Hide

A school day in the life of Kathleen Hood.

hide
Hide
Hide

COWLAM:
A school day in the life of Kathleen Hood.

Source=h:/!Genuki/RecordTranscriptions/ERY/ERYKathleenHood.txt

A School Day in the Life of Kathleen Hood

by (the late) Kathleen Hood.

I've been asked to write about a day in my life at school, when I was between thirteen and fourteen years old.
It's a bit difficult to write about one day without telling a bit about my school days as a whole.

The first five years of my schooldays from Easter 1923 to Easter 1928, I went to the Burlington Council School in Bridlington. They were very happy days for me, I got on well with the teachers and children. Our classes were of children all the same age, with the average of thirty to thirty four children per class. We had to walk and later cycle about one and a half miles to school from North Mount Farm where we lived. The teachers were very caring about us having to come so far and helped us in any way they could, drying our clothes and shoes and letting us go to the toilet during lessons if we needed to. We had to take a packed lunch and were allowed to go into the boiler house to keep warm whilst we ate it. My sister, brother and I all settled in and did well, being in the top ten each year in our exams.

In April 1928 my father rented a farm in a Hamlet on the Yorkshire Wolds called Cowlam, with only around between 30 or 40 people living there and no school. The nearest school was at Sledmere which was two and a half miles away. We got a shock when we started at the Sledmere school. We had to ride two and a half miles each way to school and there were only between seventy to ninety pupils there, with only three classrooms. The infants with about twenty children aged between four and a half and seven years old with one teacher, the juniors with about twenty children aged between seven and ten years old, in the second room with one teacher, and the seniors average about thirty four aged between ten and fourteen years old with the head master teaching them. Over half the children came from out-lying farms some of them having to come up to three miles to school. We were no longer cosseted and had extra care, we were more likely to be scorned if we didn't turn up to school because of bad weather and snow. The first time we stayed away because of snow, the head teacher brought me out in front of the class and brought two little children from the infants room to tell the class these two had come through the snow and I could not, not very good for my ego!

Our teacher the head master had standard four, five, six and seven to teach, it was very hard work being in standard four, as the History, Geography and several other lessons were taught to us en block, a lot of it going over our heads. He also liked to get us all out round the black board (it was a big room) for mental arithmetic, his pet subject, he was very fond of using his stick if you couldn't answer him when he chose you to answer, I was terrified of him and used to try and hide behind one of the older girls. It got better as we grew older.

2.

Twice a week all the girls went into the junior class, to the lady teacher, to learn sewing and knitting, and all the boys went into the head master's class for drawing and handwork. On a Tuesday morning the Vicar used to come (it being a Church School) and teach from assembly to play time. When I was thirteen the headmaster left and we got a new younger man not so keen with the stick and much kinder, helping the younger ones as well as the old.

Both headmasters were keen on sport, and four successive years we won the shield at the inter school sports at Driffield. The year I was thirteen, ten of the older girls were taken to Driffield Council School, by the local carriers coach, on a Thursday, for the day when we, along with girls from Garton School and Little Driffield School, were taught cookery, washing and cleaning being split into sections and taking turns week by week in rotation, we really enjoyed this, taking home some lovely dishes and cakes we had cooked. It was a job carrying them home on my bike when we got back to Sledmere. We had our dinner in the cookery room usually having some of the things we had cooked, then we where able to go into Driffield which was a treat for us. I got my hair cut regularly that year in the dinner hour and was able to do little bits of shopping for my mother. It was a long day having to get to Sledmere to catch the ride with the carrier by 8-30 a.m. and not getting back to Sledmere until 4-00 p.m. and then having to ride the two and a half miles (one mile being very much up hill) home, but I really enjoyed it. I think those Thursdays were some of the best days of my Sledmere Schooldays.

Kath at 10 Kath and Alf GW
Kath aged 10 Kath and Alf at their Golden Wedding in 1991


Copyright © 2018 Pauline Hinson
(Pauline is Kathleen's Daughter).
Kathleen was born in 1918
and died in 2008.