School Plays

Looking through the photo album, I came across a photo of our time at Keyham Barton when I was about 9 or 10 years of age. One of the things Sister Denis was very keen on was drama and speech improvement. I have no idea why that was but we were organised and trained to learn a play called “Zurika the Princess” and I can’t remember at thing of the plot. All I know was I played the King in this drama and having gone back to mum to tell her she set out to do the best King’s outfit you could possibly have. A crown made of strong cardboard covered in gold paper and the four straps of the coronet all liked together in the middle with a ping pong ball wrapped in silver paper holding them all together.A cloak and pantaloons with long white sock material for each leg. It was some costume! The play was a huge success played at the newly built Honicknowle Secondary School and had a run of a week at the Globe inside the Royal Marine Barracks in Stonehouse. For us it was an exciting experience and the ability to go from one side to the other underneath the stage was quite unique.
Looking at those in the photo they were Cederic Chapple, Peter May, Jim O’Connell, Jennifer Smyth, Julianna Hayes, Carmel Collett, Maureen Frost, Janet Harold, Theresa Gemmett, Pat Burchell, Edward Sheppard, Catherine Fielder, Michael Ryan, Richard Cavanague and Martyn Collier. These were all resident in Keyham except for Richard Cavanague, Peter May, Janet Harold and Theresa Gemmett. Edward Shepherd was one of the children of that era who had polio from birth and have calipers to support his lower legs, but he got stronger and better as our time at Keyham went on much was down to everyone supporting him in every way.
We have lost a number of these people over the years but looking at the photo they will always live in my mind for the times we had together growing up as children in Keyham. Some of the boys went on to St Boniface’s with me and we spent another five years there in the 50’s. At a time when things were changing in society very rapidly. Rock and roll happened along with the Tony Curtis hairstyles and flash clothes although I wasn’t allowed because according to mum it looked common. This was my mum who liked Little Richard can you believe when no one else thought he was any good at all. Always a surprise in store with mum.
The summer holidays were a huge time for leisure and because there always seemed to be sunshine we were up at North Down fields for football most of our days and along with families from both North Down Gardens and Royal Navy AVE we would make up teams and spend the day playing. The pitch was on a slope so play tended to go in one direction but these were good times. The Bartrops, the Edges, Michael Ryan, Tony Clark, Ken Squires, occasionally Terry Meager and Mike Cusack from Fleet St would play but the last two were good players who played at quite a high standard later on, as did Ken Squires.
In the light evenings Top park or Alexandra Park was the venue for many of us to meet up, kick around a bit, play a bit of cricket but again it was such a steep site invariably we would end up at the top plateau just sitting around. It was here we watched HMS Amethyst return from the Yangse incident to Devon port badly damaged a very famous incident that had the whole country following on the radio.