The Vanished World Of A Woolton Childhood With John Lennon – Part 3
Sunday School at St Peter's Church Hall, Woolton and at the bottom of Church Road, Woolton next to my Granny Ashton's House in School Cottage - now, that really is a vanished age! There must have been 600 or 700 kids used to go to Sunday School Lower, Upper and Bible Class taken by Jack Gibbons, one of the unsung heroes without whom I guess there might have been no Beatles, no Quarrymen, no St Peter's Youth Club and even no sense of purpose in our youthful lives. I loved to get Jack Gibbons talking about the Battle of Britain when he was stationed at I think it was Biggin Hill in Kent as an Aircraft Fitter. Jack would tell our Bible Class of Churchill saying "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" and would tell of young men little older than ourselves learning to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes in just a few weeks and being killed in just a few days. But they died as heroes so that we would all have the right to free speech, democracy, health and welfare. I was often moved to tears listening to him as was John and the others he came with including Nige Walley, Pete Shotton, Alan Walpole, Rod Davis and all the others whose names I cannot remember. If any I have left out are reading this, please get in touch, as I would love to hear from you.
John Lennon attended all of them and I was nearly always in the same Sunday school and Bible Class with him. There was a motive! We had a Sunday school trip to the seaside resort of Southport, North of Liverpool and in those days of single-sex schools Sunday school and Bible Class were Uni-sex so you got to sit with and talk to those strange creatures, girls! For those who did not have sisters there was often not much chance in the formative years, with parents or guardians looking on, to get to know girls. I remember that we were getting near the top class of the Upper Sunday School in St Peter's Church Hall. We sat next to the kitchen. The top class itself went into the kitchen with its strange gas-fired ESSME water boiler. We must have been 11 or 12 years old at least. 'Ma' Davies, the Sunday school teacher, got on about Scribes and Pharisees and how they had treated Jesus. John Lennon got very annoyed about these Scribes and Pharisees and said they must have been Fascists. 'Ma' Davies blew her top and said that Fascists were much, much worse than Scribes and Pharisees. I also asked her if John was not right. Just to support my mate but I had no idea what fascists or Scribes and Pharisees were in fact. We were hauled up in front of the Rev Pryce Jones, rector of Woolton Church, who told us off in his lilting Welsh accent and then decided to cane us for causing trouble. But he could not find a cane so he got hold of spinster Bertha Radley's gamp (umbrella), which had crocodile skin and head on the handle. John got it first, one on each hand and then when Prycee hit me the gamp handle broke off and I remember to this day Bertha Rigby saying " Oh my poor crocodile". Bertha Radley was one of the Woolton families of Radley who Paul immortalised in his wonderful song 'Eleanor Rigby'. For us boys who were in the church choir she was a terror as she had a knack of flicking your ears if you did not hit the right treble note and giving you a 'thick swollen lug hole' as we called it. I never sat, if I could avoid it, on the women's Cantata side (the boys sat in front pews, the women behind) of the St Peter's Choir. I sat on the men's Descantato side to keep away from the two terrors, 'Ma' Mambridge and Bertha Radley who, I am sure, were lovely folk but they terrified me as a boy as they did the rest of us.
During one of the Reverend Pryce Jones' very boring sermons (though he was a very nice man he was not a good preacher) I had got my Boy Scout Pocket Diary out and was reading it. John took it off me and altered the Boy Scouts' law, which says 'A Boy Scout is thrifty' to ' A Boy Scout is fifty'. We got our choir pay docked for talking in a sermon but on reflection it was yet another example of John's creative mind.
