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First day at school was traumatic Arthur and his friend refused to
hang their school caps in the lobby and insisted on taking them into
the class. Miss Peachy the assistant teacher, and Mr Morgan, the
Headmaster, brooked no dissent, the caps were confiscated and
Arthur and his friend fled for home - an event for a three-year old
never to be forgotten! Education was conducted with all classes in
one large room of the National Church School, built in 1839.
Arthur remembers , at four years of age, seeing the school house
of the Sunday school teacher, ‘Daddy’ Hollings, being demolished
in 1914 to make way for the enlargement of the playground - the
demolition provided a pram full of much welcomed firewood. At
school, letters were learnt by using a wooden meat skewer to
scratch letters in the surface of sand in a small tray. Progress was
made from sand trays to the use of slates with a slate pencil.
Memories of the First World War remain real. The sound of a
Zeppelin, droning over Bottisham on its way to bomb London,
coincided with his mother being fined five shillings for showing a
chink of light from a window during the blackout (a sum equivalent
to £9 in 2002!). There would usually have been no fine, but, on that
particular night the local policeman was accompanied by his
Superintendent! Arthur has no memory of wartime food rationing
which probably reflects the sacrifice by his mother for the growing
boy. The army billeted horses and carts in the barn of the King’s
Head and, once the hay had been baled on the farms, it was
confiscated by army patrols, who visited all farms with horse drawn
vehicles. The soldiers were billeted in the various village pubs.
Relief to school life came when gangs of children were taken by Dr
Grace to select sweets at Woollard’s Store (now 103 High Street).
Visits to the Cambridge Fair, by taxi, were also organised by Dr
Grace which were most welcome: life in the 20’s was hard. “When
we came out of school we went up to the Swan, especially the last
day of the Newmarket races. When the races were on they did not