Mal's Memories 16

DO YOU remember your first school?

I started at Dinas Powys Church in Wales School in the village centre in the late 1940s. The main school entrance and school yard were on Britway Road, while the school house, occupied by headmaster Mr H N (Nut) Rees and his delightful wife, faced the Twyn.


The buildings were eventually demolished to make way for a housing development and the new church school built at St Andrew’s Road. The need for a modern school could not be denied, but despite the many inconveniences many of us were sad to see the old place go.


Winters, which seemed to be much harder then, were a particular time of trial. There was no central heating, and the classrooms were lit by individual coal fires. At times it was so cold that numbed fingers could not hold a pen and we were invited up, two at a time, to warm our hands in front of the fire.

Such frozen conditions also had a drastic effect on the outside toilets.


School dinners were partaken at the nearby Scouts Hall in Highwalls Road, and in my final year I was sometimes sent ahead to try and thaw out frozen water pipes in advance of the hot meals being delivered after they were prepared at the Council School on Cardiff Road.

I remember the old fashioned desks, with their hinged lids, and their ink wells in which we used to dip our nibs. And woe betide anyone careless enough, literally, to blot their copy books.


Two other features of the school stand out in my memory. The handsome external clock which provided villagers with a permanent time check, and the bell-tower, much like a church.


Pupils were sometimes chosen to pull the rope which tolled the bell, calling the boys and girls to school, and it was considered quite an honour!