Published in Windlesora 19 (2002)
© WLHG
I was born in Springfield Road Windsor in 1922. I started at Spital Infant’s School when I was three years old. The ‘baby room’ was a tin hut in the small playground. Outside was a sandpit and we had shallow tin trays in which we learned 19 do our letters in the sand. The rocking horse was almost life-size to my small stature but I do not expect it was any larger than a run-of-the-mill one. There was a large teddy bear and my favourite toy was a golliwog. I could never understand why | could not take it home with me. In the afternoons we were made to lie on little canvas folding beds for our afternoon nap. It was while I was still in the infant school that there was a fire in the hospital. Our teacher was called Miss Edney and she had to take some of us home as the hospital was on the route. I can clearly remember the flames and seeing parents coming to collect us. The classroom was built in tiers with desks facing the teacher. Most of the children took sandwiches for the morning break, with our names on the package as we were made to drop them in a waste paper basket in case we were tempted to eat them during the lesson. We were well disciplined and I remember the teacher telling the boys to take off their caps when their parents met a friend in the street and to let a lady go before them for politeness. On May Day we would dance around the maypole in the playground. As | grew older I was allowed to walk to school with my friends. On the way, we had to pass a sweet shop, which was owned by Mr Bowers. He had a son of our age who went to the same school. I envied him so much as he lived in that idyllic little shop with all those succulent sweets.
Later I was enrolled at Clewer St Stephen Junior School and then at the senior school where I stayed until I was 14 years old. This was 1936 and I was apprenticed as a bookbinder with Messrs Oxley and Son who printed the Windsor and Eton Express. At that time the office was in the High Street and the works on Bachelors’ Acre. The conditions in which we worked would never pass today’s hygiene standards. It was a small room, and I was given to understand had once been a stable. There were iron grids in the wooden floor, which collected all the dust and dirt. In humid weather the smell of horses would permeate the atmosphere and add to the smell of an obnoxious pot of glue that was always boiling away on a gas ring. The same gas ring was used to boil the tin kettle for our tea. A small cupboard at floor level housed lead blocks that were used to make the type. The time I worked there has left its mark on me for the rest of my life as I lost a finger on an unguarded machine. I was awarded £40 compensation, which was not good even in those days.
When World War Two broke out I joined the Wrens and was stationed at Dedworth Manor. I married a Merchant Navy Officer and we eventually went to live at Dedworth Manor with our family at the end of the war. I now live in North Devon where my husband and I owned a hotel on the fringe of Exmoor. The marriage lasted for 25 years but was not a happy one and I left home after our three children had grown up. I have been a District Councillor and a Parish Councillor and still work for Age Concern. I try to pay a visit to my hometown when time allows, as I am proud to be a Windsorian.
Barbara J Daltrey
Windsor Local History Group 