As many of you will know John was in a choir from time to time. He used to turn up with Nige Whalley especially when we had a wedding to sing for. Then we used to get two shillings and sixpence per wedding, a lot of money in those days when most of us only got sixpence or a shilling pocket money a week. I remember one Saturday we thought we had hit the jackpot! We got three weddings on the trot and got seven shillings and sixpence paid out after the last service by choirmaster Eric Humphrey’s who I think was agnostic and did not reckon much to religion as he said it caused wars. He was a lovely man and loved church music. His brother, Ernie Humphrey’s was Ringing Master of the Bells in Woolton St Peter's Belfry. Their father, Enoch Humphrey’s, was gardener to Harry Pilkington of the Pilkington Glass firm of St Helens. Pilkingtons had a lovely house at the corner of Beaconsfield Road and Quarry Street and also had a wonderful orchard where we lads scrumped apples if Enoch did not catch us.
The Choir and Sunday school trips were big events in our lives when few folks had holidays in the 1950s. Soon after the schools broke up for the Summer holidays we choirboys were shepherded early in the morning onto the 121 Crossville bus from Woolton village by the Rev Prycee Jones, Miss Cynthia Pilkington and Bertha Radley. My dad said that the Pilkingtons helped pay for the trip as they did when he had been a choirboy at St Peter's Church. The bus took us to the Pier Head and Liverpool’s' Floating Landing stage next to the great liners - Canadian Pacific, Cunard and P&O liners coming back from Canada and North America or the 'Rena del Mar' from its long journey to Tierra del Fuego at the Southern tip of South America...'Welsh Wales beyond the seas, the land of fire and brimstone where Welsh people lived as they did in Wales' Prycee would say in his lovely lilting Welsh voice. Next to the great liners were the smaller Isle of Man boats like 'Lady of Man' or 'King Orry' with red funnels like the proud, boastful, eminent Cunard liner just home from New York. Then the steamboat of the North Wales Steamship Company with its dark yellow funnels. Usually it was the 'St Tudno' but it could be 'St Trillo' and on occasions it was the little 'St Seriol' - all named after the Welsh Celtic saints. "The Welsh were Christians long before the English and most of Europe” Prycee would say as he changed over to speaking his beloved Welsh language to the crew of these little Welsh boats as we got on board. How I loved to hear Prycee speaking Welsh. He was a new man - a man liberated.
I suppose all us kids living in Liverpool knew some Welsh but not enough to understand the conversation on the 2 to 3 hour journey to Llandudno in North Wales, that beautiful seaside resort. As long as we kept clear of Big Bertha Radley and her Gamp and the flick behind the lughole we were safe so we sat on the prow and let the Irish Sea spray fly over us as we drank our pop, sitting on the ship's ropes watching the Welsh coast appear as we passed Hoylake, Point of Air and Rhyl and then just past Colwyn Bay the Great Orme Head appeared. "Home of the Celtic saints is the Great Orme" Prycee would say as we berthed at the beautiful Llandudno pier next to the Grand Hotel. I never forget the alluring beauty of the turquoise-blue water at Llandudno. It was clean! We choirboys were used to the grimy, dirty River Mersey water as it was then (it's much cleaner nowadays). John Lennon's comment was 'Shakespeare said 'The quality of Mersey is not pure' and I got in to trouble at school later for saying it and had to write out a hundred times the correct Shakespeare quotation 'The quality of Mercy is not strained'
Some times we would go for a swim at Llandudno and then go into a hotel for tea and cakes and to use their toilet. Prycee knew the manager and used to talk to him in Welsh. Other times we would take the smaller 'St Trillo' or 'St Seriol' around Great Ormes Head to watch the puffins, cormorants, little terns and myriad other nesting birds feeding their young on the Head or would see porpoises, basking sharks and seals as we passed the Conway Estuary and Penmaenmawr and then down the Menai Strait passing Prycee's home at Beaumaris to berth at Menai Bridge with thousand of scented flowers. I used to think that we had arrived in Paradise as I listened to folk talking their lovely Welsh language. I always remember with surprise all the women rushing to see our bachelor Minister Pryce Jones, to talk to him in Welsh. "Go away" he would say to us "This is a very private conversation". We lads had not a clue what he was talking about in Welsh but we made up some amazing stories. 'The quality of innocence is pure' I think John would have said.
