Young at Heart: Hugh Gallagher reminisces on a trip back to his primary school in Derry

I went back to school the other day. Down memory lane to a happy time, the days of my boyhood. Short trousers, long socks and round wire prescription glasses. Buying wine gums and aniseed balls from Harley's shop in Helen Street; slaking my thirst with a drink from the Lion's Head; walking the ledge around the outer wall of the school; getting thrown out of the choir because 'ye canny sing', these are just some of the incidents that came flooding back. Revisiting Rosemount Primary school lifted my soul. Happy days indeed!
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There was a bit of a mix-up when I started school in 1954 at the age of five. At first I was packed off to Rosemount. Then I was removed and sent to the newly opened Holy Child School in Creggan to make up the numbers. After spending a year there it was back to Rosemount.

I remember the entrance we used to the school. Up the laneway in the middle of Marlborough Road each day we went. Kieran McGonagle lived across the street from the lane and yet somehow he managed to be late. Usually he would emerge from his house to meet us, still pulling on his jacket and chomping on a piece of toast. In wintertime we used to heat our hands against a certain spot on the side wall of the house on the left of the laneway. Then the clanging bell drew us onwards. But first we made our way to the Lion's Head fountain at the rear wall of the school. We called it the front of course, coming down from Creggan.

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The old part of the school hasn't changed a lot, except that the main corridor seems a lot shorter. Maybe it's my big feet! But the glass panelled heavy doors are still there as are the partitions down the centre of each room. And those ancient looking radiators remain.

Hugh Gallagher as a boy in more recent times.Hugh Gallagher as a boy in more recent times.
Hugh Gallagher as a boy in more recent times.

The Lion's Head is long gone though. Many's the cool drink I had from that source on a warm summer's day in years gone by. After a game of football in the yard or a relay race on sports day I tried to drink it dry.

I feel old now looking at all the bright young boys and girls around me. When I attended Rosemount there were no girls there, they had their own school. Rosemount was strictly boys only. My seven sisters attended the girls' primary school on the other side of Creggan Hill.

Outside a classroom I stop and stare. This was where 'wee Hutton' taught. People called him 'Snowball' but not me. I recall his throaty voice and his spelling tests on Fridays. Twenty words we had to spell. Under six correct and you got 'the cane'. I liked English and managed to get enough right. The other subjects I took an interest in were Geography, Art (we called it drawing), and sport of any kind. There was no such thing as P.E. then but every now and then we were let loose in the playground and surrounding fields and just left to our own devices. Mr Hutton sold the 'Far East' and 'The Africa', two religious magazines. Their content escapes me now but I remember opening up the bundles and helping to write the names of those to receive them on the top right hand corner. The smell of new print and the sight and feel of glossy paper lingers still.

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Looking through the glass door it's hard for me to imagine a class of up to 50 pupils sitting there. Now it's only 30 or so. They get a ten minute break in the morning and afternoon a young boy told me. In my day we got milk then, in 1/3 pint bottles with a straw. I dreaded getting a bottle with thick cream on top.

The Rosemount School building.The Rosemount School building.
The Rosemount School building.

And desks are different too, they're more like tables, three or four to each. We had a smaller more sturdy desk with a flip-up seat and top and an ink-well. Aah - I remember them still! I'll say one thing for the old pens we used, with their steel nibs and wooden handles; they learnt you to be neat and tidy. Somehow I can't picture a child of today dipping his or her pen into a pot of ink every few seconds when writing a composition or story. I can still see wee Hutton's face as he told me once to 'start that again, boy' after a blot of blue ink appeared in the middle of my exercise book. No amount of pink blotting paper could mop it up. Practising to write with a scraping nib was penance.

I walked on down until I came to where Mr Friel's class would have been. A more gentle man I can't recall. In an age of instant corporal punishment he didn't believe in administering the 'cane'. Persuasion and reward was his chosen route. If you got your spelling right in his test he would sometimes send you to the nearby sweet shop with a thrupenny bit to buy a big bag of gums.

Sweets meant one thing - a visit to Harley's Shop in Helen Street. It was but a short distance down the steps to that haven of all things sugary. And what a selection there was. Packets of aniseed balls; clove rock; humbugs; bon-bons; mint imperials; liquorice pipes; penny dainties; chocolate logs; whoppers; fizz; blackjacks; toffee bars; nougat; wine gums and midget gems lay before you. I remember myself and Manus Doherty making friends with someone for the simple reason that he always had 'dough' (money) and liked to spend it freely. We helped him do that of course - no bother to us!

