At the other end of the room Master Hannon taught the fifth, sixth and seventh classes. In the second room Mrs Hannon had the third and fourth classes.  Each class had few pupils, reflecting the size of the rural community.  There were probably no more than 70 pupils in the whole school.

There was a bare front yard bounded by laurel bushes through which the boys chased each other when not kicking a pug about. The sloping back yard was divided down the middle by a high wall, dividing the boys from the girls. The facilities were primitive with the dark, doorless and waterless toilets discharging directly into a drain in the field behind. It was a thoroughly unpleasant place and needless to say was avoided as much as possible.

It was very cold in winter. Heating was provided by open fires at each end of the room, kindled daily from October to April.  During the spring jackdaws filled the chimneys with twigs and bracken as support for their nests.  This had to be removed before the winter fires could be lit.  It never seems to have occurred to anyone to fit covers to the chimneys to prevent this.

Discipline in the school was enforced by corporal punishment. Mrs Hannon never used the cane but her husband was an enthusiastic exponent. Someone stole it and in its place he started to use a foot long section of rubber hose - about an inch thick, ribbed lengthways. This had a heavy hard action on the hand, leaving it numb. In its turn this was also stolen, leading to him using a length of flexible red piping, about half an inch thick. This had the merit, from his point of view, of wrapping itself round the hand; administering punishment on both sides at once.  We would have been better off with the cane.

When the National Health Service was introduced in 1948 we started to get free school milk. This came in third-of-a-pint bottles, sealed at the neck by a waxed disk which could be extracted by popping a central core. These disks were later used as the basis for raffia work, making baskets etc.  In wintertime the milk would be frozen in the bottles, causing expansion which popped the disks. We had to heat them by the open fire.

My sister, Kathleen had a chronic condition, which left her in some pain, and she was frequently off school as a result. She was just a year younger than I was. We were great pals and I was very protective towards her. On one occasion, after she had been off school for some weeks, she failed to answer some question put to her by Master Hannon and he called her out to be caned.  He was a noted caner who never "pulled his punches" and I knew that she would be hurt so I objected, pointing out that she was delicate and that she should not be punished.

This so infuriated him that he gave me a hammering instead.  I gave him no satisfaction, never flinching from the assault, though truth to tell I was in considerable discomfort.