Memories of County School (High School)
The 70 or more students accepted into County School each year were divided into two parallel classes; first year was Form-1A and Form-1B, second-year Form-2A and 2B, and so on, and the kids were known as second-Formers, third-Formers, etc., depending on their number of years at County. I was allocated to the A class and Ken (my brother) to the B class - not that this had any bearing on one’s academic standing, but was more than likely done to avoid setting two brothers into direct competition one with the other!
The school was divided into four Houses, with teachers and students from the entire spectrum (from junior to senior forms) divided up between them. The Houses, named Dewi, Llewellyn, Penri, and Tudur, competed very strongly for the honour of being nominated the top House, either for the term or for the whole year, by accumulating merit points. Points were earned according to the excellence of achievement displayed by the various House-members, whether academically or in the field of athletics, or perhaps by some singular performance in society - such as earning a musical award or being publicly recognised for some good deed. Conversely, inappropriate behaviour, such as being caught smoking, or being punished for some misdeed or other, would earn demerit points for one’s House. It therefore became a matter of pride for us to earn as many points as possible - and, more importantly perhaps, to be on our best behaviour so as not to bring dishonour on our own House!
This was one reason why Ken and I had a sudden change of heart on an occasion when we were once busily engaged in wiring tightly closed - with a long length of baling-wire we’d found - the gate leading onto Lover’s Lane in Aberdare Park during one of our lunch-times. Half-way through our operation, we spotted Charlie (our Headmaster) approaching from around a far bend in the path. It was too late to run, we reckoned, because if we’d had time to recognise him then almost certainly he’d recognised us too. So we merely stayed put, and began UN-winding the wire instead. Then when he came right up to us and asked “What are you two boys up to?”, we could quite truthfully say “Somebody wired this gate shut, sir, so we’re unwinding it, so we can get through!”
Our teachers, all men, were top-notch in their various fields, and always wore their academic gowns, smudged with patches of chalk-dust, when in class. Each Form had one of the teachers assigned to it as Form-Master, just as each House had its House-Master. Each class normally stayed in its own Form-Room, the teacher leaving for a different class at the end of each lesson, while students remained at their desks. During the transition, while awaiting the next teacher, order was maintained, more or less, by a monitor - a student selected for his ‘reliability’ in controlling the rest of the class! Only for lab-work, such as Chemistry, Physics or Biology, or subjects such as Woodwork or PT (Physical Training), would we leave for the appropriate laboratory or gymnasium, or if a lesson-period demanded that boys studying Latin be separated temporarily from those taking Commercial. All the teachers had nicknames - mostly based on their first names - such as Tim (our maths teacher), Sammy (chemistry), Billy-2 (our headmaster in my final year, William Williams), and so on.
Only two boys in my Form, I recall, were of a slightly different religion from the rest of us; one was Tom Cochlin and the other Ikey (Isaac) Munn, both Roman Catholic, who, by virtue of not being ‘normal’ Christians, were therefore exempted from our regular Scripture lessons. At such times they’d be excused, to go off to find themselves a quiet spot somewhere in another part of the school, there to settle down to work at their current homework assignment, and thus reduce their work-load for that evening. Lucky devils!
One major advantage of attending County School, from our personal viewpoint, was that we now had 6 weeks for our summer vacation, running from late July to early September, instead of the 4 weeks we’d previously enjoyed in Elementary School.
Maths and Commercial Subjects
By the time I was eleven I was already into algebra and trigonometry - and Pitman’s shorthand, of all things. And once in High School, we began learning our third language, French, and some of the boys a fourth as well, namely Latin (plus ancient Greek in their senior year), or even a fifth language - German. The Aberdare Boys’ County School offered newly-enrolled boys the choice of taking either Latin or the combined set of commercial subjects, which included shorthand, book-keeping and touch-typewriting, plus economics in the final year. My parents signed up both brother Ken and me for the commercial subjects (click here to see the Pitman’s Shorthand Elementary Certificate awarded at the end of the course). Strangely, the Girls’ County School (Headmistress — Miss Cook) didn’t teach the young ladies any commercial subjects; they were taught Cookery and Domestic Science instead. I guess it was assumed back in those days that the majority of girls would become wives and mothers rather than secretaries or accountants!
Class Size and Homework
School-hours ran from 9am to 12 noon, with a 1-hour break for lunch, then from 1pm to 4pm, each lesson lasting about 40 minutes, with a 10- or 15-minute break at mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Class-sizes ranged from about 35 to 45, but due to school-discipline (plus our own sense of self-discipline) this was no great problem, either for student or teacher. Unlike today, where discipline has been abolished altogether, as a result of which teachers find they can’t cope even with 20 students per class!
In the classroom our desks were arranged in columns, about six deep, facing the teacher and the blackboard at the front. As far as I remember there was a single column of desks along each side-wall, with two separate double-columns of desks down the centre of the room, leaving an aisle between each column. Enough room was left at the rear of the room (apart from those desks along the walls) for the master to stroll down one aisle, around the rearmost desk and down an adjacent aisle. The top of each desk was rather like a shallow box, the slightly sloping wooden lid of which (scarred with the carved initials of generations of schoolboys) formed the writing surface of the desk. At the front of each desk two inkwells were recessed (one for black or blue ink, and the other for red), and between them ran a shallow groove to hold pencils and pens.
