Whitley Abbey Mixed Comprehensive School was opened in 1955. It was formed by merging Churchfield High School with Cheylesmore Secondary Modern. Carol Hinde recalled what she liked about Whitley Abbey during the time she was there in the late 1950s.
Length of audio clip 1 min. 30 secs.
Hilary: What school did you go after that school?
Carol: Right after that school I went to Cheylesmore Secondary Modern School and I was just there twelve months and they opened the Whitley Abbey Comprehensive School, I think that was in nineteen, I think I was twelve when they opened that so that was 1954 or something like that. I went to, yeah Whitely Abbey. I loved that school it was lovely.
Hilary: What did you like about it?
Carol: Well it was partly, you felt more grown up and it was a new school and there was three houses on the site. There was Stoneleigh, Warwick and Kenilworth and I belonged to Stoneleigh House and our housemistress was Mrs Rosbottom and she also used to teach us Geography as well and it had it’s own little flat so when we got into doing domestic science there used to be a group of four of you and three of them used to do the cooking and invite the teachers to the meal and one of us used to do the cleaning. I always volunteered for the cleaning, I don’t like cooking. So you felt more grown up, you seemed to have a lot more freedom. And of course you walked about the school because every lesson was done in a different class, classroom. And the houses were away from the classroom so yeah. We had a big lake and you used to go over the bridge into the teaching blocks kind of thing. It was good, I really enjoyed that it was good.
Voices of Postwar England 
Like you I went there in 1955 and I cried because no one in our family knew what a Comprehensive school was and my brother was going to Bablake and I thought I had failed my 11+ Anyway I loved the school, fell off the bridge because they had not put the guard rails up straightaway – actually we jumped off to see if we could get thedayoff- I remember Mrs Duffy head of Warwick, who taught English and terrified me, Mr Poole who read us Sherlock Holmes every time we had English Literature and Mr Satchwell who we all thought incredibly handsome and were madly keen on . Thanks for the reminder about the cooking I had forgotten that… we were also taught how to starch and iron properly, which I hated. We used to dig up pignuts at the edge of the sports field and eat them something else I have never done since!
By: Amanda Walton on October 18, 2008
at 7:13 pm