EVERY memory, story or photograph which appears in Memory Lane seems to start a chain reaction which triggers memories with your readers and results in more memories and photographs arising. How great.

One such ‘chain’ of memories relates to Margaret Road Infant and Junior Schools at Headington, now the Windmill School, in the 1950s.

Having sent you a photograph of the teaching staff from that period, I have been sent a photograph of the school’s 1955 county athletic team.

Most, if not all, of these boys would have been in my year, but I am struggling to put names to many of the faces.

In the back row, second from the left, is Richard Puddephatt, the son of one of the teachers.

Second and third from the right in the back row are Bernard Blackwell and Peter Smith, while the boy sitting on the ground on the left is Malcolm Downing.

I think I can recognise some others, but not with confidence. I wonder if your readers might be able to assist.

BERNARD STONE, Bartlett Close, Wallingford

It's fascinating

Oxford Mail:

  • Jack Thomas receives his ‘cards’ at Transport House in Cowley Road, Oxford, when he retired as Oxford district secretary of the TGWU in 1974. L-R are: Mrs E Cooke, caretaker at Transport House, Mr Thomas, David Buckle, Mr Thomas’ successor, June Mott, Mr Thomas’s secretary, Clifford Crawley, the union’s district organiser, and Ruth Nelder

IN YOUR 50 Years Ago column (Memory Lane, September 8) you refer to Jack Jones retiring after 27 years as Oxford District Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union – it was of course Jack Thomas.

The Pressed Steel branch of the union paid for Jack and his wife to go on a cruise.

He then stood for the city council with me in May 1964.

He also nominated my wife Barbara to be a magistrate – she served on the bench from 1970 until she was 70 in 2004.

I was asked to take his funeral in 1987, but couldn’t as I was on my way to Nicaragua.

I always look at your Looking Back column, which is fascinating.

TONY WILLIAMSON (the Rev), Watlington

Fire column

TWO people I know, one from Didcot and the other from Wantage, have recently told me of an incident involving a mobile fire column, including firemen from Didcot and Wantage, during the Second World War.

The person from Didcot thinks this mobile column was going to Coventry and the person from Wantage thinks it was on its way to London, both cities having been bombed.

They both say that the column was machine-gunned by a German aircraft and firemen were killed.

My pal from Wantage seems to think Newbury firemen were killed.

Firemen from Didcot, Wantage and Newbury were in A Division, Fire Force 15, of the National Fire Service.

Do any of your readers know of this incident?

BILL LAW Faringdon

Memory Lane this week

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