Recollections of the school in the 1920s

Laurence (Larry) Nolan was born and brought up in Manchester by Irish parents. As a youngster he was a frequent visitor to Ireland and became fascinated with all things Irish.   In Manchester he was active in Irish language, cultural and sporting circles. At about the age of 19, he changed his name to the Irish version and became known as Labhrás Ó Nualláin. In 1933, aged 21 and with his family’s blessing, he emigrated to Ireland, where he continued his studies and rose to become one of Ireland’s leading economists and academics. He became a self-taught academic and eventually became a very popular and inspirational Professor of Economics at University College Galway. In a highly successful academic career, he was the author of numerous books and articles and was much in demand for lectures, both at home and abroad. He was also prominent in public life in Ireland. In 2015, fifteen years after his death, his daughter, Niamh Ó Dochartaigh, edited an autobiographical book based on his extensive writings and memoirs.   Entitled MEMOIR OF AN IRISH ECONOMIST – Working Class Manchester to Irish Academia, the book contains a kaleidoscope view of many varied memories of sporting, social, political and academic happenings in Ireland and England spanning over seventy years of the twentieth century. It deals in detail with her father’s life and times in Manchester in the 1920s and ‘30s. It also includes numerous references to his old school, St Gregory’s, and gives an interesting account of life at the school from the point of view of a pupil who was among its first intake in 1923. Blessed with a photographic memory, Larry recalled how his schooldays in Manchester left him with pleasant memories. In fact, his time and experiences in the city – at a time of economic, social and political troubles – had a profound influence on him for the rest of his life. He writes:

“When my father [Michael Nolan] emigrated to England in the early 1900s he worked for a period in Leeds, where he joined the Labour Party. From Leeds he moved to Manchester and he met my mother, then Johanna Hyde, and they were married at St Aloysius’ Catholic Church in Ardwick. They came to live at 7 Deanery Street in Chorlton-on-Medlock where I was born in May 1912, their first child, followed by my brother John (known as Jack or Jackie) and then by my sister Marcella.

Ardwick, or Chorlton-on-Medlock, was not a run-down working-class area like the original Irish quarter of Miles Platting, or some of the areas between the twin cities of Manchester and Salford. Deanery Street was a short street with about twenty two-storied red-brick houses on each side, facing each other across a cobbled roadway, with two or three gas-lamp standards. Those houses were built in the late 1880s or 1890s and were in reasonably good condition, each with a tiny garden in which most householders cultivated a low privet hedge or a few flowers.

I was the one deputed to keep our patch in good order, with cuttings of plants, some of them collected in Ballinacloon [Ireland]. Most of the flowers succumbed to the sooty atmosphere that prevailed over our district. Each house had upstairs rooms, one large front bedroom and two middling-sized bedrooms at the rear. On the ground floor there was a front room, known as the parlour, and to the rear, a living room and a kitchen with a gas stove. A small yard at the back of the house contained the outside flush toilet. The back of the house looked out on the backs of the houses on the next street.

In between there was a space of ground running the full distance of the terrace, just wide enough to constitute our playground and large enough in which to kick a football or play cricket, according to the season. A passageway at each end gave access to the neighbouring streets, Polygon Avenue and Wilson Street, which ran at right-angles to Deanery Street and joined the collection of large three-storied terraced houses on the main road, the Stockport Road.

My father was a railway worker and worked as a goods checker in the central goods marshalling yard in Ancoats, working day and night shifts for a wage that was far from princely; but it was regular and permanent if your health stood up to it. He was seldom sick and his robust constitution may be attributed, I feel sure, to his healthy upbringing in that quiet, unpolluted and peaceful little-known corner of the Irish Midland counties, Multyfarnham. There was at least one advantage involved in working for the railway which was greatly to our benefit as children. Railway workers were entitled to three or four passes for free travel on rail and sea, even between England and Ireland. Were it not for this it is most unlikely that any of us would have been able to go to Ireland as often as we did. My own life could have been quite different.

My father was a quietly spoken man, relaxed and easy-tempered. I rarely heard him raise his voice in anger and we were never struck or beaten as children. On our walks in the countryside in the nearby suburbs of Withington or Northenden, on the banks of the river Mersey, he would comment on the soil, whether or not it was good for growth of grass or crops and the difference between poisonous toadstools and mushrooms.

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I have pleasant memories of my schooldays in Manchester. The nearest Infants school for me was in the parish of the Holy Name. From there I went to the Holy Name Catholic elementary school, also within easy walking distance of our house. My third school was the St Gregory’s Catholic Boys High School in the parish of St Aloysius, where the parish priest was Father Roche, a Wexford man.

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I was still attending the Burlington Street primary school when the opportunity to go on to second-level education presented itself to me and to other boys like me, whose parents could not afford to pay the fees at the very few Catholic Secondary schools in operation in Manchester at that time. One was St Bede’s College, in Whalley Range, which was a middle-class district of Manchester. There was also Xaverian College. So far as Catholic boys were concerned, they could, and were, going to non-fee-paying denominational secondary schools or, in a small number of cases, they obtained scholarships, by examination, to Manchester Grammar School. That situation was a matter of concern for Catholic parents and particularly the Catholic diocesan authorities in the Manchester and Salford districts; so much so that Dr Casartelli, the Catholic Bishop for the diocese of Salford, which took in the Manchester city area, authorised the establishment of a non-fee-paying Catholic secondary level school, to be named St Gregory’s Catholic High School for Boys [Central School].

