The history of Mr Polly - and his son, Noel

He has kindly sent me written memories of his time as a young teacher at St Paul's School, Worcester, from 1947 to 1953.

Noel - sometimes known in his younger days as Billy - very much followed in the footsteps of his father, William (Polly) Watkin, who became something of a local legend on the Worcester schools and sporting scene. He taught at St Martin's Boys School for his entire career.

Noel Watkin, who was a headmaster on the Isle of Wight for many years and now lives in King's Lynn, Norfolk, tells me that Memory Lane has brought him "so very many friends and correspondents - people who either went to St Martin's School and remember my father with affection, or people who were at St Paul's School during the six years I taught there".

Noel hopes his written recollections of school life in those days will be of interest to readers. I'm sure they will!

On leaving the Army in 1947, Noel opted to follow his father into teaching and was offered a place at the city's Teacher Training College in Oldbury Road. However, even before entering college, he was offered supply teaching posts at the Stanley Road and St Paul's schools.

"George Leek, headmaster at Stanley Road, was a friend of my father's and, in introducing me to the children, told them he had no doubt I would be as much of a disciplinarian as my father, so I was to be respected.

"I had a class of 54 pupils - yes, 54! - and, after only a few days, I had cause to chastise one lad. The next day there was a knock at my classroom door and a rather belligerent father stood there asking: 'Are you Mr Watkin?' Almost before I could reply, along came Mr Leek, who asked the man the name of his lad and then opened the classroom door and called the boy out.

"He then turned to the father and said 'Is this your boy?' After an affirmative answer, Mr Leek said: 'Well you have two options. The boy goes back into the classroom and I do not see you again, or he goes home with you and I do not see him again'. With that the father walked off without saying a word.

"What impressed me about the whole incident was that Mr Leek never mentioned it again and was obviously full of support for his staff."

In fact, when Noel qualified as a teacher from the Worcester college, he would like to have taught full-time at Stanley Road and would have been given a post there, but Christopher Darke, head of St Paul's, apparently had greater sway with the City Education Office - and so it was that he began his first full-time post there.

"It was to be an experience which would hold me in good stead throughout my long career," stresses Mr Watkin.

"However, life was hard at St Paul's. It was not an easy school to teach in. My classroom was huge. It had what I can only describe as a cathedral-like ceiling ... it went up for eternity. It meant that heating the room was a big headache. We had a coal fire which had to be kept stoked up all day, and in severe weather the place really was cold. Added to this was the fact that my classroom overlooked the playground, and there was always a good number of broken windows.

"We had an assembly each morning in the hall where one could smell the incense wafting from the adjacent St Paul's Church. The staff had an unofficial rota for carrying pupils out if they fainted. The boys and girls were very poor, and so many fainted because of malnutrition.

"Mr Darke did not always take assembly, but when he did, he would come in carrying a gramophone record under his arm and, before long, would announce that we were hearing a piece of music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

"Mr Darke was a very fine musician, and the school choir was one of the best I have known. He made the recorders for all the children in the recorder group, and the pupils in general were well catered for in music.

"I had not been at the school long when a call came from a farmer seeking boys to help with the potato picking. This meant that for a week, I would have to set off in the farmer's lorry with about a dozen or so boys on the potato picking assignment. It was dirty work and tiring. The boys brought their own buckets and got paid a very small sum according to the amount they picked. My reward was half-a-dozen eggs at the end of the week!

"One lunch-time in the fields, however, the boys complained that they were being underpaid and staged a sit-down strike. They had a very good 'union leader' who put his case forcibly to the farmer and, after a lot of wrangling, the boys won. I was glad because they were being used as cheap labour."

Mr Watkin was teaching the senior pupils and had special responsibility for physical education and some science.

"Miss Milne took the girls for PE while I was in charge of the boys. At first we took it in turns to share the Hall but after a while the school arranged for me to have the TA Drill Hall for one day a week. We thus had a fine gym to work in.

