Memories of the Nineteen-Seventies Darren Giddings September 2024
Box School entry to the Royal Bath & West Show Design a Costume competition, 3rd June 1977. L-R: Darren Giddings, Paul Dowling, possibly Michael Holbutt (just visible behind), Alison Packer, Della Jones, ??, ??, Marcus Bray, ??, Anthony Hayward (at the front with the banner), David Smith, Andrew Baugh
It seems slightly weird to me that the 1970s are now officially The Past. But when I look in the mirror and see some strange old man looking back at me rather than a cheeky ten-year-old, I realise, sadly, that it must be true! Given that, it seems a good idea now to make a record of a few memories of Box in that unique decade while I can still claim to have enough recall to do it.
Barn Piece
By the time I came home to number 14 on the southern arm of Barn Piece for the first time in the autumn of 1966, the street was about 30 years old. Mr Weston who lived next door at number 15 had been the original occupant of our house and recalled that he had been building the steps in the back garden when he heard the news that World War II had been declared.
The street comprised twenty semi-detached council houses, numbers 1 to 12 going off at right angles to numbers 13 to 20 with a row of private houses on the west side of the road, who for many years preferred to consider themselves part of Hazelbury Hill. Relations between the two arms of Barn Piece were never particularly close, though characters like the Coombeses (who for a long time had a couple of rusting bubble cars at the top of their garden), the Perrys and the seemingly immortal Mr Bird were familiar faces.
The road was not properly metalled until the early 1970s, I know this because I excitedly watched it happen. There was a water tower at the bottom of the hill (next to Price’s rubber works) which local children weren’t supposed to climb. Of course, we never climbed it … If you were to visit the southern arm of Barn Piece in about 1970, you’d find the following families: 13 - Bean,
14 - Smith, 15 - Weston, 16 - Francis, 17 - Frayling, 18 - Webster, 19 - Packer, 20 - Collier.
Smith Family
My mum was born into the Smith family. My grandparents had moved to Barn Piece with their two daughters in 1963 in a three-way council house exchange, having previously been in The Ley. The previous occupants of number 14, the Packers, went to number 19. The Betteridges from number 19 went to the Ley and the Smiths went to number 14.
My line of the Smiths can be traced back to the 18th century, mainly in the Corsham area, Guyers and Priory Lane. Most were at best labourers, at worse ‘paupers’ or ‘on the parish’, as the censuses would have it. Francis (Frank) Smith, born in 1887, bucked the trend. He worked in dairy delivery in his youth and as a teenager he made a surprise move to London where he worked as a milk carrier. While there he met and married Nellie Coffin and they had the first four of their children, two of whom sadly died very young. At some point between 1912 and 1914 the family returned to the Box area, living first in Longsplatt, then Wadswick, where three more children came along.
Frank made his name in the area as a market gardener and travelling greengrocer, still delivering fruit and veg from a horse and cart until well into the 1950s. He was well known locally as Mr Smith rather than by his first name. One of the most tragic incidents connected with him was the death of a 7-year-old Romany gypsy boy, killed when a horse cart the boy’s family had borrowed from him went out of control. The funeral was quite an event for the village.[1]
By the time I came home to number 14 on the southern arm of Barn Piece for the first time in the autumn of 1966, the street was about 30 years old. Mr Weston who lived next door at number 15 had been the original occupant of our house and recalled that he had been building the steps in the back garden when he heard the news that World War II had been declared.
The street comprised twenty semi-detached council houses, numbers 1 to 12 going off at right angles to numbers 13 to 20 with a row of private houses on the west side of the road, who for many years preferred to consider themselves part of Hazelbury Hill. Relations between the two arms of Barn Piece were never particularly close, though characters like the Coombeses (who for a long time had a couple of rusting bubble cars at the top of their garden), the Perrys and the seemingly immortal Mr Bird were familiar faces.
The road was not properly metalled until the early 1970s, I know this because I excitedly watched it happen. There was a water tower at the bottom of the hill (next to Price’s rubber works) which local children weren’t supposed to climb. Of course, we never climbed it … If you were to visit the southern arm of Barn Piece in about 1970, you’d find the following families: 13 - Bean,
14 - Smith, 15 - Weston, 16 - Francis, 17 - Frayling, 18 - Webster, 19 - Packer, 20 - Collier.
