And a memory from Cyril Webb writes….
I was pleased to receive the last newsletter, as I am unable to go online at the moment. My computer is complaining about its age and it needs careful handling.
The item about the trees on the playing field interested me because when I started at Trinity in 1945 it was never mentioned even though some of the staff involved were still teaching there. Perhaps a lot of the trees disappeared when allotments were dug during the war and others were lost when the new tennis courts were constructed.
I seem to recall there were a few trees over the far side of the field by the long jump pit. Somehow twelve years after planting the venture seems to have been forgotten or perhaps I didn't listen if we were told about it. Whatever trees still existed I suppose we just accepted as being there and never realised there was a history behind them. At the time of the planting it was well covered by the press.
Wood Green had many small parks and gardens and I remember you told me your father built some of the walls around them. There was of course Tunnel Gardens but also others at the corner of Palace Gate and Crescent Road, the top of Palace Gate and Alexander Park Road, the corner of Albert Road and Durnsford Road and the one by the Congregational Church - to name but a few. My mother used to say Wood Green was aptly named because of the open spaces but the last time I saw these gardens they were in a pretty poor state.
Something else that used to get press coverage was the school grumble meeting. The Evening News and other papers used to pick up the details from the Wood Green Herald. I wonder if this was another unique venture by Trinity.
My sister recently visited Steeple Bumpstead where Rhodes Avenue School was evacuated to in 1939. She found the cottage where she sat the 11 plus exam. There was no other place available in the village. She passed for Trinity but my parents were offered a free place for her at Glendale which they
accepted. By the time I got to Trinity fees had been abolished.
Anyway we left the village in the early summer of 1940 because the chapel we had been using as a school was bombed and my mother was concerned about the standard of care my brother and I were receiving from our host family. Miss Lorraine advised my mother to 'bring them home'. Thus my sister took her place at Glendale and we went back to Rhodes Avenue just in time for the blitz.
