Mirfield Grammar School

MGS Blaser Badge MGS Cap Badge Every year the Grammar School produced its own magazine. I present here the issues for 1954 through to 1962.
These magazines were full of articles, prose and poetry that were the work of students at the school along with accounts of school trips. Sport and examination results were listed and also the Births, Marriages and Deaths columns which can bring back memories for a few of us.

The badge pictured left was the blazer badge while the one on the right was the cap badge.

Just a brief word or two of explanation may be helpful. The Grammar School taught Latin so it was inevitable that some Latin words would crop up in the magazines. Since I had to seek help to understand some of the headings (it is a long time since I was there after all) I will give a little help to those of you who may need it.

SALVETE means HELLO so this section is the intake of students for that year.
VALETE means GOODBYE so this is where you will find the school leavers.

Choose your magazine to read

Discovering the Fire at MGS - March 17, 1961

As recalled by Carol Thornton (nee Jackson)

The first time that I knew something was wrong was when I got up to get ready for school as usual that day and saw the note that my father, Bruce Jackson, had left on the mantel piece.

My father was a goods guard at Huddersfield railway station at that time and often worked on "late turn". The nature of his job meant that he kept irregular hours so we occasionally communicated in this way. He had been coming home on his motorbike, from his shift, at around 2:00 am the previous night and while riding down Lee Green and along Dunbottle Lane towards Flash Lane he saw a glow in the sky caused by the school which was aflame. He promptly reported the fire at the next phone box on his route.

The message that he left for me that morning said that my school had probably burned down during the night.

Not knowing what to expect I left the house and walked to school as usual. When I arrived I was greeted by quite a scene of devastation. The lovely old stone central quadrangle and classrooms had gone and all that was left was a smoking ruin. There were several of our teachers standing around and some of them were in tears. Being young and naive I wondered why this was until someone informed me that they had lost all of their school records.

One of my fellow pupils was quite negative with me when I said my father was the person who had called the fire brigade — he would have preferred not to have had any school left to go to at all.

I was sad personally because only the day before I had taken some sticklebacks from the local pond and installed them in the big fish tank situated in the old classroom where we had biology lessons. The thought of the fire surrounding them, glass breaking and their being consumed by the heat and flames really upset me and I wished I had left them safe in their pond. Obviously there were no classes that day so I returned home.

Next week an account of the fire appeared in the local paper "The Reporter". The article said something like "...a lonely railway worker wending his way across the fields saw the fire..." and when I indignantly showed this to my father he just said, "well you can't believe all that you read in the papers".

All in all, because of these events, it has stayed quite vividly in my memory.

There is also an article on the fire in the 1961 magazine although it seems to have copied inaccurate details of the discovery from the newspaper report. There are also two photos in the Editorial

Mirfield Grammar School Teachers

Mr. Hepworth was still headmaster of the Grammar School when I transferred there after a re-sit of the eleven plus and he took us for the occasional lesson when our regular teacher was absent for any reason. His favourite punishment for eating in class was to have us write 100 lines or more. His favoured line was 'Masticating movements of the mandibles are reminiscent of ruminant animals'. His favorite hymn was Jerusalem. When he came to the school in 1920 to take the post of Science specialist he was the youngest master. He worked his way up to become Headmaster's right hand, and then Second Master before becoming Headmaster in his own right. He worked untiringly for the school for 37 years before retiring in 1957.

The headmistress was Miss Jeffery who was a rather large lady and I remember her lifting her ample bosom onto the top of her desk after she sat down. She was also in charge of lost property and we had to pay one shilling to have an item returned. Her nickname was 'The Net'. This was possibly due to the fact that she always wore a hairnet but I remember one morning at assembly she was reading from the Bible and the passage she chose was about Simon Peter fishing from his boat but having no luck. Jesus told him to cast his net on the other side of the boat and the net came out full. This conjured up a vision to us of Miss Jeffery pulling out her hairnet full of pens and other lost property and gave rise to a spate of sketches which turned up on the notice boards under the heading of THE NET.

The science master was Mr. Raymond (Sammy) Saywell, a very tall man with broad shoulders who would stand at the back of the stage during assembly with his eyes shut and rock back and forth. We were sure that one day he would rock too far and fall over but we were never to see this happen. He also had a slight speech impediment in that he slurred the letter 's' and we would delight in hearing him announce to the class, "Today we are going to make a shaturated sugar sholushion".

