Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

Methodist chapels or no church at all. The Foston Road or council school was at the extreme east end of the village, next to two rows of cottages and one of the hosiery factories, but otherwise surrounded by fields. The council school had three teachers and three classrooms. The headmaster, Harry Gilliver, spent almost all his working life at the school, and Miss Williams and Hettie Vardy assisted him. Harry taught the senior boys and the ladies the younger children. Harry was a gentleman and a sports enthusiast, and to continue the perverse theme, a member of the parish church – the church school headmaster, was naturally a nonconformist! As he walked down the village to school, he would speak to everyone, and raise his hat to the ladies in greeting. After war service and only one year as a probationary teacher, he was given responsibility for the school, where he remained until his sudden death, four months before his intended retirement, and nine months before that of perhaps his most celebrated pupil in 1956. The headteacher’s job at Countesthorpe was no sinecure. The school had serious overcrowding problems. When Maurice started there were 130 children enrolled, and Harry had over fifty in his class. As the only qualified teacher he was expected to oversee the other staff, and the inspector’s report of 1925 suggests that because of his own class size, this was difficult. Each class operated with three sub-groups, and individual attention for the slower pupil was lacking. Much of the class-size issue arose because children from the children’s home attended. It is noticeable that published photographs of the school give names of village children and ‘CH’ for those from the Cottage Homes. By the time Maurice had left, these children attended schools in Leicester, and the total roll was down to a more manageable ninety. Maurice attended the Foston Road School until the age of eleven. This school was over a mile from his home on Cosby Road, the other side of the all-important divide of the railway, and the boys from the two communities did not tend to play together. His walk to school would almost take him past the Church of England school, whose well-mannered pupils delighted in throwing stones and shouting ‘Boardy bugs, Boardy bugs’ as the Council (or Board School as it was commonly known) children passed by. His early promise at sport was fostered at the school, who were proud winners of the Mid-Leicestershire Primary Schools’ football cup in 1930. Home matches were played at Countesthorpe United’s ground, which they shared with the cricket club at the back of the Railway Hotel. This was conveniently next door to the Tompkins’ hosiery factory, so Percy had to do no more than hang over the fence or look out of his office window to watch them play. It was only a few hundred yards from his home on Cosby Road, so Percy’s commute to work would be no more than a five-minute walk. This cup victory was in no small part due to Maurice’s speed on the right wing, and the refreshments afterwards were remembered by the Family history and background 11