Mr Andrew Durrant PART 2

PART 2 – Another thing I ought to have mentioned about Garvestone School before we move on was that at the beginning of one term (this was in the early 1950s) at the beginning of a term we went to school and there were several children there who we had not had at Garvestone school before and they were children from Reymerston, and I think what happened was that after the closure of Reymerston School, way back I think before the Second World War, Reymerston children went to Hardingham School, and then probably was when Hardingham School closed in the early 1950s, the Reymerston children were transferred to Garvestone School. It must have been quite a long daily trip for some of them especially if they had to walk. Anyway, they soon became integrated into the life of the school as I remember it. And then of course the next big thing was the 11+ Exam. Since then, I’ve realised what a bad thing the 11+ Exam was; separating children into those who went to Swaffham Hammond’s Grammar School or, in the case of the girls, Dereham High School – what is now the Netherd School. And the others, who were sent to the boys secondary modern and the girls secondary modern, what is now the Dereham Sixth Form Centre in Crown Road in Dereham. But at the age of eleven we were separated out by our ability to pass or not pass an examination. Mrs Barnes and Mrs Allen must have I think, had been good teachers as they got several, each year, of us to pass the exam. We weren’t supposed to use the word ‘pass’ but everybody did, nobody was fooled by being selected to go to the secondary modern schools. So, in the year before we took the exam at the age of ten or eleven, in the year preceding the exam, some of us had practice sessions to poach us for the exam and the others who Mrs Barnes and Mrs Allen thought were not likely to pass did not get the coaching. I was one of the ones who did pass the exam and so we went to Hammond’s Grammar School in Swaffham, which was a long way in them days, from Garvestone, and of course a completely different way of life as far as school is concerned. We had to be kitted out in uniform with a badge, jacket, tie, cap – had to have a cap, and we had to have a satchel which we’d never had before, to carry our books in and also to carry maths equipment and our fountain pen and a bottle of ink for use in the fountain pen. During my time at Hammonds Grammar School, one day I perhaps hadn’t put the top on the ink bottle correctly and it leaked and forever after, my satchel had a blue stain on the bottom. What happened to the books that were in the satchel that day I can’t remember? Because we had to carry books and papers around with us because we had, I think they called it ‘prep’ rather than homework and every night, that was something else of course that distinguished who went to the Grammar School or the Dereham High School for girls, was the fact that when we got home from school, in the evenings, we had this prep or homework to do, whereas the boys and girls who went to the secondary modern schools didn’t, at least I don’t think they did. In my case going to Hammond’s Grammar School, was the first time I’d really had much contact with what you might call middle-class children and indeed adults. The teachers who were called ‘Masters’ were of course middle-class professional people and many of the boys came from middle-class professional homes. But we got on with each other okay, there were times when odd things happened that they would find amusing that betrayed our working-class origins. We went there, my year group, in September 1955, and September 1955, which was when British railways stopped using steam engines to pull their passenger trains on the line from Dereham to kings-Lynn, and so we travelled from Dereham to Swaffham in brand new diesel car units. And then from Dereham back to Garvestone (to and from, morning and afternoon) the trains through Thuxton weren’t at convenient times so we had a thing called a dormobile, which was a little van with seats in and we were brought from Dereham Railway Station to the top of Town Lane, in this Dormobile, and sometimes when I got out of the Dormobile to walk down Town Lane to Cherry Tree Farm, if I felt a bit peckish I would go to Mrs Kiddle’s shop and buy a tuppenny packet of KP Salted Peanuts to eat as I walked down Town Lane. I can’t remember but I do hope I didn’t through the empty packet down on the roadway, I hope I didn’t.