Smith Family
My mum was born into the Smith family. My grandparents had moved to Barn Piece with their two daughters in 1963 in a three-way council house exchange, having previously been in The Ley. The previous occupants of number 14, the Packers, went to number 19. The Betteridges from number 19 went to the Ley and the Smiths went to number 14.
My line of the Smiths can be traced back to the 18th century, mainly in the Corsham area, Guyers and Priory Lane. Most were at best labourers, at worse ‘paupers’ or ‘on the parish’, as the censuses would have it. Francis (Frank) Smith, born in 1887, bucked the trend. He worked in dairy delivery in his youth and as a teenager he made a surprise move to London where he worked as a milk carrier. While there he met and married Nellie Coffin and they had the first four of their children, two of whom sadly died very young. At some point between 1912 and 1914 the family returned to the Box area, living first in Longsplatt, then Wadswick, where three more children came along.
Frank made his name in the area as a market gardener and travelling greengrocer, still delivering fruit and veg from a horse and cart until well into the 1950s. He was well known locally as Mr Smith rather than by his first name. One of the most tragic incidents connected with him was the death of a 7-year-old Romany gypsy boy, killed when a horse cart the boy’s family had borrowed from him went out of control. The funeral was quite an event for the village.[1]
An unusual postcard view of Box from c.1957 looking west across Uncle Fred’s field towards Barn Piece from the footpath to Quarry Woods
Frank’s second son Herbert (Bert) also delivered groceries, but with the luxury of a motor van. He did this through the 1960s and into the ‘70s, when his younger brother Fred (who lived at the top of Quarry Hill and whose farmland included the big field at the back of Barn Piece) took over his round. The appearance of ‘Uncle Fred’ in his black transit van was a fixture of a Saturday night in the mid-1970s, Fred opening up the back doors of the vehicle to reveal crates of fruit and veg as well as things of more interest to a child – sweets! The distinctive smell of that van has stayed with me in a Proustian way ever since. I also recall those card displays for packets of nuts, where more of a glamorous female model was revealed as more packets were sold.
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Bert was my Gramp. For a man who seemed like a Wiltshireman to his very core, it was strange to think that he’d been born in London, within the sound of Bow bells – making him a true cockney! He married my Nan, Florence Porter, in Box Church in 1936. The Porters also had a fascinating history, having been in service to royalty (but that’s another story). They had two daughters, Paulene and my mother Jane. In the days before drink-drive legislation Gramp liked nothing better than to spend an evening driving around the pubs of North Wiltshire for a singalong with the other ‘old folks’ – the Old House at Home in Burton was a particular favourite. I was occasionally taken out in his big green van to collect supplies. I remember being startled to see an almost identical van rusting away in a field near Colerne on one of our travels – probably a sign of Gramp’s thriftiness, why buy a swanky new van when a serviceable old one would suffice? (a footnote – when did Colerne become ‘c’Lern’, with the emphasis on ‘lern’? When I was growing up it was ‘Cullern’, with the emphasis of ‘cull’).
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Me with Gramp, Bert Smith, at Barn Piece in 1979
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Nan and Gramp taught me to read. As a consequence, I had the basics long before I started school. Every week a new Ladybird book would arrive from Yvonne West’s paper shop and open up new reading experiences with the boldly illustrated (but perhaps a little mundane and stereotypical) daily life adventures of ‘Peter and Jane’ and their extended family.
Gramp also took me along on some veterans’ British Legion coach trips. In hindsight, I was very privileged to be in the company of these ageing gentlemen singing wartime songs with gusto. For many of these ex-servicemen the war was the biggest thing that had happened in their lives. They’d seen horrors and lost friends, so these days-out were an opportunity to enjoy the nostalgic element with their peers without too many of the demons. There’s a 1960s Marty Feldman TV comedy sketch set on a coach where the vehicle zooms in speeded-up motion between pubs and layby bushes where everyone decants for the call of nature. The British Legion coach trips in the early 1970s were a bit like that, punctuated by verses of The Quartermaster’s Stores.
