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Other Gosport Books

New Book By

John Sadden

Discovery Centre Books

Gosport Gardening

Photos of the UK

Weather In Gosport

OR

Gosport Weather

The school had already been improved to some extent by 1960 but it was realised that further work should be done to bring it up to the standard required by the 1944 Education Act. New toilets and washbasins were built for the Infant School with a covered way leading to them.  Later the caretaker’s store-room was adapted to make a small staff room between the Infant and Junior sections, with a sink unit and electric point for a kettle. A platform had been erected in the hall.  To reach the Staff room, from the juniors’ side, it was necessary to mount the steps up to the platform and walk across it to the staff room door.  There was a door onto the Infant School, one into the playground and another led into the Infant toilets.  For teachers who ate their lunch in the staff room it could be a bit draughty!

The school was a very friendly school, but by modern standards it was still rather inadequate.  In the Junior side, all the classrooms except one led into one another. Even the Headmaster’s room led into a classroom, though there was another door from his room into the playground.  The junior hall was used for assembly, music and as a dining room. Occasionally, it was used for P.E. in wet weather.  However, this was not very convenient as it was a rather small hall and it served as a passageway between classrooms and the Infant school.

Trestle-tables were put up for dinner-time and removed afterwards and stacked on the platform.  Later, when the numbers for dinners increased, an adjoining classroom had to be used as well.  The desks in the classroom were put together to make a table.  The children in that class were obliged to stop work early in order to prepare for dinner.  Older boys helped to replace the desks afterwards.  The room needed to be swept after the meal, and the smell of dinners lingered on during afternoon lessons.  The “dinner-ladies”, with the help of a few of the bigger boys, moved the tables and chairs in the hall. A hatch opened from the kitchen into the smaller room and there was a door from the kitchen to the hall.  When small tables and stacking chairs replaced the trestle tables, the work of moving them was easier, but they still had to be lifted onto the platform.

There was not much space in the classrooms.  It was difficult to imagine how any of them could have been used for the larger classes of former days.  Blackboards were balanced on easels and coal-consuming stoves were still in use.  A few years later, wall blackboards replaced the easels, so that less space was used and the doors could be opened without having to dodge the easel.