A school days memory that is picture perfect

A S a schoolboy during the 1950s, Barry Barker and his pals didn't have the luxury of a bus to ferry them to swimming lessons.

Instead, the Granville Junior School pupils had to make do with finding their way to the baths on foot.

"Our school was off Waterloo Road, between Cobridge and Hanley," says Barry, "and every Friday we had to walk from school to Burslem Baths for swimming lessons.

"We walked up Waterloo Road to the lights, turned right along Elder Road, forked left at the park and then walked down Nile Street to Doultons.

"There was a cobbled alley behind Doultons that came out into another alley, which ran down the side of the baths. Then, of course, we had to walk back again."

And if any of the pupils had toothache, they were accompanied by older children and again had to walk to Burslem to the school clinic, which was at Swan Bank.

"I wonder if any readers remember these events," says the 63-year-old, of Lakewood Drive, Barlaston.

"I've got a photo that I found in my late mother's possessions. It was taken in 1956 and shows the top class at Granville school in the year we took our 11-plus.

"However, I didn't take the exam that year because my birthday was in November, so I had to stay on another year and take it in 1957."

Barry, who is pictured second right in the second row from the back, passed his 11-plus and went on to Hanley High School.

"The man on the right of the picture was the headmaster Mr E Spendelow and the man on the left was the form teacher Mr Colley," he adds.

Born in 1945, Barry spent the first five years of his life in Moss Street, later renamed Sudlow Street, near Cobridge Park.

"We didn't have either an inside toilet or a flush toilet in those days," he says. "The toilet was down the bottom of the back yard.

"There was a bench seat with a hole in the middle, with a shaft dropping straight down to the main sewers, which ran along the backs of the terrace houses.

"This was fascinating for a little boy of four because when I had a poo it was several seconds before I heard the splash."

At the age of five, Barry, together with his parents George and Mary and his baby sister Linda, moved into a new council house on the Grange Estate in Barrett Drive, Cobridge.

And while still a pupil at Hanley High, he got a part-time job at the Sun Street greyhound track.

"I worked during the race nights on Monday and Friday nights," he says. "I was one of six part-timers who used to wear white coats and walk the dogs around the track before each race so the punters could see the dogs.

"We then took them to a man named Sam who used to put the dogs in the traps ready for the race."

When Barry left school in July 1963 he didn't have a job, so he became full-time at the stadium.

"I worked there until it closed in the November of that year," he says.

Barry and his 58-year-old wife Sandra are the guardians of their 11-year-old nephew, Daniel Bentley.

Barry and Sandra both worked for British Rail for many years and then for the Royal Mail, before retiring.

Do you recognise anyone in the photograph of pupils at Granville Junior School? Write to Colette Warbrook, including a full name, telephone number and address, at Features Desk, The Sentinel, Forge Lane, Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, ST1 5SS, or email colette.warbrook@thesentinel.co.uk