Memories Of Bob Jopling
Recollections of Hatton Park School, Longstanton 1975 – 1993
By Bob Jopling, who taught there between these years.
“A village school, within ten miles of Cambridge, where the Outdoors is valued and where Sport is not the only thing that matters …”
That was my reply when asked what kind of school I hoped to work in. A mature student in my forties, with only Army and business experience behind me, I would have taken any post I was offered. But from my first meeting with Hatton Park’s Brian Hayward, I knew that his was the school I wanted. The seventeen years that followed were the best of my working life.
When I arrived the school had a teaching staff of eight. It was in two parts: four Junior classes in wooden classrooms around a lawn, and three Infant classes in a separate brickbuilt block. A 1950s school, it had two good, well-equipped Halls and, for the Juniors at least, spacious classrooms. By my time poor maintenance of those rooms was starting to show: window frames were rotting and rain sometimes came through the roof.
But such deficiencies were more than made up for by the grounds. On the site of the old Hatton family Mansion, they were extensive. At one end they were wooded, and they included a large pond which had originally been a clay-pit. A happy decision by the planners had been to leave the pond as it was, merely tipping in four lorry-loads of gravel to form a shelving beach. An ancient, probably Tudor, wall stood along one boundary; it had once sheltered the Mansion’s kitchen garden. We knew we were fortunate – few schools had grounds to match ours.
I was glad to be appointed to Hatton Park, despite being warned it was not an ‘easy’ school. My wife had taught there in the Airfield’s days, and remembered the continual coming and going of the RAF children. Now there was a similar problem with Army children: we were the sixth or seventh school for some, and a stay of eighteen months was as long as most could expect. This constant moving was hard on Service children, and especially on those of less than average ability. And if they were educationally behindhand on arrival (as a good many of them were), we had to be sure they did not hold back our own Longstanton children.
I have always been impressed at how well the two groups merged. It says much for the village that its children could be so accommodating. Always in the minority, they went out of their way to make new arrivals welcome; only once, when a sizeable proportion of the intake hailed from places like inner Glasgow, was there any real difficulty. And the fault was partly ours: we should have realised earlier how alien our rural school would seem.
Many Service children coming from Ireland faced a culture shock too. Compared with the schools they were used to, our ways were very relaxed. They were surprised, for instance, to find talking allowed in the Dining Hall. I had hardly believed the first child who told me she was used to eating in silence; but later arrivals knew the same hand signals for such things as “no vegetables” and “small helping, please”. (But I believe it was only Derry schools that maintained this enforced silence).
Another feature of Army life was that it was difficult to keep pets. It was largely because of this that our school had so many. Most classrooms housed a hamster or a pair of gerbils, and my top class ran almost a small menagerie.
Its beginning was un-ambitious – just a couple of female rabbits in a run outside our door. But early one morning a teacher noticed (as she thought) one of our does outside the run. She put it back in without difficulty, pleased with a duty done. But when the first children arrived they spotted three rabbits in the run: our own two does and a stranger. The stranger turned out to be a buck who had made the most of his chances, for soon we had mothers and babies to deal with! Gradually we added other livestock: guinea pigs, guinea-fowl and several sorts of duck, and then a handsome peacock and a very drab peahen. These never managed to breed, fortunately, for their doleful wailing was not appreciated by our neighbours. Nor were their occasional escapes, when they first perched high in the treetops, and then devoured our neighbours’ cabbage plants.
With our menagerie growing, the PTA built us a large, fox-proof enclosure. Our caretaker Wally Crisp, always obliging, ‘acquired’ from somewhere everything he needed to make us a large shed. Inside he put perches for the birds, and boxes and hutches for the animals, and all retired there amicably at night. For the children a prized job each morning was to search for eggs and new births.
Within my classroom were some other animals. Rats (the ‘fancy’ sort, not brown rats) were favourites. The children loved them, though few teachers or parents did. We kept young rabbits there, letting them loose in the afternoons, till they nibbled and spoiled our new carpet. Twice we reared baby squirrels in the classroom, not knowing we were breaking the law. There were ducklings every year from our incubator, with much excitement on hatch-day, and for a long while we kept a one-legged quail (‘George’) who seemed never to have noticed he should have had two. Another favourite was our snake, (‘Syd’) – though when he went loose the cleaning ladies would not come near us.
On the pond there were always mallards – a hundred or more in winter, when we bought them grain. Another popular job, usually given as a reward, was feeding the dinner left-overs to the ducks. Children could spin out this task for a remarkably long time, especially once they hit on the idea of offering the food on a fork!
What was the point of all this animal husbandry? First, it helped make school a place where children wanted to be. Second, it encouraged responsibility, for children had to take turns with weekend duty, and care for the animals right through the holidays. (We were fortunate to have an animal-loving parent nearby – without her kindly supervision much less would have been possible). Children did all the fundraising for the animals, and took pride in keeping the accounts. And when someone was distressed in school (as new arrivals occasionally were), having an animal to care for usually worked wonders.
But the pond was much more than a home for ducks. In those days, before schools became safety-obsessed, it was a useful teaching resource. I remember the maths involved in mapping its profile, taking soundings from a borrowed rubber boat. We measured the pond in all directions, calculating the volume of its water. There were bird surveys, and insect surveys, with results carefully recorded and compared year by year. And just once a great crested grebe nested near the bank. Much creative writing came from our watching her bring up her family.
