Visitors 9
| 1. Arthur Gilbert 1961-68 | |
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►House - Holgate - "who wouldn't have Talbot as a Guest at any Price." Forms - Celts in 61/62, 2C, 3C, 4R, 5R, L6S, U6A. Funniest memory was at the expense of Alan R. - cannot remember if it was 3C (63/4) or 4R (64/5). 'Twas in't Gym. Mr. Wilkinson was PE master. Alan fancied himself as a bit of a gymnast. The small trampette was set up at the end of the box (full height). We had to run, jump on the trampette and vault, or something onto/over the box. Alan - a bit cocky, took a good run up, jumped, overshot the middle of the trampette and his legs went through the elastic ropes. His feet hit the floor, his body the end of the box - bolt upright. His face was a picture Mr. Wilkinson slumped on the box to stop himself falling over. We had no such support and many of the form were just rolling on the floor howling. I can still picture it - it was so funny. Thankfully, I think Alan's pride was hurt the most. Arthur (November 2003) |
| ►Dear Arthur, I have added the content of your emails to the site and made certain date adjustments as per your suggestions. Thank you. I have also added your email address to the site. This will further develop our Hilmians' Network. If your photo arrives here from Fred Johnson, I will also add that to the site. Best wishes, Dave McKenzie | |
| 2. Celia Asher 1943-50 | |
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►Not an enquiry, but on the photo of L6A (1948-9), next to Miss. Harris is Celia Asher, Marie Allen and then Joyce Dixon. Celia (November 2003) |
| ►Dear Celia, Thank you very much for the information. I will add it to the site today. If you have any memories or photos of HGS, please send them in. Lovely to hear from you. Best wishes, Dave McKenzie | |
| 3. George Backhouse 1944-49 | |
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►Hi there. As an old, now quite old, school boy, I hope that I can help with a few identifications of the Form Indices. 1944/45 Form 1A Back row No 3 Brian Shields Front row No 5 John Marley, No 6 Roy Leach, No 8 Tommy Pilkington, No 9 ? Jones. 1945/46 Form 2B 3rd row No 1 Arthur Doughty, 2nd row No 5 Eileen Hurst, No 6 Jean Thompson, No 7 Barbara Fox ? Front row No 3 John Marley I attended the school from 1944/1949 was in Talbot House and Forms 1A, 2C, 3C, 4C, and 5C. I had five very happy years at Hemsworth and wonder if any of us "elder ones" are still going strong. It would be nice to hear from any old friends. George Backhouse (December 2003) |
| ►Dear George, I hope you have enjoyed your visit to the site. Thank you for the additional information. It is now on the site. Please feel free to add to the site any of your memories or photos. Hilmians are spread all over the World and are very happy to be able to reflect on their schooldays. I note that Irene Wright and Doris Richardson from your 1A form are in contact with the site. Irene and I met in the Summer and had a lovely afternoon discussing HGS. Lovely to hear from you, Dave McKenzie ►Dear Dave, Hello again. Just a few more tidbits of information that I have recalled. Names of pupils in Form 5c 1948-1949: George Backhouse, Alec Bentham, Arthur Doughty, Raymond Duffield, Roy Leach, Hubert Ogden, Eric Pape, Tommy Pilkington and John Warden. There were no girls in our form. I have not, as yet, had any contact from any of my old friends but I live in constant hope that at least one of them has lasted as long as I have. Cheers, George Backhouse (March 2004) ►Dear George, Thank you for the information. Many of us would like our schoolfriends to get in touch. From personal experience I know that many former pupils are not on-line. Some of those who are on-line prefer e.g. to look at the HGS site and remain anonymous. This is entirely understandable. Hopefully, as time goes on, they will identify themselves so that friendships can be renewed. Best wishes, Dave | |
| 4. Bruce Ward 1947-54 | |
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►Dear Sheila, Thank you for the E-mail concerning the web site for HGS. I still keep in touch with a few of my school contemporaries and for the last two years have attended a March reunion in Hemsworth. I have a number of photos of my time at the school. If they would be of interest I can E-Mail copies. Regards, Bruce (December 2003) |
| 5. Bill Hewitt 1950-55 | |
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►Dear Sheila, I was in Talbot house. Do you remember:- "Talbot wouldn't have Holgate as a Guest at any Price!!" We played most of the games in the old air-raid shelters. I remember Mr Stewart - he gave me a love of Maths that has lasted a lifetime. I am a retired Chartered E. Engineer but I still do maths teaching support at a College. I was in the male voice choir - coached by the super Music and English teacher Mr Burnett. I used to take part in the School and House dramatics. I went back to the old school last year to help with learning support. As you say the old Dining Room is now the Staff common room. It's funny how much smaller everything looked to how I remembered it. |
| I remember Speech Day at the Hippodrome - Shirley Summerskill, who was Shirley William's mum, presented me my O Levels. She was Minister of Education at the time. I have never moved in such exalted circles since. I remember my old school with the greatest affection - I wish I had appreciated it more at the time. Regards, Bill (December 2003) | |
| 6. Bud Abbott 1959-66 | |
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►Now then Dave, Identity of ? in Hilmians vs School Rugby Match 1963. The name is Neil Stone, he was a very good fullback. All the best, Bud Abbott (December 2003) |
| ►Dear Bud, Lovely to hear from you. Thank you very much for Neil's name. That now completes the list. If you have no objection I will add your email address to the site. This will further develop our Hilmians Network. Ken Johnson will be sending material through to the site. I am sure that many people will enjoy looking back with him. Please keep in touch. Best wishes, Dave McKenzie | |
