I was born at Park Gate, Brampton Bryan in June 1903. I started school at Brampton Bryan when I was five years old in the little room under the infants' mistress, Mrs Bradshaw. I left school when I was 14 years old. Our lessons were reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, geography, religious teaching (by the rector), nature study, and PT.

All the pupils walked to school in those days from Boresford, Newton, Letton, Buckden, The Reeves, and The Green; some of these places being 4 miles from the school. We did not even have bicycles then!

The usual games were played in their seasons: conkers, (when the chestnuts were ripe), marbles, potato guns (made from the quills of the feathers dropped by the swans), whistles (from willow — once the wood would twist out from the bark leaving a tube, windmills (made from laurel leaves), steel hoops, with a guider or stick, football, rounders and cricket with homemade bats and wickets.

In the dinner hour several boys would chase across the fields in a game of Fox and Hounds; two boys as Foxes were given a good start, and the rest, as hounds, followed. Very often they were all late getting back to school, then they had to line up in the classroom and a caning session followed.

On one wall of the classroom hung some very large maps, about 6 feet by 4 feet wide. I remember one day the master took one down off the wall, held it up, and began to roll it up, while starting to walk at the same time. Unfortunately his foot got tangled in the bottom of the map. Master and map were brought to the floor and a roar of laughter went up from the class. Mr B got himself into a kneeling position, and pointing a finger at any grinning pupil, said "You stand up, You stand up" then, after getting to his feet and dusting his trousers, came round and caned the ones standing up.

The playground in those days was not tarmac or concrete but just hard trodden earth. The master used to walk round the corner of the school on his way to the School House for his lunch. One lunchtime, a hole was scooped out round the corner where he walked and was filled up with a nice muddy mixture of ashes and water, with a sprinkling of earth on top to match the surrounding ground. Mr B's foot sank well into the puddle, to the delight of the grinning bystanders who later had to suffer another caning session.

From 'Reminiscences of Life in Brampton Bryan' by Robert Geoffrey Walter Messer 1903-1988 (© Leintwardine History Society)