This is a part of the school I attended from 1928 (when I was five years old) to 1933, when my family left Harringay and moved to Surrey. Memories of two teachers of that period still remain lodged in my (85-year old) noddle. Miss Clayton, who took the induction class for infants. She was a blonde ‘princess’ in my eyes, not least because she had a tall glass jar of boiled sweets on her desk. At going-home time, those who had been ‘good’ got a sweetie. Her colleague (Miss Osmonde) was a different type. Red-haired and with a very short fuse, she taught us arithmetic. A hard task-mistress, who could wield an ebony ruler to great effect. As a result, I can still recite all my tables (up to 12 times 12) to this day. Other memories of that school include Empire Day parades in the playground, and rigid observance of the two minutes silence on Armistice Days. If I can find them, I have two photos of the school in the 1928-33 period. One shows my class, most of the boys dressed in mishapen jumpers and the girls in pretty frocks, and the entire cast of the school’s 1930 (?) Christmas ‘play.

Arthur Astrop, Kenilworth

Harringay board school, between Falkland and Frobisher roads, opened in 1893. It accommodated 1,475 boys, girls, and infants in 1898, when they occupied separate floors and when there was also a temporary mixed department for 480, making it the largest of Hornsey’s schools. The school, called North Harringay from 1903, accommodated only 1,160 by 1932 and was reorganized into junior mixed and infants’ schools in 1934; senior girls were transferred, while senior boys continued to use the top floor as a secondary modern school, later absorbed into Priory Vale. In 1976 the upper floors of the board school building were occupied by North Harringay junior school, with 411 on the roll, and the ground floor and extensions by the infants’, with 258 enrolled.

Woodlands Park board school, St. Ann’s Road, opened in 1900 to accommodate 1,500 juniors and infants. It was overcrowded in 1906, with 1,678 pupils, and the number of places had been reduced to 1,457 by 1919. In 1972 separate buildings on the same site were used by junior and infants’ schools, with 490 and 310 pupils respectively.

Allison Road school opened in 1913 in premises leased from Harringay Congregational church for Tottenham infants who previously had attended schools in Hornsey. The school, which had 200 places, closed during or immediately after the Second World War.

South Harringay council school, planned by the board, opened in 1904. It consisted of a building with 600 places for junior mixed pupils and another for 300 infants, on a site between Mattison and Pemberton roads which also housed new higher elementary and special instruction schools.

After 1919 the accommodation was for only 400 juniors and 240 infants, until reorganization in 1934 created a junior mixed and infants’ school for 340, senior girls used the old higher elementary school block facing Pemberton Road.

When the senior girls moved into Hornsey grammar school in 1952, their block was occupied by some of the juniors, who shared their own building with the infants. In 1974 the infants took over the Pemberton Road block, leaving the juniors the whole of the old junior school and part of the original infants’ school. There were 339 children on the roll of the junior school in 1976 and 263 on that of the infants’ in 1975.