There is one pond memory I do not relish. Now and then there were sick birds to rescue, or footballs to recover. This meant swimming in its murky depths, where there were submerged branches in the deep parts, and stinking mud at the margins. The children watching always cheered when I came out, but I’d much rather not have gone in!
We were also luckier than most schools in having our own swimming pool. It was outdoors, and therefore for summer only. Really it was not much more than a huge raised wooden box, with a pump and filter system and a tough plastic lining. But it was perfectly adequate for beginners, and many of our children took their first successful strokes in it. I think the pool had been provided by public subscription, though that was well before my time; I know its surrounding fence came in that way – a fresh board being added each time £1 was raised. (We worked out that the fence, less the gate, must have cost £386).
Another feature of my time in school was the annual or bi-annual school trip. Previously this had been to a Youth Hostel, sometimes in Derbyshire. After some persuasion the Head approved a more adventurous trip for my children, and we started going to the Lake District, where we ran our own programme and did all our own cooking and cleaning. I shall always be grateful to four parents who year after year used their holidays to come with us. Though in no sense a holiday for the children (for a great deal of schoolwork came out of it), they always regarded Lakes Week as such, and some remember to this day swimming in natural pools, accomplishing quite challenging climbs, and having the unfettered use of some the most beautiful countryside in Britain. Lakes Week was, for nearly everyone, the high point of their Primary school years.
Our daily Assembly (called ‘Worship’ these days) is something else many remember. Our Assemblies may not have contained much worship, but we usually managed a moral point.
Brian Hayward’s were quite out of the ordinary, and I think he would be pleased that I recycle them even today; others of us vied to see whose could be the next best. My own efforts twice got me into trouble.
The first of these was about unexploded bombs. I had no bombs, but I had demolition fuse from my Army days and lit a length of it to demonstrate. All would have been well if I had thought of disarming the fire alarm. But I hadn’t – and as at this time we were considered a potential I.R.A. target, someone hearing the alarm promptly called the police. They were with us within minutes, lights flashing, and they were closely followed by two fire engines. And they were not amused when they discovered what had happened. In fact they hinted at prosecution and confiscated my unused fuse; I did not tell them I had more at home, but thirty years on I am still using it for the same Unexploded Bomb Assembly.
I am fortunate my Mountain Rescue Assembly did not end my career. I had borrowed a rescue pack from a friend, with medical kit and harnesses and climbing ropes and shackles. Some children asked if they could see it all again in the dinner break, and I met around twenty of them in the Hall where we rescued volunteer ‘casualties’ from the wall-bars. As a precaution I had checked through the pack beforehand, removing knives and surgical scissors and Paracetamol.
What I hadn’t removed – because I hadn’t seen it – was an emergency rocket. An inquisitive boy did see it, and naturally enough unscrewed the lid. That ignited the rocket, which of course he dropped, and from it burst three flares which flew around the hall, scorching the curtains and burning the floor. Providentially they missed every child, but I will never forget the panic. The mark was there on the floor as long as the school remained – a reminder of my carelessness. Not only carelessness: near-disaster.
What about the more mundane things? Like most schools, ours put the three R’s first, and most children left us with sound basic skills. We listened to music (for the first few minutes of every afternoon, in my class); we did a good deal of history and science and a certain amount of geography. Art was given a lot of time in some classes (though rather less in mine) and visiting teachers did instrumental work with interested children. Sport had its share of school time, though I cannot claim it had a high priority. Something new in my time was Sex Education for my top class; we did not separate the sexes; we followed a new television series called ‘Living and Growing’ and no aspect or question was barred from our discussions. At the end of the series we invited parents to an evening session to see some of the programmes with their children, following which parents’ comments were never less than favourable. I am puzzled that three decades later Sex Education at Primary level remains a matter of contention.
So all in all – though of course I must be biased – I would claim that Hatton Park offered a reasonably sound education, and certainly a broader one than schools can attempt today.
In saying this I bear in mind what ex-pupils tell me. I am in regular touch with some fifty of them, of whom a number are now into their forties, and still more make contact through Facebook and Friends Re-United. When they write, or occasionally visit, I am amazed at how much about our school they remember. The animals of course, and Lakes Week – but also Assemblies (especially Brian’s), the Christmas Performances, and my Country Dance Club (which changed to Swimming Club in the summer). They remember our class’s completely unofficial Saturday trips, often to the theatre. For twelve years running my wife and I took children (generally a coach-load) to London for ‘The Nutcracker Ballet’, and on one special occasion when “La Fille Mal Garde” was danced in Cambridge, we were taken behind the scenes to meet the Royal Ballet’s Shetland pony. We had just seen it on stage, and that memory has stayed with several now grown-up children.
Amongst my own particular pupils I know of two lawyers, one doctor, several successful soldiers, one Air Traffic Controller, at least three who run their own businesses … as well as hairdressers and carers and call-centre operatives. Of course subsequent schools played a greater part in their successes than we did, but I like to think we got them off to a good start.
The school I served has gone now, as has the Army from the village. There is a new and better school building, and very possibly a better school. But I think back with great pleasure to the Hatton Park School I knew, and am grateful to have had it for so long at the centre of my life.
Bob Jopling
St. Bees Cumbria CA27 0BD
May 2010
Some remarks above may be better understood if I say that in our eighteenth year of retirement my wife and I are still very busy in our local village school.