I suspect these trips were run by Millers coaches, but it might have been Brownings: one village, two motor coach companies! When Nan died in 1973 Gramp moved to a cottage near the Quarryman’s Arms and my mum and dad took over the lease of
14 Barn Piece.
Gramp also took me along on some veterans’ British Legion coach trips. In hindsight, I was very privileged to be in the company of these ageing gentlemen singing wartime songs with gusto. For many of these ex-servicemen the war was the biggest thing that had happened in their lives. They’d seen horrors and lost friends, so these days-out were an opportunity to enjoy the nostalgic element with their peers without too many of the demons. There’s a 1960s Marty Feldman TV comedy sketch set on a coach where the vehicle zooms in speeded-up motion between pubs and layby bushes where everyone decants for the call of nature. The British Legion coach trips in the early 1970s were a bit like that, punctuated by verses of The Quartermaster’s Stores.
I suspect these trips were run by Millers coaches, but it might have been Brownings: one village, two motor coach companies! When Nan died in 1973 Gramp moved to a cottage near the Quarryman’s Arms and my mum and dad took over the lease of
14 Barn Piece.
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Miss Oatley My Nan had done some housekeeping work for Margaret Oatley in the 1960s and Miss Oatley developed a great respect and fondness for her. One consequence of this friendship was that Miss Oatley agreed to be my godmother. Sometimes I was inducted into the other world that was her home, Little Orchard on Bulls Lane, and treated to dark Belgian chocolates – quite unlike anything that I had ever encountered in Yvonne’s paper shop. One of the many kind things Miss Oatley did for me was at Christmas in 1977. I’d been buying motor car photo stickers for a kid’s collectors album called Super Auto (a packet a week from Yvonne’s) and was some way from completing the set. For Christmas, Miss Oatley bought me an entire box of sticker packs, I couldn’t believe my luck! Though I still never managed to complete the set even then. On one of the last occasions that I met her, she’d moved across the way to Cherry Tree. She was showing me around the garden and pointed at a particular garden ornament. ‘You see that? That’s the original angel from the Angel, Islington’, she told me. Her father had acquired it during his auctioneering days. I never knew quite how seriously to take this revelation, and I often wonder what happened to the statue, but it is clear that her father regarded it highly, as in the well-known photo of him he is standing beside it (right courtesy Heather Meays). |
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A Seventies Childhood in a Seventies Box
I’m sure almost everyone believes the years of their childhood to have been better than anyone else’s, and I’m no exception, I feel very fortunate to have grown up in the 1970s. Tom Baker as Dr Who and the likes of the Six Million Dollar Man and Space 1999 kept me entertained on television, while my creative soul was entranced by the TV artist Tony Hart. Pocket money disappeared into Yvonne’s every Thursday for anarchic comics like Whizzer and Chips, Shiver and Shake, Krazy and Monster Fun, or more gruelling fare like the bloodthirsty Action. Pop music was in a pretty good place (though the boys could never really understand what the girls saw in the Bay City Rollers and the Osmonds). But it was not all mass-media. Living on Barn Piece meant that I had the best of both worlds, as Quarry Woods was on my doorstep, full of places to explore, make dens, and generally hang out. Fly-tipping is no new phenomenon, though. I remember a car (an Austin 1100 if memory serves) was dumped at the top end of the woods in the early 70s and proved a thing of much fascination to a young boy. I also still have a charming book called Pamela’s Teddy Bears which was found amongst some discarded junk.
It is perhaps odd to think that even well into the 1970s, Quarry Woods was still the place where I’d help my mum gather wood for the fire that heated our house and water. An alternative source of fuel was a sack of strangely-shaped wooden offcuts from the carpentry workshop at the bottom of Quarry Hill, where Woodside Place is now. There were a few odd little light industrial units dotted about the village, of which Price’s was of course the acme. I remember a little industrial estate of two or three Nissen huts just off Box Hill which was called Moon Aircraft. I found this terribly exotic, were they making spaceships?
