School Meals

As was pointed out in the 1949 HMI report, only a fraction of the pupils availed themselves of the meals served at school. For some years following the end of the war, rationing of certain basic foods was still in place and dinners at St Gregory’s were rarely hot and were often unappetising and unappealing. Meals were cooked earlier in the morning at one of Manchester’s central kitchens (probably in Openshaw) and delivered to the school by van. The van parked on Ardwick Green North from where the meals were carried in aluminium containers up the outside steps, through the main entrance doors, past the headmaster’s office and then to a lift (‘dumb waiter’) which ultimately led to the dining room on the second floor. It is also possible that food was carried up the stairs on occasions.  Boys would sometimes pester the delivery men to find out what there was to eat that day. On the rare occasions when the delivery van arrived late there would be a ‘knock-on” effect with afternoon lessons starting a little later.

Mrs Richardson, the secretary, visited each class in the morning selling dinner-tickets and giving out free tickets. Access for the boys to the dining-room was from the schoolyard, near the tuck shop. Boys queued up on the three levels of the rickety stairs. Some would fight to get there first; others would hang back and ask the early diners what was for dinner and then decide whether to save their ticket for another day or sell it and go for chips off-site. Some boys tried to go in last hoping there would be ‘left-overs’ or ‘seconds’ and this occasionally resulted in acts of bullying or fights.

This being the era of Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays, fish was usually prepared on those days. One pupil described the fish as “the most revolting grey matter sloshing around a tin of oily, dark liquid”. However, the best part of the school dinner appeared to be the ‘sweets’, particularly the jam roly poly.

There were no ‘sittings’ as such and boys sat in a different place each day. The system was voluntarily supervised by a few teachers, a practice that had been in place since 1927 when dinners were introduced. There was an established system and the fact that there was a teacher-presence was all that was needed. Discipline was well understood and readily administered. A small number of dinner ladies served the food and cleaned up afterwards.  The new first-years would be introduced to the system in their first week in September. Thereafter, the numbers would steadily decline.

Such was the poor quality of dinners that on one occasion, in 1954, Mr Rocca made the following note: “Owing to the unsatisfactory amount of food being sent [to the school] for dinners I am going in person to the Central Kitchen this afternoon.”

In 1953, the price of a school meal increased from 7d to 9d and led to a further decline in the school’s uptake of meals. In 1957, the Treasury wanted to charge the full market price of a school meal, which was 1s 9d. However, Mr Quinton Hogg, Minister of Education, only raised the price from 10d to 1 shilling, a figure which remained stable until 1968, when it was increased to 1s 6d.

Before 1960, school dinners, the dining-room, the facilities and the system were generally very poor. But that’s how it was. The boys knew no different.

By and large sandwiches were not usually taken to school. Those boys that did bring their own food probably had plain bread or jam butties and ate them most likely in the ground-floor cloakroom or in the playground rather than in the dining-room. Dinah Wilson sometimes sold pies from her kitchen. As for the rest, the chip shop on Stockport Road was a popular venue and bread buns and rolls could also be purchased nearby. Further up the road was “Sivori’s”, which was a sort of café, chip shop and ice-cream parlour. Peter Sivori, of course, was a pupil at the school. Relatively few pupils lived nearby and very few went home for dinner.

One of Mr Rocca’s main aims was to improve school meals. To this end, he spent much time and effort in discussions with planners, architects, inspectors and governors to provide the best possible facilities in the plans being drawn up for the school’s extensions. 

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