Another thing that happened in the early to late 1950s was the starting up of the Garvestone Wilhelm Pack and Sea Scouts this would have been about 1954, and the two adults who became Scout Masters was Ted Wright the farmer and Norman Allen, and Norman Allen, he was a good scout master, very keen and he was an office worker on Dereham Railway Station. We had scout meetings throughout the evenings in the old Garvestone Village Hall – ‘The Wooden Hut’ as we called it. We were Sea Scouts because Ted Wright had been in The Navy during the war I suppose, that’s the only reason why scouts in a village of Mid-Norfolk who hardly ever saw the sea, that was why we were Sea Scouts. We had a sort of sailor uniform and it was great, we used to have some wonderful times working for badges and all sorts of things we used to do that would not otherwise have done. One other thing was camping, usually, in the village, very often on the meadows what is now called Wyvern Farm next to the river. Very uneven ground because there were cattle kept normally on the meadows the ground was full of potholes which made it uncomfortable sleeping in the sleeping bag at night. Sometime in 1957/58, there was a Jamboree, a big scout camp on the Sandringham Estate, and we travelled there by train and took all our kit with us I suppose and there were scouts there from all over the world, I think there were some there from Korea? But mainly European countries, including, there was a contingent of scouts from Germany, and baring in mind this would only have been perhaps less than fifteen years since the end of the war, and there was a cinema tent, we were there about a week or ten days, and there was a cinema tent which we, most of us, thought was a great idea, because of course it was moving pictures and we would spend our evenings going to this cinema tent, much to the annoyance of Norman Allen our Scout Master who thought fancy going to a Jamboree, a scout camp and spending the time in the evenings watching films! And one of the films that was shown was the film ‘The Dam Busters’ and I remember hearing that the scout master of the German contingent of scouts, complained to the Jamboree Authorities about the film ‘The Dam Busters’ being shown, but it was shown so they obviously didn’t take any notice of him, but it wasn’t perhaps a very sensitive thing to do having invited these scouts to take part in the Jamboree.

We used to have parades, scout parades every so often, to services in Garvestone Parish Church which, for me, was very strange, because I’m not at all sure that ever before then, I had been inside Garvestone Parish Church. We sort of lined up and marched in and sat down, and it was very peculiar because people kneeled down during the prayers and that sort of thing, which I find very strange because normally of course, the Durrant Family went to the village chapel, the Methodist Chapel, which is still there in Garvestone. We were a chapel family, there were other families who were in Garvestone who were also chapel families, but there were other families who were church families, and although we might quite happily mix and get on well six days a week, on Sundays we went our separate ways. We went to the Chapel on Sunday mornings to the Sunday School, my Grandfather was one of the teachers, and Mrs Soffley who kept the shop in Thuxton near the railway station, Mrs Soffley played the harmonium for the chapel services at Sunday School. And then again at half past six in the evening, which we attended as a family. We used to have a Sunday School Christmas party every year in January, that was in ‘The Hut’ – the Village Hall, only of course only for children who had been to Sunday School, so attendance at Sunday School would be good in the weeks leading up to just after Christmas. In the summer, in June, I think the third Sunday in June, we would have the Sunday School Anniversary a couple of farm wagons would be end-to-end on what was then the meadow next-door to the chapel. We would then have practiced for weeks before-hand, singing special hymns, and learning recitations and poems with sort of a religious message to them. We had to learn to be able to say them without reading them, and on Sunday School anniversary Sunday, people would come from miles around, who sat on chairs or on the ground in the meadow, and we would say our pieces as we called them, the special poems and sing these special hymns. The collections of money were taken in the afternoon and evening services of the Sunday School anniversary, oh and there was a morning service as well, so that was three services that Sunday, that money went towards paying for the Sunday School trip to Great Yarmouth, which was in July I think just after the schools had shut for the Harvest Holidays. That was a great day out, it would be the only day that some of the children, at least, went to the seaside. Years and years ago, before my time, they used to go by train, but in my boyhood, we had a coach. The coach picked us up at Garvestone Chapel and took us via Norwich to Great Yarmouth. That really was a very special day out. Some people took all their food with them and sat on the beach all day. We as a family didn’t do that. I remember, I don’t remember the very early days of going on the Sunday School outing Yarmouth but certainly by the time I was in late primary school and at Swaffham Grammar School. We’d get off the coach and I think, first of all, we probably went to see the ‘laughing policeman’. This was tucked away on the promenade, it was a sort of glass box and inside it was a large rubber doll dressed as a policeman, and you put a penny in a slot, in