MEMORIES OF KNOWLES HILL
Come on - Where are you??
Please send your memories to me at mike@mad-mike.co.uk
Just do it OK!

You can choose to have your email address or other contact information associated with your name here if you wish, whether or not you have any associated memories.

Susan Burwash

The play - Lady Precious Stream by N.S. Hsuing that we performed in about 1955

Susan Childs

The play - Midsummer Night's Dream was performed - about 1951 Susan has sent several photographs (Drama section), As you Like It was performed earlier.

Thalia Childs

Do you remember the pink, blue and mint green painting of the tulips that hung in the dining room over the manltle piece? The dens in the shrubberies , and climbing the trees, Health and Safety would have a fit nowadays! Open a door and stand aside. Spare the rod and spoil the child - Miss Rainford shared her thoughts with me "That the usual interpretation at that time was that it endorsed corporal punishment. She felt this was wrong and it meant love the child, without reservation. Coquerico was our French text book. I remember the serious but not frightening talk we had upstairs in Miss Rainford's room before being given freshly sharpened pencils to go to take the eleven plus. I remember the history books with pre raphaelite and water colour illustrations. I have one. The percussion band - we learnt to read music. At lunch times on Miss Rainford's table we took french names, and spoke french during the meal. Baked beans, mashed potaoes and grated cheese on Mondays with treacle pudding for afters.Vegetarians were catered for - later we ate in the small room behind the kitchen - separately. We sometimes had playtimes in the cobbled cellars with wooden pillars, as a child I thought it was because it was raining but it probably was when the Germans bombed Newton Abbot, including the railway station? My mother was on the PTA she told me miss Rainford was on the left. Several evacuees were pupils, and the local authority paid for handicapped children - in the parlance of the time - to go there instead of to state schools, the smaller classes were better for them.

[Look also at Thalia's Knowles Hill School research section on the reunion page SC]

Wendy Truscott

I was nursing in Torbay hospital when Jan (Florence) Rainford was admitted with a fractured hip. I took her to theatre but as far as I recall she never made a recovery from that operation and died.

Billy Austin

There was another production of A Midsummer's Night Dream in 1957 with Wendy Boulton as Titania and me as Oberon . Miss Forrest was, as usual the Director/Producer/Stage manager!

Winifred Dougall

I remember the production of Midsummer Night's Dream referred to by Billy - I was Mustard Seed!

Rosemary Banning

... A couple of "Lady Precious Stream" [photos] with Billy Austin with the white beard, Wendy Boulton in the lead I think and Gloria Light, Diane Ayliffe and me as the three girls with the spears. Ian Niven, Tommy Fuller and could it be Derek Reed as well.

The other photos are of our" Midsummer's Nights Dream" production and Winifred Dougall, (my best friend) played Mustard Seed and she wore a lovely yellow dress, I was really jealous because I wanted to be a fairy and I was put in the character of Helena one of the lovers (the one who was always losing her temper!). I remember there was an awful lot of dialogue to remember and I think one of the other lovers was Stephen Simmons, I can't remember the names of the other two. Richard Phillimore played Puck brilliantly.

The photo of " As You Like It "or was it "The Merchant of Venice," has my sister Jen with Margaret Sharp, Molly ?, Sandra Woolner, Angela Desborough, Judith Burns, Paul Smith, that's all I can remember.

Lizzie Morris

Referring to A Mid Summers Nights Dream [1951 SC] I remember it well! I was Cobweb! I wonder if anyone remembers the camelias
in the wood and how at playtimes we would rush out to find the best freshly fallen flowers and collect them. Does anyone remember the opening of the marble pitch up by the vegetable patch, as senior girl (by age only) I and Tony Courtier had to play the opening match!
Assemblies at KHS were always interesting, Miss Rainford telling us stories. One in particular was about a blind girl and how she learnt to use a Braile Machine [Helen Keller SC] . The story took several days to tell and Miss Rainford had this wonderful knack of always ending on a terribly exciting note...does anyone else recollect this? I am a member of a family of six children. Five of us attended KHS; Joy, twins William and James, and Edmund. Sally, the baby, attended Decoy during Miss Evans reign. [More Personal details from Lizzie can be found in the guest book SC]

