The boys and staff at MGS have returned from the summer holidays this week. Staff came back on Monday, and the new year 7s started on Tuesday. The rest of the School returned on Wednesday. This staggered start to the Michaelmas term is nothing new. This document from the 1930s shows the shape of the start of term:
Do Old Mancunians remember their first day at MGS?
Hoots from the archive 
Yes, I can remember my first day, in 1975, very clearly.
I got up at around 5.45am to walk to Stalybridge bus station to meet my Grandma, who (because mum and dad were both working) had been designated as a ‘companion at a distance’. I was to find my own way, but for that first day, she would be a shadow some yards behind, to make sure I didn’t go too wrong.
We caught the 153 from Stalybridge. This was a somewhat unique ultra-limited stop bus, making only a few stops up to Ashton, and then none at all before Manchester Piccadilly. Needless to say, everything was pitch dark in the before dawn gloom. From Piccadilly, I got the 44 to the Toast Rack, and then along Old Hall Lane and down the drive, arriving at around 8.45. My grandma peeled away at this point and went home. The next day, any travel mistakes would be mine to solve!
There were no ‘taster’ days, or introductory days – just a normal school day, but with an amended start.
Prefects were on hand to show all new first years (never called Year 7 in those days) to the lecture theatre, most of us never having been there before. We gathered, all shrill voiced, but pale with anxiety. A few knew a few. Some had acquaintances. Most knew no one.
Mr Laycock bounded on to the stage and gave words of encouragement and motivation. He was intense – this was nothing like my single class junior school in Ashton. He read out the forms and the ones we had been assigned – 1B under Wynter, in room B, 1E under Eugene Kilty in room E, 1H under Rodger Anderson in room J, 1J under Tom Jackson in room 15, 1L under Godfrey Jackson in room K, 1S under Dr Jones in room C, and 1W under Mr Little in room F. So seven form entry, and every form other than 1J with 30 students. 1J had 31, so making a year group of 211 students in all.
I was to be in 1E, under Eugene Kilty, a mathematician and accountant, active later in local politics and a lovely, dedicated and caring form master.
At the end of that assembly, we trooped out and tried to find our way to the rooms we had been assigned. Along the way, coats were to be deposited in the cages – one side of each cage for each form, under the watchful eye of Wilf, who then locked them up. With keys, cages and tiled walls, the impression to a hesitant 11-year old was rather more Strangeways than Eton!
The morning was given over to administration, in forms, led in my case by Mr Kilty. Calendars were distributed, and we completed our timetables using fountain pen (all work was in fountain pen or else would not be read). Forms remained together, including for Maths in the first year (setting was to be done for the second year based on the summer exams at the end of the first year), so every boy’s timetable was identical. Alia inter, I recall we were to have David Hutton for French, Martin Griffin for Latin, Eugene Kilty for Maths, Bryan Bass for English, Roger Hand for General Science, Richard Turk for Geography (in the lower school, boys studied Geography one year, and History the next, or vice versa).
Lessons began according to timetable after the morning break, with the long queues at refectory for milk or orange (‘contracts’j and/or the tuck shop.
I think, were it not for the expert pastoral care from Mr Kilty, I mightn’t have lasted that first month, but as you’d expect, things settled down into a routine. Getting home at 6.15 made it quite a long day, and then this thing called ‘homework’ appeared- some masters having a very tangential appreciation of what could be achieved in 20 minutes without any Internet, computing, or calculators! And each boy slowly, or more quickly, depending upon his makeup, began to find his place in that ever-changing river that flows down the drive in Rusholme early each September.
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NO,but there again it was 72 years ago!
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I did leave a comment, quite a long one, which has not appeared. Perhaps that might be why you only have 80 subscribers?
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Hi Mark, do you mean your comment on “A Letter to a Boy on Leaving School”? I have now approved the comment. I’m afraid we can’t have an unmoderated comments section because we receive a lot of spam so we need to filter them before they can be published
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Thanks for coming back to me.
No, I meant the one about the first day at MGS. I wrote a very long piece which I thought was quite nice and highlighted how much better pastoral care is now, than then. It took me about an hour to write – and said it was being moderated. But it has not appeared…
I have no objection to you deleting this short thread once everything is sorted out!
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Hi Mark – I’ve just discovered your comment – it had been incorrectly marked as spam by the system. I’ve now approved it and it should have appeared in the correct place
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Smashing.
And thanks!
It took a long while to type (on a tablet, and even now I can see Autocorrect has worked its magic on Rodger Alderson’s name.)
Hope it gives a feel for the dark and rainy 1970’s.
MGS is much more welcoming now, I feel.
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