Much nonsense is written about how much better childhood was before mobile phones and the internet. In my experience, the 6 weeks of mid-1970s school holidays were often existentially boring – lots of things to do, but none that I ever felt like doing. What I needed was something like an iPad! Summer holiday morning TV programmes like Why Don’t You tried to encourage kids to get creative rather than sitting around watching another re-run of dubbed film series like White Horses or The Flashing Blade. So, I made little books and comics for my own consumption and drew on every surface I could find. During one night-time thunderstorm, I drew all over the staircase wall, which meant unexpected and unwelcome redecoration was required. I once chalked a detailed and involved street scene all the way up the Barn Piece footpath, populated by extraordinary buildings and fantastical vehicles. This did not impress the neighbourhood and I was dispatched to scrub the whole thing off without delay.
For a while in the early ‘70s, mum worked at Cheney Court in Ditteridge, which was being run as a hotel by the De Jersey family at the time, and I was a regular feature there during school holidays. Perhaps my most famous achievement was to fall in the pond, being rescued by quick-acting staff. Cheney Court had a reputation for multiple hauntings; the one that sticks in my mind is the story of a disembodied hand that came through the wall in the Gents’ toilets! A notorious spot was the much-feared Top Floor. On an occasion when a babysitter couldn’t be obtained, I had to accompany mum when she was working an evening shift in the bar. I was horrified to discover that I was to be accommodated in a room on the Top Floor, with nothing but a TV set for company. However, the supernatural terrors I anticipated failed to materialise, largely because I became rather more absorbed in the equally mysterious world of late night television, a new experience for me. I’d long wondered what the Old Grey Whistle Test was. Imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be an array of what appeared to me to be extremely old men with beards playing what seemed at the time to be interminably boring music.
Having learned to read at such a young age, I was quite a fan of books, and so spent a lot of time in the library. The Rec was also, inevitably, a regular hangout. High swings, a slide and a roundabout all bedded with lethally sharp gravel (as I once discovered to my cost after being distracted from a particularly high swing by an extraordinary circus vehicle travelling along the main road). The roundabout had a hole in its wooden floor where you could excitedly watch the gravel and broken glass speed by underneath.
I was a cub scout for a year or so, but fear that I was nothing but an exasperation to David Ibberson the scout leader. Not only was I not really a gung-ho scout kind-of boy, I lived in fear of the mockery I’d receive if any of my schoolmates saw me heading off for the weekly meeting in my uniform (even though a large swathe of them were cubs too). The most unforgiveable thing, though, was that I didn’t get home until half-way through an episode of the TV comedy series The Goodies. In the days before streaming media and DVDs, if you missed an episode, it was pretty much missed for good, which at the time was a terrible thing indeed.
I’m sure almost everyone believes the years of their childhood to have been better than anyone else’s, and I’m no exception, I feel very fortunate to have grown up in the 1970s. Tom Baker as Dr Who and the likes of the Six Million Dollar Man and Space 1999 kept me entertained on television, while my creative soul was entranced by the TV artist Tony Hart. Pocket money disappeared into Yvonne’s every Thursday for anarchic comics like Whizzer and Chips, Shiver and Shake, Krazy and Monster Fun, or more gruelling fare like the bloodthirsty Action. Pop music was in a pretty good place (though the boys could never really understand what the girls saw in the Bay City Rollers and the Osmonds). But it was not all mass-media. Living on Barn Piece meant that I had the best of both worlds, as Quarry Woods was on my doorstep, full of places to explore, make dens, and generally hang out. Fly-tipping is no new phenomenon, though. I remember a car (an Austin 1100 if memory serves) was dumped at the top end of the woods in the early 70s and proved a thing of much fascination to a young boy. I also still have a charming book called Pamela’s Teddy Bears which was found amongst some discarded junk.
