Memories Of Stockingford Junior School

Brian Guest, Stockingford

I went to the nursery in St Paul's road before going to the infants school, then on to the middle school and Alderman Smith.

I remember there was a stretch of tarmac between the infants school building and the middle school playing field, with a low wall between the two. The wall apparently used to have railings on it before the second world war, but the metal was taken to build aircraft leaving one or two feet of wall. During milk breaks, if the weather was OK we used to either sit on the wall, or on the steps in front of the classrooms with our bottle of milk and a biscuit - mum always used to give me a few pence to buy a Jammy Dodger from the tuck shop to have with my milk.

During autumn, the leaves from the trees between the classroom and the playing fields used to build up on the tarmac and we used to run along kicking them up.

I remember the classrooms having very tall ceilings (especially as I was very short at the time) with lots of glass looking out over the playing field. The cloakrooms were very old-fashioned with big ceramic basins. When I was there the infants school had its own playing field by St Paul's Road (I think it's got some pre-fab classrooms on it now) which the big kids weren't allowed on. Being allowed on the newly mowed field for the first time during the summer was a really big event. During the bad weather, we played on the tarmac covered school yard.

During my time there was a row of classrooms by St Paul's Road, between the nursery and the infants school that I was in for a couple of years, but I'm not sure if that was in the infants or middle school. Those classrooms were either incredibly hot or freezing cold.