St. Kenelm's C.E. Primary School, Romsley
Centenary Celebrations
1915 – 2015
Memories of Mrs Anthea Williams - Pupil - 1950s
I started school at St. Kenelm's in 1955 at the age of five. The headmistress was Mrs Southall and my class teacher was Mrs Fanthorpe. She was just lovely! She wore bright red lipstick, sheer silk stockings, a pencil slim skirt and stiletto heels.
We sat on the floor for story time around the pot-bellied stove. I can't really remember any of the stories as I would just look at Mrs Fanthorpe and think how beautiful she looked. (Many years later my cousin Martin would tell me that Mrs Fanthorpe was the first woman he fell in love with!) I also remember that there were green canvas beds so that we could have a sleep.
We would walk down to the Mission Room for our dinners. The only two dinners that I remember were – salad with mashed potato onto which salad cream was poured using a ladle; yes, a ladle. Yuk! And sago with dates floating in it! I would put the dates under the pudding bowl to stick to the bottom (to avoid eating them), then ask Georgina South who had long hair to place a hair onto my dish of sago. I could then raise my hand and say that I couldn't eat my pudding because it had a hair in it. It worked!! From then on I have never been able to eat dates or sago!
I think that Mrs Southall and Mrs Fanthorpe left shortly after I started school. In came Miss Gray and Miss Davies and life at school was never the same again!