It is perhaps odd to think that even well into the 1970s, Quarry Woods was still the place where I’d help my mum gather wood for the fire that heated our house and water. An alternative source of fuel was a sack of strangely-shaped wooden offcuts from the carpentry workshop at the bottom of Quarry Hill, where Woodside Place is now. There were a few odd little light industrial units dotted about the village, of which Price’s was of course the acme. I remember a little industrial estate of two or three Nissen huts just off Box Hill which was called Moon Aircraft. I found this terribly exotic, were they making spaceships?
Much nonsense is written about how much better childhood was before mobile phones and the internet. In my experience, the 6 weeks of mid-1970s school holidays were often existentially boring – lots of things to do, but none that I ever felt like doing. What I needed was something like an iPad! Summer holiday morning TV programmes like Why Don’t You tried to encourage kids to get creative rather than sitting around watching another re-run of dubbed film series like White Horses or The Flashing Blade. So, I made little books and comics for my own consumption and drew on every surface I could find. During one night-time thunderstorm, I drew all over the staircase wall, which meant unexpected and unwelcome redecoration was required. I once chalked a detailed and involved street scene all the way up the Barn Piece footpath, populated by extraordinary buildings and fantastical vehicles. This did not impress the neighbourhood and I was dispatched to scrub the whole thing off without delay.
For a while in the early ‘70s, mum worked at Cheney Court in Ditteridge, which was being run as a hotel by the De Jersey family at the time, and I was a regular feature there during school holidays. Perhaps my most famous achievement was to fall in the pond, being rescued by quick-acting staff. Cheney Court had a reputation for multiple hauntings; the one that sticks in my mind is the story of a disembodied hand that came through the wall in the Gents’ toilets! A notorious spot was the much-feared Top Floor. On an occasion when a babysitter couldn’t be obtained, I had to accompany mum when she was working an evening shift in the bar. I was horrified to discover that I was to be accommodated in a room on the Top Floor, with nothing but a TV set for company. However, the supernatural terrors I anticipated failed to materialise, largely because I became rather more absorbed in the equally mysterious world of late night television, a new experience for me. I’d long wondered what the Old Grey Whistle Test was. Imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be an array of what appeared to me to be extremely old men with beards playing what seemed at the time to be interminably boring music.
Having learned to read at such a young age, I was quite a fan of books, and so spent a lot of time in the library. The Rec was also, inevitably, a regular hangout. High swings, a slide and a roundabout all bedded with lethally sharp gravel (as I once discovered to my cost after being distracted from a particularly high swing by an extraordinary circus vehicle travelling along the main road). The roundabout had a hole in its wooden floor where you could excitedly watch the gravel and broken glass speed by underneath.
I was a cub scout for a year or so, but fear that I was nothing but an exasperation to David Ibberson the scout leader. Not only was I not really a gung-ho scout kind-of boy, I lived in fear of the mockery I’d receive if any of my schoolmates saw me heading off for the weekly meeting in my uniform (even though a large swathe of them were cubs too). The most unforgiveable thing, though, was that I didn’t get home until half-way through an episode of the TV comedy series The Goodies. In the days before streaming media and DVDs, if you missed an episode, it was pretty much missed for good, which at the time was a terrible thing indeed.
At Barn Piece, probably 1974 or 1975
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I wasn’t exactly a dedicated follower of fashion in the 1970s but did have a pair of wedge shoes for a few months and a snorkel jacket that I hardly took off for ten years. I had a Spacehopper, but I drew all over it in biro and eventually it deflated away to nothing.
The skateboard trend of 1977 was never going to take off on an uncompromising slope like Barn Piece and the yellow plastic one with red rubber wheels that dad kindly brought home for me never saw quite as much action as I might have liked. Also, the famous Raleigh Chopper was no-where near as ubiquitous as nostalgists might like to think (I can’t remember anyone having one). I did have a Raleigh bike, but it was no Chopper – it was known as the Friday bike in my household because so many things went wrong with it, we assumed it had been thrown together by weary workmen last thing on a Friday afternoon. |
Village shopping was: Yvonne’s paper shop (and the Wests’ more mysterious other shop in Northfield House at the other end of the village); the Post Office; the Co-op (I still have a plastic tub of Co-op dividend stamps in my eyrie, waiting (probably forever) to be licked and stuck into a stamp book and traded for a few pence off the grocery bill); Mrs Haines shop on The Parade, just up from another grocery store (then called Astons); Mr Bawtree, the barber and two butchers. We gravitated towards Les Lay, whose butcher’s shop was next to the Queen’s Head. I generally used the opportunity to indulge in a bizarre fizzy drink called Cresta, frothy rather than fizzy; the TV adverts featured a bear with the catchphrase, "It’s Frothy, Man". The ingredients of the drink would probably leave today’s medical professionals shaking their heads in despair.
