Keyham Barton

I’ll correct as I go along. But it’s strange how you wake and your memory throws up a name from the past. When I talked of the Earson family in Admiralty St, it was of course the name of their shop in Marlborough St. It was Cecil Moorhouse and his family who lived there and it was he who taught me the street verses. For me Admiralty St remains a big part of my education. At four years old I was taken to the gate and left in the care of Keyham Barton Catholic Primary school where I remained until I was eleven.

There  was a real mixture of nationalities and religions in Keyham, so the Catholic community kept the role number pretty close to maximum and unless you were a Catholic you wouldn’t get it. They had an education system in Plymouth generally all of their own. St Budeaux, Holy Cross, Cathedral and later Whitleigh had the primary schools taught in  Keyham by the nuns. On the same site at Keyham Barton was Holy Redeemer Secondary Modern School, run by the same order of nuns. For those who passed the 11+ there was Notre Dame for girls and St  Boniface’s College for the boys. Holy Redeemer was mixed as a secondary.

This was quite the business. The education at Primary level was funded by the government. At Secondary Modern and for those who managed to pass the 11+, the cost of their education at either site was paid by the government. So there was an enormous competition between the schools to get as many passes as they could in order the be the top dog. If anyone believes that achievement tables are a new thing, they obviously were not around in my time growing up in Keyham.

The nuns were fierce and were not adverse to giving a good wacking to anyone who disobeyed them in any way. Sister Finbar ran the Holy Redeemer school, small by stature she was particularly hard in dispensing discipline. There were lots of tales from there about her prowess with a cane, they did seem to like bamboo canes. Sister Denis was the Head at Keyham Barton and she too would be harsh with discipline. After a caning she would insist you had some Ovaltine  tablets. It was useless going home and saying you’d had a  smacking cause the reply “what did you do wrong, you must have deserved it”. It seems in the Catholic households nun’s could do no wrong and if they disciplined you it was all part of the grand scheme of things to make you a good person.