Mike Woolnough's 1950s School Memories
Since Eddie and I launched this website we’ve been lucky to receive many recollections of school life, both written and photographic, from the 1960s to the 1980s. One era for which we had been lacking a first hand account was the 1950s. However, Eddie was able to put me in touch with Mike Woolnough, a former pupil at the school from 1953-1959, and Mike kindly sat down with us for a coffee when he returned to visit the UK last summer.
Mike left the school in 1959 to become a Signal and Telecommunications Engineer with British Rail. He later taught at Thomas Lord Audley school before coming full circle with a return to the North Hill site to teach when the Sixth Form College opened in 1987. He has an amazing memory for details and I’m delighted to share his fascinating first-hand account of school life in the 1950s:
I eventually heard that I’d been accepted and I turned up in September 1953 accompanied by my best friend’s elder sister who was probably in her third or fourth year. We went up the drive and new entrants were directed to the lower paddock. There we were sorted into forms - 1A, 1B, 1C. I was in 1B. Then we were directed to the Medway huts on the upper quad (which eventually became the language huts). At the time those huts were still part of the commercial arm of the Technical College but this was where we spent our first morning. My form teacher was a Miss Prosser. I don’t know what she taught as I don’t think she taught us. We hadn’t been there very long before Mr Howells made an appearance (as he often did by bursting in to other teachers’ lessons to make announcements). He came in with an arm full of text books with the instruction that we should take them home and back them.
After lunch we were taken to the Eld Lane Baptist Church and this was where we spent our first year at the school. The reason for this was because the Technical College, the Girls High School and the School of Art were still on the North Hill site so there wasn’t enough room for first years. This arrangement with the other schools continued for another couple of years. At the Eld Lane Baptist Church we occupied rooms E1, E2 and E3 and the hall. I was in E2 which was on the first floor at the back of the building. E1 was downstairs on the ground floor to the left and E3 was above it. We did use the hall for gym at some stage under the direction (for the boys) of Mick Rouse. That was our home for the first year.
I had French with Miss Moles in the first term and I imagine she left because then the redoubtable Frau Nossen took over. She looked formidable and she was formidable! She didn’t like any noise in her room. Anything above the gentle scratching of nib on paper was frowned upon and usually accompanied by the throwing of a blackboard rubber at whoever she thought was responsible. I don’t ever recall being allowed to speak much French during her lessons. We used a text book called ‘En Route’ which featured a boy called Toto and that’s about as much of it as I can remember.
Many years later I ran into Frau Nossen in Coventry Street in London. I was walking between Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus. I was in the vicinity of the Lyons Corner House when she came into view like a lone iceberg. I’d only had French with her for a couple of terms and I was in my 20s but she greeted me like a long lost son and invited me into the Corner House for a cup of coffee. I was actually still a student but working part time as a cinema projectionist in the West End at the time. Subsequently I bumped into her on a train and she demanded that I accompany her to the restaurant car where she bought me a beer!
During our first year we came back to the North Hill site for assemblies in St Peter’s Church and school lunches. Pupils were allowed to move across town of their own free will, unless their parents hadn’t given permission for them to be allowed out unaccompanied. I seem to remember that we weren’t taught art at the Baptist Church and went to East Stockwell Street for those lessons (this continued for a while and later Roy Butcher moved into the pavilion before finally moving to the top floor). I also remember doing History in years three and four there with Mick Rouse. We did some PE in St Peter’s Church Hall but we also did some in the Old Bunting Rooms in Culver Street. I remember we had PE first thing on a Monday morning and it was freezing cold in the Old Bunting Rooms! That was with Mick Rouse as well.
Mr Sprason was a very imposing man but in a very quiet and unimposing way. That may sound like a contradiction but he had a calm presence that demanded you pay attention to him. It was obvious that he'd take no nonsense. He was also a very kind, caring and gentle man. Miss Twyman, or ‘Twang’ as she was known, on account of her signature I believe, had similar qualities.
In my day Ken Howells was known as ‘Beaky’ because of his initials BK. No-one seemed to know what the ‘B’ stood for though! I discovered what it stood for at some stage in my first year because of an odd sequence of events. I was coming down Head Street one lunchtime when I was stopped by a woman who said she had left her handbag in Jacklin’s in the High Street and would I run back and get it for her. I obligingly did but when I returned to Head Street I couldn’t find the woman. So when I got back to school after lunch I told Ken Howells (who I think must have been Head of Year) and he took me down to the Police Station where he handed it in as lost property. Of course he had to give his full name and that’s when I learned he wasn’t Ken Howells, but Brian Kenneth Howells.
