Laindon Park Primary School, Reports
Plus Laindon High Road School Honour Certificates
Somehow seem to have mislaid one report, the one showing 61 pupils in class, but have found two more instead. Please note that these are pre-adoption so I am named Smith not Joy as now.
Who knew? Almost teachers’ pet at Laindon High Road School
Well obviously I wasn’t bad/naughty all of the time and here is the evidence to back up that remark. I realize there is not a lot of evidence but it’s more that I thought and I was only there for 4 years.
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Hi Jonny,
Well, well, well – after all this time! I have only just come across your posting of 26th November, 2018. I obviously have a better memory than you. What gave you the impression that my parents wouldn’t let me ‘play out’. Have you forgotten that you and I were great chums in our pre-school and primary school days – some of it during the War period? You even feature in my Life Story that I wrote a few years ago, including a photograph of the Brackenmount Victory Street Party showing you, Patsy and me standing together at one end of the long party table.
Yes, it is true that my father worked in London and that my brother Roy probably never ‘played out’ because he always had his head in a book (Roy was a more studious kid and wasn’t a particularly ‘social’ animal) but I was more of a ‘nature boy’ and would prefer to be outdoors and you and I would spend many hours playing in the fields at the back of our bungalow. In the late summer, we would invariably do a bit of scrumping in the orchard somewhere at the back of your place. I think it was part of the long garden of a property in Basildon Road. Don’t you remember? It’s OK to confess now as they will never catch up with us after all this time!
One of the things that sticks in my mind is that your Mum had a very ‘powerful’ voice. When it came to tea-time or your Mum wanted you to come home for some reason, it didn’t matter if we were a few hundred yards away in the fields, we would always hear her. We would be quietly playing somewhere in the hedgerows and then we would hear a voice from afar ‘Jooooonathaaaaaaaan’. Sometimes, during the very hot weather, your Mum would give us an ice-lolly from your fridge. I think you must have been the first family in Brackenmout to own a fridge! Not something that would have been found in the Peters household at that time – we didn‘t have that sort of money! I seem to remember that your house was called ‘The Dingle’ and the Farmer’s house next door was called ‘Mount View.
And do you remember that the Farmer boys, who lived next door to you, would sometimes come and chat to us over your garden fence? Coincidentally, our family were later to have connections with the Farmer family when Jean’s Mum married Ron Farmer, some time after Jean’s Dad had died.
One thing I can’t remember is whether you left Brackenmount before or after us. I think we were one of the first families to move away – about the same time as the Starling family who lived next door to us in Brackenmount. Both our families moved into New Town properties next door to each other in Takely End. The New Town housing department agreed to offer us tenancies of adjoining houses which, I thought, was very considerate of them. My parents got on well with the Starlings. By that time, I was working for Basildon U.D.C. and shortly after that moved down to Worthing to further my career.
Our family became very close friends with Jack Wilson and his family at the School House and it was probably at around that time, when I joined the Church Choir and spent most of my spare time playing cricket that you and I went our different ways. Geoff Fynn and I were close buddies and played cricket together for Laindon C.C. Geoff is still around, but sadly his younger brother Brian died some years back.
I suppose the last time I saw you was when we left Brackenmount to move into the New Town in December, 1958, well over 60 years ago. I do have faint recollections of two other events – one of your older brother coming home from the Forces and the other was when you sadly lost your Dad.
Anyway, it is nice to be able to ‘re-connect’ with you after all this time and hope that I have been able to convince you that I was, indeed, allowed to ‘play out’ with you in those early days of our lives without any restrictions from my parents, which I always look back on with happy memories – even when the German bombs were falling all around us! So, just to put the record straight, my parents, who were the best in the World, never stopped me playing out with any other kids in the street. If you had ever been told otherwise, then I think that you may have been misled. They were happy times. I could go on a lot more, but I think I have said enough!
Finally, I hope you are keeping well, Jon, and that you too share some good memories of Brackenmount in those early days.
Best wishes and stay safe.
Your (now very old) boyhood chum.
John Peters
Some other names I have remembered, (about your age,) Veronica Nightingale, Joan?Cooper, Frank Flint and his sister Joan, Shealer Gregory (who’s parents had the grocers in Basildon Road; and I believe married John Harding who lived in Wash Road;) Molly Smith (who later married Ray Petty). I’ll add more if I think of them. J.B.
Hi Leslie, I was at “Donaldsons” (sometimes known as “Donald Ducks”) from 1945 until 1951, so a bit before you, but my sister Pat was there about that time, as was Glyn Swift, Jeff Petty, his sister Joan, John Peters, (whose mum was sometimes on playground duty) Alan? Starling, I know this ‘cos we all lived in “Bracken Mount” and played a lot together (except for John Peters whose dad was “Something in the City” so him and his brother Roy weren’t allowed to “play out”) J.B.
Editor: ‘Donaldsons’ was only ever a nickname for the school. So called after Margaret Donaldson a long standing Head Mistress. The correct name of the school was and still is Laindon Park School.
One more teacher’s name from my time at this school 52/57 is Mr Simpson.
I was at LPPS from 1949 to 1955 when I was exiled to the West Country thanks to Basildon Dev. Corp. Miss Davis, Mrs Card, Mrs Hudson, Miss Thomas, Mrs Hughes, Mr Stone, Mr Blakemore and occasionally Mrs Wilson were the teachers. Mrs Daniels was the school secretary but I cannot remember the names of the kitchen or playground staff. Mr Tilley was the caretaker.
I would like to hear from anyone who attended St Nicholas Lane (Laindon Park) primary school from 1951 until 1956. The headmaster was Mr Wilson and my form teacher was Mr (or Mrs) Card I think? Where are all my class mates now I wonder?
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