REUNITED after half a century or more, they were four schools from a cheek-by-jowl, close knit – oh aye, even the boys did knitting – coal-fired community near Bishop Auckland.

In truth, however, they could have been from almost any other North-East community, growing up fast after the Second World War.

There were recollections of carrot and stick – stick more indelibly – of school yards like ski slopes, of ink and of ink wells, of rats, cockroaches and, inevitably, of nits. Creatures great and small, and growing with the years.

“There were millions of nits at Eldon Lane Modern,” recalls Barbara Whalen, Ambrose as was. “You could see people at morning assembly whose heads were walking in them and the cockroaches were all over your desk.”

The schools were called Eldon, Close House – though Close House was up the hill in Gurney Valley – Auckland Park and Eldon Lane, though Eldon Lane was in Coronation.

Perhaps they also taught where one village began and the next ended, because to outsiders they seemed almost indivisible, closeted side by side like old lads on a two-holer.

Malcolm Frank who’d aspired to be a French teacher, recalled a pre-college placement at Eldon Lane Modern at the start of which he’d asked the headmaster if any of the pupils spoke the language.

The head was Mr Rutherford, known with no obvious affection as Jack Rut with the Baldy Nut and perceived to be at least 90. “French?” he told the impressionable Mr Frank. “These buggers can’t even speak English.”

Barbara smiles at the story. “There was nowt modern about Eldon Lane Modern,” she says.

THE villages are roughly between Bishop Auckland and Shildon. Jeff Ridley recalls when Close House alone had about 14 shops – “cobbler’s, hairdresser’s, all sorts”; Joan Teare, nee Walton, remembers being able to walk from top to bottom of Eldon Lane main street and get everything she wanted for Christmas. “Even bath cubes for my grandma. Mind, they were about fourpence,” she says.

There was a cinema, three or four chapels, a Salvation Army citadel, two workmen’s clubs, populous pubs. There was community spirit and there was shared poverty.

“We were the tin bath brigade,” says Barbara. “It hung on a nail in the backyard and we all got washed in the same water. We had earth toilets, too.

“There was a lot of poverty. I was lucky, my parents worked, but no one was well off. It made me the person I am today.”

The villages were further eroded by Durham County Council’s infamous Category D policy which condemned them to slow death and which led to the formation of the Eldon Lane Redevelopment Association, known for short as Eldra but in more imaginative moments as Eldorado.

It was led by Eldon Lane shopkeeper Bob Jackson, who sold almost everything – “I remember he had Beatles jackets when the Beatles came out,” someone says. He’s now 82, still campaigning, not at the reunion.

“He’s fighting to keep Bishop hospital at the moment,” says Molly, his sister. “He’d be lost without a cause, would Bob.”

ELDON was the first school to go, burned down overnight in the 1950s. They blamed the painters. “It’s my favourite memory of school days,” insists Jeff Ridley, who now runs community newspapers.

“We were just kids. We thought there’d be no more school. Unfortunately' they found us another one.”

Peter Clarke was at Eldon, too. “I could have walked past about 24 houses to get to Coronation, but Eldon was the best,” he says. “I just loved it – the school, the kids, the ambience of the place. It just suited me.”

Particularly he remembers the school trip to Seaton Carew. “About six old banger buses and sandwiches, full of sand, on the beach. It was perfect.”

Miss Corner, the head, had a strap – perhaps over-imaginatively recalled as a cat-of-nine-tails – which she was unafraid to use, even on the tinies.

She also introduced what these days would probably be known as domestic science lessons, in which the juniors would be sent to clean the head’s house. “It was supposed to teach us housekeeping,” says Barbara. “She had a nice house, anyway.”

The tickets for the do are headed “School’s reunion”, the apostrophe egregiously out of alignment. Listen hard, and Miss Corner may be heard, celestially stropping her strap.

THE reunion has been organised by Joan and Barbara, by Susan Howell and Kathlyn Norman. Around 150 from all over the country have gathered at Cockton Hill Workmen’s Club in Bishop Auckland, thronged like New Year’s Eves of yore. Profits from the £10 tickets will go towards the remaining church and chapel in what has become known as the Dene Valley.

“We started talking last October and realised we had to do it,” says Joan. “Every time you open the paper, someone else has gone.”

Re-acquaintance takes time; some just play for it. “Oh my God, is that you?” they chorus and “I knew you when you had dark hair.”

Barbara says that it’s possible to see just from the numbers what the community spirit was like.

Willie Livingstone’s up from Devon, Ottery St Somewhere, recalls that his Aunty Betty kept pigs and that the reason he didn’t do very well at Eldon Lane Modern was that he couldn’t see the board and was too self-conscious to wear glasses.

“You’re always a little bugger when you’re at school,” he supposes. “I never really wanted to learn. If we wanted to play football at Eldon Lane we had to borrow a rough field off a farmer and didn’t even clear off the cow muck. You become a better person when you’re 17 or 18.”

Malcolm Frank had attended St Mary’s Roman Catholic Grammar School in Darlington and became a head teacher in Stockton. “I lived in Bishop and didn’t even know where Eldon Lane school was,” he recalls.

“Mr Rutherford said he’d heard that I was a Catholic, but that he’d still let me come to assembly so that I could learn some new hymns. Teaching was a totally different profession then, just chalk and talk with everyone sitting in rows. Groups hadn’t been heard of, but that year at Eldon Lane really taught me a lot.”

The column stays for two hours, talk if not chalk, leaves when the jiving begins. All these years later, it’s possible at last to believe what in the 1950s they sought vainly to instil. School days are the happiest days of your life.