Memories of Waltham Abbey war years and an Olympics school trip

David Drury contacted the Guardian to share his memories and pictures of that time when he attended Upshire County Primary School and is hoping they may bring back recollections for others. These are his words:

While browsing through family photographs, I came cross one or two pictures that related to my school days at Upshire from 1943 to 1951 – the days of radio programmes such as Much Binding in the Marsh, Dick Barton, Paul Temple, Journey into Space, The Archers, Just William, ITMA, Children’s Hour, Football Pools – Accrington Stanley and the Third Division North & South, or occasional visits to the Regal or Embassy cinemas at Waltham Cross to see Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour, and taking the radio’s accumulator to the shop for charging each week.

The map shows the part of Waltham Abbey where I was born, and where I lived for about 20 years. I left in 1957 to serve Her Majesty and help preserve the peace for a couple of years by helping to keep an eye on the USSR and its allies during that rather chilly international political atmosphere. Since then I have hardly returned, and eventually settled in the depths of Yorkshire. It seems that a great deal has changed in and around my old home and school during the last six or seven decades.

New Road area in 1945

The local landscape

New Road seems to have been built sometime before 1895. In 1949 it was renamed Upshire Road (see map). It started at the bottom of Pick Hill, keeping to the south of Pick Hill Lane, and curving past Princesfield Farm to rejoin the road to Upshire village at the junction of Woodgreen Lane at Sergeant’s Green.

By the 1930s some council houses and a few private houses had been built in the typical ribbon development pattern. Most of these houses were semi-detached and on the south side of the road starting about a hundred or so yards from the junction with Pick Hill and continuing for rather more than 300 yards – about 30 houses (discounting Webster Close). On the north side of the road there were three or four bigger houses each having gardens of perhaps half an acre.

Just beyond Webster Close, the road rises in a slight hill. Here, on the north side of this rise was a small nursery, perhaps half a dozen greenhouses. At the top of the rise, still on the north side of the road were eight semi-detached bungalows and opposite these, 10 semi-detached houses, in one of which, Trelawney, I was born.

At what is now where Maple Springs meets Upshire Road, there was a track into a field, known to me and my friends as ‘The Field’. On the other side of the track, a space which was later to become a war surplus dump for a while and then a cafe with a cinder car/lorry park. After that the last building on the north side of the road, and before the new school, was Sorrell’s grocery store – the track into The Field, the cafe and Sorrell’s shop with a few Princesfield Estate house beyond, can be seen in the bus picture. Opposite Sorrell’s, with its farm shop was Princesfield Farm.

On the north side of the road beyond Sorrell’s shop was a very large (for those days) field often sown with a cereal crops (it later became Princesfield Estate) and then another field, next to the new school grounds. This field was built on later as an extension (perhaps continuation) of the Princesfield Estate.

On the other side of the road – beyond Princesfield Farm – another nursery, then typical hedged fields, in one of which I remember picking potatoes at (I think) threepence per bag and on another occasion my friends and I getting in the way of haymaking and haystack building (with horses raking the hay and another operating an elevator and on another occasion a traction engine driving a bailer). In other fields along the south side of New Road, reaching and going behind the houses opposite the school, there were often cattle belonging, I think to Mr Padfield, who worked Warlies Farm at the beginning of Woodgreen Road. The houses opposite the school were probably 19th century buildings, four semi-detached and one detached.

Around the bend into Woodgreen Road there were also a few more houses, opposite Warlies Farm, and a few more along the lane, which passed the Tuck’s Pottery, on the way to the Volunteer and Woodbine pubs at the bottom of Woodredon Hill. Just beyond Upshire new school, at the bottom of Horseshoe Hill, opposite Sergeant’s Green and by the gate house to Warlies Park House, was St Thomas’ Cricket ground. Warlies Park House at that time a Dr Barnardo Home for disabled children.

First double-decker bus returning from Princesfield Estate, along Upshire Road c1951

Local war events

Like millions of others, we had an Anderson shelter in the back garden, which was used at times. There was an anti-aircraft gun somewhere up Galley Hill and when fired during an air-raid would make a very loud bang, even in New Road.

Sometime before 1943 a bomb had landed in the field behind the bungalows opposite Trelawney. It left a crater that remained there until the field was built on sometime around the middle 1950s. My memory of ‘The Field’ dates from about 1943. The crater was a singularly uninteresting feature, typically a raised ring of earth around a hole in the ground. At the bottom of the hole, perhaps three or four feet deep, were old tin cans, but it was our bomb-crater. It was though probably the site of impact of the bomb that fell on the night of 13th December 1940 and severely damaged the bungalows and houses at the top of the rise in New Road. My home, Trelawney, was among them.

Although the damage to our house was considerable – all windows smashed, ceilings fallen, roof and floors damaged, the front door blown off its hinges lying half way down the hall, and the same and worse for some of the other houses close by, it seems that no-one was very seriously injured.