Admittance to the school would be limited to those who would obtain a certain standard by examination. They would be awarded scholarships for a four-year period. I had just reached the minimum age of eleven years and my parents decided that I should sit the examination.

Most of the Irish parents of the diocese decided that their children should take advantage of securing a secondary school education, especially in a Catholic school. This became evident when the school assembled in the autumn of 1923. Practically all the Irish parents of our acquaintance opted to send their children for an extended period of schooling at secondary level, up to the age of fifteen or sixteen. There was also a large response from the Italian parents. I know that our non-Irish neighbours were surprised to learn that my parents and other Irish parents were prepared to let their children carry on at school until that age, instead of getting them out to work. Irish parents, especially those from rural areas of Ireland, appreciated better than their English neighbours the value of an extended period at secondary level and were prepared to make sacrifices, in the shape of wages foregone, in doing so. Along with the children of other Irish parents we knew of, I passed the admission examination and entered St Gregory’s, as did my brother Jack after me. My sister also took the examination some years later and went to a nearby convent secondary school at the age of twelve. Both of them carried on at school until they were sixteen. St Gregory’s was housed in a former Industrial School building, refurbished and altered to meet less disciplinary purposes. It was a very extensive three-storey red-brick building, facing a small public park, the Ardwick Green, complete with flower-beds, shrubbery, large trees, two duck ponds and spacious pathways, very pleasant for old-age pensioners and young children alike. A large playground provided ample space for four hundred boys and the occasional kick-about football game.

The first entrants to the school were drawn from many parts of the Salford diocese and a large number of them had several miles to travel to school. Our house was located about ten minutes’ walk from St Gregory’s. After some months one became aware that the Irish community was well-represented, considering all the O’s and Mac’s one came across, whether in class or at the playtime break in the schoolyard. A number of aspects of the school made a lasting impression on me. I became aware of the existence of other ethnic groups that were living in Manchester and district. As I progressed through my four-year period at the school, I felt nothing strange or unusual at the ethnic composition of my classmates. Their family background was deducible from their surnames. For instance, one knew that surnames such as Bassinetti, Rocca, Quiligotti and Lorenzelli were of Italian origin. Anyway, they looked Italian to me, with their black or dark-brown hair, their sallow complexion and dark brown eyes. I think that other boys in the class must have been struck by our surnames and it became a subject of some discussion between us. The boy that had the unusual surname of Ragalski, informed us that he was Polish. MacIntire claimed to be of Scottish origin. Anderson was Danish. Ludvigsan was Lithuanian. It was no surprise to hear that Taylor and Richardson acknowledged to being English. And there was no mistaking the origin of the black boy in the class who bore the name Otis Franklin, when he informed us that he was from Nigeria, or probably his parents were Nigerian.

The subjects provided by St Gregory’s were English, Mathematics, French, Science, Geography, English History, Art and Biblical History. Physical Education was also provided under a qualified Gym-master in the spacious and reasonably-equipped Gymnasium, which had also served the boys of the former Industrial School. The practical nature of the instruction of those boys was reflected by the existence of a carpentry workshop under the direction of a woodwork instructor. 

The school was divided into four houses: Arrowsmith, Barlow, Campion and Whitaker. The teachers were all university graduates, specialists in their own field, and presumably Catholics. [Only some, in fact, were university graduates.] The headmaster, a serious-looking man, was Mr Holmes, concerned with discipline in the school and rarely allowed himself to smile, although sometimes he laughed at his own jokes whenever he came to talk to a class. I don’t think that he was a bad class of a man. Altogether the teachers were quite competent and well-disposed to their charges. The music teacher was Mr O’Connor, an Irishman from County Roscommon, a ruddy long-faced man, serious-looking but agreeable. To my satisfaction, he taught us not only English songs but Scottish, Irish and Welsh songs. Moore’s melodies were his favourites and the only musical instrument he used was a tuning-fork. I can recall the class of thirty boys belting out such songs as The Minstrel Boy, The Meeting of the Waters, The British Grenadiers, Shenandoah, Clare’s Dragoons, The Mountains of Mourne and The West’s Awake. They were some of the songs he taught us, making use of a primer named The British Song Book.

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Mr Stafford, who was from County Wexford, taught Mathematics. He brought a novel interest to school activities when he introduced cross-country running on Saturday mornings during the winter months. Fortunately, there was still open countryside not too far away on the outskirts of the city, in a district known as Moston. I was thirteen years old at the time and I took part regularly, along with some twenty boys from the school, in these runs, in which the master took the lead. (After leaving school I continued to engage in that form of sport over a long period of years, in Manchester, Dublin and Sligo.) It was Mr Stafford who organised the school’s first annual sports day, held in the grounds of the Manchester Athletic Club in a suburb aptly named Fallowfield. On that occasion (possibly 1926), I won the quarter-mile, from scratch in 60 seconds! The following year I won the mile, from scratch in five minutes. Not spectacular, I admit, but promising.

