A Jamaican Childhood -- Off to High School

This is a photo of my mother, Maud Levy, taken on the front verandah of our home at 5 Holborn Road. I was thinking of her as today, February 16^th, is her birthday and I have to thank her for her decision to send me to St.Andrew High School at 10 Cecelio Avenue, St. Andrew,when I left Surbiton Preparatory School at the age of nine.

 I have a few photos of the school and my time there, but none from when I first started in 1944 in the Third Form.  The photo above is of the front of the school with two of my later teachers, Miss Stockhausen and Miss Stewart, in the background. You can just see the famous front steps of the office, which no student was permitted to climb!  The building, which housed offices, the kitchen and eating areas, as well as dormitories, was originally Cecelio Lodge, owned by Cecil Lindo. The school has expanded considerably since my time there.

I remember that my mother first walked me to school but as I got older I walked there by myself … it wasn’t far. I used to cut through the home of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Clark whose house had entrances on both Holborn Road and Ruthven Road which ran somewhat parallel to Holborn Road. From there I would walk down Ruthven Road, turn right on Strathairn Avenue, and then left on Cecelio Avenue. This is a satellite picture of the school as it is now .

When I got older I was given a bicycle, a ladies Rudge-Whitworth, and I rode that trusty bike to school every day. Here’s a photo of what it most likely looked like 

and here I am, on the bike, in school uniform 

I have very fond memories of my school days at St. Andrew High School, or SAHS as we would call it in shorthand. In my next post I’ll expand on my school days there

 

A Jamaican Childhood -- My Early School Days

I was probably about five or six years old when I first went to the Surbiton Preparatory School, at 7 Surbiton Road, St. Andrew.  The school was held in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Cunningham and was operated by two of their daughters, Miss Linda and Miss Ivy. Another daughter, Miss Sybil, taught music, and I was to become one of her pupils as well.

This is the earliest advertisement I could find for the school in the Jamaica Gleaner of April 1942:

Miss Linda and Miss Ivy seem to have taken turns for the position of Headmistress as later ads name Miss Ivy in that position.

The house at 7 Surbiton Road stood on a large portion of land, similar to many houses of that age in St. Andrew. I remember that in the garden there was a large summer house completely overgrown with trumpet vine, campsis radicans.

Classes were held in the large dining room and the living room, though that was reserved in the afternoons for the Surbiton School of Music, under Miss Sybil’s instruction  As a child I took part in the percussion band. Here is a photo of the band

The photograph was taken on the front lawn, and one can see in the background, the house which belonged to the family of Noel Fraser, located opposite 7 Surbiton Road. I don’t recall the names of all the children in the photo.—Dennis Brennan is on the extreme left, playing the drum, and his sister, Sheila, is fourth from the left. I am fourth from the right, playing the tambourine, with Clare(Tinka) Taylor on my right, and her younger sister Rosemary (Bidi) on the extreme right.  The conductor is Michael Bronstorph, the son of Dr. Bronstorph whose home was on Trafalgar Road, almost opposite to Holborn Road.

Among my photographs is one taken of what appears to be a school pageant in honour of our British heritage. We dressed up in various costumes representing the different cultures which made up the British Isles

Beverly Webster and Joanne Surridge, on either side of the group, represented the British Navy. Hazel Aird, Lena Negretti and Michael Bronstorph, decked out in kilts, were the Scottish contingent. Heather Aird, and a child whose name I have forgotten, were the Irish representatives, and myself, to the right of Joanne, and another child were togged out in Welsh costume. As you can see, from the scowl on my face, I didn’t really appreciate the tall hat. Towards the centre little Toni Negretti appears to have been some sort of fairy. It’s interesting to me now to realize that the African history of Jamaica was totally ignored in this pageant.

In looking through some of my old documents I came across the certificate and marks I earned for my Grade II Piano exam back in April 1946.  I actually made the Gleaner, along with the other successful members of Miss Sybil Cunningham’s Surbiton School of Music.

I continued to play piano for quite a long time, then got sidetracked to the electronic organ and now, with age, have quite lost my pianistic ability. Still, it’s rather gratifying to look back at my score sheet for Grade II (Elementary) – Pianoforte, and remember that I once “delighted” the examiner with my playing!

A Jamaican Childhood -- Growing Up in the Forties

I was probably about six years old when this photo was taken, in the garden at 5 Holborn Road. I grew up during the Second World War, not particularly aware of the war itself, although my family was. I remember, for example, that at 49 Beeston Street where my aunts and uncles lived with my grandmother, there was a picture of the King, George VI, with an excerpt from a speech he gave in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British Empire. He quoted from a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins, “The Gate of the Year” and I distinctly remember these words beneath his photograph in the framed picture:

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.
And he replied”: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way”.

I was four years old when the war started and ten when it ended, and yet I don’t have many memories of life being particularly different because of the war. I believe that there were food shortages, especially of imported goods. I have a vague memory of my mother producing a dessert known as “Patriotic Pudding”, probably because of the few ingredients used to make it, but for the life of me I cannot recall what was in it or what it tasted like, only that we were supposed to feel that we were doing our bit for the war effort by eating it!  Another memory that comes to me is from my school days. Around this time, probably when I was about four or five, I was sent to the Surbiton Preparatory School at 7 Surbiton Road, run by the Misses Ivy and Linda Cunningham. Here is an ad for the school from the April 1942 Gleaner:

Miss Linda and Miss Ivy, as we called them, took it in turns to be Headmistress. I’ll speak more about Surbiton Prep in a future post. My reason for bringing it up is that at sometime during the war the school was moved briefly from 7 Surbiton Road to the home of Dr. and Mrs. Ernest Bronstorph on Trafalgar Road, opposite to Holborn Road. They had a large house with spacious grounds, and I distinctly remember that we, the children, took part in training for possible air raids.

I remember that my brother, Micky, who was eight years older than me, was dead keen to “join up”, until he heard of the death in action of one of his friends who had joined the RAF. Our family knew of at least one close friend who was in the War -- Jack Duffus, who served in Egypt, and sent us this photograph.

 

The photo was signed on the back “In the field …Xmas 1944”. The Duffuses were very close to our family. Jack’s parents, Will and Hetty, were Micky’s godparents, and Jack had been a pageboy at my parents’ wedding.

I have a vague memory that Captain Tame who, with his family lived across the road at 6 Holborn Road, may have been in the Home Guard, but I’m not sure. Frederick Tame, his wife, May and their two daughters, Lily and Violet, were very good friends of our family. Frederick Tame had been an officer in the British Army, and we all called him Captain Tame.

This is a photo of Violet with her father, Captain Frederick Tame, in their garden, with Vi holding their Pekingese.

Looking over this post I realize that my memories of wartime are somewhat indistinct. In fact, I was very lucky indeed to be so untouched by the war, not like children in Britain and Europe. My Jamaican childhood was certainly a blessed happy time.