John Oakford

[John, a journalist, has written this for another purpose but wanted me to include it here SC]

My memory tells me Knowles Hill School was run by three maiden ladies who were the Rainford sisters, but perhaps one of them may have been married at some time in the past and was now on her own. Miss Rainford No. 1 was the headmistress, Miss Rainford No. 2 cooked and was the general factotum, whilst No. 3 just seemed to appear occasionally, dressed in a green cape and with a large hat on her head! The education was good and the food terrible. Lunches consisted of boiled potatoes with hard black bits in them, yellow mushie-type peas or cabbage of the same hue, grated cheese, baked beans and some unidentifiable meat, possibly related to Spam, and tasting of nothing I have ever tasted since! Of desserts, I have no memory whatsoever, but I'm sure there were some.

Life at my first school was fairly uneventful, in the early days doing very little except take an afternoon nap on canvas camp beds, having consumed the statuary 1/3 pint of milk, played a few infantile games and listened to the obligatory nursery rhymes and children's stories. Later, as we progressed to the more senior classes leading to the 11-plus exam, there were real lessons and an attempt to drill some education into the disparate brains of the assembled youngsters.

Too many people dwell on their school reports in their autobiographies and there is no need here to go down that boring path - they don't mean much at that early age anyway. Suffice it to say that mine were the usual "could do better, has improved this term or lacks concentration". The bottom line is that I didn't pass my 11-plus and didn't go on to grammar school.

**

In those days (late 40s into the 50s), the population of Newton Abbot was around 14,000 and the town supported a Great Western Railway (GWR) carriage works. In the summer months hundreds of holiday makers on Trip or Wakes Week passed through the township en route for Torquay, Paignton and beyond, visiting the market in its heyday and taking time to travel the few miles to Dartmoor, the jewel in the crown of this red earthed county.

Sadly, today, Newton Abbot is a shadow of its former self, with the market place taken over by a modern shopping centre and an ugly multi-story car park. Growing up in Newton Abbot has left many pleasant memories for me, not the least is the town's historic identity of a "small market town". The Market Place was a meeting space for locals, school kids, housewives, business people and farmers alike. It hosted the annual fair, with its roundabouts, dodgems cars, hot-dog stands and candyfloss.

On market days, the area would lined with stall holders selling anything from corn plasters to dodgy goods at a mock auction. There would be the smell of cattle and the cries of the drovers herding their charges towards the stud field or slaughter house. The local tramps would make their appearance, along with the old gent who never begged, but dragged himself around on crutches, with his legs wrapped around themselves in a bizarre bonding enjoined from birth.

The pubs would ring out with the broad Devon accents of the locals and farmers sharing a joke, beer, shove-halfpenny and the establishments' steak and kidney pies. In the holiday season, the accents would be joined by those of the holiday makers from London, Midland and the North. There would also be the Wiltshire timbre of the hundreds of Great Western Railways workers from Swindon (Newton Abbot's big cousin), who seemed to be drawn to the South West and the sun.

After school, we kids would visit the ice-cream kiosk or the snack wagon to boost our intake of carbohydrates. The snack wagon was run by an ex. Catering Corps Major and served a double purpose, in that, in the evenings a different clientele would frequent the venue. Taxi drivers, village idiots, assorted riff-raff and teenagers like myself. It wasn't much of a night spot, but the steak and kidney pies were wonderful!

Rodney Booker

I was a friend of Bill Austin. I was only at the school about 18 months until the 11+ and Newton Abbot Grammar. I was in the '57 production of MIdsummer Nights Dream at the hall in Highweek Street. I was a bird that got shot!

