THESE girls didn’t need TV programmes or cookery books to know how to prepare a meal.

They learned the basic skills of the kitchen under the tuition of their cookery teacher in the classroom.

These were the 24 girls in the cookery class at Wolvercote School in Oxford in 1948.

The picture comes from Jim Pratley, of Aysgarth Road, Yarnton.

The cookery teacher, whose name we don’t know, appears on the extreme right of the picture. The man in the middle is Bill Fallows, the headmaster.

Former pupils remember Mr Fallows as fair but strict.

Val Faulkner, of Raymond Road, Bicester, recalled (Memory Lane, April 6) how he gave her brother Fred a kick on the backside when he arrived late one morning.

Michael Stockford, in his book, Growing up in Wolvercote, 1931-51, remembers twice falling foul of Mr Fallows.

Pupils were asked in a woodwork exam: “Describe a bench hook.”

Mr Stockford recalls: “Bill Dorrell, working on a bench the other side of the workshop, caught my attention, mouthing, ‘What’s that?’ I picked one from under my bench and held it up.”

For that misdemeanour, he was deducted 25 per cent of his marks.

On another occasion, Mr Fallows was umpire at a cricket match in which Mr Stockford and John Stone were batting.

Mr Stockford recalls: “I played a ball and ‘Skuzzy’ Stone shouted, “Come on, Stocky, run ’ell for leather’.

“Bill Fallows stepped forward, removed the bails, drew the stumps and said, ‘I will not tolerate that sort of language on my sports field. The whole team will return to class for a maths lesson’.

“Explanations were in vain. I was not the most popular kid and I hadn‘t even opened my mouth!”

Does anyone recognise themselves or anyone else in the cookery class photograph?

And any more memories of headmaster Mr Fallows?

Let us know.