"I remember how there used to be in the playground, a kind of shed with a big black post. We used to spin around that post, well most of the girls used to see if their hair could touch the floor and it used to be a competition to see who had the longest hair. We ended up with the most extravagant hair styles!
There were pipes on the bottom playground . They were huge industrial type pipes for us to play on but it used to be quite scary going inside them, you could see the other end but it was quite dark and quite a tight space, so if there was anyone coming in the other end it used to be quite scary. I did fall off the top of them once and got cuts all over my legs, I remember that very well.
In the classrooms, I remember playing with things like stickle-bricks and lego, the same things we have now like wooden building blocks and wooden trains and tracks."
(Alex Gray - Pupil 1978 and now teaching at Russell First School)
1970 - 1999
"In the corner of the playground, near the nursery gate, there used to be a little shelter. The roof held up by a large pole in one corner as there were only two walls. We used to play a lot of games in there like 'What's the time Mr Wolf?' and 'Please Mr Crocodile, may we cross the water?'
To play 'What's the time Mr Wolf?', someone played the wolf and the rest of us had to say "What's the time Mr Wolf? and the wolf would shout "ONE O'CLOCK!" so we would take one step towards the wolf. We would keep asking the wolf the time and stepping forward until the wolf told us it was "DINNER TIME!" and then we had to run away as fast as we could and whoever the wolf caught, then became the wolf and we would start again.
To play 'Please Mr Crocodile may we cross the water?', someone played the crocodile and the rest of us would say Please Mr Crocodile may we cross the water to see your lovely daughter just like you?" the crocodile would say something like 'only if you are wearing something blue' or 'only if your name begins with J' and then you could take one step forward. This went on until someone reached the other side of the water and then took their turn to be the crocodile.
We also used to play hopscotch and kiss-chase and in the lower playground, there used to be two very large concrete pipes secured to the ground with mud packed onto the sides. We used to crawl through them or play on top of them, they were really good fun.
(Alison Ward - Pupil 1974)