Soccer and cricket were the school outdoor activities, carried out in the nearby public parks and recreation grounds. Inter-house teams were selected and the school took part in inter-school league games. In the early summer months, each class in turn was brought to one of the nearby parks for a couple of hours of an afternoon to play cricket, a game which I never took to on account of what I felt was its slow tempo, apart from the vigour necessarily involved in a fast run-up when one was detailed to perform as a bowler.

A chaplain was attached to the school and Mass was held in the school hall on Saints’ days. Each morning, beginning at nine o’clock, an hour was given over to the reading of biblical history. Physical punishment was not over-emphasised as part of the school policy and I did not harbour any grudges on that score, although I received my share of six cuts with the cane as I was averse to doing homework. Far worse to me than the caning, was the penalty for lack of attention in class which involved writing out so many lines to be handed in the next day, and worse again, the detention punishment of being held back in the main hall for possibly half an hour after the school day had finished. But there was one occasion, and only one, in my four years in the school, that really shocked all the boys.

The event was the public caning of a boy by the headmaster, before the whole school, on the stage in the assembly hall. There were not too many strokes of the cane on the boy’s posterior, perhaps half a dozen or maybe ten strokes, while he was stretched over a stool and held down by another master. Very likely the punishment was done publicly to demonstrate to the rest of the school what could befall any boy that perpetrated a misdemeanour.  We were not given any reason for the punishment, but the headmaster did say to the assembled school that the boy had been punished for misbehaviour. It was not so much the actual caning that disturbed me, and I could also sense the feelings of other boys near to me, but the humiliation involved for the boy concerned. The entire proceedings, and our silence, hung like a cloud over us all. Such an event did not take place again during the remainder of my time in the school. I think that even the masters present were disturbed by the proceedings.

In the area of academic renown, I only once rose to the heights when, to the consternation of my teacher and the disbelief of my classmates, I came top of the class of forty boys in French at the end-of-year examination. The main and probable reason for my success in French was that I was sitting in the front row of the class and was therefore in a position to read the blackboard. Another factor could be that I liked doing French! I did not have much trouble with the rest of the curriculum, except in the case of Maths, where I could not see what the teacher was writing on the blackboard, due to my position in the back rows. In short, there was something amiss with regard to my eyesight. That only came to light when I was called before the school medical services to undergo an examination to check my fitness, as a juvenile, to engage in part-time employment on a newspaper round for a friend. I was found to be short-sighted and should get spectacles. I carried out my newspaper delivery job for one month, delivering the morning paper before going to school and followed with the evening papers on my return home from school. I duly received my half-crown – two shillings and sixpence per week – for the four weeks, when I handed back the round to my friend. But I did not get the spectacles until several years later.

Towards the end of my four years at St Gregory’s, I found myself, along with a small group of others, deemed not to be of much academic potential and was changed over from French and perhaps Maths to one half day per week in the school carpentry workshop, much to my great satisfaction. It was in keeping with my inclination to become a carpenter. I did not learn, until later years, that to have become a carpenter would have been in line with one branch of my mother’s family, the Ahers, who for seven generations had been carpenters, from the late 1790s and probably before that, up to recent years. A few years after leaving school and taking up employment, I tried to become an apprentice carpenter but was not accepted by the trade-union as I was by then, at the age of 17, too old to begin the seven-year apprenticeship.

During my years at St Gregory’s, my contemporaries and I were not conscious of such matters as third-level examinations leading to scholarships to third-level institutions. Neither did we hear of such a matter as a matriculation examination. Consequently, there was much wonder and excitement when the word got round that one of our classmates, by name Henry, whose parents came from County Roscommon, had passed the matriculation and had been awarded a scholarship to Southampton University college. Later, a few years after leaving school, I heard of a few other former pupils of our school who had been called to what was described as teacher-training college.

When I did leave school soon after reaching the age of 15 years, I had achieved no academic distinction, but I did acquire a modicum of knowledge of French, a liking for Geography and History, albeit English History, an interest in plays from the English course and a strong interest in reading, which had been inculcated in me during our once-weekly afternoon in class described as ‘silent reading’, of books supplied from the school library. To which, I might add, two medals from winning in the annual sports!

For a year or two, I continued to maintain links with the school through the newly established Old Boys’ Association, which organised Saturday evening dances in the school assembly hall and occasional concerts for former pupils and their friends. More importantly, for me at least, they organised walks or rambles, on Sundays, on the nearby moors of the Pennines and hills in the Peak District of Derbyshire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. Rambling, as it was so named, was a favourite recreation for hundreds of people, young and old, that were organised in Rambling Clubs; some by the churches, others by workers in the factories, offices and shops in the city and in the neighbouring small towns. London Road Railway Station came alive early on Sunday mornings as hundreds of these ramblers set off by train to the starting point for the day’s walk, to small villages such as Poynton, Edale, Glossop or Hayfield. The usual return fare was one shilling. During the summer months, these hikes became, for many, weekend camping trips.”

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