Spondon Village

In 1658 Thomas Gilbert, the Squire of Locko died and left the sum of £60 to purchase an annual rent of £3, "the same to be paid for and towards the maintenance of a School-Master in Spondon ... for ever." In 1661, the year of the coronation of Charles II, the trustees secured the services of William Thomas Bowes for the post. A fine history of the Spondon schools has been written by Dr. E. J. Kenedy who taught at the school after the Second World War. My sister Marjorie sent me a copy which has become another treasure from which to excerpt, as no doubt the schoolmasters would have us say.

After many ups and downs, and several locations, the village school was finally settled on Church Hill at Post Office Yard, near the beginning of Potter Street, with Peter Coxon as the head-master. I still remember the ancient, two-story red brick schoolhouse, now torn down, and can't help thinking of what mindless vandalism we commit in the name of progress. The house had a wall inset stone inscribed with the Latin motto "Ingredere ut Proficias" (Enter, that you may become skilled). George Wright, the churchwarden and a previous student, found this stone in the demolition pile of rubble and transported it in a wheelbarrow to the new school. Many school buildings and locations later, this inscription has remained the Spondon House School motto.

The Moravians founded a religious settlement in nearby Ockbrook in 1750, with a chapel and boarding school. Private schools were also at that time being founded in Spondon. One of them was previously the dower-house of Locko, located in Church Street with grounds extending to Chapel Street and to Hall Dyke. In 1854 the Rev. T. Gascoigne opened this boarding school, to be known as "Spondon House School for the sons of Gentlemen". None of the students were then allowed to mix with the more humble villagers. All this changed when the Rev. Edward Priestland came to the school in 1874. He liked all people and opened the gates of the school and its wonderful cricket pitch to anyone who wished to play. His successor, T.C.H. Hayman, was a first class cricketer and willingly played for the village side. A photograph of the Spondon team in 1898 shows him with my grandfather George Porter. This private school was converted to an emergency convalescent hospital in the first World War, and afterwards became the state-supported Spondon House Central School which all of my peers attended.

A National School for Infants was built in 1835 on Chapel Street, and is still used for that purpose. My father, John Porter, attended this six-roomed school at the turn of the century and said that he paid two pence a week for the privilege. He was born on August 25th, 1890 at Moor End, Spondon, and was the fifth of eight children. He was a very good penman and had a fine writing style until well into his seventies. As a boy of about five or six, I was walking down Gravel Pit Lane and met this very old bent and bearded man who asked me my name, then said he remembered my father, and gave me a school slate and pencil as a present. I later showed it to Dad and he told me this benefactor was 'Gaffer' Douglas, his old schoolmaster.

I started my own schooling in 1930. My sister Marjorie took me that first morning and I remember standing with my back to the school wall, gazing nervously at the hordes of yelling children running about in play. The National School was operated by a long-standing agreement with the Church of England, and on Saint's days we would troop off down to the parish church in long crocodiles. There was no thought of separation of Church and State. We never gave thought to the Non-conformists and Catholics who had no choice in the matter. All our family and cousins went to this school, there was rarely a year without a few Porters in attendance. Miss Truman the head schoolmistress lived two doors away from our house so any truancy was out of the question. My friend Maurice's mother, Mrs. Hill, who lived directly across the street, was also a teacher and taught me to read and write. We somehow took it for granted that our progress was reported home, almost on a daily basis, and this no doubt helped our school behaviour.

At the age of nine we were transferred to the Springfield Secondary Modern School on West Road, a quarter of a mile further away from home, but only a five-or-ten minute run. I don't remember walking it. Absent-mindedly I even once ran home during the afternoon recess, elated to be first out of the school gates. Mam promptly made me run back again and fortunately no-one had noticed my absence.

At Springfield we made our first acquaintance with male teachers, and Mr. Arthur Cockersole was the genial headmaster. At the age of 11, the outcome of sitting a voluntary examination decided whether you could attend Grammar School at Long Eaton, or would leave school at age fourteen. It meant doing homework, which was against my principles at the time, and as none of my close personal friends was going to go, I avoided sitting the examination.

In August, 1936, at the age of eleven years, I moved up to the Spondon House Central School. The Munich Crisis came in 1938 and as a newspaper delivery-boy I followed the events closely. I can still remember the feeling of shame and indignation I felt at the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. Some of our male schoolteachers were army or air force reservists and prepared to depart. Air raid precautions were begun, and gas masks were distributed.

SHCS 1938... image pans by click-drag and zooms by shift or control (...slow load...400K+)

In July 1939, I left Spondon House for the last time. World War II started a few weeks later. The War brought many other changes to the schools and untimely death to many teachers and fellow-pupils. After the war, the old Georgian Spondon House school was torn down and a modern replacement school for a much larger pupil enrollment was built on the Devas's property, a quarter mile to the west. As a link with the past, the old archway at the entrance to the new school grounds still contains a stone where, as a boy, my granddad George Porter the cricketer, had deeply carved his name. Time and weather has now nearly erased this marking.

Fifty years later, Springfield School still serves as a junior school, and the old National School still survives for primary grades. The plumbing has been improved but outward appearances remain the same. Six generations of Porters have been taught there, and who knows how many more will follow?