Bishop Ullathorne Schools (girls, boys and grammar school)

Was it Mr Igoe???

Mentioned a while ago on this thread, my mum went to Ullathorne in the 50's. She often mentions Mrs Van Hee as she is buried near to my dad at Canley.

Helen, you must have been at Ullathorne at about the same time as me - '60 to '65. I recognized some of the last names so they might have been siblings of my pals. My last name was Mainwaring but now I have a Polish surname thanks to my husband's father. My relative, Ann Hastings, was there a few years before me and several Hastings followed after, both in the boys and girls schools. I had to bus it across town from Coundon so I lost touch with all but a few people. The boater was a pain as it often got sat on in the bus rush and didn't do well in the rain. I was thinking this week of the influx of kids we had a Christ the King in the late 50's/early 60's coming from Latvia and Lithuania after the uprisings there. They would come to school in their beautiful national costumes on special days.

Mr and Mrs Igoe were both at Christ the King.

Mrs Van Hee taught us history and I loved her classes. I also like, for some reason, Mrs Ghent as she called me La Belle Dame Sans Merci!

Over on the Bishop Ullathorne FB page, my good friend Nick Pilley posted these pics of some of the theatrical/musical productions at the Boys Grammar from the years we were there - I am sure he will not mind me sharing them here. Here are 3 that include my name plus 1 more - as some may remember, being an all boys school the younger boys whose voices had not yet broken had to play the girls parts - embarrassed, not us! I was in year 1 in 1964 (Patience), year 2 in 65 (Iolanthe), and have no memory whatsoever of subsequent productions that I was clearly in! 1964: "Patience" 1965: "Iolanthe" 1966: 2 plays 1967: 2 plays

Helen - I was friends with Delia Vincent and Margaret Cann, here's a picture of them from about 1971-2 in the chemistry lab of the 'Grammar' school. I think Margaret married Delia's brother John and Delia went into nursing but I more or less left Cov in '72 and lost contact.

I also knew Tony Rees. He was friends with Nick Pilley whom I was in a folk band with (me, Jimmy Holland, Mick Street and Nick) called Aquitaine. I bumped in to Tony in the Grafton Arms near Warren Street in London about 1984. We had a surreal conversation about where we came from, not recognising each other. Tony was a year above. The Tony I remembered had specs, no beard and long hair, nothing like the photo below.

Hi John Quinn! Unfortunately I have no recollection of that conversation (apologies for that) but yes, that is me in the picture, with my performing partner of the time, Caroline Frost (since unfortunately deceased); the "Grafton Arms" in London was the local to where I worked at the time, and we had a regular bar gig there. Subsequently I moved to Australia in 1986 and remain involved with music (in a fairly low key way) here as well as working 1986-2014, now retired but still enjoying life.

Still performing 40 years on (well, give or take a year!) - thanks to John Penhallow for the pic!

That's lovely. Thank you!

I'm still performing a bit, we've got a charity festival coming up in a few weeks time. I spend more time playing piano these days, so why do we have so many guitars in the house? I seem to recall that we went to a folk club somewhere in South London and you had me playing bass on 'I shot the Sheriff'. I was in a rock and roll band for a while b4 I moved to Reading and went back to Folk music, which is where I met the wife I spend a lot of time grandparenting now, we've got a three year old. Glad to know you're still OK. I've never been back to Ullathorne and my last relative in Coventry died a couple of years ago, so the nearest we get is to visit my cousin in Leamington. I gather Coventry is changed out of all recognition anyway. Oh well...

Mentioning "Aquitaine" prompts me to add these John

Hi njap53, welcome to the forum Thanks for sharing the pictures

Where on Earth did you get those from? I'm assuming it's Nick???