Mike Insall

I followed my sister to KH and my first problem was my hand writing which was, and still is, terrible! I write left handed and they tried to make me change. I remember PT with Mr Smith; now although I loved sport, I hated PT! I also don't like heights (I'm OK in a chopper at 3000ft with the door off, but get terrified 10 ft up a ladder! I also don't like wooden floors! As a result of all this, having to climb a rope in the gym freaked me out! Mr Smith used to get quite annoyed with me! We played football at the pitch down near the station that we walked to. During one early game MR Smith asked me to change places with Nicky Evans who was in goal. For some reason we had words and I bashed him in the face!! I was sent off and told to walk back to school and report to Miss Rainford! That was the first and last time I ever struck anyone on the sportsfield!! I have written to NE and have asked him if he can remember what happened! Mr Smith and his wife were the typical cool young couple. They had an old MG TF or similar and Mrs Smith was very attractive. During break in dry weather we would build dens in the wooded grounds. I remember one day a terrible fight between two boys on the drive up to the school. In assembly I remember 'What goes up must come down' and the prayer 'They that go down to the sea in ships and do business in deep waters' A boy from the school was killed in a car accident, but I can't remember his name. By the way, Ann Bovey died in a car accident on Haldon hill aged about 21, coming back from Exeter one night with a boy friend so I'm told. We always used to go to the bus station and buy loads of sweets prior to catching the bus home. At this time the Biro was just starting to come into use, but we still used pen and ink as Miss R thought the Biro was bad to use. I was always covered in ink by the end of the day, hence my nickname Inky ( actually a bit cruder than that!) The only food I remember was the tart with corn flakes in it! Yuck! I think we also had a day trip out to see the Mayflower being built at Brixham; does anyone remember that! Knowles Hill is I think the last extinct volcano in the UK. Sometimes we would be taken up to the top of the hill where there was a very small crater. Quite a lot of my friends at KH went on to SO and I have a lot of memories of visits to their homes and them to mine etc. I was a sapling in the Play A Mid Summers Night Dream, and Friar Tuck in Robin Hood (Photo to follow) For some reason Miss R liked mime and she once put on a mime show with some French guy, but it was not at the school; does anyone remember that?

Anne Cooke
My mother Clare Cooke was a teacher at the school from 1955 to 1960. She was a class teacher (when I was in her class it would have been Transition and then Class 1 I think, or maybe Class 1 and then Class 2 - I'll dig out the reports she wrote, which I still have!) but she also played the piano and taught percussion in the school.
I learnt the piano from the age of 6 and my first public performance was at Knowles Hill! I had to play a very simple piece and there was percussion with it I think.... We had big posters with the percussion parts printed on. I still have a selection of my writing books from Knowles Hill - French exercise book, story writing, 'News'.

I can picture her [Miss Rainford] when she used to stand up on her toes and down again, tucking back wisps of her hair, standing very upright. I remember when she became really animated and would slip into French unintentionally!

Clare Cooke

... when I looked at the Knowles Hill Website and saw the wonderful photograph of Miss Rainford and of the staff, memories of that era have flooded back. It must have been one of the happiest teaching times in my life as I remember little detail of the other schools in which I have taught. So since I visited the site my mind has been collecting details of the few years which I spent there ... We lived at Seale Hayne where Mr. Cooke was a junior lecturer and, in those days the job was poorly paid; but as David was an isolated child there we managed to afford to send him to Knowles Hill, but when Anne and Peter were born I had to go and see Miss Rainford and tell her that we couldn't afford to send David anymore, and she said to me "You are a teacher, aren't you? If you come here as a teacher, the children can come as pupils but you will only have a small amount of pay" - I think it was £15 a month; and so it was arranged. We all got on the School Bus at the bottom of the road at Seale Hayne. At one point, we had my sister's two children living with us and they also came to school. (David Cooke was probably 8 years old then, so Mary Scarlett would be 7, Anne Cooke would be 6, Allan Scarlett would be 5 and Peter Cooke would be 4 ) Hilary Christopher and her brother (?) Stuart , who is now an undertaker, and I think , Margaret Whiteway-Wilkinson were also on the bus. Later on Nigel and Nick Stanbury, who are my nephews and live at Littlejoy, Highweek, also went to Knowles Hill. They now have the Golf Course at Hele on the Ashburton Road and the original farm at Littlejoy. Other people whom I remember are Peter Thorn, who lived on a farm near Seale Hayne, Peter and Malcolm ( Bobby ) Laws, Alan Haine, Ann Lovell from Kingsteignton who was a friend of our daughter Anne, a boy called Peter who lived in The Avenue in Newton Abbot and whose father was a Fish Merchant ( I think ) - he played the drums in the percussion band , Robert Hough, whom I spoke to recently and was then working for Devon County Supplies, ( we had our first car from his father Nigel ), a consultant's son - I think he was called Geary, and the son from the Drum Sports Shop and Mr. Tucker. I met them at the reunion [1998 SC] and although I didn't remember them as young boys and now can't even remember either of their names unfortunately, I apparently gave one of them piano lessons. I knew Winifred Dougall as an adult, as she lived opposite my husbands mother in Highweek. Did childen from Bearns and Bovey building firms go to Knowles Hill? I taught Ann Bovey the piano. I believe she died, but can't remember the circumstances. I taught Nigel Pollard (sweets and ice-cream), and remember Nicky Hunt, Anthony Vallance and a boy called Tim whose father farmed near Hay Tor. He must have worked on the farm because his nails always had soil in them which I remember surprised me. David went to a wonderful firework party there which he described in great detail when he came home and he must have been very impressed.