The French master was Gus Elliott. He was a small brown skinned man with a thin face and was a real tartar. If you were good at french then you were treated well but if you couldn't grasp the subject, as I couldn't, then you were in deep trouble. If you failed to complete your homework to his satisfaction then his method of improving you was to have you remove your slipper (plimsoll) and bend over in front of the class to be beaten with it. I had missed the first year of french due to having come to the Grammar School by way of the Modern School and a resit of the entrance exam and never did manage to catch up with the rest of the class I was placed in. Thus I became very familiar with the slipper throughout the whole of my time there. Gus would have been totally lost in today's schools where his methods have been made illegal. He was the major reason, amongst other lesser ones, why I left school at the earliest possible opportunity.

There were some excellent teachers who helped to redress the balance. Mr. Barker who taught English was a prime example. He was a tall imposing man who was much respected. He always made his lessons interesting and we would take a poem and dissect it line by line to find out what the poet was trying to convey. I am much indebted to him for teaching me how to find pages of description and vivid pictures from just a few lines of well written poetry. I my later life I always thought that he reminded me of Mr. Chips of 'Goodbye Mr. Chips' and I could never think of any vocation that would have suited him better.

Our Latin teacher was Tom Rowland who had been a tank driver during the war. For one year he was our form-master and we developed a good relationship with him. He would regale us with tales of his exploits and explained the intricacies of driving a tracked vehicle that had no steering wheel but steered by varying the speed of either track in relation to the other. He once told us in graphic detail how his light tank with steel tracks travelling on a wet road was unable to stop on a steep hill because of the tracks sliding and ended up through a wall at the bottom. He was ambidextrous (could write with either hand) and would stand in the centre of the blackboard and swap the chalk from one hand to the other as he wrote. He could also spin round and throw the chalk with deadly accuracy at the sound of anyone talking. He left the school in 1960 after seven years to take up a post at Ripon Grammar School as Head of the Classics Department.

Mr. Evans was a Welshman with a strong accent who taught maths. He was nicknamed Mr. K. because he appended a 'k' to all words ending with 'ing' such as 'talkingk' and 'thinkingk'. I had mixed feelings for Mr. Evans as he was mostly alright with me but had a way of taking a boy by the ear, or the hair just above the ear, and marching him to the front of the class if he thought he wasn't paying attention or was misbehaving in some other way.

Miss Hellawell also taught French. She was a pleasant woman but was easily taken advantage of by an unruly class and it was not unknown for Gus Elliott to have to march in and instantly quell the unruly element. Her nickname was Flossie, probably due to her bleached blond hair. She sang with the Huddersfield Choral Society, renowned for its rendition of The Hallelujah Chorus.

Miss Smith taught History. She was known for her rimless spectacles and the way she would peer over them at her class. Born in 1926 she later became Mrs Hopwood and lived at Lightcliffe. She died at 81 years of age on 13 November 2007, following an illness, leaving her husband Norman, 3 sons and 5 grandchildren.

Mr Jessop taught geography and lived on Shillbank Lane. He would write comments on our homework which were mostly indecipherable. Once when I had to give in and ask what his comment said, it turned out that he had written "this writing is scrawny". Well, Mr. Jessop, so was yours.

Mr F. J. Walker (Freddie) was our music teacher and tried his best to give us an appreciation of classical music. I believe his favourite composer was probably Elgar and the Enigma Variations featured heavily in our lessons. It was widley rumoured among the pupils (though never proven) that he played the piano in the Black Bull Hotel. He left the school in 1959 after 15 years of part time service.

Mr. Jones. Destined to marry Miss Kirk (below). They bought a house on Crowlees Road near its junction with Westfields Road. Mr. Jones taught biology. I saw Mr. Jones at the sponsor's evening for the latest Francis Stott book "The Changing Face of Mirfield" on the 10 October 2003 but didn't get the chance to speak to him. He was older, as we all are, and his hair was thinner and grey but he was unmistakably Mr. Jones. Mr. and Mrs Jones celebrated their golden wedding in August 2005.

This was Miss Kirk when I first went to the Grammar School and she taught domestic science to the girls. She became Mrs Jones in 1955 when she married her colleague Mr. Jones (above). She left the school during the summer of 1959.

Mr. Jack Charnock taught maths. He lived near the Baptist Chapel on Water Royd Lane. Mr. Charnock was also present at the sponsor's evening for the latest Francis Stott book "The Changing Face of Mirfield" on the 10 October 2003. He has the same shock of hair but it is now as white as mine.

Mr. Eric Hargreaves was the physics teacher and a very good one at that. He later left Mirfield to teach in Batley.

Mr Booth was the Art teacher. What else can I say?

This was the boys' PE instructor, Mr Young.

This was Jean Chappell the girls' sport and PE mistress.

Miss Sheard was the school secretary.

Mr. Beaumont was the school caretaker. He retired in 1959 due to ill health.