Many people had to be evacuated and billeted on neighbours – we, my mother, brother and I (my father having been recalled to the Royal Navy in August 1939 was at sea) were billeted with a Mr and Mrs Farthing who lived about a hundred yards down the road. Shortly after we found rooms, where my mother, brother and I could stay, while war repairs were carried out on our houses apart from a couple of bungalows opposite Trelawney, which seemed to have been so badly damaged that they were beyond repair at the time, and were not rebuilt until the war ended. My mother, brother and I eventually returned to Trelawney in 1943.

My memories of Waltham Abbey, New Road, Upshire and its school then date from 1943. By 1944 V1s (Doodlebugs) were sometimes seen flying overhead and in January or February 1945 a V2 rocket landed quite close to New Road, causing very severe damage to greenhouses behind the council houses on the south side of the road. Trelawney was also damaged again but this time less severely than in 1940 and we were able to remain in the house, even though windows were broken and many tiles removed from the roof. Once again war repairs returned the house to order.

The school

The old school in Upshire village was a typical Victorian school building with high windows and primitive facilities and was in use as a school until sometime in the middle/late 1930s (the building remained standing for a number of years after 1945 but was eventually removed). Around 1936 or 1937 a new school, in the corner where the eastern end of Pick Hill meets New Road, near Sergeant’s Green and the beginning of Woodgreen Road was completed and the staff and pupils from the old school moved in. The head teacher was Mr Samuel Church and one of his assistants was Miss Boyce. I attended school there from 1943.

Upshire County Primary School football team 1949

Upshire School was an elementary school until the implementation of the Butler Education Act in 1947, when children of 11 were to attend secondary school, either a so-called modern school, or if the child passed the selection examination, generally known at this time as ‘the scholarship’ but later as the 11-plus, he or she would go to a grammar school. But, it seems, it was not always possible to comply to the letter of the law, presumably because of wartime shortages and post 1945 austerity, there was a shortage of places at Waltham Abbey School, and we children at Upshire stayed at Upshire School until we were 14: then we transferred to Waltham Abbey School.

There seems to have been at least an attempt to comply with the spirit of the new education arrangements by sending Upshire’s 12 to 14-year-old pupils to Waltham Abbey School for one day each week where we were taught science for half the day, and handicraft for boys and domestic science for girls for the other half. The school leaving age was also raised by the 1944 Act, again not implemented until 1947, to 15, and that must have presented schools with even greater accommodation problems.

At Upshire there were six teachers. Quite how the classes were arranged is now less than clear to me, but some classes were made up of two year groups. As I recall (with uncertainty) the first two years, were under Miss Evans and Miss Williams. The 7 to 8 and the 8 to 9-year-olds were taught by Miss Boyce, the 9 to 10 and the 10 to 11-year-olds by Miss Porlock (or was it Portlock?). The 11 to 12 and the 12 to 13-year-olds were taught by Mr Hovall and the top class, the 13 to 14-year-olds by Mr Church.

Although a small school with only about a 120 pupils, its ‘catchment’ area was quite wide. Children from the village and around the school, as far away as Broomstickhall Road, Honey Lane, Monkswood Avenue and even Lea Road almost in Waltham New Town.

School was not solely about learning about the world from books and developing some of the occupational skills thought desirable for teenagers in the middle of the 20th Century. There was games – soccer and cricket, P.T. the rare mobile film van with an educational film (these seemed a treat in the days before television) and an occasional visitor to give a talk. Others were of a less elevated kind – the district nurse checking for ringworm and lice.

Upshire School's 1948 visit to Wembley

Visits were also made to places and events of educational interest. One of the more memorable was in 1948 to a day at the Olympics at the Empire Stadium, Wembley, where we saw track and field events – some new to me, like the javelin – and although unaware of their later fame, seeing Fanny Blankers-Koen (the Flying Housewife) and Arthur Wint run in their respective disciplines.

Even more memorable though, were the revival of an apparent school ‘tradition’, the School Journey. A week’s stay at a hotel in Shanklin, Isle of Wight, for anyone willing, I think, in the top two classes. The visits I remember, the group picture was taken of one of them, probably took place at Whitsun in 1950 and 1951 although they may have have been at Easter and a year earlier. During these School Journeys we pupils were able to see our teachers in a new light, and perhaps they saw us children differently too. Visits to a chine, in Ventnor I think, and to collect variously coloured sand at Alum Bay were laid on but my memory is of great freedom and a new experience of staying in a hotel.

Other items in my collection are two photographs, Miss Williams' class, probably 1946, and the school football team of 1949. Perhaps the names of those in the pictures can be completed?

If you can help fill in the missing names or have any other information you wish to share, email details to amatthews@london.newsquest.co.uk.

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