Mr Howells’ teaching methods would be considered old fashioned now (and they were probably old fashioned back then) but I’m brilliant at Geography in a quiz and that’s all down to Ken Howells. Funnily enough I think Miss Smith was also sometimes called ‘Beaky’ on account of her nose.
In my second year we were based on the North Hill site. My form room was the Old Canteen and, for some reason I never quite fathomed, I was now in 2C! My form master was Alan Edgar Horlock, known as Oscar and for some reason it was common to shout “rhubarb” after him! At various times I was taught, English, History and RE by him.
Music was taught by Mr 'Drip' Drabble, in room forty-one. He was a kindly man much put upon, I fear. Music seemed to consist mainly of singing traditional songs such as “The British Grenadier” and “The Vicar of Bray”! In my second year he also taught Maths. I must admit to bunking off some of his lessons. I also spent a lot of time in room forty-four, mainly under Ken’s eye. It was also where Frau Nossen held her weekly violin lessons. In my third year I had English there with Mrs “Old” Heath! There was a small staffroom down there in the corridor opposite the girls’ loos. We were still using East Stockwell Street and also St Peter’s Church Hall but I never went back to the Baptist Church. The Large Hall didn’t exist then.
As you walked up the drive on your left, where the hall is now, there was a wall and a gazebo in the corner. That gazebo featured in a Christmas card that Roy Butcher designed for the school in the 1950s.
At this time if you walked up to the top of the drive and turned right towards the Metalwork room (which was level with the tennis courts) there was a building called Frost’s Barn on the right. Frost’s Barn acted as a staff room. The top floor was the mens’ staff room and it had a commanding view of Hilly Fields. So PE with Ken Howells would start with us going into the boys changing rooms to change, actually the cloakroom just inside the main entrance of the building on the left hand side. He would then send us off down North Hill, over Balkerne Lane, into Sheepen Road by the cattle market and along to the boundary of the playing fields. We then went up to the top of Hilly Fields and back down. Ken Howells would stand in Frost’s Barn with his cup of tea and supervise! Any boy unable to participate was directed to Balkerne Lane to act as a “Lollipop Boy” and see us safely across the road!
The Metalwork workshop was incredibly well equipped in my day. It had industry standard machinery which had been installed during the war and the workshop used to aid the war effort!
We didn’t have the playing fields in Sheepen Road in my first two years. We went to various places instead. We were bussed to West End Playing Fields up Shrub End way. We also went to fields that subsequently became the site of St Benedict’s and the Girls High School. In my first year we swam in the old open air baths by the roundabout. Also at some stage we used the Garrison Pool.
There was a set of doors on the ground floor that divided us from the Girls High School. There was a passageway on the right hand side (lined with lockers) down to underneath the steps on the side of the building. At the bottom of the passageway on the right was ‘Brother’ Calaam’s Woodwork room, which I think in later days became the library. (It became the Sixth Form College’s refectory, I was never able to eat in there without the smell of hot fish glue coming into my mind!) Opposite that was the High School’s Domestic Science room (which was also used by the Gilberd’s girls). Directly above on the first floor you had Mr Sprason’s office and the General Office. (Miss Twyman was based in the Cock and Pye at this time, although later she was in an office on the first floor at the opposte end to Mr Sprason.) Also on that floor was room twenty-four which was used mostly by Ralph Cook, who taught Geography. I remember that he had a rather slow and ponderous voice that didn’t change, even when he needed to admonish a child in the middle of his dictation. For a slow and ponderous speaker he was a deadly fast bowler - he walked everywhere sedately but on the cricket pitch he was quick.
So the ground floor was 50/50 Gilberd/Girls High School, the first floor was 95% Girls High but the second floor was 95% Gilberd. It was a rather popular floor as you could see down into the Girls High School hall when they were doing PE! On the second floor room twenty-eight was first on the right and it was mostly used for Biology. Then of course there was the top half of the hall on the right. On the left hand side were rooms twenty-seven and twenty-nine. Room twenty-nine was the tiered lecture theatre room, then there was a Chemistry lab and Physics lab at the far end. The top floor of course all belonged to the School of Art. I think that the Medway Buildings probably were still used by the Technical College at this time. There were cycle sheds below the upper quad (the tuck shop was at one end) and I remember standing there with a group of friends “scoring” the female college students marks out of ten as they returned after lunch! (Sorry, very un-PC now, but this was the 1950s!)
