I liked living at Carlton Road, Worksop. We had a decent sized lounge with a kitchen off and a bedroom and bathroom upstairs. We shared the house with Mrs White, the elderly lady who owned it. She was a real treasure and left us completely to ourselves. Nothing was ever too much trouble for her if we needed anything. Mrs. White had the front room, another bedroom upstairs, and went round to her son nearby for meals. This would be the first time we had actually lived together; it was a wonderful time for us. I set up a large drawing board in the lounge and most of my thesis project was drawn here. We settled into a routine, Edna would walk to Bentinck School, and I would give her a kiss, wave her off and settle down to several hours of work. A couple of mornings a week I had to go on the scooter into Sheffield for lectures and to see my course tutor. There were no rules that you had to stay in the Department and work each day, as long as you turned up with the drawings when they had to be submitted that was fine. A question has just crossed my mind, how did they know it was my hand using the drawing pen, particularly after what happened at the end of third year? It was and they trusted me.
We used to go down to the school on summer’s evenings and play tennis with other members of staff. One day Jeff Jennings approached me and asked if I would be interested in turning out for the football team he played for. He said it was for Bakestone Moor where he lived. I went along for a practice and was surprised at the standard; they were good, very good in fact. The league they played in incorporated the junior teams of local professional teams like Mansfield Town and nearby Colliery teams. When I turned out for my first game, I noticed with surprise there was a large hoarding around the ground and I seem to think spectators were charged admission That may be my imagination running wild but I certainly know I found it tough, I hadn’t played regularly for a couple of seasons and the pace of the matches was quick and they didn’t hold back when tackling. I played for about half a season and then gave up; I didn’t think I could spare the time with my finals approaching. It was an interesting experience and made me realise how good you had to be to make a full time career in football when we played the Mansfield Town Junior side.
In February 1958 I became twenty-one and under the rules at that time, eligible to vote. My first opportunity to put my cross on a ballot paper did not come until the 9th October 1959. Harold McMillan was prime minister and went to the country on the back of that famous slogan; “You’ve never had it so good!” We were living in Worksop but I was registered to vote at Little Hulton, not to be deterred I set off early one morning on the scooter. The weather was bad and there was fog around. It was a difficult trip over the Pennines but I was there to record my one and only vote ever for the Conservative party. I stayed overnight at Tynesbank. Dad didn’t come in until very late; he had been acting as the returning officer at a polling station in nearby Swinton. McMillan’s slogan must have worked he won by a huge majority; this must have pleased Dad, as he was a staunch Conservative all his life.
During the summer term in final year I went to an evening lecture in the Department. It was by Henry Swain who was the Deputy County Architect of Nottinghamshire County Council. He was talking about the work his office were doing at that time in the development of prefabricated system building. In the late fifties this was becoming very fashionable and local authorities were combining resources to fund huge building programmes. Notts had recently hit the headlines by winning a Gold Medal at the international Milan Architectural Exhibition for a school design. Henry was a striking figure, he reminded me of Spike Milligan, hair all over the place, wild eyed and gabbling as the words poured out of him. You couldn’t help but be impressed with his enthusiasm, the slides of the work made a big impression on me also and I decided to apply for a position there. A few months later I sent off an application form and one day set off for an interview. It was my first visit to Nottingham. My initial reaction was certainly more positive than when I had first seen Sheffield. The county Hall buildings designed by Vincent Harris were rather imposing, sited alongside the river Trent. I was also very pleased to see the Trent Bridge Cricket ground on the opposite side of the road. I had an interview with Henry Swain and the County Architect Dan Lacey. Dan was quite the opposite of Henry, a bluff, taciturn man but very shrewd. They showed me around the office and I made a careful note that you could see the wicket of the cricket ground from the drawing office window. The interview went well and I was offered a job, subject to my passing the degree course on a starting salary of £789 per year. How salaries have changed!
I worked steadily through final year on my thesis. The basic design was agreed with my tutor and then it was the long grind of preparing the detailed drawings. Everything was drawn up in the lounge at Carlton Road, usually to the accompaniment of my jazz records, the odd burst of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” and Mitzi the yapping poodle next door. I harboured some very dark thoughts about her. I asked a couple of old Farnworth Grammar school friends for help; Harry Baggs was a heating and ventilating engineer and Alan Cockshaw who had qualified as a civil engineer at Leeds. Alan and his wife Brenda came over to Worksop to visit us. Both men kindly helped out by providing me with detailed calculations, it all helped enormously to improve the final presentation and help me to qualify. I can’t remember if I paid for their valuable services, Harry and I are still talking so he can’t be feeling any resentment and I was delighted to make contact with Alan again only about three years ago. I had actually forgotten he had helped me out until he reminded me. Time and time again during the process of writing this I have been reminded of things, which had gone from my mind. I decided to have all my drawings stretched and mounted on hardboard professionally. I’m not sure it made any difference but at least in years to come it gave me a useful supply of hardboard; they were cut up for all sorts of jobs. There were about twenty-five sheets and they were heavy to transport. On finals hanging day they did look very sharp though. It was a very tense occasion; the external adjudicator was Sir Hubert Bennett, chief architect to London County Council. We all had to stand by our work in the main hall of the University to answer any questions from the examining team. Later that day we were told the results. I had made it and got a 2/1 -degree. This was the classification just below a first and I was delighted with that. I can’t remember how Edna and I celebrated. I probably drove back to Worksop on the scooter and we went out to the cinema, which was our usual relaxation A great day for us and the end of a long winding road of ups and downs that began in 1942 when I started at St. Paul’s Peel Infants school.
The degree-day ceremony was held at the City Hall on the 2nd July 1960. I had to hire robes for the presentation. The hall was packed and a very proud Mary and Wilf were sitting with Edna. I don’t know how many presentations were made; across all the Departments of the University there were an awful lot. The name and qualification of each person was read out and then they walked across the stage to receive the certificate and the applause. It seemed to go on and on, I was glad to be named “Clarke” and not “Young” as we went on in alphabetical order. I can’t say I enjoyed it and was relieved when it was over, I didn’t like wearing all the fancy kit. One thing of interest, I wrote earlier that a five-year course was like a marathon, of all the students, around twenty +, who started that first year in October 1955 only seven of us walked across the stage that day. In the box of letters I found the programme for the ceremony when I looked at the names of those who had passed on the programme I could not see Abdul’s name. This was explained in a letter I wrote to Edna on the 9th June, Abdul had decided he had no chance of qualifying and went to see the Professor and asked to be referred back a year. That must have been agonising for him having come so close. Before I sent the robes back I had a studio portrait done for my parents at a photographer’s in Worksop. You have never seen such an embarrassed look on my face; I couldn’t wait to return them and get back to normality. So ended five momentous years for me. I started as a rather naïve shy lad when I had arrived in Sheffield and ended up married with a degree. Along the way I had my traumas, panics and difficulties but there were enormous benefits in the independence and growing maturity I acquired. I met so many people, made so many close friends and above all had the luckiest day of my life when I cast eyes on the young Miss Barrett at just the right time.
