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Cranberry Junior School

Dim past

Just came across the site. Left Alsager for Melbourne Australia in 1969. I'd just finished my final year at Cranberry Lane.
Alsager is another world, one I spent my childhood in and remember fondly. I remember the bells of Christ church, the copse behind Harper Crescent.
I remember the farm house that used to stand derelict as the Pikemere estate took shape around it. Walks to the locks. I remember when the quiet nights were punctuated by the clanking of a steam train in the distance. I remember when the motorway opened and the night filled forever with the distant surf of traffic. I remember them constantly testing the mortar and machine guns at Radway Green.
The winter of '63 when the pipes froze and the bath became our water supply.
Walking to Church in the morning and Sunday school in the afternoon at Wesley Place. I was just starting to hang around the newly contructed swings behind the co-op. I remember walking up to some old compound of dilapidated buildings near the station perhaps left over from the war years where they held Cub meetings for a while.
Mr Catsmeresak the schools caretaker. A great teacher in class 5, I've forgotten his name, who created a huge world of fantasy in and around the classroom that allowed our imaginations to run wild. How we never learned to spell or connect our handwritiing properly, but made up plays and stories and adventures instead. I remember that we were not allowed on to the grass at playtime. That changed when we got a new headmaster. When the school got a fish tank. Being bell monitor and window monitor. Staring out over the fields. I remember visiting the doctor to have my lip sown up. His surgery was very old fashioned andlooked out onto the very private Mere. I was back in Alsager for an evening in the Christmas of 83 and remember people singing Christmas carols door to door. Surely that still can't happen anymore. I remember when you could see the radio telescope from the new adventure playground. I got injured there by a loose plank of wood and spent a week in Stoke Hospital. I got my photo into the local paper for doing "Boob 'o Jobs because I happened to knock on the door of the papers photographer - I never wanted to leave Alsager back then because it was the centre of the world as I knew it. I think there might be many more memories lurking from those years. Yes, there was Mr Browns farm that use to be next door to the school. David Brown went to school with me for a while. So did Alan Jones, and there will be plenty of others I'll remember if I put my mind to it, but it's 1am and time to hit the sack. Bye for now.


Posted by: David Chesworth on 02 July, 2002 at 15:45:13

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