Chapter 2

1929 - 1935 Junior School

I started my education in September 1929 and attended the Westgate Primary School. I remember very little except that we used slates and I got into trouble for hitting another child with a ruler and was sent home. There was no central heating and a huge guarded fireplace occupied one corner of the classroom. I think the playground ran down to the river and there was an iron staircase up to the upper floor. Little did I know that I would be returning many years later during the war as an ARP messenger. After one term I was transferred to Kidgate Junior School. The headmaster’s name was Mr Latter, a very tall kind man with a nasty habit of pinching your cheek when he was talking to you. I think my first teacher was called Mrs Bontoft or perhaps Mrs Johnson and I also remember Mrs Hibberd, an awesome lady, and Mrs Mason who taught the top class. In those days you were seated according to your ability. The brightest pupils were to be found in the back right-hand corner of the room and then progressed in reverse order of achievement (not necessarily intelligence) to the front row. Discipline was maintained by the authority of the teachers - you did respect them in those days - but it was backed up by various deterrents culminating in the CANE. I don’t remember any of the teachers using their authority sadistically. As 50 pupils per class was the norm I cannot but admire their achievements. Most of us acquired the rudiments of the three R’s.

We didn’t have a school playing field, but we had wonderful tarmac

playgrounds, one each for the boys and girls. Most boys wore studded boots and with these you could run and slide as if you were on ice. The toilets were outside and bitterly cold in the winter. My ambition was to pee over the toilet wall and I was very envious of those boys who achieved this feat so effortlessly. We played football, marbles, hopscotch, conkers, cigarette card games, tag, etc. Games came and went like ladies’ fashions.

In 1930 we moved to “Ashlea” on Eastgate opposite the Priory. This

house had a watermark five feet from the floor in the downstairs entrance hall and rooms, a reminder of the Great Louth Flood of 1920. The back gate led into a lane flanked by a field, on the far side of which ran Monks

Dyke. This was a small canal which used to run from Springside off Aswell Street to Louth Abbey. It was used by the Monks for transport and to provide water for their fish-ponds. The water was crystal clear and stocked with shoals of sticklebacks which I often caught with a fishing net and kept in jam jars. I have a vivid memory of accidentally falling in and running home soaking wet. I told my mother that a boy had pushed me in, and Grandpa Maddison set off across the field in his slippers to find this “boy” who had done such a dastardly deed. The dyke has now been filled in and the railway embankment removed to make way for a housing estate.

I also used to play by (and in) the industrial Canal which connected

Louth with the sea-lock at Tetney. It was unused and neglected but contained the biggest sticklebacks I have ever seen. In Victorian times it provided a link with the Humber for the shipment of carpets and farm produce. Louth was a major centre of carpet making in those days and some of our ancestors were weavers. The Riverhead area has now been restored and there are plans for repairing the rest of the canal.

In those days we had maids. The first one was Gladys Clarricoates, our

cousin from Brough, and then came Kathleen. We met Kathleen in 1992 on a trip to Louth and she clearly remembered my brother Leslie and I locking her in the pantry and giving the butter to baby brother John. We were punished by being sent straight to bed instead of going to the Cub’s bonfire party. Our fireworks were given to Kathleen.

My father’s vehicles were housed in the East Lincs Garage near the War Memorial on Eastgate. I often used to play on the old buses stored at the back of the garage or go for free rides to say Mablethorpe or my grandparents at Donington on Bain. The new RAF Station at Manby was being built in 1936 and my father negotiated the contract to convey the Irish labourers from Louth Station to the site. He bought two ancient double-deckers but on the first morning they were introduced the labourers refused to get on them. Considering their age it was not surprising but my uncle, Harry Dixon, (later to become landlord of the Prince of Wales) simply started to drive away and said “Either ****** get on or ****** walk”. They got on and we had no more trouble. Double deckers were a rare sight in Louth and I often used to get up very early and travel on the rear platform for fun.

It was at Ashlea that I got my first Meccano set and clockwork Hornby train. I think that Baildom’s in Eastgate had a toy shop and the toys came from there. I also had an electrical set, a simple film projector and a ‘Frog’ rubber powered low winged model plane. This had a geared propeller and you wound it up by placing it in its box and winding a handle at one end. I think it was this little plane which started my love of aircraft. I also had a steam driven ‘O’ gauge locomotive. This had no speed controls so it either came off the rails at nearly every corner or didn’t move at all. Along the back lane to the right was Maxey’s woodyard, another source of entertainment. It was there that I made my first and only parachute jump. I climbed a huge pile of logs and clutching two open umbrellas jumped into space. They turned inside out and to my amazement I landed heavily but safely.