| 7. John Moorhouse 1958-62 | |
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►Hello, I have a few photographs taken during my years at the school, 1958 to 62. If you send me your address, I will have them copied and send them to you. I don't have a scanner. Regards, John Moorhouse (December 2003) |
| ►Dear John, Lovely to hear from you after all this time. Your photos will be very welcome and will be much enjoyed by our site visitors. Lots of Hilmians have retained various forms of memorabilia which now form interesting features of the site. Simply send your photos, and any covering comments if you wish, to the site address. I will scan them and return them to you. Best wishes and Season's Greetings, Dave McKenzie ►Dear Dave, I have very fond memories of Hemsworth G.S. I often wondered if my colours award for Hockey ever got onto the Honours Board. Anyway I'm still playing Hockey 40 years on. My parents ran the King's Head Hotel on Cross Hills and I remember the Old Hilmians Rugby Team used to come in after training. Mr. Hamilton occasionally visited our pub and used to buy a crate of bottled beer. Mr. Collette ensured that I eventually obtained a good O level pass in English. Happy days. Enough reminiscing. I hope the photos are helpful. I believe the school trip was to Montreux, Switzerland and Rimini, Italy in 1960. The web site is excellent. Thank you for all your efforts. Best wishes, John | |
| 8. Jenny Cocksedge 1961-65 | |
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►I started at Hemsworth Grammar School in September 1961 and my first year was spent in the Celts class. My house at school was Talbot. I lived in Upton and as far as I know, at that time there was only myself and another girl my age called Christine Eades from my village, (she was in Price house I think) who attended Hemsworth Grammar School. Looking at the website has brought back a lot of memories. I recognise some (not many) of the faces in some photos and seeing names has also jogged my memory. |
| The only thing I remember about my first day at the school is walking past the church on the corner up to the little gate in the wall and up along the tree lined path to the side entrance. It's the little things that stick in my mind. Only being able to walk up the "up" staircase and down the "down" staircase which was much much grander. Mr Hamilton, the Head and a lady who taught French whose name I can't recall. The sick room on the first floor, the Domestic Science room overlooking the Dell. This room seemed to me to have all the mod. cons. available. Buying 3d worth of sweets from the little shop down the hill, and sometimes sneaking out for fish and chips at lunchtime. Trying to memorise the words to Cliff Richard's "The Young Ones" whilst waiting in the Boys playground for the bus to take me home. I attended the school during the winter of 1962/63 and remember being sent home early one day because of particularly bad weather. Unfortunately it was so bad the buses stopped running and myself and Christine had to walk (in the dark and during a blizzard) from South Elmsall to our home in Upton. My parents were frantic and telephoned the school to find out where I was. My friend and I arrived home several hours later after we had been rescued by a passing motorist. I also remember The Celts, Danes etc classroom block being damaged (around 1962/63) when gales brought down a large tree onto the block. Another memory is of my friend and I "bopping" and then "doing the twist" to pop records in the hall at lunchtimes on wet days. It is over 40 years since I started at the school and I left in 1965 when I transferred to Wakefield College. I am attaching a photo. It shows Mr Owen (I think) and what was I believe the school choir. I remember taking part in a concert but can't recall when or what it was for. Regards Jenny White (nee Cocksedge) (January 2004) ►Dear Jenny, Thank you for contacting the site and welcome to it. Thanks also for the photo and for your thoughts on times gone by. We must have some common memories as I am also from Upton. I left in 1962 so we must have travelled on the same "single decker" school bus. As you visit the site perhaps some of the memories will become clearer. That, after all, is one of the aims of the site. Lovely to hear from you and please keep in touch. Best wishes, Dave McKenzie | |
| 9. Paul Thorpe 1961-66 | |
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►I have the following class photos- a. Normans 1961/2 b. 2A 1962/3 c. 3B 1963/4 d. Teaching staff 1963/4 If required, I can send originals or scanned copies plus names. Best regards, Paul Thorpe (Price 1961-1966) (January 2004) |
| ►Dear Paul, Thank you for getting in touch with the site and Welcome. I do hope you have enjoyed looking around Willowhem. We were at the school together for one year - your first, my last - so we will have some memories in common. Your photos will be very welcome. Clearly we do not have them on file. If you scan them, please make the scans as detailed as possible so that individual photos can be extracted. I usually scan at 300dpi and save them in jpeg form. I look forward to receiving the scans. Our audience is growing. Memory clarification is very important to so many of our visitors. Thank you very much for the offer. Best wishes, Dave McKenzie | |
| 10. Allan Skelton 1959-64 | |
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►Dave, Phone line blocked for most of the day, tiling the bathroom not completed, forgot to get the shopping, various other jobs not completed and all because I discovered your simply wonderful website! I can identify myself from the 1960 Whole School Panoramic (photo 1 of 6) as being sat at 1st row position 1. If it helps any Paul Dyson is at 2nd row position 1. Billy Morrell is at 1st row position 3. Edward "Dickie" Bird is at 1st row position 4. There are of course many other faces that I recognise but I would hesitate to commit to print for fear of embarrassing myself and misleading you. |
