Images that strike a chord

MEMORIES 174 and 175 told of Beaumont Street School in Darlington, which was behind the Dolphin Centre. The school was demolished in 1966 when a multi-storey car park was planned for its site. Now, after nearly 50 years, the multi-storey may soon be built.

Football was obviously a major part of Beaumont Street School life. Alan Barkley has sent in this photograph of the team of 1953 at Feethams. Alan is the goalkeeper in the back row

Sylvia Suddes (nee Brook) started at the school in 1945 when she was seven. She remembers sitting cross-legged on the wooden hall fall listening to the wireless for the magical words: "Are you sitting comfortably, then I'll begin..."

"I remember singing hymns in the hall during assembly," she says. "For those in peril on the sea – it was poignant, even though I didn't know then the circumstances of my father's death. We just got a letter saying 'missing presumed dead' – he was a prisoner of war on board a ship from Tripoli to Italy when it was shelled."

The 1960-61 Beaumont Street School football team. Standing at back, left to right: C Johnson, Phil Sefton, P Longstaff. Back row, left to right: Kilfeather, Howes, Reese, Bright, Wealands, Macskinnaning, Spence, Murray. Front: Dixon, Hirst, Wright, Williamson, Robinson

Sylvia, who now lives in Richmond, has fond memories of her schooldays, although she says: "You didn't misbehave or you received a hard slap on the back of your leg, or were smacked across the palm of your hand with a wooden ruler.

"Our playing fields were where Hummersknott school now stands. We part walked, part went by trolley bus for rounders, football, races – it was a whole afternoon out. There were sports days on Feethams field: egg and spoon race, sack race, obstacle race and sprinting – I remember the Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen running there."

Blankers-Koen was known as "the Flying Housewife". Aged 30, she was a mother-of-two who won four gold medals at the 1948 Olympic Games in London.

Sylvia never quite reached such levels, but she was solo triangle – yes, that's solo triangle playing a larger triangle that the ensemble trianglists – in the Beaumont Street School orchestra. "I'm not very musical at all," she says. "I just had to make a ding every now and then."

Beaumont Street School, Darlington, shortly before it was demolished in 1966

She's clearly very modest as the orchestra won a prize in 1948 which allowed the school to display a copy of Thomas Gainsborough's painting The Red Boy in the hall, with the school name inscribed on the frame.

"My friends were Muriel Watson from Swan Street, Margaret Dougill from Backhouse Street, Pat Alderson from the Nag's Head in Tubwell Row and Jean Grant Munro from Salutation Road," she says. "Where are you all now?"

These street names are a reminder that the east side of Darlington town centre was once full of terraces that are today covered by the ever-expanding inner ring road. Hundreds of people lived in the terraces and so Beaumont Street School – Darlington's first purpose-built state school – was erected in 1886 to accommodate 1,000 infants and juniors.

MR C JOHNSON was a teacher at Beaumont Street School from 1959 until 1962. He was involved with the school football and, although the children were too poor to have a team kit, they won the League Shield in Mr Johnson's first year.

"The school yard was concrete, so we had to walk to South Park to play our home games," he says.

On the centre of the back row of Mr Johnson's picture is a diminutive goalkeeper called Jeff Wealands, whose family were among the first residents of the new post-war Skerne Park council estate.

After Beaumont Street, Jeff went to Eastbourne secondary school, failed his exams, became an apprentice at Cleveland Bridge where he was spotted keeping goal by a scout for First Division Wolverhampton Wanderers. He signed professional forms aged 17 in 1968, but so badly fractured his collar bone that Wolves sent him packing without making the first team.

He started the 1971-72 season back home with the Fourth Division Quakers, who were having a terrible run. In the first 28 matches of the season, he conceded 56 goals – including six in two matches – but he most have impressed because Second Division Hull City signed him up. He went on to play 240 games in seven years for Hull, who were so keen to keep him that they turned down a £150,000 offer from Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty.

In July 1979, he moved for £300,000 to Birmingham City, was voted their player of the season, and then Manchester United came back in for him, this time successfully. Unfortunately, he made just seven appearances for United in his two years due to a back injury which ended his top level career. However, he carried on playing in non-league football until he was 41 when he moved successfully into property restoration. He was last heard of living in Cheshire with a holiday home in Florida – and it all started at Beaumont Street.

FOOTBALL was obviously a major part of Beaumont Street school life. Alan Barkley has sent in this photograph of the team of 1953 at Feethams. Alan is the goalkeeper on the back row.

Jeff Wealands

CONTINUING the school theme, Heather Rippon has sent in a couple of photographs of her class, when she was ten, at the Arthur Pease school in Darlington. Arthur Pease was a practising school for teachers who were training at the college on Vane Terrace.

The school's site is now housing, Scholars Park, and the old training college – latterly the Arts Centre – may soon go the same way. In Heather's picture, from 1949, the children appear to be practising their curtseying. "I wonder if the picture would create any interest among those who might recognise themselves," she asks.