Schooldays and air raids – Mother and I were taught by the same teachers
THE passage of time has not been kind to this photograph, but it holds many memories for Bilston reader Mrs Iris Woodings, for it shows the school which both she and her mother attended.
Mrs Woodings writes: “This is a copy of an old photograph of Broad Lanes School, Ladymoor, Bilston, where both my mother and I attended, and several of the male teachers taught both of us.
“Mom was there aged 13 in 1926, and I was there from the age of 11 to 14, when I was among the last children to leave at 14 in 1946. The children who were due to leave after my group at Easter of 1947 were not allowed to do so, they had to stay on another year until they were 15.
“My later mother’s name was Mrs Ada Cox (nee Ada Wilkinson, of Deepfields) and among the teachers we both had were my form teacher Mr Millard – he was my mom’s as well. He remembered her being in his class.
“I also had Miss Jones, and both Mom and I recalled Mr Hopcutt, and Mr Moody. Mr Pearson was the headmaster when I was there.
“When my mom was there it was known as The Tin School, because the walls were of corrugated metal sheets, but by the time I went there it had been rebuilt in brick. Apparently, so I’ve been told (and I don’t know if it’s true) the Tin School building was originally the fruit and veg property of Proctor’s of Bilston, and was situated by the traffic lights at the top of Bilston Town by Millfields Road, and then later became the Tin School in Ladymoor.
“I believe Mr Webb, who is also on the photo, was the headmaster of Christ Church Junior School, which I also attended before Broad Lanes Senior School.
“On leaving Broad Lanes Senior I began work at Stewarts and Lloyds’ offices in Bilston, the local steelworks. It was the worst winter in many, many years when I started in 1947, with waist-high snow on my first day at work. I recall it well, because there were no buses running.
“It would be of interest to me to know if any other Bugle readers remember being at Broad Lanes School, from about 1943 to 1947.
“I do recall an incident that happened when the heavy bombing raid was going on in this area during the Second World War. If it had turned out differently, this article would not have been written.
“One morning after a raid when I arrived at school, I was greeted by a group of schoolfriends saying a part of a German aeroplane had landed in the night; it was in the field near the school and they were going to see it. Did I want to join them?
“I did. Well it turned out to be an unexploded landmine which later had to be detonated, so my parents and I, plus a lot of our neighbours, had to be evacuated to a very big air raid shelter belonging to a nearby factory. We had to leave our doors and windows open because when the mine was set off, the blast could have shattered the windows and blown the doors open.
“It was a good thing it hadn’t gone off when we children went to have a look at it, innocently thinking it was part of a downed plane.
“Anyway, all the road was cordoned off by the police, and we were in the shelter waiting for a big bang, but when it went off it was nothing like as loud as we had been expecting. We hardly heard it.
“But while we were in the shelter an elderly friend of Mom’s had paid us a visit, ignoring the police cordons, and had arrived at our house and was wandering around the deserted and empty bungalow. Obviously she wanted to know where we’d all gone and why all the doors and windows were open. She was completely unaware of the danger she had been in, but we had all been very lucky in the long run.
“After continuous air raids and being in our shelter night after night, sleeping in there, Dad decided one night that it was not safe there any more, and that we had to go to a safer place.
“So all three of us made our way to the quarter-of-a-mile long Coseley Tunnel, ready to spend the night there, just outside the tunnel and ready to make the dash into it if the sirens went off.
“We didn’t have an air raid that night, but what I do remember happening was that one of my teeth came out, and I spent the night with a bleeding mouth, from where my front tooth had fallen out.
“My apologies if any of the information I’ve provided is incorrect, but it has been many moons ago, and the original school photograph is almost a hundred years old now. Only three more years to go.”
Mrs Woodings has supplied several names for the teaching staff on the photograph: from left in the back row are ?, ?, ?, Mr Hopcutt, Mr Moody, (headmaster), Mr Webb, ?, Mr Millard, ?, ?.
We had to leave our doors and windows open to stop the bomb blowing them out