At the end of the academic year in 1955 the Girls High School moved to Norman Way. It was the custom at that time to admit a couple of pupils who had been successful in the 13+ exam. Because of the unprecedented increase of space that year it was decided to admit a complete form group, known as 3N, some of my closest friends, Graham Shakespeare, Johnny Price, Mike Greenland and Roger Kingstone, (with whom I am still friends), were in that intake. I think it may have been another couple of years before the School of Art moved out. They must have moved out mid-year as I can remember wandering up to the top floor to look about before the Gilberd took it over. It was probably around this time that the School became “The Gilberd Technical High School”, following a trend to name schools in the area after notable local citizens rather than their geographical location. Mr Sprason hated anyone referring to the school as "The Tech"!
The curriculum at that time was fairly standard in the first three years - English, French (only for the 'A' form after the first year), Maths, History, Geography, Physics (Mr Hamer in the first year, thereafter with either Mr Brookes or Mr Dobson), Music (My first year was with Mr Page, then with Mr Drabble until he died. After that Miss Grace Ball of Colchester Operatic Society was drafted in to fill the gap until the end of the year. I don’t remember having Music after the third year.), Art, RE (with Miss Twyman in the first year, after that I only remember having it with Mr Horlock), PE and Games of course. In the first year we had Woodwork with Mr Calaam, in the second year it was Metalwork with Mr Nunn (called 'Putt' after the noise his moped made!) He had originally joined the staff as a "drill instructor" in the 1930’s! In the third year we had both Metal and Woodwork. The girls had Needlework and Domestic Science. In the third year Biology was added. I’m not sure how all the extra bits were fitted in as the 'A' stream also had French. I think they only followed one practical subject, though.
In Year four there was a totally different set up. The 'A' stream continued much as before; these were people who were destined to follow an academic path leading, for some, to University. The rest of us chose one of four sets. 'B' for building, this boys only set followed the basic curriculum but took woodwork and building drawing (with Norman Curd). 'C' for commercial was girls only and followed a course designed to equip them to work in an office; thus they studied Shorthand and Typing. 'D' for Domestic was also girls only. I’m not sure what career path this was designed for, other than to be good housewives! However those girls who wanted to be nurses were usually in this set along with a few who wanted to teach domestic subjects themselves. They, of course, did cookery and needlework. Interestingly, these two sets only did Arithmetic rather than full Mathematics. It was possible to do ‘O’ level Arithmetic in those days!
The final set, which I chose, was ‘E’ for Engineering. We took Metalwork and Technical (Engineering) Drawing. This was taught by Mr Thomas, who sadly collapsed in Frost’s Barn and subsequently died, when I was in the Lower Sixth. In addition there were four options open to everyone except the 'A' stream. History, Geography, Art and Surveying. We had to choose two. For Maths the 'B' and 'E' classes joined together and were formed into two streams. Set 2 was taught by Mr Denholm, Set 1 by a teacher I won't name! I was in set 2 and came top of the group in the end of year exams and was promoted to set 1. Here I discovered that this previously unnamed teacher was useless! One lesson we had with her was the last before lunch. She always dismissed us early so that she could go and get her "butcher meat"! I don’t ever remember being ‘taught’ by her, we simply worked our way through the text book! On one occasion there was something I didn’t understand and went to her for assistance, she put down her knitting, took the book from me, studied it for a moment and then said, “That’s easy!” She gave the book back to me and carried on with her knitting! Come the exams only one person in the top set passed and only one person in the second set failed. One boy in the top set told her what he thought of her and was demoted to the second set - he of course, passed. I wish I had been braver! Curiously, she never returned after the summer holidays!
Consequently, there were a number of us resitting Maths in the November series. Our resit class was taken by Mr Sprason and I can vouch for what a brilliant teacher he was. No failures that time around. In the Lower Sixth I also had Engineering Science with him. In the fifth year I had English with ‘Killer’ Jones. In the mock exams he set a pass mark of 60%.Anyone scoring less that that had to pay the entrance fee of ten shillings (50p). I scored 59%! I believe I could have got a refund, but I never bothered, I was just pleased to have passed.
I remember the prize-giving ceremonies. First years didn’t get to go as there was not enough room in the Moot Hall where it was held before they transferred future ceremonies to the ABC cinema. The reason for the switch was because of Mrs Brittle, who taught English. Her husband was a leading light in the amateur dramatics society and we had the use of the cinema during the Amateur Operatics Society’s week. Prize-givings during my time were generally against the backdrop of the opening scene of ‘Brigadoon’ or ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ or whatever they were doing that year!
At the first prize giving ceremony I went to the guest of honour was Sir (later Baron) William Penney, the famous nuclear physicist and ‘old boy’ of the school.
I won the F.W. Brackett prize for Engineering Science in 1958 and the following year I won the prize for 'Services to School'. (Click on the programmes below for higher resolution images.)
