Life in 1950s Marlow Part Three Transport and Childhood

Part One covered sport and leisure, Part two dealt with homes and employment.

Post by Charlotte

Transport 

Car ownership while not uncommon was far from universal in the 1950s so bus services and trains as well as cycling were important to local people trying to get from A to B. Currall's Garage in the High Street offered repairs and sales for those lucky enough to have their own car and of course there was Platts garage too. Platts was a Morris and M.G dealer. The Maple Garage in Little Marlow Road was an Esso and Ford dealership. Unusually for the times it opened for the sale of petrol on a Sunday.  Petrol rationing continued into the 1950s meaning careful thought needed to be made about whether any journey was necessary. A couple of  petrol pumps stood ready outside Comptons cycle shop in West Street for any motorists who pulled up kerbside. Marlow Bottom wasn't to be left out, Witches Barn Garage still operated in the village.

A Mr or Mrs Cook of Marlow had a red upholstered 1953 second hand Austin A30 for sale as advertised in the Reading Mercury 1958 for a bargain £415.

See a pic of the A30 on Wikipedia here.

Daniel Gibbons of 19 York Road had previously operated as a secondhand car and other vehicle dealer but I haven't found any reference to him still doing that in the 1950s. He was definitely still operating as a rag and bone man however, which was previously his sideline.

George Bason of 18 Wycombe Road sold secondhand motorbikes and offered repairs.

Mr Sylvester of 41 West Street was a driving instructor, possibly the only one in town at first. 

Driving could have its hazards then as now. Heavy snows of February and early March 1958 saw buses unable to reach High Wycombe and the roads out of town to Henley and Stokenchurch were blocked for all traffic.

More bizarrely the road at the foot of Bisham Hill was covered in jam for hours following a collision involving a truck carrying several tons of the sweet stuff in 1958. What a sticky situation.

Concerns about the weight of the traffic crossing Marlow Bridge have dogged the structure since the 1800s. Increased weight restrictions on vehicles using the bridge and emergency structural repairs to it were both needed in the 1950s. Thames Valley services from Maidenhead stopped crossing the bridge in 1958 because of new weight restrictions. Instead passengers got on and off in Quarry Wood Road.

Other bus services connected Marlovians to Reading and High Wycombe. The Marlow-Little Marlow-Bourne End service however came to an end in the 1950s because too few people were using it at a time when petrol rationing meant bus companies had to ensure every bus they sent out on a journey had earned it's share of the limited petrol supplies available.

Bicycles were available to buy from C. A Boddy in the High Street. Like quite a few other cycle suppliers in this time period he also supplied prams. Well, they both have wheels, I suppose. The Boddys also sold toys. Another cycle agent was Comptons in West Street, also a motorcycle seller and as mentioned above a petrol supplier 

Marlow still had a full sized railway station in the 1950s.

Childhood 

Schools

The 1958 Marlow Town Guide lists the Girls' school as being in Oxford Road and the Boys' one in Wethered Road as well as Sir William Borlase School (then just for boys and both a boarding and day school) in West Street. They obviously hadn't updated themselves from their previous edition as the schools had in fact been totally reorganised in 1954. A good lesson in treating all historical sources even very official seeming ones with caution. Back to school for the guide authors we say! The boys' school had been transformed into a unisex secondary school known as All Saints Secondary School. The future site of Great Marlow School was purchased by the council in 1957 though it would not be developed into a secondary school for several more years. Bigger premises were sorely needed as All Saints Secondary School was bursting at the seams. Until further schools opened in Stokenchurch and High Wycombe children from Lane End and Cadmore End had to attend the Marlow school. Overcrowding meant that the school was not able to offer the G.C.E exam, as extra classes for the pupils who wished to study for it could not be physically accommodated. Any children who wanted to pursue post 15 education elsewhere would be helped to find avenues to it where possible however. 