"Football and cricket were played on Pitchcroft which meant quite a walk to reach there. Another chore was getting the goalposts from a shed and carrying them to the pitch to be erected. After the game, it was the same process in reverse.

"However, I had a letter not long ago from an old boy of St Martin's School who told me how proud he had been the day my father selected him to be one of the boys to carry the goalposts at Pitchcroft!"

"I worked hard on the football at St Paul's. Like father, sport was in my blood, and I did manage to produce a school team which won a trophy. Two of the players - the backbone of the team - were Donald Howell and Derek Morris who, I understand, later played for Worcester City."

Noel recalls that schools in those days had resources which were a far cry from today's.

"Inkwells had to be filled each week, and pen nibs were sacred. I had little or no equipment for science lessons but, after a visit from a team of HMI's, I did get £100 and was able to have a bunsen burner - remember, this was to teach science to boys and girls up to the age of 15."

Mr Watkin says he really cared for his students.

"They had so little but were full of affection. I know how sad I was when one of my class was sent to an approved school, and for such a petty offence. He stole some pigeons from a loft which was under one of the viaduct arches by the river.

"School discipline in those days was harsh. The cane was considered a 'must.' I was advised to get one as soon as I started teaching and recall giving a lad in my class a shilling and telling him 'Go to Mr Large's shop and ask him for a cane for Mr Watkin'. The boy came back with the message 'Mr Large picked you out the best one he had.'

"Even so, I don't think I was as frequent a user of the cane as some teachers. I always tried to get my class to discipline themselves."

Noel vividly recalls the annual school outings which usually involved a train and bus ride and, sometimes, a boat ride. There were trips in his time to New Brighton, Windsor Castle and Weston-super-Mare.

He says another member of staff, Mr Lloyd seemed to be able to do very much as he liked.

"He would send a lad from his class down to the County Ground to peep through the gate at New Road and come back to him with the score. If the game looked to be exciting, Mr Lloyd would ask the head if the school could close early - and the request never seemed to be refused. In those days, if you went to the County Ground after the tea interval, you would find most of the city's teachers gathered there!"

Noel says Miss Preece, a teacher in St Paul's Infants School, had taught him to read as a four-year-old at Hindlip School. Other colleagues at St Paul's included deputy head Harold Bradley, Jack Quinn, Mrs Phillpotts, Miss Gould and Miss Milne, who was related to the author A.A Milne.

Mr Watkin says St Paul's School will always have a very special place in his heart.

"It was a sad school - the children had so little, but they had love, and they were a happy little crowd. I learned so much from them. I know teaching in that school benefited me greatly when I became a head.

"I can still see my classroom at St Paul's and particularly remember it on my last day there. No farewell presentation was made but, at the end of the day, the children came to say 'Goodbye' and, when they had gone, I put on my mackintosh which was always hanging on a hook on a cupboard. Putting my hands into the pockets, I found little gifts that the children had put there for me.

"I know that they would have been ashamed and shy to come and give me these little presents which had such little monetary value, but they wanted to say 'thank you,' and my eyes filled with tears ... to me their presents were gold!"

St Paul's School closed down in 1970. About half-a-century beforehand, the Rev Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, the legendary Woodbine Willie, had taken an active and fatherly interest in the school during his years as vicar of St Paul's from 1914 to 1922.

Mr Watkin says that even now he still hears from some of the people he taught 50 or more years ago.

"I love hearing from them, and they know they will always get a reply. I am now looking at a Christmas card I received two years ago. It says 'To a Special Teacher' and came from Dorothy Lynch (maiden name, Fowler) who, sadly, died fairly recently.

"Over the years since I retired, I have got to know more and more of my old pupils from St Paul's and also a lot of former pupils of my father's at St Martin's. Father was so involved in sports.

"If he was not playing for a cricket team, for instance, he would umpire or be scorer. In the case of football, he would have to be manager or trainer. He would have to be doing something. He played cricket for Salwarpe long beyond the usual age yet still topped the team's batting and bowling averages.