The young lady sitting next to Miss Forest in the 1958 photograph was called ' pretty Pat' by our younger son, her name was Pat Lovell and she helped in the Nursery. I think she lived at a Nursery - Garden Centre - at Kingskerswell - We had another teacher at that time who is not on the photograph. She was Mrs. Dyer and she taught in the Kindergarten, I think. She was a lovely person; her daughter Vivian had a mild form of Cerebral Palsy but Miss Rainford did not think that Vivian was 'bad' enough to go to a special school. Mr Dyer - Horace - was an organist at Highweek and also played in a big church in Teignmouth. You didn't always do Music and Movement using the BBC programme, because I used to improvise on the old piano in the gym? or the hall? I certainly remember the songs you speak of, and probably taught some of them. Miss Forest and I both took music lessons - or maybe I taught music after she left - I really can't remember. But we both had a class as well. At one time I was reprimanded by Miss Rainford for spending too much time painting a huge jungle picture which covered a whole wall of the classroom. In fact, I came into school one Saturday with my tribe of children and we glued it all together with Mr. Smith helping me to put it together and up on the wall. He must have been living in the school at that time? I wasn't going to use any more class time on the Jungle. I think Miss Forest went to Miss Rainford to complain about me! But it is the only unhappy memory I have and it didn't put me off, because I did the same thing again years later in Essex.

We entered the percussion band in some kind of a Festival once - at Torquay ? Miss Rainford asked me if my son David was better on the drums than the boy I had given that part to, and I had to say that he was, so David got the chance. I was always very severe with my own children - who called me Mrs. Cooke instead of 'Mummy' and I was more than careful not to give them any special treatment - poor kids! At one of the Carol Concerts in the Hall I wrote out the words of " On the first day of Christmas " so that the parents could join in, and whenever I have to play it ever since, I hear Miss Rainford telling me that the Ten Pipers were Piping and not Pipping ... Monday lunch with Peas, Baked Beans and Potatoes and Grated Cheese was one of the things I had on my list of memories as well. I tried it once years later and thought how awful it was, and the cheese I would have used would be much stronger and probably much more!

In 1960 we moved to Essex when Mr. Cooke had another job. We waited until David had taken his 11+ exam. I taught Music all my working life, but also got qualified in Children with Special Needs - as it was then called - and often combined the two subjects. I ended my career teaching teachers about music in Special Education and in Mainstream as well in Workshops in many places in the country. I had a very busy but enjoyable time. In 1980, when we were living in Chelmsford and both working there, and there were no children at home any more, we decided to come back to Devon, where I ran a Special Unit for children with difficulties, and we later retired to Cornwall. I still teach the piano, have had a Ladies Choir for over twenty years, and a small group of lady singers called Cadenza Singers: I'm also involved in a choir at our Church, where I play the piano and organ, accompany singers and players, have written quite a lot of 'Musicals' for children and spend a lot of time now writing and arranging music for my choir - so even as an old lady I still don't have enough hours in the day. In fact the time is now 4.20 am and I just couldn't sleep until I'd written all this down! [Clare can be seen in the 1958 photo near the top of the main page SC]