Here are four photographs of Preston school children. The change of clothing style over the years are worth noting. The three later snapshots feature Mary Woodhams (nee Chalkley). As she was born in April 1913, her presence helps to date the photographs. Perhaps you can identify some of the children. Appropriately, Mary’s later contribution to the school is also highlighted. She worked there until its closure at School Lane in 1966.
1896
The photograph was taken around 1917 -
This ‘likeness’ was taken in about 1919. It shows Mary Woodhams
at the right end of the second row from the front
Mary Woodhams is the second girl from the left in the second row from the front.
She is two or three years older than she appears in the previous photograph which
dates the occasion as at about 1921-
OLD SCHOOL DOOMED February 1977
End of an era for cleaner
Three detached chalet houses may soon stand on the spot where Preston schoolchildren fidgeted on school benches – and for Mary Woodhams, who has been school cleaner for generations of them, it will mark the end of an era.
The now almost derelict building was built in 1849 and its rafters rang to the voices
of its last all-
Mrs Woodhams was cleaner then, as now, and her earliest memories of the school go back to 1917 when she was four.
‘I wish I could come to the school as a child now,’ she says without a trace of fashionable nostalgia. ‘These children are all happy together and there were no big boys to bully them.’
There’s no sentiment in her memories of cleaning at the old school either. The job which she took on from her own mother, who had it since 1924, was a heavy dirty one.
Mrs Woodhams started cleaning in 1939 when her own children were old enough; one of her duties was to empty the buckets which were the only form of toilets in the school in those days. Twice a week she had to dig holes to empty them into.
Mary Woodhams at work
Another duty was to fetch and chop firewood for the old-
But the fate of the old school is unlikely to be mourned by many now that its condition
has deteriorated so far. It will be remembered by the log book and photographs salvaged
by the last headmaster, Mr Freddie Orchard, and now in the keeping of the present
headmaster, Mr Ray Penrose. He also has the old school bell and is planning to have
its clapper restored and to re-
Last time the old school was used was as a youth centre for a few years after 1966.
The planning proposal for the chalet houses has been submitted by Ryan Property Management of Brand Street, Hitchin.
Although the old school is in a conservation area, it is not a listed building and a spokesman for the Planning Department of North Herts Council said that, because of its condition, it was unlikely that there would be any objection to it being demolished. (From a cutting at HALS.)
Below: The derelict Preston school in 1977
Biographical notes: Mary Woodhams was born in April 1913 -
