MARIAN Simmons has two vivid memories of her schooldays – scary teachers and squealing pigs.

As Marian Ellis, she attended St Christopher’s School in Temple Road, Cowley, where girls risked a slap with the ruler if they misbehaved.

Mrs Simmons, of Quarry Hollow, Headington, was prompted to write in after reading Chris Cox’s memories of the school and his photograph of pupils on the school climbing frame in 1961 (Memory Lane, August 31).

She writes: “The picture really took me back in time, as I attended first the infants and then the junior school in Temple Road, dating back to the late 1930s.

“I well remember hearing the pigs squealing from a building opposite the infant school – it was scary when we found out it was an abattoir. Oh, horror!

“At one of my part-time jobs many years later, at Eyles and Coxeter in Headington, I met a car salesman called Richard Harris, who was also an ex-pupil of St Christopher’s.

“We remembered names of pupils and teachers. In both schools, we were all pretty scared of our teachers! Kids were different in those days.

“One teacher from the infants was Miss Pawsey; tall, thin and handy with her ruler. In the juniors was Miss K Child and headmistress Miss Kneave, the latter a most frightening character.

“At 11+, I passed the scholarship to Oxford Central Girls’ School – a very enjoyable place.”

Mrs Simmons lived in Oliver Road during her childhood and remembers many of the names of children who lived there.

“They include Ann Cliff and her brother Dennis, Peter and Tony Sutton, Muriel and Marion Church, Sheila Wiseman, June Perry, Beryl Webber, Diane Aldsworth, Gillian Wiffen, Kathleen Baker and Betty Onion, whom I visited in South Carolina three times. I hope many are still around.”

As we recalled, generations of Oxford children have been educated at St Christopher’s, which opened in about 1877.

It was one of the first in the city to organise foreign holidays for pupils.

In 1956, a 41-person group of 10 and 11 year olds spent a week in Belgium and Holland, with the owner of the hotel they stayed at in Bruges describing them as “the best behaved party of schoolchildren I have had”.

After surviving a threat of closure in the 1970s, the school moved to new buildings in 1982 and continues to play at important role in education at Cowley, with more than 400 pupils.