View source for Teaching at Bellingham Council School in 1943

''From our archives - the reminiscences of Isabella F. Sisterson on teaching at Bellingham during the Second World War.''

During the fourth year of the Second World War, I was appointed to teach the infants class at Bellingham Council School. On the day before I was due to start, I came over from home near Harbottle on my bicycle with as much luggage as a saddle bag could hold. My books and other teaching aids had been packed in a box and sent by rail from Glendale, where I had previously worked, and these duly arrived a few days later.

I had been used to cycling home frequently at weekends, thirty-two miles each way. Now my journeys would be about eight miles shorter with only two hills worth mentioning in the way, Billsmoor and Hareshaw, which left me undaunted at that time! Cycling on a pre-war fixed gear Raleigh Roadster, which had cost £4-19s-6d in 1937, had been my main form of transport for several years. That was the way to get around in those days when people owning cars were in the minority and petrol was in short supply. A journey from Upper Coquetdale to Bellingham was just possible by public transport on certain days of the week by Morpeth and Newcastle but it took nearly all day to do it. Push biking was a way to cut the miles, the cost and the time; and “push” was the operative word when the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. 

A few weeks earlier, I had made my first visit to Bellingham to be interviewed by the school managers. On that occasion, I travelled by rail from Berwick-upon-Tweed, changing trains at Morpeth, Scots Gap and Reedsmouth. It snowed all the way from Scots Gap and then the sun came out. It was a beautiful white scene! In contrast, when I left home on 31st May 1943 to make my first journey by bicycle, the afternoon had been sunny, but the sky was darkening ahead. I had never been on this route before and there were no reassuring signposts or place names as these had been removed earlier in the war in case of enemy invasion. As I passed Otterburn Mill, the sky was ominously dark. How I was tempted to turn back! Approaching the crossroads, picture the scene: not a house in sight, not another person or vehicle, only the black expanse of sky, hill and moorland, and this was the middle of the afternoon! Suddenly, there was torrential rain, and, despite a waterproof cycle cape and hood, I was soon miserably wet and travelling at a snail’s pace. Fortunately, at that stage, along came an empty roadstone company lorry, which stopped, and the kindly driver put my bike into the back while I thankfully climbed into the cab. Within five minutes, I was unloaded at Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Hedley’s home in Front Street where I was to lodge during the week and where I was made very welcome and dried off. It was here that I met my future husband Matthew Sisterson, a tailor.

There were five different schools in Bellingham at that time. The two main ones were the Council School by the Fairstead and the Reed School (C of E) by St. Cuthbert’s Church, both of which took children from five years old until they left for work at fourteen. St. Oswald’s Roman Catholic School was small and there was only one teacher. Two spinster sisters, Agnes and Margaret Fenwick, ran a private school for very young children in their house, Riverdale Cottage. In addition, Brown Rigg Camp was occupied by a girls’ school, which had been evacuated from Newcastle to Bellingham. Miss Isobel Marks was headmistress.

My class was made up of thirty-two children aged from five to seven years old. There were only two rooms in the school. The infants were in the smaller one and the other was divided by movable wooden partitions into two sections for the junior classes which were taught by Miss Leybourne and Miss Ross who had both come from town schools originally accompanying refugees. The seniors were being taught in the Town Hall by Mr. Cairns, the Headmaster. On one afternoon, the seniors and infants changed places. This arrangement gave my class the opportunity to dance, run around and do dramatic work. I did not remember what benefits the seniors gained; perhaps they played football on the Fairstead or, if indoors, they would have had to sit on top of the infants’ desks as they would not have fitted into them.

There was no central heating in school but the larger classrooms had an open coal fire at each end and mine had a big stove, all surrounded by safety guards. The paved yard had a fence down the middle with toilets at the far end. When the weather was favourable, the Fairstead was the more popular playground. The turf was much better then than it is now because of the children playing on it and sheep grazing. On fine days, we could enjoy nature walks further across the golf course as golfers were rarely seen during school hours.

At the school where I had taught previously, children had brought their midday meal to school, if they lived too far away to go home. However, dinners were available at Bellingham at the school canteen, which was in the Town Hall. The member of staff who was on duty had to accompany the crocodile of pupils from school to the “supper room” where Mrs. Davidson and Mrs. Murray cooked and served the hot meals. They passed the dinners through the hatch (now a doorway) to older pupils, who then distributed them to the tables. It was a tight squeeze in the canteen and tended to be noisy even when nobody was misbehaving.

Evacuees were drifting back to town again and school numbers were falling so, at the end of October 1943, the use of the Town Hall by seniors ended and the whole school came together again in its original building by the Fairstead. The infant class, now reduced to about twenty-four pupils, squeezed into the smaller section of the partitioned room. The seniors occupied my former room and, at the end of term, we said goodbye to Miss Ross and settled down to be a three-teacher school under one roof.

The war had now gone on for over four years and it was a case of ‘make do and mend’. I do not think that any new textbooks came into school in the two and a half years that I worked there or for many years after that. Teaching apparatus for early learning was made by the teacher, apart from blackboards, a standard abacus and perhaps a few individual bead frames and tatty books; and, of course, there were no pocket calculators in school, no typewriters, no television sets, no computers, not even an old radio set. There would scarcely have been room for them, had they been available. As for me, I married Matthew Sisterson on 4th April 1945 and a whole new life began.
''
I. F. Sisterson, 27th January 1996''
[[Category: Schools]]