When I look at the photograph dated 1919 of the children who were in my class there is no sign of any real poverty as all the fathers were in employment. Some of them were farm labourers; there was a builder's son; a policeman's son; the corn-merchant's son; the butcher's daughter; a gardener's daughter; a publican's daughter and several who were children of farm-workers or who kept small-holdings. The boys in this photograph followed various trades and professions in later life, including chartered accountant, Methodist minister and missionary in India, animal doctor with the PDSA, estate gardener, builder, the army, and a Cambridge graduate (in mathematics I think).
The children who were given money for sweets went to a little sweet shop half way down Church Road and to Granny Bird's, which was on the corner of the present Wilkes Road. During the lunch-hour the majority of children went home to lunch. There were perhaps only a couple of dozen left. In the summer some of us would go down the footpath behind the Church down to the bridge over the brook. The water was so clear you could see the sand in the bottom. Or we went down towards the Leper House with Cissy Cunniiffe, who lived there.
In the winter when the stream overflowed we would go down to look at the floods. We used to make long slides on the bubbly ice when there was a hard frost. In the spring when we went home from school we used to pick violets from the hedgerows on the banks of Wheatstone and if we went into the fields of Woodhall Farm opposite and walked along the hedge there was an absolute mass of violets and wood anemones all the way up.
Later in the summer there were lovely bird's foot trefoils and yellow mouse-eared hawkweed. At Wheatstone where there was naturally damp land, Ragged Robin and Yellow Rattle grew. In those days you would hear skylarks all the time in early summer. Occasionally there was a function at school � the Teacher's Social, to which the parents were invited. These took place about twice a year and my parents would walk down to these from Codsall Wood.
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