The photo below was kindly supplied by David Jessop whose father was the geography teacher at MGS. It was taken on a school trip to Mont St. Michael, France in 1967.

School trip to Mont St. Michael From left to right are:

a) Brian Longstaff, who was the driver for the trip.

b) Les Salton, who was the PE Teacher during David's time at the Grammar School.

c) Not sure of this one but possible Neil Sampson, the new history teacher who arrived during David's time there.

d) Someone already mentioned on this page, Mr. Jones, the biology master.

Thanks are also due to Old Grammarians David Walker, Judith Doyle (nee Stonebridge), Margaret Elsey (nee Maughan), Kenneth Breare and John Haigh for their help with some of the names.

Footnote: Les Saltern died Tuesday, 28 March 2006.

My Moment of Glory

My moment of glory came when I was just 15 years old but I think that a little background information may be helpful before I get into the details. It's all about competitiveness, and if there is anyone out there who is less competitive than me then I would like to meet him. If someone has a different viewpoint on any subject to me or does something in a different way then I don't feel an overwhelming urge to correct them, even when I know that they are 100% wrong. If they don't want to know, are happy with their beliefs, and aren't harming anyone then it makes no difference to me. I never needed to be better at football, score more runs at cricket, or run further and faster in a cross country run, and that brings us right to the point.

It was 30th March 1955; the school sports day and everyone had to enter at least one event. The only sport I had ever really enjoyed was the cross country run. During PE lessons the boys who were not very good at real sports like football were sent on a cross country run to keep them out of mischief. I would usually run alongside my friend, Tony Stewart, whose father was head caretaker at Mirfield Modern School and also brother to Alf Stewart, father of Patrick Stewart, making Patrick and Tony cousins. This was of little significance at the time but Patrick would later become famous as a Shakespearean actor, international film star, and of course as Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation. Now a lot of the boys would take shortcuts and stop for a crafty smoke but Tony would always run the full course by the correct route and I would keep him company. When we came to the final straight Tony would always put on a spurt and finish strongly with me just behind. I'm not saying I could have beaten him, just that I never tried.

Anyway, the dreaded day of the race finally arrived. My running partner Tony wasn't in school that day so I was on my own. Before the race I was talking to another friend, Pat Kingswell, daughter of Charlie Kingswell of Ramsden's Butchers, who was trying to bolster my courage. Pat had developed a dislike for one particular boy, as girls of that age are prone to do from time to time. We will call this boy Jim so as not to compromise anyone even after all this time. Now I was quite sweet on Pat so I listened when she said that she didn't mind what position I finished in, just so long as I beat 'Jim'. Of course, being a mere male, I readily agreed and said I would do my best, and then it was time to join the others on the starting line.

The crack of the starting pistol and we were off. The runners left the school grounds and ran down Richard Thorpe Avenue then turned left along Crowlees Road. We crossed over the railway bridge where Pinfold Lane joins Towngate and along the footpath beside the railway cutting then across Dunbottle Lane and down the path by the graveyard. This was the point where I always had a 'stitch' but once I had run through it I knew I was going to be ok. Next came the wooden bridge taking us left over the railway and out onto Shillbank Lane by Longstaff's house. Now we went up Balderstone Hall Lane and entered the fields just in front of the Hall. The path skirted the fields and we emerged into Crossley Lane briefly before turning left along the path behind the houses of Lockwood Avenue and then left again down Wellhouse Lane.

All this time I was keeping in touch with 'Jim' and was surprised to find that we were among the front runners. The next turn was right into Pumphouse Lane, across Greenside Road by the Gilder Hall then up Lee Green and turned left into Pratt Lane. Now it was a run down the footpath through the fields behind the Over Hall and the school was in sight. The path ran along the bottom of the school, parallel with Towngate and emerged into Crowlees Lane once more where we turned right. Many of the other runners had started falling back now but 'Jim' was still up there going strong so I had to stay with him.

As we entered the school grounds from Richard Thorpe Avenue I was horrified to find that only 'Jim' and myself were still in the race. Now it was the final straight and against all my instincts I forced myself to pull level with him. There were crowds on either side shouting at the top of their voices; my legs were like jelly and my heart was pounding but I had promised to beat him so I kept on going. 'Jim' started to flag and I pushed myself forward with the last of my strength and took the tape as winner.

I had the glory for a few days but disappointments were to follow. At the next PE lesson the gym teacher, Mr. Young, made a point of saying that it had been the slowest time on record, but the final insult came when I was presented with a small embossed card recording my achievement. It had been filled in with a typewriter and said:

Event:
Position:
Name:
Date:

Cross Country Junior

1st

F. Ellis

30th. March 1955

They hadn't even got my initial right and never offered to correct the mistake even when it was pointed out.