Woodwork lessons at Chorlton High in the spring of 1930

It is a scene that anyone growing up in the middle decades of the 20th century will recognise.

It’s a wood work lesson at Chorlton High sometime in the 1930s.  In my case our exploration of the joys of sawing, paining and gluing the stuff at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern happened in the basement of the old 1880’s building while metalwork was in the new 1950’s annexe.

Now ours was an all boys school and similar practical lessons were in the neighbouring girls’ school where cooking was done over one of those solid fuel Rayburn ranges and needlework next door.

Of course so much hung on that difference between grammar school and secondary modern which might as well have been an ocean in distance...

In the grammar school the education was geared to what my Year 6 teacher said “were the academically advanced children” who had passed the 11 plus examination proving that they were fit for the thinking jobs and an education to deliver it.

The rest of us were destined for the secondary modern diet, which was more woodwork than, Wordsworth, and technical drawing rather than Tennyson

It’s a theme I have visited before so instead I will move on and over the next few weeks reflect on what it meant to go to school here in Chorlton in that great stretch of years from the late 19th century into the bright shiny decades of the 1940s and 50s.

Next “Cramming and paying”, the new Chorlton children chasing education opportunities 

Pictures; from The Lloyd collection