Then as now, our medical professionals could be found at the surgery, though in the earlier building which was pretty much on the car park of the new one. I found Dr Taylor rather severe and I preferred the urbane Dr Davey. Later we had Dr Macquitty, a friendly young man who died long before his time.
A visit to the surgery was more nerve-wracking for its admissions system than what you might learn about your health. You registered at reception, then sat patiently in the waiting room for a buzzer to go off and a doctor’s name to be illuminated on a lightbox mounted on the far wall. I was in a constant state of anxiety: what if I missed the light? What if I accidentally queue-jumped? What if someone else accidentally queue-jumped me? What if somebody queue-jumped me on purpose? I think many of my adult neuroses probably have their roots in the Box Surgery Waiting Room!
After medicine was prescribed, there followed the long slog up to the chemists’, which to an eight-year-old was so far away that it might as well have been on Mars. Ailments didn’t generally need the doctor’s attention though. A day off school with a Lem-Sip, watching the schools’ programmes and the testcard on TV usually proved an effective cure to most ills.
Bath was the place to go for more exotic fare. The 465 bus (later the 231 or 232) would take me into town to buy the latest
Dr Who novel from John Menzies in the underground Southgate precinct. I could also ogle the toys in Eric Snook’s store. If I was feeling more adventurous, I could go and ogle more exciting toys in Tridias out in the wilds of Bartlett Street. In earlier years I’d go to town with mum to Mitchell’s haberdashers in the pre-Southgate precinct days, where invoices were whizzed from the checkout to the accounts department upstairs in vacuum tubes. There was a hardware shop with the unlikely name of (if I recall correctly) Membery Bladwell. We’d end up in the Wimpy’s next to the Beau Nash Cinema on Westgate Street, or in the Woolworth’s café, more often than not clutching a Pickwick Top of the Pops LP. In the very early 1970s there was an adventure playground on a building site near the fire station, it was great fun but had obviously been designed by someone for whom health and safety was an entirely alien concept.
Box’s railway heritage was rather a thing of the past by the 1970s, but on one occasion I did try my hand at trainspotting. I bought an Ian Allen guide and waited for an hour in the rain until finally one of the new High-Speed Trains came by too fast for me actually to take down the number.
Then as now, our medical professionals could be found at the surgery, though in the earlier building which was pretty much on the car park of the new one. I found Dr Taylor rather severe and I preferred the urbane Dr Davey. Later we had Dr Macquitty, a friendly young man who died long before his time.
A visit to the surgery was more nerve-wracking for its admissions system than what you might learn about your health. You registered at reception, then sat patiently in the waiting room for a buzzer to go off and a doctor’s name to be illuminated on a lightbox mounted on the far wall. I was in a constant state of anxiety: what if I missed the light? What if I accidentally queue-jumped? What if someone else accidentally queue-jumped me? What if somebody queue-jumped me on purpose? I think many of my adult neuroses probably have their roots in the Box Surgery Waiting Room!
After medicine was prescribed, there followed the long slog up to the chemists’, which to an eight-year-old was so far away that it might as well have been on Mars. Ailments didn’t generally need the doctor’s attention though. A day off school with a Lem-Sip, watching the schools’ programmes and the testcard on TV usually proved an effective cure to most ills.
