RECENT Memories have been telling of Eastbourne School in Darlington and, as ever, some of our dates have got mixed up – specifically the date in which the girls’ and boys’ schools amalgamated.

To clear up our confusion, we turn to the 450-page history of the school which was published last year by former head Raymond Bryant, shortly before his death.

It is a meticulous piece of work, recording the “growth, success and failure” of the comprehensive, which The Northern Echo hailed as “Darlington’s Super School at Eastbourne”.

Mr Bryant, who was head between 1973 and 1986, provides us with the necessary dates at the start of his introduction. The school, he said “opened as Eastbourne Senior Mixed School in August 1936 in new purpose-built, although incomplete, premises. In 1939, it became two single sex schools, and after the Second World War, as a result of legislation introduced in the Education Act of 1944, it evolved into girls’ and boys’ secondary modern schools.

“Finally the schools combined again in 1968 to become the Eastbourne Mixed Comprehensive School.”

There is lots of fascinating information in the book. For example, in the 1950s, the school usually finished each day at 4.10pm, but on July 27, 1951, school closed at 3.30pm so that pupils could use the trolleybuses – pneumatic-tyred vehicles powered from an overhead electricity cables – to get home before 4pm when Patons and Baldwins shut for its factory fortnight holiday, disgorging several thousand of its workers onto the bus network.

(P&B, as regular readers will know, was the largest wool factory in the world at Lingfield Point.)

Mr Bryant compiled his book using the school logbooks, and Memories’ eye was, naturally, caught by the paragraph headed “Teenage pregnancy”.

It says: “There is a record in April 1964 of a pupil’s father calling in to the school to report that his daughter was pregnant. It was claimed that the father of the child was unknown… The impression given is that such an occurrence was unheard of and that the child involved should immediately be removed from the school. There was disapproval shown and this disapproval was clear to the other girls.”

The book ends powerfully with the former head returning to the school 20 years after he left and shortly before its closure. He was dismayed by what he saw – the discipline and the dereliction.

Former Eastbourne pupils often talk of the model house which had been the domestic science block – in the early days, they were even taught to make a bed in there, sheets folded properly at the corners. Mr Bryant found it “neglected and abandoned”. He found the once open corridors had been claustrophobically closed in and a stairwell had been caged in by a metal frame.

“The swimming pool, in which thousands of children had learned to swim, and some even learned the skills needed to handle canoes, was empty, with debris at its bottom,” he reported.

The causes of the school’s failings were myriad, and caused it to be reborn as a Church of England Academy in 2007 and, as St Aidan’s, it is now in new surroundings in Hundens Park.

Eastbourne School 1936-2007: The Growth, Success and Failure of a Secondary School by RV Bryant (Janus Publishing) costs £14.95 is available on Amazon, or by calling 01325-467602 or emailing kbryant31@icloud.com

OF COURSE, thousands of Eastbourners have happy memories of their schooldays. Alec White has sent in this 1960 picture. It was taken by The Northern Echo and shows Class 3’ (we think pronounced “three-one”) in The Fairway entrance.

“I have no recollection of why we were all lined up in the driveway,” he says, “but it might have been to greet a special visitor to the school – I know the Duke of Edinburgh visited the school in conjunction with The Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme – or was it just for a form photo?

“I am eighth from the right, blond hair, jacket and tie on and hand in pocket, and Frankie Bowman of Frankie’s Bar in Duke Street, Darlington, is second on the right.

“Is there anybody who could shed some light on why the photo was taken?”

ALBERT YARROW has the reference that Eastbourne headteacher, George Welford, gave him as he left school as a 16-year-old at the end of 1959.

“He has proved a lad of average intelligence and attainment,” said Mr Welford, who retired almost immediately he had written the reference having been head since 1936. “His mathematics are quite up to average. He is well behaved and a trier when likes. He should mould into a useful worker.”

Mr Yarrow came from a family of railwaymen, and says: “My dad took me for an interview with the engineer on the railway in Park Lane, and he asked for the reference.” He helped him get an apprenticeship as a joiner, which served him well throughout life.

Mr Yarrow, of Brunel Way, thinks Mr Welford’s reference was fair enough. “I loved maths,” he says. “I still know the theory of Pythagoras after all these years – the square of the hypotenuse…”

FOLLOWING last week’s item about David Bowie giving a young fan a telegram when he was performing at Sunderland on his Ziggy Stardust tour in 1972, music historian Ian Luck in Darlington advised us to look in The Northern Echo of December 1964 for details of what may well have been Bowie’s first appearance in the North-East.

But there’s no sing of a mention. All it says is that on December 4 at the Stockton ABC Globe cinema and on December 5 at the Newcastle City Hall there will be an impressive bill topped by Gerry and the Pacemakers.

They were to be accompanied by Gene Pitney, Marianne Faithful, Bobby Shafto, The Roofraisers, Mike Cotton Sound and – barely worth a mention – The Kinks.

The compere would be Bryan Burdon, and there would be two houses each night: 6.30pm and 8.45pm.

Indeed, in the Echo’s photo-archive there’s a picture of the Pacemakers, the headline act, backstage in a rather grubby kitchen at the Stockton venue.

But there doesn’t seem to be any mention of the tour drama which had just unfolded. The Pacemakers – who had topped the charts a year earlier with You’ll Never Walk Alone – had started on the road in November but, come early December, something had gone wrong with the opening act, The Roofraisers, and they pulled out.

Promoters Arthur Howes and Brian Epstein filled the curtain-raising void by calling up a young band from south London who had never ventured further north before than Luton.

They were called Davie Jones and the Mannish Boys – the lead singer, of course, would change his name to David Bowie about a year later.

Is it too much to hope that anybody remembers being there that night in Stockton?

DURHAM has many wondrous buildings, but Memories’ eye is always caught by No 36, Saddler Street, a café on the climb up to the cathedral, as we mentioned in Memories 263.

Thankfully, we are not the only one, and Shirley Armstrong writes from Coxhoe to say that when she worked in the city in the 1950s it was Walton’s cake shop and bakery.

The listed building schedule tells us that it is a 17th Century property with an attractive front that was added in 1844 – the date is carved on the wood at the top of the along with the initials TM. A later date, 1979, was added to the woodwork when it was restored.

The listed building schedule also says that it is a “Mannerist-style front”. Thankfully, the Victoria and Albert Museum website helped us out of our ignorance: “Mannerism is the term often given to a style of Renaissance art and architecture that began in the courts of Italy in about 1520, then spread throughout Europe and lasted until about 1610. The name comes from maniera, Italian for style. The style is characterised by surprising effects and visual trickery.”

Whoever TM was back in 1844, he (perhaps she?) was obviously a very skilled craftsman and left us with a building that is still admired 175 years later.

MANY thanks for all the emails and letters that come in to Memories on a weekly basis. In the near future, we will be returning to Danby Wiske station in North Yorkshire, and the Woodhouse Close estate in Bishop Auckland.

Tony Duffy, in Bishop, was one of those to write about last week’s article about Proudfoot Drive. He said: “My family were relocated from Witton Park in 1960 to Woodhouse Close Estate when I was 11 years old. We were the first to move into the “new estate”, and lived in 1, Murphy Crescent – I can still smell the newness of that brand new house.

“My mam used to send me down to the shops in your photo to buy her groceries from Watson’s or her Kensitas tipped cigarettes from Hardy’s paper shop – I remember the smell of sweets pervaded that shop.”