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A MALVERN CHILDHOOD
'I started at Madresfield village school as a child of five years old. The school had two classrooms, one for the infants, taught by Miss Taylor, and one for the older children up to 14, taught by Mrs Allen. There were between 30 and 35 children in the school, and as far as I remember there were only two five year olds when I started.
I remember sitting at my desk on my first day at school gazing at a painting of the crucifixion on the wall in front of me. Puzzled by the dreadful implications of the picture, I enquired what the man had done, only to be told, in hushed tones, that he was "Our Lord".
Our Lord!" I repeated, rather perplexed. "He is with you always," ame the less than comforting reply.
I was shocked and a little frightened by this information and wondered why I had been chosen to be companion to the poor, deeding figure. "Even in bed at night," continued Miss Taylor, oothingly, "He never leaves you."
I found this news quite disconcerting and as a consequence slept in the edge of the bed for many years to allow him room to get in. was even more mystified to find that at Christmas "Our Lord" iecame transformed into a baby lying in the hay. Oh, the strange .nd mysterious ways of adults!
I soon learnt from our religious instruction that God lived in heaven, and with "His All-Seeing Eyes" noted every misdeed on earth. The Devil also lurked around with his toasting fork, ready to prod the bottom of any miscreant. It was really a question of who got in first with the retribution, but I marvelled that most of the time neither of them was watching or listening.
One of my earliest memories at the school is a party at Madresfield Court to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary. I had no notion of what a jubilee was, and, as the youngest member of the school, was quite flabbergasted to be lifted up onto a table to assist Earl Beauchamp to cut the special celebration cake. Two years later at the coronation of King George VI, I comprehended more fully what was going on. I had a white dress with red, white and blue trimmings, socks with turnovers in the national colours and hair ribbons to match. There was bunting festooned on trees, and parties at Newland and Madresfield. I helped plant an oak tree on Newland Common on 12th May 1937. We lived in Newland in a cottage, which is sadly no longer there.
There had been a village school in Newland once, but when I was young Madresfield school was the nearest, so I plodded down the lanes, unaccompanied, in all winds and weathers.
An uncle of mine had lived all his life in Newland, in a cottage opposite the Swan Inn. His father had worked for Earl Beauchamp on the estate, and had died as a result of an accident there. His widowed mother and seven children stayed on in the cottage and ran a sub post office to bring them some income. I remember him saying that when they all had scarlet fever, they were wrapped in red blankets, and laid out on the common like sausages cooking, waiting for transport by the "pestcart" to the isolation hospital. The hospital was in the country outside Malvern, so visiting was not easy. The children had to remain in hospital until all their skin had peeled.
Acknowledgement: This extract is from Worcestershire in living memory -Worcs Federation of Women’s Institutes
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