Rural Leicestershire

[Growing up] [School] [Home] [Church] [Leaving]

What the village school was like

3.10 minutes

[768 kb]

Interviewee:

There were, there was the infants' room. Next to that was the middle one, school, and then you went up into the next one, which was, into the next room, which was divided by a screen. That was all that it was. Just a screen across the…

EMOHA:

What was the…

Interviewee:

So if the headmaster shouted while we were in this class you could hear every word of what he was saying. Anybody got the cane, you could hear it.

EMOHA:

What was the dividing wall for, or screen for?

Interviewee:

Well, it was so that if there was an assembly of any kind, it could be opened but it didn't happen very often, only when the school was hired for the village, local village show or something like that. We had one piano for those three classes and of course there were no central heating then and we had a coal fire in the, with a guard round it. Then it eventually got to a stove, and I think before I left school, the school, I think all that was done away with and it was central heating then. But the other heat was from a big boiler at the side of the school which my grandfather used to stoke morning and evening, and that kept the hot water going. And on Friday nights my grandma had to clean the school thoroughly and we used to go, my sister and I, and they were brass taps on the wash basins, and we used to go and polish the brass taps for her and do all the wash basins and she used to give us sixpence each for doing that.

EMOHA:

So, what sort of toilet facilities did they have at school?

Interviewee:

They were in the school yard. There was a row of them. There was one kept locked for the staff. There was the girls' side and then there was a high wall and then there was the boys' side, and of course, they were, they had the men come and empty the pans once a week.

EMOHA:

When you say "empty the pans"…

Interviewee:

Never conscious of it being done but it was always done.

EMOHA:

What sort of pans were these?

Interviewee:

Well, they were metal pans into wooden seats, you see.

EMOHA:

So, each toilet…?

Interviewee:

Had a wooden seat and metal pan.

EMOHA:

Can you …

Interviewee:

No chains or anything.

EMOHA:

Can you remember what they were like to use?

Interviewee:

Horrible. Well, I thought they were.

EMOHA:

Was that very different to what you had at home? What sort of toilet did you have at home?

Interviewee:

Oh no, we had the same thing at home! Oh yes. Lovely white seat because my sister and I used to scrub it.

EMOHA:

What happened to the pan at home?

Interviewee:

My father emptied that. That went down the fields.

EMOHA:

Did it?

Interviewee:

Buried. So we never had an accumulation, it was always kept very nice.

EMOHA:

So, the school ones weren't, you said they weren't, you didn't like using them?

Interviewee:

I didn't like it but then I was a bit finicky anyway.

Last updated: 21/11/03
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