Past Pupils

Tony Burton (1961)

I was saddened to read that the White Hart Lane school had been torn down and replaced with a housing estate! I was there when the extension was built to house the sixth form, the woodworking and metalworking workshops, the new cafeteria (if that's what it was called - we had school cooked chips for the first time – instead of dehydrated mashed potatoes), I think there were also new science labs upstairs.

Since Woodworking was one of my favorite subjects (still is a favorite hobby) I helped move the woodworking stuff (and some of the metalworking stuff) from the old workshop to the two new workshops.

I last visited the school around 1987, none of my old teachers were there at the time, not surprising I suppose. I believe I left the school in 1961, from the upper 6th, I think John Rimington left at the same time, he was in the same class as me. John was the first student in my year to own a car.

I was in Morley and for a time I belonged to the army cadet force organized by Bill Tunley ("No Teddy suits Grove!") a stern warning to on of the senior students. I was part of MacBeth in Modern Day Dress and later, Laburnham Grove, working backstage with sound effects and lighting.

Recently, I've thought about a reunion but I may have left that idea too long. It's difficult to remember all the names especially the first names because, in my day, everyone was called by their family name rather than their given name.

I remember: Rodney (Pops) Dunleavy, Terry Gostling, Tim Wilson from Edmonton, Brian Anderson, Bill Clapham ( I haven't seen Bill for a while, he was working at Martlesham Heath for the Post Office/Telephone company but that's now been replaced by something else) and Roger Cookson from Tottenham. Galsworthy, Pearson, Fred Axtell from Enfield (His father worked at the Enfield rolling mills or small arms factory, something like that.) Terry Scuse, Mick Ward and myself were from Wood Green, we'd ride together on the bus. Harrow, Digby (Sr), Digby (Jr), Rosenbaum, Hawkins, Goodenough, and Adrian Love.

Some of those things are burnt into my memory even 40 years later.

I moved to California in 1981 so I'm a bit out of touch with TGS, I visited the old school twice after I'd left, first time spent some time with Mr Sayer, second time, showed an American friend around the school, we were both installing some computer equipment at Cockfosters.

It was on the second visit that I saw the school without a bell tower, loft (where the props for the plays were prepared) and from where you could gain access to the crawl space over the assembly hall.

I moved again to Virginia in 2002 to work for an electric motor start-up company, currently employed at the United States Postal Service, supervising the installation of automation equipment at sorting offices all over the US.