As a prize for winning, I recall we chose a book from a bookshop in Crouch Street up to £1 in value. Any more than that and you paid the difference! Mine were both 25/- (£1.25). The bookplates below provide a reminder of Roy Butcher's exquisite handwriting.
Looking through the prize giving programmes there are a number of names I recall. Ken Dorman wanted to be a police officer and became the first boy to join the girls’ shorthand class! Michael Dowman was a superb artist, he painted a picture of a Jaguar sports car. He sent it to them and I think they subsequently used it in their publicity. Maureen Godfrey’s father was a senior engineer with Marconi’s. He had oversight of all the outside broadcast cameras for the Queen’s Coronation. Another of my contemporaries was Mick Morris, a fine artist but also a very good athlete – following in his father’s footsteps. His father competed in the 50km walk in the 1948 Olympics, coming fourth. Another of my sporty contemporaries was Richard Osbourne, who went on to teach PE at The Gilberd. I noticed Josephine Stoneham in the list, she was my best friend’s sister who had accompanied me on my first day. Rosemary Dutton's name also appears; I confess to having a crush on her, though, sad to say, it was unrequited! Her father was one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools, I encountered him professionally some time later. Rosemary, I believe, emigrated to New Zealand. A name not amongst the prize-winners but remembered never-the-less is Istvan Gaal. He was Hungarian and escaped from Budapest following the 1956 uprising, in which he had been rather active. He taught me how to make a Molotov Cocktail! He was at the school until the end of his lower sixth year, when he returned to Budapest.
Back in my day we had two school songs - one of which was 'Jerusalem' and the other one was commonly known as 'John O 'Gaunt’s Verse' from 'Richard II'. Looking online it appears it was also known as ‘This Sceptered Isle’ and was fairly common as a school song in the 1950s.
I stayed through to the Lower Sixth and partly into the Upper Sixth as I was going to work for British Rail as a Signal and Telecommunications Engineer. They required you to have two science subjects and we had only done Physics. At the start of my lower sixth year they introduced a new subject called Engineering Science, which nowadays would be counted as an AS level, and I left once I’d completed this subject.
Generally speaking I had a very positive experience at the school. I had a difficult time in my first two years. I had discovered just before I went to secondary school that I was adopted. It didn’t concern me when I found out but it was the way people responded to it that unsettled me. I can remember being pulled out of class by my primary school headmistress and cross examined about this. So in my first couple of years at the school I was unsettled and didn’t get the most out of it. I pushed against the system a bit. By the time I got into my third year I had settled down and enjoyed the experience.
There was an incident when I was in my fourth year, that Ken Howells often related. We had Maths with 'Dumpy' Denholm in St Peter’s Church Hall. On one occasion Mr Denholm was absent and the lesson was covered by a woman whose name I can no longer recall. Ken deposited a set of mathematical tables in the room and asked the cover teacher, “to bring the tables back after the lesson.” The teacher misunderstood the instruction and at the end of the lesson we lugged the actual tables back to the main building. I believe Ken’s comments are unprintable!
Looking back at the calibre of teachers we had, there were a few who were poor but Mr Sprason weeded most of them out. There were some who had been Spitfire pilots, some who landed on the Normandy Beaches, one who had been a navigator with the Dam Busters’ Squadron, one who had fought with Montgomery in the desert, one who had spent days adrift on a life raft in the Mediterranean, one who had suffered horrendous treatment at the hands of the Japanese, one who had served in a destroyer on convoy duties and another who had been the youngest prisoner in Colditz. These are the ones I know about. Teachers like these moulded my character and, I hope, made me the person I am today. I am eternally grateful.
I left in 1959 from the, then, Upper Sixth study to the left of the doors guarding the steps down to the outside. These steps have been the site of many a photo! My friend Roger and I always tried to sit near the window in order to get a good view of the railway. In a strange time warp I returned in 1987 to the newly opened Sixth Form College only to find that this was now my office with a desk by the same window. Unfortunately, the trees had grown and obscured my view of the trains! I subsequently moved to Miss Twyman’s old office on the first floor and became the proud occupant of the only office with a private loo!
Another link with the past was Mr Bob Taylor. He joined the school in 1959, just before I left, as a newly qualified physics teacher. I believe he remained continuously at the Gilberd until 1987 when he returned to North Hill as Head of Physics at the Sixth Form College, where we renewed our acquaintance!
Finally, it is with great pleasure that I note my grandson was also a pupil at The Gilberd from 2018 to 2023!
What an amazingly detailed description of your (our) days at the Gilberd! I was there from 64 - 70. Reading this has made me feel very nostalgic for the not always good old days - powerful stuff. Graham Sims
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