This is my first note to this forum so if I repeat things already said by others, I apologise! As I am now 77 I may well get a few facts the wrong way round but anyway..... I imagine that my family were one of the first to arrive at the Bells Lane prefab site. I can remember new ones arriving on lorries and being quickly erected on site, I believe they were what we were told were the 'American ' ones? Goodness knows if that was true, though I know that these new ones with a pitched roof seemed to be a lot better that our flat roofed one. I also remember the school actually being built and being told off, with other kids, for playing on the piles of sand etc that were being used for the building. I enjoyed going to the school when it was finished and I think I am right in saying that the first Head was a Mr Pascoe?
Amongst other things still in my memory are, the winter of 1947 when the lane down to the site was completely closed, indeed completely full, of snow and we enjoyed getting up on the roof of our prefab and launching ourselves into the deep snow drifts, an advantage of a flat roof! There was also the stream to play in, try to jump over, and catch stickle backs, A few people linger in my memory, picking bluebells with a girl named Pat Sargent, a clever girl named Vivian Ridley who, I think, wanted to be an engineer, I do hope she succeeded.
A few other things, Saturday cinema, that wonderful smithy at the top of the lane, I loved going to watch him at work, a real Dante's inferno. The farm that we used to go and 'help out' in the summer, oh and doing a paper round from the shop opposite the Maypole pub,
so heavy, had to do the Sunday round in two halves as I couldn't get all the papers in the bag in one go!