Edwina Poller

My memories of the 1950s.

In February 1952 I was a student and during a Nature Studies lesson an older student came in and passed a message to the lecturer. She immediately announced that the King had died. I remember seeing the photograph of the three Queen’s at the King’s funeral. They were the King’s mother, Queen Mary, (who died the following year, about two months before the Coronation), his wife Queen Elizabeth the Queens mother, and Queen Elizabeth II. I saw a film of the actual Coronation at the cinema.

I started work in September 1953 as a newly qualified teacher, earning just over £26. I gave my mother one pound ten shillings (£1.50) for my keep. I worked in a small village school and my first class was of 38 lower juniors (aged 7 – 9 years old). There was no Teaching Assistants in those days, we were called either Assistant Teachers or Head Teachers. Most of the children had a cooked lunch, at a very reasonable price, and a third of a pint of milk a day.

When I was first married we got our drinking water from a deep well – it was cold and delicious. Mains water came to our village in 1956, electricity had arrived a couple of years earlier. Until then we had used calor gas for cooking and paraffin lamps or candles for lighting. Very few people had telephones.

Our groceries were delivered once or twice a week, carried in to the kitchen table in large cardboard boxes. We used the bus service for shopping trips as few people had cars, although the boys had motorbikes and most people had a bicycle.