Youngest brother John arrived about this time but because of the age

difference I can remember little about his early life. No doubt the gaps will be filled when he writes his own life story.

My father obtained his private pilot’s licence in 1931 and in 1932 I had

a flight in a Blackburn Bluebird at Waltham Aerodrome near Grimsby. The plane was not very powerful and had two seats side by side. I clearly remember hanging in the straps at the top of a loop. In 1934 he purchased an Avro 504K (1919 vintage reg. G-ACRE) for £340 and formed a company called “W and M Flying Services.” The M stood for Michelmore, the pilot who gave me a trip in the Blackburn Bluebird. Unfortunately Mr Michael Goldwire Michelmore (that was his full name) disappeared shortly afterwards owing £46 and the company was renamed Lincolnshire Flying Services. I remember Michelmore’s replacement arriving on the London train one August afternoon. I was sitting in my father’s car near to the gate of the field on Kenwick Road which was used as an airfield. It was just below the so-called Whitening Pits. The pilot was asked to do a trial flight and on his landing approach went straight through the hedge close to the car and ripped off the undercarriage. He caught the next train back to London. The plane was replaced by a 1929 Avro 504N reg. G-ADFW with a more powerful engine . The photograph shows my mother and father with AVRO G-ACRE.

My brother Leslie and I are probably the only boys to make a forced landing in an Avro 504K at the age of nine and eleven. We had been to an Air Display at RAF Waddington near Lincoln and were to fly back to Louth with Pilot Kennedy. Unfortunately shortly after we took off the cloud came down to ground level and we had to make a forced landing in a field of cows at a farm near Wragby. We were unharmed and my father collected us in his car later that evening. On another occasion joyrides at 2/6d, 5/0s and 7/6d were being given from a long narrow field just outside Mablethorpe on the Louth road near the Milehouse Inn. Customers were conveyed from Mablethorpe in horse drawn landaus. Business was not brisk so I was put in the plane to show that there was nothing to fear. The pilot did a quick circle round the field, but unfortunately the wind dropped as he was landing and we headed straight for the ditch at the far end. There were no brakes on the machine, so as we neared the ditch the pilot put on full left rudder and we swung round violently. As I was getting out of the cockpit I noticed that a bracket on one of the ailerons had been bent and pointed it out to my father. He promptly told me to be quiet, as the paying passengers would be scared off if they saw it.

Lincolnshire Flying Services ceased operating at the end of 1936, probably because it was losing money or possibly the Air Worthiness Certicate could not be renewd.. The engine was later given to the Louth A.T.C. and the fuselage and wings stacked against a pea stack behind the hangar. During the war the same stick of incendiaries that destroyed Kenwick Hall hit the pea stack and destroyed what was left of a bit of Louth’s aviation history. The engine was given to the Air Training Corps but has long since disappeared. It would be very useful as spares for the Avro 504k still flying in the Shuttleworth collection.

In 1936 my father decided to build a ‘Do it yourself” Flying Flea, with

the help of Mr Wilson, manager of the whitening pits. The airframe was actually constructed by a local cabinet maker. This was kept with the Avro in the hangar on Kenwick Road. Surprisingly this hangar is still in existence at Welton on the road to Lincoln. The Flea only made one flight, the propeller shattering shortly after takeoff - it never flew again. There were numerous fatal accidents in Fleas and wind tunnel tests at Farnborough discovered that if the Flea was put into a dive, beyond a certain angle the centre of Gravity moved forward and it was impossible to recover from the dive.

Harry Dixon, my uncle, lodged with us and was responsible for trying to teach me to ride a bicycle in the lane behind the house on Eastgate. On one of my first attempts I rode into a brick wall and went straight over the handle-bars. For several weeks I refused to sit on the seat and rode it sitting on the carrier over the rear wheel. It was also Harry who initiated my early dislike of rice pudding, particularly the skin. “Flipping rice pudding” he would say when it was served for lunch. Perhaps he was responsible for my dislike of tea, I always drank water. He later married Ivy Day who was a hairdresser and daughter of Mr Day, the ironmonger in Mercer Row. She had a saloon on the first floor of her house on Newgate Hill overlooking the level crossing and railway yard and I spent many happy hours watching the trains shunting. I also had a friend who lived halfway up Newgate Hill, but my only memories of him are being chased by a chicken and blowing apart ventilation bricks by putting firework bangers in the holes. I think he became an insurance agent but I can’t remember his name. In later years I used to make fireworks from potassium chlorate, sulphur, iron filings and other chemicals bought from the local chemist. I saved Grandpa Maddison’s tobacco tins, pierced a hole in the centre of the lids, filled them with the dangerous mixture and

ignited them. They worked, but gave off great clouds of foul smelling smoke rather than pretty sparks.