Then the journey to Llandudno, on to the bigger 'St Tudno' and, tired, we would arrive home ready for bed at about 10 p.m. What days! What memories! If I ever get to Paradise I hope to talk to our rector Prycee Jones and John about those day trips to North Wales by steam boat - sadly, no longer available.
The Sunday School trip to the charming Merseyside Irish Sea resort of Southport was of a different genre. Whereas the choirboys' trip would have about 12 boys and women folk as well as the Rev Prycee, the Sunday School trip was a big bun fight with thousands of kids and their parents meeting up at Gateacre Railway Station for the long, long Cheshire Lines train to Southport. This was a day trip with lots of madness and memories.
There were girls and sisters in long flowing summer dresses, their hair with ribbons in plaits or tied up at the back, and new sandals. The boys had summer shorts and shirts on as we walked down Gateacre Brow carrying the picnic sandwiches, bathing towels and costumes and anything else parents and guardians had decided to take because they came as well.
The excitement on the way was looking for rabbits in the fields we sped past on our non-stop train or trying to see Aintree Racecourse as the Cheshire Line railway track, closed in the 1950s thanks to Beeching's axe, past Ince Blundell's Stately Home, Ainsdale Hills along the sand dunes and then, right beside the sea, passing Seaside Railway Station and Birkdale until Southport Palace, Pier and Funfair could be seen and we arrived finally at the long since closed Southport Lord Street Station - the end of the line.
The day now belonged to us and our parents or guardians. There was usually a walk to the funfair where, if you were lucky and funds were in, you got a ride on the Ghost Train or the Big Dipper. I remember seeing a Mechanical Elephant outside the funfair that looked like the real thing. To this day I wonder how it worked. Next was a picnic lunch in the Floral Gardens beside the Marine Lake or the Floral Palace and a trip on the steam-hauled 15 inch narrow gauge railway in its open carriages through the beautiful floral gardens and park to what my dad used to say was one of the longest piers in Britain which runs out into the mouth of the River Ribble estuary.
We only had enough money to go through the turnstile to walk along the pier. We could not afford the train, which went to the end of the impressive 1460-yard long pier, which was second only to the one at Southend on Sea my dad would say with his pride in his Merseyside home. He used to say that before the 1939-45 Second World War you could sail on a pleasure steamer to Blackpool and Lytham St Anne's but "the tides gone out from Southport and not come back since the war. The sands shifted and the sea has gone further out". But I always remember looking back from the end of the pier on miles of wide sandy beaches and the sea front with its hotels and there, over the Ribble Estuary, the promised land of Blackpool with its Tower and its world-famous Funfair. But Southport's funfair was, to us children, just as exciting and enchanting.
After a trip walking along the sands past Southport's Marine Lakes with its yachts scudding across the water we arrived in the picturesque Hesketh Park with its woodland setting of duck ponds and lakes containing wildlife and parkland with peacocks strutting by. Sometimes we even made it to the tearooms at the Botanical Gardens where I seem to remember they had an aviary of exotic birds from all around the world.
But we had to get back to Holy Trinity Church for tea where the Rev Pryce Jones would say grace and check that everyone had arrived back. I remember that on one trip two boys were missing and a search was set up for them. They were Graham Hale and John Lennon. We others had to go for the train while parents searched for them and my dad asked the porters at the railway station if they had seen them. Yes, they had! They were in the porters' waiting room drying off because they had been running as fast as they could along the beach and had run into the Marine Lake and got soaking wet!.
The train pulled out on time, I recall, and while some fell asleep others watched for rabbits scurrying home before nightfall. And so we arrived tired but happy at Gateacre Railway Station with a 2-mile walk back up the hill to our homes on top of Woolton Hill - the end of a memorable St Peter's Sunday School trip.