Reach for the stars, kids

As well as not having to take exams the pupils of All Saints weren't required to do homework - until the teachers got the unwelcome idea to try it in 1955. At first only some classes fell victim but from September 1956 the whole school was told to expect compulsory homework unless they had a parental letter of exemption. Such exemptions might be because the child helped in the family business, looked after younger siblings or simply because the family did not believe that school work should be allowed to encroach in family together time (this latter was a common sentiment). 

At their speech day in 1956 the speaker was an Air Vice marshall who told the children that they were lucky to be growing up in the Atomic Age as there would be lots of exiting opportunities for them. He predicted interplanetary travel might be an established fact by the late 1980s or early 90s.

In 1958 at the Borlase School speech day the guest speaker was t.v personality and criminologist John Watson who told the boys that in order to be happy men they would need two things- the right job and right wife. He warned them that a "safety first" attitude in life would be dangerous to them (not necessarily in reference to choosing a wife). 

Borlase converted part of the original school building into a flat for the caretaker and a recreation room for the school masters during the 1950s. Mr Hazelton, the Head in 1957 said that in the next year there would be around 350 pupils at his school including 80-90 boys in the Sixth Form. This he felt represented a school that had grown too fast to keep up with itself.

The 1958 Town Guide  also makes no mention of Foxes Piece School which was built between 1954-56, initially just as an infant's school with only three classrooms. The rest of the grounds were used as sports fields for other Marlow schools. Foxes Piece was only meant to be a temporary school at first. However it was extended and became a full junior school for 5-12 year olds in the 1960s. More on the early days of this school and the history of the Foxes Piece area is available in my post here.  

Another point upon which the Town Guide was well out of date on was the fact that the Oxford Road school was then functioning as another infant school. A premises in St Peters Street (which had also previously functioned as the Girls' School) was in 1954 turned into a mixed junior school (middle school). There was a mixed Catholic school in St Peter Street too. At Medmenham children attended the village school. Danesfield was of course yet to exist.

Dial Close, a private school for girls operated from the Causeway.  Another private girls school Wycombe Court was located at Lane End but put on buses to bring in Marlow pupils. It had a unisex kindergarten.

When they weren't being drilled in the three Rs or receiving questionable life advice from a criminologist, there were numerous leisure opportunities for our younger Marlovians.

Hobbies, toys and clubs 

Owning a television was becoming increasingly common in the town. British children with a set might already be watching 2 hours of television every day according to research quoted in the book A Century of Childhood. A t.v show detailing the adventures of American Davy Crockett led to a mass childhood craze of wearing a Davy Crocket style mock fur hat. I haven't been able to find evidence of these on sale in Marlow but Bonners Superstore in High Wycombe certainly offered them and was only a bus ride away.

Model airplanes and games could be bought from Moretons (primarily a bee keeping supplies shop!) in West Street. The children of the secondary school and if the former boys' school kept bees on the premises and produced their own honey so they may actually have enjoyed browsing the bee keeping supplies while they were there. Toys were also available from the Woolworths in Market Square, from the Boddy's BTC toy shop in the High Street and from Jane Ann's in West Street which offered Meccano, Dinky, Triang and Hornby ranges amongst others. The small department store W.J Daniels in Market Square had an upstairs toy department.

The Marlow Sea Cadets , just for boys, formed in 1956 though they did not yet have their own premises and met initially at All Saints Secondary School. A Boys Club, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides already existed. The latter met in a hut in Quarry Wood Road. 

Higginson Park, Riley Park (usually then called Riley Recreation Ground), Gossmore and Seymour Park were all open spaces available to play in while a children's paddling place was set up in an enclosed section of the River Thames in 1958. This was in addition to the official Bathing Place Marlow then had in the Thames at Quarry Woods for both adults and children.

Not all the outdoor activities of 1950s Marlow children would meet our approval today. Butterfly and bird egg collecting were still quite widely practiced by some children, mostly little boys. I used to have a 1950s children's butterfly book previously owned by a local boy in which the young reader is given detailed instructions as to how to use poison to suffocate a trapped butterfly and warned that sniffing or accidentally consuming the recommended poisons might kill him too. A repurposed soft drinks bottle was recommended as a carrying vessel for such poisons. Fail! Though Mr Watson the safety-last criminologist probably approved.

