Ashtead Primary School

A Memory of Ashtead.

I spent my childhood in Ashtead in the 1950s and 60s and I went to Ashtead Primary School in Barnett Wood Lane. One of the teachers was a lovely lady called Miss Portlock and she used to bring her dog to school with her.

There was no canteen at the school, so at lunchtime we children were marched about half a mile over the railway bridge to a canteen near Ashtead railway station and close to the top of Links Road. It was a single storey wooden building near the entrance to what appeared to be a disused fairground. There was a helter-skelter behind the canteen. There was also a derelict building to the right of the entrance. There was a rumour (so the boys said) that someone had been murdered there and the house was haunted (so the boys said)! The rumour scared us kids. Subsequently, I and a friend found our way through the fence in Links Road and discovered sheds belonging to the fairground which contained carousels and rides, all covered in dust. The fairground is a bit of a mystery as I have only found one reference to the helter-skelter on the Net. Does anyone know anything about its history? I stopped having school dinners after I discovered a live caterpillar in my salad one day!

Opposite Ashtead Primary School there was a small parade of shops which included a sweet shop. After school we would buy sweets there, but I don't think the shopkeeper liked us children and we were a bit afraid of him. The sweets were loose in wooden trays. There was a penny tray and a halfpenny tray. I liked the honeycomb sweets and the sherbet dabs but not the liquorice laces.

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