My form teachers at St Peter’s, Church of England controlled, Junior School, Horbury, 1958-1962.
Miss Andrassy, a relative of the Andrassy family who ran a butcher’s shop on Queen Street. I remember her being keen on art.
Mr Harker had his classroom in the prefabricated block in the school yard. Organised a class walking group, The Travel Club. Walking must be good for you, because it’s only last autumn, a few weeks before he died, that he managed the two-mile walk around Newmillerdam.
Mr Thompson, who I’ve written about before in this blog, had his classroom in the Ebenezer Hall, a few hundred yards away from the rest of the school in Ring O’Bells Yard. He was a great storyteller.
Mr Lindley, back at the lower corner of the main school, encouraged us with drama and making little booklets. I still have my booklets on Bible stories, birds of prey and, from the last weeks of our time at junior school, a short summary of the history and myths of Ancient Rome. I was a bit over ambitious with that one!
Mr Douglas, our pipe-smoking headmaster, worked from a small office in the main school which he shared with his secretary. Mr Douglas, like Mr Harker, was a keen fellwalker.
Art, walking, storytelling and writing and illustrating booklets: St Peter’s gave me all the basics I needed for my subsequent career!
You can learn a lot about someone from the pile of books that accumulates next to them. Amongst Barbara’s current reading is The Blackbird Diaries: A Year with Wildlife by Karen Lloyd, who is based in the limestone country of the Southern Lake District.
I’m trying out one of the ‘Realistic Watercolor’ brushes in the latest version of Clip Studio Paint; after quickly sketching with the pencil tool, I go for the Real G-Pen then try the new Rough Wash brush. In the real world, I’d never try for such a rugged effect in my ink or watercolour washes, but perhaps I should give it a go. After forty-odd years in the business, trying something different is one of the reasons that I keep experimenting with drawing on the iPad.
For the tall, folksy hand-lettering, I took my cue from Andrew Forteath’s striking, friendly cover design for the paperback.
The Travel Club
Fourth-year boys from St Peter’s Juniors, Horbury, taking a break halfway down Honister Pass, Lake District, early summer, 1962. I’m the good-looking guy at the front of the group. No, NOT that one: that’s my red-headed friend Adrian: I’m the one on the left. Back row: Ian Morley (like me, a member of the Great I-SPY Tribe), Trevor Wales, Marshall Coates Boy on rock: unknown Middle row: Remember him, but can’t remember his name, Peter Coates, Stephen Downing, Robert Bishop Front: Richard Bell, Adrian Littlewood Photograph, Derek Harker (or possibly Mr Lindley).
Horbury Carnegie Free Library, last Saturday, 11.45 a.m.
“Let’s see, is there anything I’d be interested in?”
It’s my teacher from junior school, Derek Harker, who’s interested in the books that Barbara is packing away in her bag.
“The Blackbird Diaries: A Year with Nature, by Karen Lloyd, that should be right up your street,” I suggest, reading the blurb, “and she won the Striding Edge award for the Lakeland Book of the Year.”
“Put my name down for it! Have you ever walked along Striding Edge?”
“No, that’s far too dangerous for me!”
“Striding Edge isn’t dangerous, I’ve walked it several times. Sharp Edge on Blencathra is the dangerous one.”
In my second year at St Peter’s Junior School, Horbury, 1959-1960, Derek organised a Travel Club for our class. We’d contribute sixpence a week and sometimes the walk would start from the school on a Saturday morning and cost nothing but, when enough sixpences had accumulated, we’d go further afield, for instance taking the train from Horbury Station to Hebden Bridge for an evening walk to Hardcastle Crags.
The photograph of us in Honister Pass was a couple of years later, in our final term at the school, taking things one stage further and setting off for a week’s Youth Hostelling, walking from Keswick to Buttermere, with a couple of nights at Borrowdale along the way.
St Peter’s juniors, fourth year children at Buttermere Youth Hostel, 1962. Mr Lindley, then my form teacher, on the far left, Mr Douglas, our fell-walking, pipe-smoking headmaster in middle at the back. This must have been taken by Mr Harker, as he’s the only member of staff who doesn’t appear on it, but I have a feeling that it was with Mr Lindley’s camera.