For sources for this series of posts see Part One. Researched and written by Charlotte Day.

©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use this research for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog.

Culture, Honour and Virtue - A history of the early Catholic schools in Marlow

St Peter Street in Marlow may be a place of quiet calm and gentility now but if you were to walk it in the early and mid Victorian era, a much more noisy and boisterous atmosphere would have prevailed. There were many reasons for this - more inns and beer-houses, the bustling Limbrook wharf, Gibbon's brewery and later the Buckinghamshire Chair Factory¹. 

One of the characteristic sounds of the street would also have been the sound of children playing. In the 1860s St Peter Street was home to 5 schools - the Catholic charity/infants school, the small Convent School, the National girls, the National infants,  and the private boarding schools for young gentlemen run from the Deanery². And then there was of course another "classic and commercial" boarding school at Marlow Place³ just a stone throw away. Our focus today is on the three Catholic schools. 

Undated and sadly very faded image of a group of pupils, identified by Michael Eagleton as coming from the Catholic infants school. Image used with thanks. 

NB. Most older historic references to the St Peter's school refer not as we would expect to the Catholic school whose modern successor goes by that name but to the two National schools in the road. The others were usually referred to just as the Catholic schools or the Convent schools. 

A start in West Street

The oldest of the two Catholic establishments was the infants charity school, as established by Charles Robert Scott Murray of Danesfield and Medmenham Abbey. Scott Murray was a wealthy and prominent Catholic convert and the person who paid for the building of St Peter's Church in Marlow⁴. The first version of the school was actually located at the Albion Rooms West Street, part of Albion House - a building which has a long connection to schooling⁵. It was established there by 1850. Initially it was ran by a couple of lay ladies and was definitely on the small side - about 20-25 pupils. It is curious that the property was let to the school managers by the Clayton family of Harleyford Manor as Sir William Clayton was outspokenly anti Catholic in the years leading up to the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. (A speech he gave in 1827 at the Town Hall in Marlow equated Catholicism with evil, tyranny and "intellectual degradation". And that was just the warm up!) This illustrates the prejudice Scott Murray faced when securing space for this purpose. 

Help for the poor

In late 1852 Scott Murray had organised for the Sisters of Charity of St Paul the Apostle based at Banbury to start a small convent at Marlow. They were also to take over the running of the charity school. In 1853 they moved into their new premises adjacent to the Catholic church in St Peter Street. Scott Murray would pay for the day to day running costs of the school such as the heating and lighting, and the provision of books and writing materials. At a time when education was not generally free, the charity school became increasingly popular as it charged a lower fee than the other schools in town. It was not restricted to Catholic families - indeed for some time in this era the majority of pupils were technically protestant. It had only become legal for non Catholic children to attend Catholic schools in 1846. This legal change may well have been what precipitated the foundation of the school. The Catholic population of the town would probably have been too small to sustain an establishment by itself.  Prior to 1791, it was not legal to run a Catholic school - and up to 1778 the punishment for so doing was life imprisonment.

A price to pay?

 The demographic was unquestionably from the poor at this period. The families must have been grateful for the opportunity to educate their youngsters at an affordable price - but the decision to send them to a Catholic school was not without controversy in the town. Protestant families whose children did not attend the church supported schools felt they were under pressure to withdraw them from the alternative.  Some also believed that when their children got into minor trouble with the police they were more harshly dealt with that would be the case of they had not attended a Catholic run school. Nevertheless by 1860 there was around 60 - 70 children in regular attendance at the infants school. 

