Readers have fond memories of performing with the Jackie Bebbington School of Dancing in Oxford.

Although the premises they used were rundown, they enjoyed their first experience of learning to dance and appearing on the public stage.

As we recalled (Memory Lane, July 6), Jackie Bebbington ran her classes in the old wooden community centre in Ashurst Way, Rose Hill, and a Nissen hut next door. Gillian Fawcett, of Abingdon, who, as Gillian Godfrey, lived in Lambourn Road, Rose Hill, writes: “I remember the old hut, even though I was only three when I started.

“I left when I was five-and-a-half because I was too frightened to dance on my own to pass exams.

“I loved the dancing and putting on the dresses my parents made for me. Jackie must have been a teenager, but was very good with us.”

She is on the extreme right in the picture we published, right, and in the same position in the picture above she has sent in.

“I was very shy and would always be on the outside,” she tells me.

Christine Norton, whose maiden name was Beecham, remembered dancing in the old wooden community centre.

She recognised herself and three cousins in the picture we published.

She writes: “The girl with a bow fifth from the left in the front row is my cousin, Adrienne Goodwin. My cousin, Carol Collins, also with a bow in her hair, is sixth from the left and then me, Christine Beecham with longer hair. In the back row is another cousin, Irene Goodwin – she is fourth from the end almost in line above me.

“My older cousin, Pauline Goodwin, and my younger sister, Angela Beecham, also attended the school.”

Bryan Cole, who lives in South Australia, spotted the picture we published in the online version of Memory Lane and has sent in two pictures, below, of pantomimes the dance school staged – Dick Whittington, Cinderella and the Wolf, and Babes in the Wood.

He writes: “My sister Sheila was a member for a few years. These days our family is widespread – I live in Australia, my sister in Devon, a brother in Carcassonne, France, and a brother in Oxford, so thank goodness for email, Facebook and the internet.

“I love to keep up with things in Oxford, and your Memory Lane is a godsend of past pictures that bring back so many happy memories.”

Jackie Bebbington, now Jackie Melson, of Westbury Crescent, Oxford, recalled how her Thursday classes were held in the wooden community centre and those on Fridays in the adjoining Nissen hut with a concrete floor.

“The dust raised by our tap shoes was so thick sometimes that you could hardly see from one end of the hut to the other. It’s a wonder our lungs didn’t solidify!”

She taught dancing at Rose Hill for more than 50 years until her retirement in 2003 and, thanks to her, generations of children had their first opportunity to appear on stage.