A Child of the East End by Jean Fullerton

Author:Jean Fullerton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

Brand Spanking New

I knew when I started at Redcoat that the following year I would be starting again in the new school we’d seen rise from its foundation over the past two years on our way to church.

I had a taste of what was to come when my parents and I were invited in for an induction day and my first ever uniform fitting before the school opened for the autumn term. With our eyes stretched wide in astonishment and led by a teacher wearing a flowing black academic gown and mortarboard, we were given a tour around the soon-to-be-opened school. And was it any wonder? After the dingy, overcrowded classrooms of the old Redcoat school, the new Sir John Cass Foundation and Redcoat School was like a palace.

Having been shown the separate Woodwork and Metalwork block, we were led across the playground into the main school building. The school was arranged over four floors. The Art, Needlework and Home Economics rooms were on the top floor, with the Science labs and Commerce suite – a room full of typewriters where girls would take classes in typing – on the floor below. The first and second floors were taken up with classrooms and they contained the usual rows of desks facing a blackboard.

Having gazed in wonder at the up-to-date equipment and the spacious provision for our learning, we were taken along the corridor past the staffroom, school office, headmaster’s office and sixth-form lounge to the PE and Music block. There was a large music room with tiered seating, an acoustic ceiling and a stage where various instruments were on display, including a full set of drums. Having gazed goggle-eyed at this cultural marvel we were led across to the other side of the block where, wonder upon wonder, there was a half-size swimming pool. There was also a purpose-built gymnasium with windows set high in the lofty walls, fixed nets on the wall and floor-markings for netball and basketball. Unfortunately, it also had the dreaded PE apparatus fixed to the wall.

Having completed the tour with my father repeatedly saying, ‘I ’ope you know how lucky you are’ and, ‘I wish I’d had your opportunities’, we were ushered into the main hall where row upon row of tables displaying various bits of school uniform had been set up along each side of the room.

One table was laden with navy blazers, others were piled high with pleated skirts and boys’ trousers. There was white and navy PE kit, too, plus diagonal-striped ties, dull brown woodwork aprons for boys and white ones for girls ready to master their housekeeping and cookery skills. The girls were also given a hat that looked like something a 1960s air hostess would wear to greet passengers boarding a plane, which we were supposed to wear but never did.

Legend has it that Sir John Cass, an eighteenth-century city trader and businessman, founded and endowed a school for the poor boys of the City on his deathbed, staining the quill in his hand with blood as he signed his will.

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