In 1935 we moved to St. Michael’s Road and it was here that I started

piano lessons with Mrs Meanwell. She charged one shilling per lesson and in later years I realised why her charges were so low. She had no qualifications and was a very poor teacher. I was a reluctant pupil at first and our maid, Kathleen, used to lock me in the front room every evening for an hour until I had completed my practice. In retrospect I believe I had a natural aptitude for the piano and it is sad that it was stifled by this well meaning lady. She was the organist for the Riverhead Methodist Church and used to force me to play the piano at concerts. My piece de resistance was the “Harmonious Blacksmith” which I played atrociously, to my great embarrassment. To get to Mrs Meanwell’s I had to cycle across a railway level crossing and I remember being ambushed by a school enemy who trapped me between the kissing gates and bit me on the thigh. Yes, we had thugs even in those days. My father smoked cigarettes and at the age of 16 I asked for permission to smoke. I remember buying 10 Players Weights for 6d at the corner shop and puffing away in my bedroom whilst I did my homework.

Grandpa Maddison was a Methodist Exhorter, a gentle and intelligent

man, but a very frightening figure in the pulpit when he elaborated on the fate that awaited us in Hell. Hence mother was a strong Methodist and we were “encouraged” to attend Sunday School. Even in those early days I silently questioned the reality of the “Heaven” we were promised if we behaved ourselves. It seemed too good to be true. The Sunday School Anniversaries were the highlight of the year (not to me), new clothes, sentimental religious songs and recitations presented by the pupils and a special preacher.

As my father was reluctant to go far away from his bus business during

the summer, we spent many happy hours in a caravan sited at North Shore, Mablethorpe. The caravan had been built by my father in his aircraft hangar and somehow managed to accomodate all five of us. The site was about half a mile from Mablethorpe and I remember how we used to walk through the sand dunes and enjoy a free show at the Beach Theatre. You only paid if you occupied a deck chair and if you were outside the rope barrier it was up to your conscience whether you put a coin in the collecting box. The slot machines were also a great attraction,

especially the halfpenny ones where you pressed a lever down and had to get a ball in one of six cups.

I also used to visit my six cousins at Brough, near Hull. Uncle Charlie was

a stoker at the gasworks alongside the railway line, and I used to admire his skill as he threw shovels of coal into the fiery retorts and later pushed the glowing coke through . Later the the retorts were replaced by a large automated vertical furnace in which the coal was raised to the top by a lift and burned as it gradually dropped through the tall tower. We used to play among the gasometers and the smell of tar still evokes memories of those days. I was later to make my first solo flight in 1944 in a Tiger Moth from the airfield on the other side of the railway bridge

Sometimes we spent a few days with my maternal grandparents who

lived at Donington on Bain in a cottage down Woodyard Lane. We used Wrights Buses to get there and the old Ford 14 and 20 seaters used to struggle to get up and down the hills of the Wolds.

They were a delightful couple. Grandpa had a flowing white moustache

and I seem to remember that he had a special cup so that his moustache did not dip into the tea. Grandma was rounded and homely, just like children expected a grandma to be. They had no electricity or gas, and used rainwater for washing. Clean water had to be carried from a pump fifty yards down the lane and the toilet was an earth closet. Cooking was done on a coal range, or in the summer on a paraffin stove perched precariously on the dining table. They had a small pantry and scullery from which steep stairs led to a double bedroom. There was a small bed on the landing which we used if we stayed overnight. They had three children, Jesse my mother, uncle Arthur, and uncle George, so it must have been very cramped when they were all at home.

Half a mile away was Benniworth Haven, a beautiful lake which always

entranced us, especially in the Spring, when it was carpeted with bluebells. The local railway ran beside it and I remember putting pennies on the line and waiting for the locomotive to squash them flat.

Sometimes on a Sunday, provided we had attended morning Sunday

School, my father would take the family for a run into the countryside or down to the sea. I remember distinctly that they would sometimes stop at a cottage and deliver parcels, but they never said why. I realised in

later life that they were probably giving a helping hand to people they knew were in need. Occasionally we would visit my three cousins in Grimsby who were all deaf and partly dumb. My aunt, Louis Wright married a Fred Wright, and possibly there was a blood relationship which caused the disabilities in their children.