the box, and the policeman would start to move around, some sort of mechanical movement, and the record of the ‘laughing policeman’ would play. So, he would sort of piffle about in time to the music, we thought that was very good for a pennies’ worth. Then we would go into, I don’t know if its still called ‘Joy land’? It was then, and they were the snails, we used to go on the snails which I think are still there? It was a ride, with giant snails on a track with seats inside. Then into ‘Noah’s Ark’ which went up and down, again some sort of mechanic device, and was sort of you went through tunnels and looked at things in glass boxes, I can’ remember any more about that. Then it was dinner time, I already said that as a child I was very fond of food, and we would go down Regent Street to Prince’s Restaurant, and we’d go in Prince’s restaurant, only time in the year we went to a restaurant, anywhere, and we had fish and chips. That was probably the only time in the year when we as a family had fish and chips, that was a real treat that was. And at teatime later on in the afternoon, at teatime we went I think to another restaurant, and I always had baked beans on toast, for my tea, because my mother at home, would never buy baked beans as they were in tins and my mother didn’t like food out of tins, that was a part of her up-bringing I suppose. Anyway, baked beans on toast was a really special treat for me. We, in the afternoon at Great Yarmouth, we walked down to the Pleasure Beach. When I was young enough, I’d always have a ride in the pedal cars, and the pedal cars went round and round on like a racing track and I used to go on the pedal cars, I think it cost a threepence, every year until I was just too big to get into the pedal car, and the man had to give me my threepence back, that was sad. I didn’t like the rides in the pleasure beach, my sister did, but I would never go on the big, noisy, fast rides I just didn’t like them, bumper cars and what was it called? Anyway, I wouldn’t go on them. So, I was glad when we left the pleasure beach and, on the way, back down towards the Britannia Peer, my father always bought a paper bag of cherries from a fruit store along the front. We would eat those cherries as we walked back towards Britannia Peer, and I think we put the pips into the paper bag and then put it in the bin, I hope we did anyway.

The only other time, most years anyway, that we went to the seaside, was to go on the train to Wells-Next-The-Sea. That of course involved getting to Thuxton Station and going on the train. Whether we had to change trains at Dereham I’m not sure but anyway, we would go to Wells-Next-The-Sea which was a long trip. The two things I remember about the train journey, particularly, was a place called Wighton which just south of Wells, which is what I thought of as a child, was being a long tunnel. I don’t suppose it was really long, but I thought it was a long tunnel, and also on one memorable occasion, when the train stopped at Walsingham to let people on and off, our compartment, because this was a steam train of course, our compartment door opened and two nuns got into the compartment and sat down facing each other, and I can remember being awe struck, because I don’t remember ever seeing nuns before. I only remember one remember one Roman-Catholic family in Garv-, well they lived in Reymerston actually, but being a Roman-Catholic family in our part of Norfolk in them days was very, very unusual, but there we were riding on this train in this compartment with two nuns. I’ll always remember that. When we got to Wells, Wells railway station was right on the outskirts near the town, and so there was a bus that took people from the railway station down to the beach. It was a bus run by a company called Ables, and Able’s bus was a blue bus if I remember rightly, and it was always packed to and from the beach. And of course, Wells beach didn’t have any sort of, as far as I can remember, any sort of catering facilities so we used to take our own sandwiches that mother had packed, egg sandwiches if I remember rightly and we probably would buy an ice cream and that was quite a treat in them days to have an ice cream. Although I do believe the two shops in Garvestone at some point sold Wall’s ice creams. Anyway, back to Wells, there was always a good deal of anxiety during the day in Wells, to make sure you got back to the bus stop next to the beach in good time, to be able to get onto Able’s bus, which was always packed, but had to be able to get on to the right bus, because if you didn’t and you were late getting back to the railway station, you might miss the train, and that would be a major disaster to miss the train and have to wait for the next one to get back to Thuxton, that was a long day out that was. But other than Yarmouth and perhaps Wells, we didn’t go very far. Occasionally we went on the Friday bus, the market bus to Dereham, and there was also a bus that went to Norwich on Saturdays, but we dint very often go on that. I don’t have any of recollection going on that. If we needed to go to Norwich for some reason, it was very rare, and we probably went on the train from Thuxton. The buses were run, on Friday and Saturday, by Mr Billy Sherris from Reymerston shop and post office. And on Boxing Day, trains used to run on Boxing Day, we would go on the train from Thuxton to Norwich and I don’t know whether we walked or caught a bus up to the hippodrome as it then was, its now a carpark I think in Norwich, and that was the Boxing Day Pantomime, and that was the only time in the year that we would go in a theatre. Don’t remember much about it.