"A few years ago, when I was a director of King's Lynn Football Club, I came to St George's Lane for a game against the City, and I had only just walked into the ground when some elderly gentleman stopped me and said: 'You're Polly Watkin's boy.' When I admitted it, he declared: 'If he was alive today, we would have some better players here!'

"Like my father, I have been connected with sport all my life, and I am happy that my son, Geoff, who teaches on the Isle of Wight, is also very involved in sport."

Overall, he hopes his recollections will bring back memories for pupils not only of St Paul's but of all Worcester schools. "I will always be very happy to hear from anyone in the old city," says Noel. "Happy days."

Local legend's entire working life at same school

THE Watkin family has been in teaching for four generations.

It began with the uncle of William (Polly) Watkin, who was headmaster of a village school in Shropshire.

Polly served as a pupil teacher under his uncle and so much enjoyed teaching that he decided to take the profession into a second generation of the family.

He moved from Market Drayton to Worcester as a young man and was to spend his entire teaching career of 42 years on the staff of St Martin's Boys School.

Polly Watkin became something of a local legend, not only as a teacher who commanded great respect and affection but as a keen sportsman who was heavily involved on the schools' sporting scene generally in Worcester.

His son, Noel says Polly was "more or less unqualified and never went to college but was extremely well read, a brilliant teacher and a great and popular character".

I too, can testify that during the years I dealt with the All Your Yesterdays photographs for the Evening News, a significant number featured Polly.

Noel is not sure how his father came by his nickname.

"One theory is that it came from the days when two classes at St Martin's were separated only by a make-shift screen across a large room. What was going on in each class could be heard across the screen, and it is suggested that my father would sometimes mimic the posh voice of the other teacher, a Mr Firth - hence a parrot-like behaviour which may have earned him that Polly tag!"

Polly and his wife Ethel lived in Fernhill Heath, Worcester, and then at Rogers Hill.

Noel attended Hindlip School and Worcester Royal Grammar School, and his first job was with the Caledonian Insurance Company in Foregate Street.

Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined Worcester's Royal Artillery TA unit and was soon called up for what turned out to be seven years service. For some time after Dunkirk, he was based at Hereford, where he organised his own variety show troupe who went round entertaining at American and British military hospitals.

On de-mob, Noel moved into teaching, spending six years at St Paul's School, Worcester, before going to Hereford where he was on the staff of Holmer School for about eight years.

He then went to the Isle of Wight where he was headmaster of the Ryde St John's School for the remainder of his teaching career. He retired at the age of 65 in 1985.

Noel, like his father, has always been actively involved in sport. At Hereford, he started the Pegasus football team, and for some years he was a director of the King's Lynn Football Club. Among his friends is former England manager Bobby Robson, "a pal of more than 40 years".

He has also been much engaged in local "theatricals" down the years, especially on the Isle of Wight where he once directed in a play the youthful but later Oscar-winning writer and director Anthony Minghella, of The English Patient film fame. Noel says the Minghella family have been luxury ice-cream makers on the Isle of Wight for generations.

Noel wrote a book on the teaching of drama and also a science book and contributed articles to a magazine while on the Isle of Wight.

"I got my love of writing from my old English master at the Royal Grammar School, Edgar Billingham," says Noel who some years ago, gave a trophy and award for literature to RGS and, in more recent times, donated two memorial bench seats, one of them in memory of his father. This is on the school's Flag Meadow sports ground.

Noel also recalls that at 14 or so, he entered an essay competition in the Worcester Evening News and gained first prize - three tickets to see George Robey on stage at Malvern Festival Theatre.

Noel's wife Christine was also a teacher, spending some years on the staff of his Isle of Wight school and running a nursery of 80 children.

Noel and Christine are proud that their son Geoff is continuing the Watkin dynasty's teaching tradition into a fourth generation on the Isle of Wight. He teaches at a middle school and is an athletics coach, responsible for athletics for Hampshire and Isle of Wight schools.