Arthur shares his wartime memories

5:32pm Monday 12th May 2008

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A FORMER Winwick Primary School pupil has recalled his happy school days during the war.

Arthur Wright, aged 77, contacted the Warrington Guardian after reading an article about Nancy Cartwright, one of the school's oldest ex-pupils, who had returned to the Myddleton Lane site to cast her eye over its its new £400,000 extension plans.

Mr Wright's father, uncle, aunt and cousins all attended the Victorian school - and during the 1920s his grandfather was even the school caretaker for several years.

He left Hill Crest on Waterworks Lane in the mid-1960s for Holsworthy in Devon, where he ran a dairy farm.

But his family in Lancashire keep him in touch with goings on back home - and his memories of the school remain undiminished.

He said: "We sat at small tables and chairs, two to a table. We practiced letters and numbers using a small tray of sand, each with a wooden skewer."

At that time the school had two separate junior and senior cinder-covered playgrounds, with toilets in each.

He said: "The junior toilets consisted of about six loos and a small concrete lined square, open to the sky, where the boys went to wee.

"The challenge' in there was to wee over the wall into Worrall's farmyard. Rumour had it that the only one to be successful was Ernie Davis."

During morning playtime he remembers having a cup of Horlicks, which was later changed to milk which was drunk through a straw - a real straw!

He added: "Headmistress, Miss Blackwell, ruled not so much with a rod of iron' as a "rod of wood".

"The cane was in fairly frequent use on us boys - we probably deserved it. Sometimes she had a change and used a genuine Australian boomerang. It was about three feet long and about an inch and a half wide from what I can remember."

A sad wartime memory was a little girl who died when she was knocked over by an RAF lorry outside the school.

He added: "In wartime we had to sit in the classroom practicing wearing our gas masks for fifteen minutes, they got all steamed up and wet inside.

"When the air raid siren sounded we all had to leave school and walk up Hermitage Green Lane to the new Rectory where the air raid shelter was situated."

Send your memories of Winwick Primary School to ndocking@guardiangrp.co.uk.