Education

Don Wright

I am Don Wright and I came to live in Lincolnshire with Margaret my wife in 1960. We came from Sheffield where I was teaching at the King Edward the Seventh School. We lived first in Grantham and came to live in Colsterworth in 1971. I came to get job at Stoke Rochford Hall. It was called Kesteven Training College in those days. Up to 1960 it was a two-year teacher training course but in 1960 it was increased to three years, taking in more students because of the increasing school population. Consequently more staff was wanted and so I was appointed lecturer in Biology. I started working in what people recognise as the Orangery at Stoke Rochford Hall where it was very hot in the summer and pretty cold in the winter. But was a pleasant place because you had the most delightful view out onto the lakes and the grounds. We moved later to laboratories in the Stable Yard. Read more....

Margaret Wright

I am Margaret Wright and I was born in County Durham and went to Neville`s Cross College in Durham. It was a two-year course then if you wanted to teach primary school children. My first job was at Easington, a coal-mining village on the coast. We had two hundred infant boys in the school, they were lovely little lads. I was there at the time of the great mining disaster in 1952 when 80 men were killed. The next day there were only eight children in school. I stayed there for four years and when Don and I got married we moved to Sheffield. I taught at a big school with a large playground but no garden. I went to school for 2d on the tram. My father-in-law was the head of a primary school in Durham and it so happened that one time we were on holiday when he was still working so I went into his school one afternoon to help out. My father-in-law said to the children, `Be careful how you treat Mrs Wright because she is used to tough city children not paper tigers like you`. Read more....

Olive Wright

My name is Olive Adams and I as born at Pickworth near Folkingham, Lincolnshire, on March 17, 1921. When I was three years old we moved to Sapperton. I started at Ropsley school when I was six years old. I was late starting school because I was ill. I had some sort of chest ailment, similar to the one I suffer from now. I can`t remember having any treatment for it except Scott`s Emulsion. I did not go to hospital and only saw the doctor occasionally. He said it was muscular something or other. I did not know I was ill, I just played happily at home. My brother was a year and a half older than I was and each day when he came home, whatever he had done at school I did it again with him. I could read before I went to school, which came about because the Attendance Officer, it appeared, was looking for this Olive Rastell (as I was then). Well, he found me and off I went to start my education. Read more....