Rural Leicestershire

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Starting school

3.14 minutes

[779 kb]

EMOHA:

What memories have you got of your first day, first day at school?

Interviewee:

Well, I was at grandma's when I started school, just outside the village, and well it was a big day 'cause I had a new outfit. And 'cause we always wore, well really it was, I mean it was a top with a pleated skirt with a white blouse. Even in those days, I mean, it went on to other, to senior school days the same uniform really. I mean we could wear what we liked but that was always considered… mine was often my aunt's coat turned inside out and made up by the dressmaker which was beautiful material. But it was something that had been discarded but was made up by the dressmaker to make me a dress, uniform dress to go to school.

EMOHA:

And you remember…

Interviewee:

That was a local lady in the village.

EMOHA:

And you remember wearing this outfit going for the first time?

Interviewee:

Yes. Yes. Yes.

EMOHA:

And who took you?

Interviewee:

Oh, grandma took me.

EMOHA:

Grandma took you. Can you remember what it felt like to be left at school for the first time?

Interviewee:

No, I don't remember that. 'Cause knowing everyone, you see, we'd no strangers there. You'd all gone to Sunday School together, more or less, and all grown up together, so…

EMOHA:

So what age, again, were you when you started school?

Interviewee:

Five. You didn't go to school until you were five.

EMOHA:

What recollections do you have of the activities you did in the Infants' School?

Interviewee:

I always remember the slate and the pencils that squeaked on the slate. And my grandma was the caretaker of the village school so if anybody was ill of any description I had to nip up to grandma's to tell her would she come and clean up. And we had, when it was, when we broke up for the holidays Miss Oakey, that was our schoolteacher's name, she was a Miss Oakey, she always used to buy a box of assorted Bassetts' Assorted Fruits and Candies, order it from the village shop. And I would go up and fetch it and it had got strawberries in and all those sort of thing, cherries and thing and I would collect it with these three-cornered bags and every child was given a bag and I'd have to take the box round the school and give them the sweeties. I handled them, they didn't. Round the Infant class and give them all a, until the box had gone and that was our treat when we had half school holiday.

Last updated: 21/11/03
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