Treats and trips for the scholars

One advantage of having a wealthy patron who took a close interest in the school was that the little pupils were not forgotten on the occasion of any kind of celebration in Marlow. Scott Murray inevitably provided the youngsters with a Christmas dinner served in their school rooms. Roast beef and plum pudding all round. Royal celebrations were another common excuse to have a break from routine. When the then Prince of Wales married in 1863 Scott Murray provided the youngsters with all kinds of goodies from lemonade to sweets and oranges. Other treats including river boat trips to Danesfield - where sports and games were provided, and a special tea provided by Canon Bernard Smith⁶ to mark a 25th anniversary of his service at Marlow. (1878)

Life at the infant school had its difficult aspects though - the school inspectors inevitably noted that the two classrooms were far too cramped and that the toilet provision was abysmal! (In this they had something in common with the two National schools over the road.) The school was also, like others in the town, subject to periodic closures due to outbreaks of the likes of small pox and scarlet fever. 

Culture, honour and virtue - the Convent Upper School 

Right from the start, the Sisters of Charity were permitted to take in a handful of private pupils who would  be educated seperately from those attending the charity school. The fees charged to these weekly or monthly boarders (who tended to be fairly well off) could be retained by the Sisters. The proviso was that the education of the poor children had to come first - if the Sisters wished to increase the numbers of other pupils they had to provide another Sister to ensure this.

At a meeting of mainly non conformists to discuss the re-establishment of a British school in Marlow, a (concerned) comment was made that Scott Murray was going to expand the provision for middle class children at his Catholic schools. If accurate this seems to have been the start of the expansion of the private convent school to take in more day pupils. 

In 1885, a dispute of uncertain nature with the school managers caused the Sisters to withdraw from both the Marlow schools and their branch at Danesfield (also established by Scott Murray). They finally left in 1886, although Scott Murray begged them to stay. The schools were undoubtedly a success and had just been extended. A Miss Grace Crowther was then recruited to head both the infants school and what was then generally known as the Convent Upper School, which was mixed and took pupils up to around age 14. To quote a source from 1894, this upper school was where "the children of the wealthy and well to do are carefully trained by fully trained and efficient instructors to occupy their positions in the higher ranks of society with culture, honour and virtue."

The young people attending this second school followed a broader curriculum including subjects such as Latin and more in depth musical study. The two establishments remained closely linked however and shared a prize giving day and entertainments. Mrs Scott Murray usually presided over the former and ensured all those attending on a more or less regular basis came away with some prize. The younger and  poorer pupils recieved individual practical items such as clothing and the older pupils more decorative ones such as copies of old master paintings to hang on their wall. 

In 1891 it was decided that Miss Crowther's residence could be altered to allow her to take in paying guests during the lucrative river season. This was to permit her to increase her income. A straightforward pay rise was seemingly out of the question. This is the why the oft published Marlow summer visitors lists includes so many names for people staying at the Convent school.  Miss Crowther certainly earned her keep - she had some 90 children of the infants school in her care and only one assistant mistress beside pupil teachers. 

The 1890s and beyond 

By this time the schools founder Charles Robert Scott Murray had died, and although the wider Scott Murray family did not forget their school at Marlow they had a less immediate every day relationship with it. Many of the treats and trips now provided to the pupils were by well off Catholics who took homes at Marlow for the river season year on year. This is especially true of Eugene Kelly and his family who regularly took up summer residence at Temple House. Eugene had also personally defrayed most of the cost of an assistant priest to help the ailing Canon Bernard Smith in the last two years of his life. The Scott Murrays still could be depended on to provide a Christmas surprise for the children though. Mrs Charles Aloysius Scott Murray managed to find a Christmas tree that would reach the ceiling of the Music Room (now the Masonic centre, hired for the purpose) in 1899 and she festooned it with gifts for all.

Since the 1870s the infants school had been under government control. This meant they could access grants rather than rely solely on their benefactor,  but in return they had to submit to school inspections and payment was by results. It also meant a "conscience clause" was now formally in operation. So the religious education was to taken at the beginning or end of the day to allow those children not participating to more easily absent themselves. 