| There are others there on different sections of the photograph, Neil Stone, Jackie Marston, Bud Abbott, Howard Fisher and so on, but they can wait for another occasion. In any event I feel sure that they will step out of that, "six degrees of separation" and identify themselves before too long. Once again my congratulations on a very fine and most interesting website - even if it did get me into trouble, it was worth it. Regards, Allan Skelton (January 2004) ►Dear Allan, Welcome to the HGS website. I am so sorry that you got in trouble reading about our old School. It had a strong hold on most of us then and it still has now. We were at HGS together for three years. In common with many ex-pupils, my memories in some respects are clear but in others they are very fragmented. The site has certainly helped to clear misconceptions that may have developed over the years. On March 20th of this year the site will be 2 years old. What you see is a credit to the many Hilmians who have sent in material - magazines, memorabilia, articles, memories and photos. Do enjoy the site and if you can help with more memories for our audience, please do. Lovely to hear from you. Best wishes, Dave McKenzie | |
| 11. Graham Guest 1953-60 | |
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►Sheila, Sorry its taken so long to reply to your Email. As it happens I am Chairman of South Hiendley Community Archive, and my cousin Paul Thorpe (HGS 1961-66) is Secretary. I drew his attention to your website and he has been in touch with Dave McKenzie. I have several photos, from plays etc which I will dig out and get in touch. Cheers, (John) Graham Guest (January 2004) |
| ►Dear Graham, Delighted to hear from you, no matter how long it has taken! We are all busy people, so it's good that we can spare a minute or two to look back at that part of our lives which influenced the way we all turned out. I know you must be able to share our enthusiasm for putting our Schooldays on record, as you already seem to be committed to doing this for a whole community. I would imagine that task to be more difficult than ours, in that you don't have any start or finish dates to form boundaries, as we do. Many of the people who formed the South Heindley community will overlap into our School records, I'm sure, and so your contact with the site may turn out to be mutually productive. Do you have a website? Dave and I have often said that we are amazed at the number of photographs, School Mags. and general memorabilia which are still in existence in the area. We decided at the outset that as time went by, such items would be lost, and therefore should be collected together in an easily-accessible place for all to see. That, in effect, is our mission! Your mention of photos from plays etc. certainly falls into our remit, and we look forward to seeing what you can dig out for us. Equally of value would be your own memories of your Schooldays, and the identification of as many of your schoolmates as you can. If you can offer any corrections to the data displayed on the site - again, we would be most grateful. Sincerely, Sheila. | |
| 12. Mary Croft 1968-73 | |
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►Hi, Sheila. This is Mary Croft. I would like to thank you for your email. I visited your site and found it very interesting. Unfortunately I left HGS/HHS in 1973, and your site only goes to 1967, but I enjoyed looking through it. I had the chance to look at the other sites involving Hemsworth and was astounded to find a picture with my father and brother on. It's good to know that people like to keep memories alive. I hope at some point to be able to post some old pictures myself. Thank you once again, Mary Bentley (Croft) (January 2004) |
| ►Dear Mary, Thank you so much for your feedback on the HGS website, and I'm really pleased you enjoyed your visit. Much of what you remember of School will be based on the regime installed 5yrs after Dave and I left, but I'm sure you would have found things in common with what you saw on the site. If you left in '72/3, you may have started School quite soon after it became Comprehensive. How did you feel about the change from Primary School to Secondary? How was your first day there? I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Staff when you were there had been pupils with us when we were there! Did you have any favourites? Although your experiences of School are beyond 1967, we have an audience of browsers with a fascination to hear of what happened when the system changed, so do, please, let us know about your School days - anything at all - dinners, playground games, sports teams, music, drama, school trips - it's all grist to the mill! I'm assuming the Hemsworth sites where you discovered the photos of your father and brother were in our 'Links' section. What good luck! So many stories of coincidences and happy fortune come our way connected with our website that it's sufficient to keep us going when the enthusiasm flags a bit. We have heard of meetings of friends all over the country and all the news is positive, as is our attitude in creating the website. Your mention of old pictures was interesting. Were they Class photos? You will no doubt have seen our Gallery, and the class photos section dating back to 1927. I'm glad you have an appreciation of how important it is to get the memories recorded before it's too late, and we would be most grateful to receive anything you feel you want to send. Some people scan the pictures and send them by email, but those who don't have a scanner usually post them to Dave. He copies them, and then returns them safely to the sender. Good luck with your 'learning curve' on the computer. Technology's wonderful, isn't it! Hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely, Sheila. | |