Family: Margaret's Story

Margaret’s Story

Like “my big sister Anne”, I was born at no. 68 Musgrave Gardens in 1944. Another baby was born only 2 weeks earlier and she and I became lifelong friends. Her name was Katherine Carswell and she lived at no.51. We played together all the time, although we made a threesome too with Keith Bainbridge from no. 70. A favourite game was dolls and prams, except that Keith did not have a pram (boys don’t do they!)…until one Christmas Santa Claus did bring him a doll and pram. We continued to play happily until we had to start school. When it became known that Keith used to have a doll and pram he was teased about it mercilessly. 

Katherine and I started at the same school as Anne…St. Hild’s Demonstration School. Unlike “my big sister”, neither of us liked it at all. Katherine cried every morning when her mother had to leave her at school and I hated the school dinners which seemed to feature a lot of overboiled cabbage and grisly meat. So our parents decided to change our school for the “TIN SCHOOL”. The school building was made completely out of corrugated iron and had been used as a temporary building after the Second World War. However, lack of funding meant that it was still operating as a junior school, right until the end of the late 1950’s. Strangely, although the Tin School was definitely a rougher place than St, Hilds with quite a number of children from poor families, we liked it much better and thrived there. It also meant that we could come home for dinner every day.

 I do remember one poor little girl called Florence Bell…(Flory to us children). Flory was small and very thin with a permanently runny nose and cold sores. Our teacher often asked her....”Florence, did you have any breakfast this morning?” The answer was invariably “no.” As a child I used to wonder why the teacher didn’t ask us other children the same question too, not realising that poor Flory was not being properly looked after at home. The teacher always ensured that Flory got extra bottles of milk at playtime. This was at a time when all primary school children were given a gill of milk (one third of a pint) every day at school.

Compared with nowadays, education at that time was very dull. Reading, writing and arithmetic were the main lessons. I don’t recall any geography, history or science although the routine was broken up with country dancing, P.E. and singing. There was no piano and so singing took place in your own classroom with the teacher starting the song off (giggles were often heard from the class at this point) and then we all joined in. The songs we learnt were all old English folk songs like MEN OF HARLECH, THE VICAR OF BRAY and WIDDECOMB FAIR, which I think children these days probably won’t know.

I remember schooldays as very happy, dull or not. Playtimes were always fun and walking to and from school twice a day, at morning time and dinner time with a lot of other kids was always lively.

We didn’t have extra lessons in things like swimming, horse riding and gymnastics, but I was very lucky that my mum played the piano and thought piano lessons were a very good idea. The piano teacher I had was the second stroke of luck. He was rather “posh” but very musical, gentle and encouraging. I got on like a house on fire and am so glad that I can still play today, because it is so enjoyable. The only problem was that when Katherine and Keith came to knock at our door to see if I was coming out to play, I often had to say…”Yes, after I’ve done my piano practice.” 

The other main focus for school lessons from age 9 to 11 was preparation for the exam called the ELEVEN PLUS. If you passed this exam you continued on to the Grammar School. If you did not pass the exam you went to the Secondary Modern School (viewed as very much inferior.)  So classes practised the kind of tests we would have to do in the exam. Mental arithmetic, IQ puzzles, maths questions….these were practised a lot.  There were 2 parts to the test we had to do. The first part took place in your own school and so wasn’t too scary. If you passed this test the scary part began because you had to attend the grammar school itself! This was quite a challenge as the school seemed very big indeed compared to our little Tin School. The large school hall was set out with desks and we all sat at a desk in absolute silence. The exam papers were put in front of us and the teacher (whom we didn’t know at all) said in a loud voice…..”You may start”. If you passed this test you returned to the Grammar School for the second test. Then the waiting time began. Had we passed or not? Anne Katherine, Keith and I all passed so now, education was segregated, meaning that there was a grammar school for boys and a grammar school for girls. A new adventure began.

In between all this activity, when I was 8 years old, we moved house. This did not involve a long journey to the other end of the country because we just moved down the street from no. 68 to no.114 Musgrave Gardens.  Why the move? No. 114 had a much bigger front and back garden. This gave my gardening-mad father more land to work on. My Dad looked after the front garden, which was dedicated to a wonderful display of flowers. My Granddad Simpson looked after the big back garden which was dedicated to vegetables. Our greenhouse must have been one of the first in Durham to have under-soil heating to bring on the cucumbers! As children we were surrounded by gorgeous dahlias, lupins, chrysanthemums, roses, and numerous bedding plants (all raised in the heated green house.) Then the back garden gave up its treasure of parsnips, brussel sprouts, potatoes, leeks, turnips…and more!