Barbara started at the same school a few years later but she never got the opportunity to head for the hills. So why was St Peter’s so focussed on hill-walking in the early 1960s? A lot of it was down to the headmaster, Mr Douglas, who was a keen fell-walker but the Travel Club was Mr Harker’s initiative. I’d often wondered how it all started and on Saturday he told me that his enthusiasm for the great outdoors started during his school days.
In the final months of World War II, Derek and other boys from his school, Thornes House, Wakefield, went off on the first of several annual camps, a kind of boys’ version of the Land Girls, to help with forestry in North Wales. He was sixteen at the time, so he and his classmates were capable of helping out with tasks such as clearing debris.
One of his friends had built himself a battery-powered radio, which was about the size of a shoe-box.
“One evening he rushed from his tent shouting ‘They’ve dropped the A-bomb!’ I didn’t even know what the A-bomb was.
“My brother, who was older than me, had been serving on an aircraft carrier in the North Sea, protecting convoys, but by the end of the war they were sent to join the effort to defeat the Japanese. They’d just arrived when news came that the bomb had been dropped. The Japanese in New Guinea surrendered immediately.”
Links
Karen Lloyd, award winning writer and environmental activist
I’ve struggled with this sketch of my fourth year junior school teacher, not just because I’m still trying out new techniques in Clip Studio Paint but also because, although I’ve got a vivid image of him in my mind, I find it hard to capture that in a drawing.
Barbara thinks that I’ve made him look too young and I think that’s partly down to exaggerating the size of his hands and face.
I found my previous year teacher, Mr Thompson, easier; he was nearing retirement and was a larger than life character. Mr Lindley was a great teacher, in mid-career – he went on to become a headmaster – and he didn’t have the kind of foibles that lend themselves to caricature.
I might try the headmaster Mr Douglas next and come back to Mr Lindley when I’ve improved my technique.
Continuing my experiments with drawing with a brush, here’s my third-year teacher from St Peter’s Junior School, Mr Thompson. In those days of the post-war baby boom our class, 3T, was a short walk from the school itself, in the Ebenezer Hall. I’ve got an image of him in my mind leading us from school to overflow classroom and vice-versa. As to whether he wore a trilby hat and a scarf, I’m not certain, but I’ve tried to keep to my impression of his character.
There’s a gap between the picture in my mind and the drawing that appears on paper, so why should I add further to my difficulties by not going for the more familiar medium of pen and ink? I scan my initial pencil before inking over it (right), just in case that turns out to be the version that I prefer.
I couldn’t resist adding colour this time. The brush pen drawing works well with the flat colour produced by the paint bucket tool in Photoshop, so I’m definitely going to keep on experimenting.
I’ve got one more class teacher to draw, Mr Lindley from the fourth year, then there’s the headmaster, the caretaker and about half a dozen other teachers who made an impression on me, so hopefully I’ll get better with practice.
Mr Thompson has ended up looking a bit like J B Priestley in my pencil drawing and like Priestley’s main character in his play An Inspector Calls. That’s appropriate because Mr Thompson was a great storyteller.
Continuing to experiment with drawing comics in line only, I’ve made a start on trying to capture memories of my class teachers from junior school days.
Miss Andrassy – I think she was ‘Miss’, not Mrs – was our teacher when we started at St Peter’s Juniors in Horbury.
Miss Andrassy was keen on art and I remember her setting up a still life for us to draw.
In our second year, Mr Harker, then in the pre-fab in the playground, was the teacher who first introduced us to dip pens and joined-up writing.
I’ve got strong mental impressions of these characters but some details of their appearance are guesswork, for instance did Miss Andrassy wear glasses?
I’ll come back to her after I’ve drawn Mr Thompson (third year) and Mr Lindley (fourth year), as I’m sure I could get nearer to the character I see in my mind’s eye.
Mr Harker didn’t tax my memory to the same extent as I saw him earlier this year in Debenham’s cafe in Wakefield, and he’s very much the same personality that I remember from almost sixty years ago.
