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PREVIOUS PAGE
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Section includes memories of a number of people.
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Chapter 6
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Miss Eve Hayward’s Memories of St. John’s School and Mr. John Ray’s Pageants
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In 1881, a young teacher, Miss Saverton, came from Ely to teach at St.
John’s, teaching was very hard work then. Large classes were squashed into rooms which were too small. The Playground was just mud. In each of the three schools there were 250
children. A new classroom was built on the main playground. Miss Saverton later married and became Mrs. Hayward. Eve Hayward, one of her daughters, became a pupil at St. John’s School
in 1902. One Classroom in the Infants’ School still had a gallery at that time. School money of 2d. a week was paid. There were then 6 classrooms in the Infants’ School and
6 each for the Boys’ and Girls’ Schools. Curtains divided the classes and partitions were used later.
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Miss Rose was head of the Infants’, Miss Johns, Head of the Girls and
Mr. Ray, Head of the Boys’ School.
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The Band of Hope meetings were held at the School. The Vicar’s
daughter, Miss Stephenson, ran the meetings in the evenings, once or twice a week. At the meetings, the children played games, performed plays, and learned poems about Temperance. They sang
songs too. There was quite a bit of drunkenness in Gosport, mostly the Marines in uniform.
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When Eve’s sister, Dorothy was a child in the Infants’ School, she
was sometimes stood up on a high chair to show the others the actions to songs.
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Sunday School “treats” were held in the Marine Barracks field (St.
Vincent). The children would walk in a crocodile from St. John’s and St. Luke’s (the mission church in Forton Road) and down the road to the field. At the field, lines of children
were given food, etc.
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The Band of Hope went to Stokes Bay once a year. Stokes Bay was barren
with Gorse bushes everywhere and very isolated. They also arranged walks to Lee. At that time it cost three halfpence from Gosport Station to Stokes Bay by train. There were three
arches to go under. It was threepence (3d.) to Lee. You could get out and pick flowers on the way, because the train went so slowly. Bury Arch was by the White Hart, Gosport Road
Station was behind the White Hart.
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(NB) 3d = 3 old pence = ¼ of 5p. Three halfpence =(1 ½ d) = ½ of 3d.
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In 1910 Eve passed the Scholarship examination to the Secondary School.
From 1914 to 1915 she was a student teacher, working with another teacher. The student teachers had to take criticism lessons in front of the head. Eve trained for two years at Bishops Otter
College, Chichester, after which she started teaching as a qualified teacher, in 1917, at St. John’s School. She taught there for five years.
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Plays were performed at the School. The teachers tried to get everyone
on the stage. There were other concerts too.
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After the First World War, there was a Peace Procession. St.
John’s children were on a float representing Queen Victoria and the Empire.
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Miss Hayward thought the Inspectors were terrible when she was teaching. She
taught in London for 8 years then came back to Gosport, taught for a year in Canada, and was evacuated to Hambledon in 1939. She returned to New Elson School in 1942.
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Mr. John Ray wrote a Pageant telling the History of Gosport in 1912. In
1914 he wrote a pageant telling the history of the Church in England, beginning with the possible visit of Joseph of Arimathea to the Vale of Avalon. Mr. Ray not only wrote the words, but also
composed music for songs, hymns, dances and interludes in the pageant. This pageant was repeated in 1930 as part of the Centenary Celebrations of the Church at St. John’s There were ten
episodes in the Pageant dealing with events connected with the History of Christianity in England. The characters in the Pageant were played by members of the church, some children from St.
John’s School, and some of the teachers.
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Miss Gwen Edwards, a young teacher at the school at the time,
acted as “Rachel at the Well” and also as a Puritan Maid. Maisie was a Puritan maid too.
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NEXT PAGE - Chapter 7
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