In front of the blackboard, facing the class, stood the master’s desk, a rather tall pedestal type. Sometimes, just for fun, one of the class would pick a small bunch of daisies or buttercups during recess, and stick them in the master’s inkwell as though it were a small flower-pot — to which, in fact, it bore a strong resemblance, apart from the quite tiny hole in the top, just wide enough to insert the nib of a pen. The more daring pranksters might even, on occasion, round up a stray cat to stow away inside the desk’s top.
We were always loaded with homework each night, which meant getting down to it right after evening tea (supper in North America) and working through till maybe 11pm, sometimes till midnight. We were also given assignments for weekends, and even a pile for school holidays. Of course, being in parallel Forms, Ken and I would often pool our resources to lighten a particularly heavy work-load, while he did Geography, for instance, I’d do History, then we’d copy each other’s work. It was very hard work, but we sure got a darned good education. Moreover, we didn’t grumble about it - this was the way things were, how they’d always been and how they always would be - this was our way of life!
Other Languages
In the later years of High School, I developed a love of languages, and not only taught myself German (so that I could understand some of the German radio broadcasts) but made a start on Spanish during the Spanish Civil War, though I never met anyone of either nationality with whom to converse, so as the years rolled on I gradually forgot most of them. This was also true of French and even my own language, Welsh, so that nowadays I’m fluent only in English!
Sent to Coventry
In my class in County there was a boy of exactly the same name as my dead brother, Clifford Jones, who was fairly good at sports, and therefore much admired by the rest of the class. In actual fact he was quite a bad character - a thoroughly rotten egg, as he’d be called way back then. It was well-known, for instance, that he broke into other kids’ lockers to steal their pens or books, or anything else he took a fancy to!
One year, near the end of term, my biology note-book went missing, and as the term’s assignments counted as part of one’s total marks I got a very low score for biology that term. About a month or so into the following term, though, I happened to glance over to where this other Clifford Jones sat at one of the biology benches, a few places away from mine, just as he was glancing back through his notebook. I immediately recognised the writing as my own, so at the end of class, when we handed in our notebooks before ambling back to our regular Form-room, I hung back and asked Jimmy, our biology-master, if he’d take a look at Clifford’s notebook. This he did, and when he compared the earlier writing with mine it was perfectly obvious to him whose book it really was. Clifford had formed a large ink-blot over my name on the book’s cover, as though he’d accidentally spilled a bottle of ink over it, then written in his own name just above! So I got my book back, and all my marks, and Clifford was appropriately downgraded ... as well as being hauled before the Headmaster for disciplinary measures, where he probably got a caning.
The rest of the class was horrified at my action, and I was sent to Coventry for several weeks. That is, no-one spoke a word to me, and if I spoke to them they’d utterly ignore me. It was as though I just didn’t exist - I was the criminal, not Clifford, who’d stolen a fellow-student’s book and lost him his marks for the entire term! Such was the schoolboy code of honour! Only one boy - Danny Owen, a small-statured boy from Cwmaman - would speak to me, I remember, and even then only if no-one else was nearby to observe his breach of THE CODE.
Goats and Railway Viaduct
Our home was too far away from school to allow time to go home for lunch, so while the better-off kids enjoyed a school-lunch in the school’s cafeteria, we normally took sandwiches to school, and during lunch-hours in fine weather several of us roamed around the neighbourhood, eating as we walked along, and getting into all kinds of mischief. A favourite amusement of ours was to go down Tudor Terrace in Roberts-town, past our school’s playing-fields at its lower end, and along some of the country lanes beyond to where several cottage-owners kept their goats tethered at the roadside to browse on the hedges or the grass and weeds at the edge of the road. We always found time to untie a few goats and swap them around before wandering off to fish in the nearby river for tiddlers, which we’d release before wending our way back to school.
A highly dangerous ‘game’ of ours was to visit a nearby railway-viaduct, the Cwm viaduct (demolished in 1946), which spanned part of the valley, and to walk out onto the girder-work, which consisted of heavy timbers, about 8 by 12 inches in cross-section. We’d run around on these beams (on the 8-inch surface) playing tag, maybe 100 feet or more above the rocks and river below, without any sense of fear other than for the first few times we’d tried it. Sometimes, for a change, we’d sit out on a centre span during lunch-hour, leaning back against a vertical beam, to do part of our homework assignments.
A short while after the war, probably in the summer of 1946, I made a point of going
back over some of my old haunts, and decided to try walking once more to the far side
of the valley across these beams - as I’d done so many times when I was younger.
But as the ground fell away below me my knees became shakier and shakier, and by the
time I was a mere 40 feet or so above the ground they became so jelly-like that it was
utterly impossible for me to go any farther, so with a complete lack of confidence I
somehow managed, ever so gradually, to turn myself around on the beam on which I was
standing and slowly inch my way back to terra firma! Never again!!