Bath was the place to go for more exotic fare. The 465 bus (later the 231 or 232) would take me into town to buy the latest
Dr Who novel from John Menzies in the underground Southgate precinct. I could also ogle the toys in Eric Snook’s store. If I was feeling more adventurous, I could go and ogle more exciting toys in Tridias out in the wilds of Bartlett Street. In earlier years I’d go to town with mum to Mitchell’s haberdashers in the pre-Southgate precinct days, where invoices were whizzed from the checkout to the accounts department upstairs in vacuum tubes. There was a hardware shop with the unlikely name of (if I recall correctly) Membery Bladwell. We’d end up in the Wimpy’s next to the Beau Nash Cinema on Westgate Street, or in the Woolworth’s café, more often than not clutching a Pickwick Top of the Pops LP. In the very early 1970s there was an adventure playground on a building site near the fire station, it was great fun but had obviously been designed by someone for whom health and safety was an entirely alien concept.
Box’s railway heritage was rather a thing of the past by the 1970s, but on one occasion I did try my hand at trainspotting. I bought an Ian Allen guide and waited for an hour in the rain until finally one of the new High-Speed Trains came by too fast for me actually to take down the number.
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Box Schooling Before I started at Box School, there was a nursery school at the back of the Market Place car park. I remember being scared by the floating stairs. My main pre-school experience, however, was in a nursery held in the Methodist Chapel, where I still recall being trapped in a canvas tunnel when two of my peers decided it would be hilarious to sit on each end so I couldn’t get out. I won’t name them. I started at Box School in autumn 1971. One of my earliest memories is of an enormous circular papier-maché head which was stored in the mezzanine area above the passageway to the bottom end of the playground. It remained there for some time. I think it was from some kind-of Mummer’s Play that the school had put on a few years earlier, but I never found out the truth. |
First school photo, the Rec, probably spring 1972
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The only copy of Weekly School magazine from 1977. This is black-and-white but the original was purple-on-white Banda print.
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The teachers were a joy without exception – Miss Palmer, Miss Kynaston, Miss Read (they were all ‘Miss’, regardless of marital status). Although Miss Palmer did ban me from cookery classes for several weeks because I licked my fingers on one occasion. A particular favourite was Sybil Hams, who lived in a house in the grounds of Fogleigh House. She wasn’t there for long, but she was one of those generous and kindly teachers who stay in one’s thoughts. The eldest children were taught by Mr Ayers. His classroom was a mobile building at the top of the playground. I wrote light-hearted short stories in which I gave roles to many of my classmates, and Mr Ayers would indulge me by letting me read them out in class. I was also given time to create a school magazine on the office Banda machine. It never passed its first issue, and the purple print of any survivors has probably faded away to nothing by now (that is certainly the case with my copy, left).
While I was there, the school swimming pool opened, but I don’t remember it ever getting much use, either weather or lack-of-heating proving insurmountable obstacles. We also engaged in fundraising to build a path across the top of the Rec so that our regular visits to the church with the delightful Rev Selwyn Smith didn’t involve muddy shoes or a perilous trek along the side of the main road. I think we were all surprised when the path turned out to be a row of concrete slabs rather than the fabulous yellow brick road we perhaps imagined. |
Having the Rec on the doorstep was a bonus for the school as it was a great space for outdoor activities. I remember once the Red Arrows flew over and we all threw ourselves to the ground in terror, the teacher included.
The school’s centenary was celebrated in the mid-1970s, and we had a Victorian day which chiefly involved us all trying to get into the shot of a local TV crew that turned up to film the event. My family all gathered round the TV set that evening in anticipation. I could be seen for a split second but it was enough, I was on telly!
The school’s centenary was celebrated in the mid-1970s, and we had a Victorian day which chiefly involved us all trying to get into the shot of a local TV crew that turned up to film the event. My family all gathered round the TV set that evening in anticipation. I could be seen for a split second but it was enough, I was on telly!
The programme for the 1977 Royal Bath & West Show
We also took part in the Royal Bath and West Show’s Bi-Centenary celebrations that year, winning a prize in the schools Design a Costume Competition. I dressed as a wheelwright and the costume mum made for me had several extra lives – once as part of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations, and then again as part of a memorable medieval-themed day in Lacock, where I took on the role of a merchant and managed to make a reasonable profit in the process.
