WILFRID Widdows - another old boy of Worcester's Stanley Road School - has sent some personal recollections to be included in the Millennium Book being compiled on the 85-year life-span of the school.

In his notes, posted to head teacher Barbara Dunn, Wilfrid of Dovecote Road, Droitwich, recalls:

"My family came to Worcester from South Wales in 1920, and I was a pupil at Stanley Road School from then until September 1925. I confirm reports of the severe discipline. I was once caned by the headmaster, "Captain" Cuthbert Henry Cook, and my hand was sore for a good six months afterwards!

"But there was another side to him. In 1925, he decided to give personal coaching to Bernard Croad and myself to prepare us for the entrance examination to the Worcester Junior Technical School. He gave up a tremendous amount of his personal time in this effort and proved a very capable and patient teacher.

"In instilling the basics of mathematics and English into our thick heads, it can fairly be said that he 'flogged us to death!' However, it all paid off when one morning at school assembly, "Captain" Cook announced that in the entrance examinations for the Tech, of the 30 or so taking part, "Widdows had finished top and Croad third".

"So we both gained scholarships, and the assembly was instructed to give us a good clap.

"In 1924, 'Captain' Cook and George Leek, who became the school's next head, took a number of us to the Wembley Exhibition and on a tour of London. George was a wonderful teacher though I never understood why he thought football and cricket came under the heading of 'religious instruction'. "

Wilfrid Widdows went on to 50 years' service with Heenan & Froude and its successor company, Redman Heenan, while the late Bernard Croad was to spend many years of his working life with Metal Box at Worcester.

Since my features earlier this year on the recollections of many Stanley Road old boys, I have also had a call from Derek Martin of Oadby, Leicestershire.

He attended the school in the 1940s with his brother Anthony, who still lives in the Rainbow Hill area of Worcester.

One of the teachers was Miss Agnes Nugent, and among Derek's enduring memories is going with school groups to pick potatoes on a Nugent family farm at Powick.

"It must have been as part of the war effort," he recalls.

Derek was also sent in to Worcester on shopping trips for teacher Miss Moffat and, more significantly, was sometimes despatched by head teacher George Leek to collect new canes from a Worcester shop.

As most old boys have testified, teachers at Stanley Road in those times used canes regularly and painfully across the hands of pupils.