REGARDING the demolition of the old Accrington Grammar School (LET, January 28), it would appear from the many letters you have published there are many fond memories of the old school.

Living in Burnley, my father took me to school on my first day in 1934, arriving as the pupils were streaming into morning assembly and I must confess that it was rather overpowering to a young boy.

Meeting Miss Holden, the school secretary, who, I later found, seemed to know the names of all the present and many of the past pupils, soon put me at my ease.

After a few words of greeting from Dr Edkins, I was taken down to Form Lower 4A and introduced to the teacher.

Somehow, I do not think that Dr Edkins' staff would have addressed him by his christian name as he presented himself as a very autocratic figure and I personally treated him with the greatest of respect.

Louis Portno, also mentioned by others was quite a character. He would say: "Pollard, you have been doing your homework coming to school on the train again. I can see where your writing went jiggly as the train went over the Rosegrove points"!

'Daddy' Patchett, well remembered, of course, and Mr Digby who, while demonstrating the properties of boiling sulphur managed to set fire to Ken Staveley's hair and ruined my pair of new trousers.

One morning during a physics lesson, one of the boys was fooling about with a knife and managed to stab me under my shoulder blade.

Luckily, it was not a deep wound so plaster was applied and I was given the rest of the day off. I wonder what would have happened now? Banner headlines in the local papers and an inquiry set up?

Stanley Jones, a very nice man trying his best to pass on his enthusiasm regarding his love of the English language and the classics, could never understand why I failed to learn the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. My reply was that I was more interested in radio!

As time went on, many boys and girls came into school from the Burnley and Hapton area. Dr Edkins made arrangements for a school train to run from Todmorden calling at all the stations to Accrington.

I became a train prefect, not a particularly onerous task. No drugs - just the odd smoker.

The Paddock House girls used the train, all smartly attired with their mortar boards and little umbrellas.

JIM POLLARD, Woodgrove Road, Burnley.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.