In the late Victorian period the school inspectors still lamented the state of the toilets, the rough stoney playground and the general state of the school buildings but praised the teaching at least. Grace Crowther remained in charge until just after the First World War which brings us up to the end of the period we deal with. But to answer the oft asked question of when the modern St Peter's school moved to Prospect Rd, it was 1974. The land was actually released for school use by the Ministry of Agriculture from allotment use in 1965! 

Written and researched by Kathryn Day. 

Links to related subjects referred to above:

1 - The Bucks chair co of St. Peter Street - here

2. The Deanery school - here

3. Marlow place schools here

4. Early history of St Peter's Church here

5. The Albion rooms as a British School here

6. Biography Canon Bernard Smith, 50 years at St Peter's and a Marlow Hero here

To find other school related posts search by school name here

For other church related content see here - all denominations

Sources include: 

Information from Sister Anne, archivist to the Sisters of Charity of St Paul the Apostle with many thanks. This included information from the undated draft of the foundation agreement for the school and convent. 

Slaters commercial directory 1850. 

Musson & Craven's commercial directory 1853. 

Kelly's Directory Bucks 1863

The Catholic Directory 1853 

Marlow Town Guide and Directory 1891

Marlow Almanack qv 1907 & 1915

South Bucks Free Press 2nd Jan 1857, 14 Jan 1860, 19th Jan 1861, 15 March 1863, 13 May 1868, 7th Oct 1870, 28 June 1878, 7 June 1888, 3 February 1889, 4 March 1910

Maidenhead Advertiser 2 July 1879, 29th September 1886

Bucks Herald 17 April 1886

The Tablet April 16 1887 Vol 69 p 630

Buckinghamshire Examiner 2  December 1891

South Bucks Standard 21st April &  22nd December 1893, 8th June 1894, 21st July 1894, 22 December 1899, 5th September 1902, 14 January 1910

Bucks Free Press 19 July 1919

© MarlowAncestors 

Will of Thomas Bowles 1819

 Thomas Bowles of Great Marlow. Will written 1814, proved 1819. An awkwardly expressed will in the beginning.

Says that he is sick and weak but of sound mind and memory.

To loving wife Elizabeth and her assigns all the houses he is possessed of with their appurtenances and all other of his personal property until the children reach 21. Certain of the properties go to various of the children as they each reach the 21 milestone, as described below. She can still have the house he lives in and any residual property for the term of her natural life unless she remarries. When she dies or remarries son William to have it.

Daughter Sarah at age 21 to receive the house next door with appurtenances and the long back house adjoining it.

Son Thomas at age 21 the house with appurtenances in testator's own occupation [so he is using a second house too as the one he lives in was previously mentioned in the will. The second house may have been a place of business or storage] next door to Manus Gray [probably meant to be Parmenus Gray who witnessed the will. The testator was likely using a friendly short form of the name when he gave it as Menas. The name Parmenas /Parmenus in various forms was traditional in the Gray / Grey  family of Marlow].

Son James at age 21 house with appurtenances in the occupation of John Harding.

The child that the testator's wife is pregnant with will receive £50 over and above it's share of his residual estate as described below.

All household goods and furniture to his wife for life. All residual estate to be invested and wife Elizabeth to receive the income from that in her lifetime. Afterwards the principle sum to be divided equally between his children.

Executors his wife and his brother James Bowles.

Testator signed only with a mark.

Witnessed by John Allnutt, Jno. Mossenton and Parmenus Gray.

Will was proved by the brother James Gray with power to administer also reserved to the other executor Elizabeth.

NOTES=

"Jno" (a common way of rendering both John and Jonathan on paper) Mossenton was probably the cordwainer of Chapel Street John Mossenton.

Will transcribed and summarised by me Charlotte Day from an original at the National Archives, Kew. Notes also by Charlotte.

Well over 100 wills of Marlow people are on this blog. See the wills index here

For every mention of any individual on this blog please see the A-Z Person Index. There are lots of Bowles!

©Marlow Ancestors. Reuse for family or local history purposes freely permitted with credit to this blog.