The old school yard

Today the dog and I went walking on the other side of town, up above the hillside village of Goodwick that tumbles steeply down towards the modern ferry harbour. I knew there was an old school up there but I'd never set eyes on it, because it's set well back from the road, surrounded by fields and served only by green lanes from nearby hamlets.

It must be 50 years since it was in use, extinguished in an earlier cull of small rural schools whose numbers dropped as folk left the land. I'd assumed it was converted, as so many old schools are, into a private dwelling or a community meeting hall. But no, there it still stands, empty but not much dilapidated although the briars have encroached close around.

Ysgol Henner would have offered the Three Rs to the children of the scattered farming community of Pencaer high above Fishguard Bay. "On dark, rainy mornings with gales roaring in from the sea, it called for determined parents and children to undertake journeys down soaking pot-holed lanes, in some cases up to four miles each way....The school bell officially stopped ringing at 9.15 am by which time the children were standing by the old teak desks, carved and chipped, and shiny from generations of patched elbows and corduroy bottoms." (From a book about a similar school in a village just a few miles away.)

I was carried back in memory to my own early education in a very similar rural school that lay half a mile outside a small village in Breconshire: the same windswept playground, the outside toilet block, the chimney, the high windows and (I peered through) bare boarded floor and wood panelling part way up the walls to deter scuff marks and scribbles I suppose. Not that we would have dared to stir from our creaking wooden desks with their integral inkwells, filled each day by the ink monitor.  Oh no:  "Sir" commanded complete obedience from the seniors even if the other teacher, "Miss", had a gentler manner with the juniors. There were 40 children in total, ranging in age from 4 to 11,  divided between two rooms. One had a stove around which wet coats were hung, the other  an open coal fire and you were lucky if your desk was close to it. "Sir, Sir! The cinders have dropped out again!"

Cat Stevens remembers an Old School Yard that's rather different  whereas
the Irish country singer Mick Flavin's has more in common with this one. Enjoy!