Sundridge Road School

In 1944 someone photographed the playground at Sundridge Road School. Children carry gas-mask boxes. On the right are the air-raid shelters. Walter Boyle, who shared the picture with Voices of Kingstanding, is standing at a classroom door on the left. “I do not recall the air raid shelters being used,” he added.

A school opened in wartime

Of the estate’s council schools, Sundridge Road was the last to open, and the only one begun in wartime. The Victoria County History records that Birmingham opened Sundridge Road Council School in 1940, in temporary buildings, for 240 juniors and infants. Walter Boyle was there “from its onset in 1940 until 1945”, when he went on to Handsworth Grammar School, and wrote that Sundridge Road “became the source of many good memories”. Ken Gosling, a pupil from 1941, remembered it “with much nostalgia”: “living through a war and rationing was a trial, and those short trousers in the winter was appalling!” He also remembered playing Toad of Toad Hall.

It stayed small. In 1961 the Victoria County History counted seven classrooms and a hall, against eighteen at Twickenham Road and twenty-three at Kingsland Road. Diane Stringer, there around 1947–48, remembered the toilets at the bottom of the yard; Margaret Kocon, there from 1956 to 1961, remembered them too, and the cloakrooms between the classrooms with their sinks and strong-smelling red soap.

Festival year

In 1951 Sundridge Road put on a pageant for the Festival of Britain, and a local paper photographed it. Diane Stringer kept the cutting: she was one of Queen Elizabeth I’s courtiers, and Denise Anderson, who played the queen, found the same picture in her own album. Diane also went to the Festival in London, guided by the dinner lady, Mrs Robey, “a plump jolly lady”, and was terrified by the Underground escalator. Another class went to London in 1953 and was photographed by Tower Bridge.

Mr Poole’s pond

In the 1960s the headmaster was Mr Poole. His son Andy wrote that he built the school pond, which once had goldfish in it, and that in his late seventies he could still reel off the name, class and teacher of almost every child who had been through the school in his time. Margaret Potter remembered classes being walked into the hall each morning to classical music: “I have a love of the classics because of this I’m sure.” Pupils remember Mr Kelly, who taught Irish dancing and later became head, and Lawrence Jones remembered Mr Harvey as headmaster, with football and cricket teams to match. Marie Densley remembered the school gathering in the television room in 1969 to watch the Moon landing, in black and white.

Rebuilt, and still there

The school says that in 1995 it was rebuilt and that in 1996 it moved into its new building. It is still a community school on Sundridge Road, with its own sports field, one class to a year. It began in wartime huts for 240 children, beside shelters that one of its first pupils could not remember ever being used.