I left Box School for Corsham Comprehensive in 1978 and it felt like the lightness of childhood left at the same time. I found secondary school soulless and impersonal, most of my Box School friends were put into different classes so we quickly grew apart. Some friends went to other schools and I never saw them again. As I moved into my teens the innocence of youth was replaced by all the predictably complicated emotions of adolescence. My main contribution to Box life in the ‘80s was as a long-serving paper boy for Yvonne West. I was getting on for 22 before I finally handed in the orange newspaper sack for the last time. Soon after, I left for a job in Swindon.
The rest of life followed apace, though I have been a regular visitor to Box ever since as my parents still successfully maintain their corner of Barn Piece.
I left Box School for Corsham Comprehensive in 1978 and it felt like the lightness of childhood left at the same time. I found secondary school soulless and impersonal, most of my Box School friends were put into different classes so we quickly grew apart. Some friends went to other schools and I never saw them again. As I moved into my teens the innocence of youth was replaced by all the predictably complicated emotions of adolescence. My main contribution to Box life in the ‘80s was as a long-serving paper boy for Yvonne West. I was getting on for 22 before I finally handed in the orange newspaper sack for the last time. Soon after, I left for a job in Swindon.
The rest of life followed apace, though I have been a regular visitor to Box ever since as my parents still successfully maintain their corner of Barn Piece.
Family Tree
Smith Family
Great Grandparents:
Francis (Frank) Henry Smith (1887-1964) and Nellie Coffin (1885-1945), married 1906.
Children born in London:
William (Bill) Edward Thomas (1907-1965); married (i) Ada Georgina Gale (m.1931, died 1938). After her death, Bill's younger brother Bert bought his furniture, so that he would be able to marry Florence Porter and furnish their cottage! (ii) Evelyn Ford (married 1940-?), (iii) Lily Claridge (m.1946).
Herbert (Bert) Francis Smith (1908-1983); married Florence (Flo) Maude Porter (1909-1973) in 1938.
Gertrude Emily (1910-c.1912).
Sidney A (1912 -c.1916).
Children born in Box area:
Frederick (Fred) George (1914-1999); married Olive M Eddols in 1945.
Florence Ivy (known as Ivy) (1917-1991); married Walter Sealy in 1938.
Edward Arthur (1920-1994); married (i) Joyce H Jones (m. 1943, died 1945 aged 22) (ii). Audry Joyce Elizabeth Reed (m.1946).
Grandparents:
Herbert (Bert) (gramp) and Florence Porter (nan)
Children:
Paulene (1943-);
Jane Elizabeth (1946-) - my mother. I was born in Greenways Maternity Hospital, Chippenham, on 17 September 1966.
Smith Family
Great Grandparents:
Francis (Frank) Henry Smith (1887-1964) and Nellie Coffin (1885-1945), married 1906.
Children born in London:
William (Bill) Edward Thomas (1907-1965); married (i) Ada Georgina Gale (m.1931, died 1938). After her death, Bill's younger brother Bert bought his furniture, so that he would be able to marry Florence Porter and furnish their cottage! (ii) Evelyn Ford (married 1940-?), (iii) Lily Claridge (m.1946).
Herbert (Bert) Francis Smith (1908-1983); married Florence (Flo) Maude Porter (1909-1973) in 1938.
Gertrude Emily (1910-c.1912).
Sidney A (1912 -c.1916).
Children born in Box area:
Frederick (Fred) George (1914-1999); married Olive M Eddols in 1945.
Florence Ivy (known as Ivy) (1917-1991); married Walter Sealy in 1938.
Edward Arthur (1920-1994); married (i) Joyce H Jones (m. 1943, died 1945 aged 22) (ii). Audry Joyce Elizabeth Reed (m.1946).
Grandparents:
Herbert (Bert) (gramp) and Florence Porter (nan)
Children:
Paulene (1943-);
Jane Elizabeth (1946-) - my mother. I was born in Greenways Maternity Hospital, Chippenham, on 17 September 1966.
Reference
[1] Maggie Smith-Bendell, Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two, Little, Brown Books, 2010
[1] Maggie Smith-Bendell, Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two, Little, Brown Books, 2010