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Down Helen Street and up Creggan Hill was also the direction we took when going to the canteen which was at the bottom of Westway. We were marched there in single file. Most of the people in our school got their dinner free in those days. Indeed if someone had to pay they were considered to be rich. Fish and chips on a Friday was my favourite meal. I wouldn't touch it if there was white sauce anywhere near the plate though. I was a 'server' in the canteen for a while. I volunteered for the job when I discovered that you got extra grub, particularly desserts. Alas, it didn't last! I was sacked for spilling soup over a certain person's lap. I pleaded that it was an accident, that the soup wasn't even warm but I wasn't believed (correct decision!) The dinner lady had overheard him calling me 'specky four eyes' and my goose was cooked. No more perks for me!

A young Hugh Gallagher.A young Hugh Gallagher.
A young Hugh Gallagher.

Sometimes after the canteen we did not have to return to school in lines. We went by way of 'the field' which dipped down from where St Joseph's Secondary School is now to the Rosemount Primary. Many's a war took place there when the area was snow covered. Rosemount shirt factory girls returning to work after their lunch break were a favourite target for our snowballs. If the girls caught you they rolled you in the snow. Huge slides were also made if the snow froze over for any length of time. In summertime we sunbathed on the slope. In those fields the whole school turned out in classes one day to watch an eclipse of the sun! It was an eerie experience.

The visit of the nurse to our school caused great excitement. She appeared unannounced in classrooms. I remember Nurse Pitts. We had a rhyme about her which went - Nurse Pitts takes fits, when she sees nits. As I recall she was a stern faced woman with her hair in a bun. She entered our classroom and we all lined up to be examined. It was our head she was interested in, she said. Not our brains though, just the hair and the scalp. She pulled, tugged and parted clumps of hair. She selected bits of hair to test with her stick, which was the same size as an ice-pop stick. It acted like a magnet I suppose. Thus did she pick out any little foreigners roaming around unmolested in our innocent domes. If she found anything the whole class or even the entire school got a dose of stuff called 'Solio' and scalps were red raw for weeks afterward due to the effects of fine-combing. If you were seen scratching your head you were subjected to this ordeal; indeed my mother had a steel fine comb!

We travelled down Helen Street too when we were going to Confession (once a month sometimes) or to the Forty Hours Adoration or to the October Devotions in St Eugene's Cathedral. I remember I had a particular dread of making my Confirmation. I had learned my Catechism alright but I was terrified of being picked out of the crowd by Bishop Farren to be questioned in matters of Faith at the Altar. I would have frozen! This nightmare was all too real for some pupils. Come the big day I tried to hide behind my friends so that the Bishop's eye would not fall on me. Two boys were called up and their fate was the basis of several rumours. If he had called me and I had failed to answer I would have been forced to sell my new suit and emigrate I feared. Imagine going home in your best finery after such an ordeal.

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Religion leads me to the school choir and Master Giles Doherty. I joined and bluffed my way for several months. Being in the choir meant doing less homework and that was fine by me. We practised in the corrugated huts which served as classrooms. They were at the side of the main school building. Instead of singing in unison I hummed along, almost silently. One day Giles Doherty called out, 'I want to see your mouths forming the words, boys. That means you, Gallagher!' That was my undoing. I then made the mistake of actually trying to sing.

The ledge at Rosemount School.The ledge at Rosemount School.
The ledge at Rosemount School.

'Stop! Stop! Someone's out of tune here,' shouted Master Doherty, as we sang Sweet Bonny Boat. 'Stop! Stop!' he cried.

With that he tested us individually. Before he came to each of us he pranged his tuning fork on the desk and asked us to sing two notes 'La. La.' I was third in line beside Manus Doherty. 'La. La.' I bellowed.

'Out, out,' he said. 'Out...out. You can't sing!'

When I left the hut I had a quick go at 'walking the ledge'. This was the term we used to describe a two inch angled ledge about two feet six inches above the ground. This ran right around the school building. To us it was the equivalent of walking a tightrope in a circus. The idea was to hop up onto the ledge and try to walk along it. You could use the window sills and corners to steady yourself as you clung to the building. The most difficult section was around the headmaster, Mr Duffy's office because you had to duck down in case he saw you. I only got half way one day when I spotted Mr Gillen coming. I scarpered quickly.

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It's been over 60 years since I last set foot in 'the Rosemount'. I wrote short stories after I left there and when I look back at all those compositions I penned all those years ago I think that maybe that's where the writing bug and my style was formed. To me, Rosemount was an extension of my home life. It was a pleasant experience being there for six years or so. It was a place where problems didn't appear to exist. The real world seemed to stay outside the front gates.

As I was leaving the school a young boy asked 'Are you really, really old, Mister?'

'Naw,' I replied. 'I'm young at heart!' I smiled.