John Wayne | John Knifton

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by jfwknifton | June 28, 2023 · 6:17 am

Brincliffe Grammar School for Girls (2) Before and After

Having started my researches abou the Brincliffe Grammar School for Girls on Balmoral Road, I could not resist trying to find out more, and more, and more……..

Using my very sad collection of Kelly’s Directories of Nottingham, I was able to trace just a little bit of history, not so much for the Brincliffe School, but for the site where it would eventually be situated.

And so, in 1876, (the year of Custer’s Last Stand), on the corner of Balmoral Road and Forest Road, on the western side, was “Porter & Jones, boys’ school (Tudor House)”. In other words, the same building which would, one day in 1907, house Brincliffe Grammar School for Girls, had been, thirty years earlier, a private school run for profit, inside what had originally been a private house. The two partners in the business were Messrs Porter & Jones, and they had given the school the name of “Tudor House”.

Three years later, in 1879, the entry reveals that Tudor House had become a boarding and day school and that, of the original partnership of Porter & Jones, Mr Gregory Porter seemed to be the Head Honcho.

In 1881, the house, now apparently the property of Mr Gregory Porter alone, was now No 25 Balmoral Road. No 23 is still standing, the house immediately to the left of the main entrance to the High School staff car park. In 1885, the situation was exactly the same. Tudor House, and Gregory Porter, were still in business. Here’s Nos 19, 21 and 23 today, complete with original Victorian sandstone wall:

Alas, by 1891, Tudor House was no more, and the school became “a ladies’ school” for ladies. under its Headmistress, Miss Blanche Hall.

By 1894-1895, the Misses B. & K. Hall were running a boarding and day school at No 25. The house was now called “Brincliffe”. Why they had chosen this name, I do not know. Presumably, it refers to the “brink” or edge of a “cliff”, a reference perhaps to the small area of steeply sloping ground to the northwest of the Church Cemetery, overlooking the much flatter and much lower, Forest Recreation Ground.

Here is that “brink of a cliff”:

The slope is actually quite steep and, while not a cliff, it would have seemed a lot more precipitous 140 years ago because there were no trees then. The trees are quite young for trees, only around 80-100 years old. Here is a view inside the trees on a very familiar path down from the High School (and Brincliffe) :

The slope is certainly steep enough to sunbathe on. Here is a lovely Sunday afternoon with people in their Sunday best, relaxing around the long gone bandstand. See if you can solve “Where’s Walter?” and can you spot Robin Hood?

And here is the much lower flat area, which has always hosted any number of football/soccer pitches. In 1865, they had seen the birth of Nottingham Forest, nicknamed at the time, the “Garibaldi Reds”:

So, by 1894-1895, the Misses B. & K. Hall were running a boarding and day school at No 25. It was called “Brincliffe”. And now you know why!

By 1898-1899, “Brincliffe” had been acquired by the Misses Koppel & Hall. It was still No 25. In 1904, Miss Amy Koppel was running the boarding & day school on her own, the premises still with the same name and number.

In 1907, the City Council made it a Girls’ Grammar School, but from 1913 onwards it is listed as just “Notts County Secondary School, Miss Sybil Randall, head-mistress”

I have not been able to find any pictures of the girls in their green blazers and Green Berets, “à la John Wayne”. That crumpled, baggy 1950s blazer is still the only thing I’ve found:

One final detail.

The very first mention of a school on the Brincliffe site was “Porter & Jones, boys’ school (Tudor House)”. We know this already, but one thing I did find was that in 1862, a Miss Sarah Porter was running a “school” on distant Woodborough Road. In 1864 she was named as Miss Sophia Elizabeth Porter, presumably the same person (or perhaps sisters), still in an un-numbered location on Woodborough Road. Unfortunately I have no directories available for the period 1864-1876.

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Filed under History, Nottingham, Politics, The High School

Tagged as Balmoral Road, Brincliffe Grammar School for Girls, Brincliffe School, Church Cemetery, Directory of Nottingham, Forest Recreation Ground. High School, Forest Road East, Garibaldi Reds, Green Berets, Gregory Porter, Head Honcho, Headmistress, John Wayne, Miss Amy Koppel, Miss Blanche Hall, Miss Sarah Porter, Miss Sophia Elizabeth Porter, Miss Sybil Randall, Misses B. & K. Hall, Misses Koppel & Hall, Nottingham Forest, Notts County Secondary School, Porter & Jones, Robin Hood, Tudor House, Where's Walter?, Woodborough Road

by jfwknifton | August 27, 2019 · 7:40 am

the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk at Hendon

On July 22nd 2010, we visited the RAF Museum at Hendon. I took a great number of photographs and these few show the Curtiss Kittyhawk IV.

First a general view of the aircraft, taken from the rear, as the museum is very, very, full. The peculiar colours are because of the strange Jacques Cousteau type lighting which is supposed to prevent deterioration of the original paint from the 1940s. They originally found some thirteen P-40s abandoned in the New Guinea jungle in 1974 but I suppose you can’t be too careful! Incidentally that was the same operation that retrieved the RAAF Beaufort I depicted a little while back:

Here’s a second view of the Hendon P-40 with perhaps a little bit less of the “Under the Sea” effect and a lot more of that strange deep purple light made famous by the Aviator Formerly Known as Prince. Here’s a very slightly different view of the P-40. And by the way, I don’t know why the question mark is there:

And here, incidentally, is that Bristol Beaufort, with the link to read about it:

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One of the most interesting things about this plane is its name. Manufactured by Curtiss-Wright of Buffalo, New York, the largest aviation company in the USA during the 1930s, the P-40D and subsequent models was called the Kittyhawk by the RAF, the RAAF, the RCAF and the RNZAF as well as the South African Air Force. It was used extensively in North Africa:

The earlier P-40A, P-40B, and P-40C models were called Tomahawks. I have no idea whatsoever why, other than a sneaking feeling that it was just to confuse everybody who wasn’t aware of the story. The Kittyhawk had a more powerful engine and if you like aircraft engines, you can read a tale involving substandard or defective aircraft engines for military use, conspiracy, false testimony, gross irregularities, neglect of duty, troublemakers and a general court martial via this link. Amazingly, the paragraph you need is called “”Defective engines sold to U.S. military in World War II. It was apparently such a big story at the time that Arthur Miller wrote a play about it.

These two pictures show the most famous thing about so many P-40s and Kittyhawks. The shark’s mouth nose art:

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On a P-40, the first people to use this design seem to have been the Chinese Nationalist Air Force although they seem to have thought that they were using a big cat, insofar as they were dubbed “The Flying Tigers”. They were still the most famous of the Shark’s Mouth aircraft though:

So just treat yourself to a little bit of the film “The Flying Tigers”. John Wayne at his very best:

In this film, “The Duke” actually speaks Chinese. Two words, “Ding Hao”.

In case you don’t know, “Ding Hao” means good luck, or good day or very good or fantastic and so on. Not as universally applicable a word as “Mao” in “The Deer Hunter” but not bad. It’s quite impressive when one single word is an entire language: