MY MEMORIES OF DENTON SCHOOL BY EDWIN CAWLEY ( written c1980)

I started school at a very early age, I was just 2½  years old. I can just remember Denton School before it was altered to what it is now. I can just remember workmen finding the old slate pencils which had fallen through the cracks in the floor.

While the school was being altered the small children went to school in the Chapel Sunday School Room, the older children went to Yardley Hastings.

In those days discipline in school was very strict. No talking, the only time you were allowed to talk was when you spoke to the teachers. To be caught eating a sweet you were in real trouble, made to spit it in the waste paper box followed by a good clip on the head. To be late for school also carried a discipline, this meant stopping in to do writing or sums during the next play break.

When I was first at school there were three teachers, Mr & Mrs Battison and Miss Arsent. Later Miss Arsent was replaced by Miss Weston who came from Little Houghton. Miss Weston always came to school on her bicycle. Mrs Battison taught infants, Miss Weston the middle classes and Mr Battison the older children over 11 years of age. I think there were about ninety children in Denton school.

At 11 years of age we all took an exam called the eleven plus, if one passed a boy was offered a place at the Town & County Grammar School in Northampton or a girl at the High School for Girls, Derngate, Northampton. If you failed, as I did, we stopped at Denton, leaving at the age of 14. Often boys or girls who passed this exam never went into the Northampton schools as their parents could not afford to pay for their uniforms.

We wrote with pencil when in the Infants, but on going up to the middle class we went on to a pen. These were not like the pens used today, we used to fit a knib into a holder. If you dropped these it made the knib cross over so we had to have a new one. If you did this too often you were soon in trouble. Desks had a hole in the top into which fitted an inkwell, a small round container into which ink was tipped. The ink was made by one of the older boys (I did it when I was older) by tipping ink powder into an ink jug and mixing it with water. If one got the ink too dark or too light you got a good telling off.

Every year before the August holiday the last Friday of term, we all went to Castle Ashby to take part in sports, competing against Yardley Hastings, Grendon and Easton Maudit schools. After the events had all finished we had tea in a big tent, when tea was over we all went to the front of the castle to get our prizes and for everyone there was a bag of sweets and an orange, nearly always presented by Lord and Lady Northampton. To us, this was a great day, for one reason was because in Denton in those days was a bus company named S.J. Knight and they always took us to Castle Ashby in two coaches. Yardley Hastings and Grendon used to arrive in horse drawn wagons (so we also thought we were a bit better than them), also once a year we went to Wicksteed Park in the same coaches.

On Friday afternoon when in season we played cricket on the green. It was quite safe then because very few cars came down Denton streets. Football, we played in Mr Robinson’s field using coats as goalposts (being keen on football I was often given the job of keeping the ball blown up. I was allowed ½ hour for this on Thursday afternoons – this I thought was good because I missed a lesson).

In those days the cane was used in school for boys who didn’t behave, you knew when the headmaster was going to give caning because he called the boy out by name then slowly opened  his desk where he kept the cane. I only ever saw one girl given the cane, not very hard (she was really naughty)

I left school at 14 years of age just before the war, I must be honest when I say, as a boy, I never did like school but they were happy years and I am sure in later life I owe much to my teachers at Denton School.