school dinners in the 1950s uk

I would be pleased if you would contact me. [Anniversary Booklet - ... School Class - 1950s … I don't remember anyone using the term 'lunch' There was no choice at all. A school meal or school lunch (also known as hot lunch, a school dinner, or school breakfast) is a meal provided to students and sometimes teachers at a school, typically in the middle or beginning of the school day.Countries around the world offer various kinds of school meal programs. (formerly Sally Porte) who is on the right. At Ship ha'pennies were Mince, ie minced beef, was on the menu every day along with boiled Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. Salad dressing? However, not That World War. Those school dinners were about 40 years ago! Denis G. Campbell is founder and editor of UK Progressive magazine. “Tapioca Voted Worst School Dinner.” Donald MacLeod. Many a time, I suspect that we were allowed to sit with one Jamie Oliver spearheaded the school meals revolution in 2004, through his ‘Jamie’s School Dinners’ series which revealed outside caterers were feeding UK’s children with energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods on a daily basis: turkey twizzlers, potato smileys, chips, pizzas and pies. So unheated but at least provided some respite from cold winds. English schools provide a meal to students at lunchtime, so, of course, they call it dinner. Surprisingly, muesli was available in those days; it was called cattle feed. In the process, it also repelled the people forced to eat it. I'm not sure why, since food at home was rationed and school meals were not. We had our dinners in the school canteen which was outside the main building on the edge of the playing field - the most distant building in the aerial photograph. All the boys knew with complete certainty that the protein content, liberally laced with gristle and fat, was provided by whales. Monday mornings after she had taken the register. Toad in the Hole, Spotted Dick. The lavatories were outside in the nearest Based on experiences at Copthall County Grammar School, north London in the 1950s. dinners were so awful in the in turns to do the leading as the man. They were pleasant enough and very filling. They were On Fridays there was fish. Our school had a boy's half and a girl's half and never the twain shall meet was the order of the day. was where we hung our coats. I think the teachers had a rota for this. School dinners were served in the late 1940s at my primary school, but no-one who lived nearby stayed for them. The only way to add flavour to this bland plain cooking was with tomato ketchup or brown sauce. A selection of specially made English sausages, (including a vegetarian option) and mash, home made pie of the day, roast beef followed by traditional spotted dick and custard.” Although why anyone would feel a nostalgic tug to the place is a complete mystery to me. Mains. that time, halfpennies were not worth a lot, so were relatively easy for 1950s must have been the country's austerity in the aftermath of the School dinners first became a topic for the national agenda in 1906. Nutritionally, probably not, but if we didn't want something, we didn't have ), salmon sandwiches, tinned fruit with evaporated milk, fish on Fridays and ham salad for high tea every Sunday. This week, the UK education community is celebrating the 21st anniversary of the National School Meals Week (NSMW). If you were at Copthall around this time, you will Such negative views are mostly in the past, but they cannot extinguish my own anguished schoolboy memories of British cooking in the 1950s. in the middle of the day. Occasionally, they would throw into the rotation – Oh! Dessert was almost invariably one of a series of grim milk puddings – rice, semolina, or tapioca. Clothes rationing had ended by 1949 and by the early 1950s women in particular wanted dresses and skirts made with a huge amount of fabric to make up for the meagre amounts they had endured during the war. Grrrsnort. Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. The only vegetables known to us were potatoes, peas, carrots, and cabbage. we were assigned, our mid-day break came either before of after our meal. the walls, and seating - I Jan 17, 2021 - Explore Mandy Noble's board "1970s school dinners" on Pinterest. potatoes and a vegetable. so awful because of rationing and the austerity in the aftermath of World Whenever possible I hid until the bus had left and preferred to do a detention instead. Average ingredient spend per meal was as little as 40p. A m… Download this stock image: 1950s, historical, primary school children sitting together at wooden tables having their school dinner (lunch) England, UK. There were no salad dressings as we know them today. served the dinners. building on the edge of the playing field - the most distant building in the Unsurprisingly, the eatery is called School Dinners and offers “good, old-fashioned British grub. we swallowed gristle with lots of water as if were a huge pill. 0 1. The place of learning to which I was sentenced for ten years during the 1950s was a minor public school for boys; again, the perversity of the language raises its head—public schools, as they were then known, were private. even needing change. Yes? We were a disciplined lot. They arrived at the school by lorry in Pop Art. table would probably oblige by eating it. No. what we were leaving was edible, we were sent back to eat it. See more ideas about school dinners, school dinner recipes, baking recipes. Brown bread was something only poor people ate. School dinners were basic, simple and filling - the food was typical 1950s fare - meat and two veg, macaroni cheese, fish on Fridays and always a cooked dessert such as rice pudding, semolina, tapioca or jam sponge and custard. Julie Chocolate Concrete (or Crunch depending on who you ask) is the stuff of British School Dinner legend. ). I suspect that we were allowed to sit with one particular friend, but I can't remember the mechanism for this, but otherwise the policy was to mix the years. The cod was flecked with tiny black threads that meandered through the flesh and which were widely known to be some sort of parasitic worm. This meant that, depending on which sitting It is roasting meat till it is like leather. (This was a grammar Me too. What we got was limp lettuce turning brown at the edges with always the chance of finding wildlife lurking in the darker recesses – small beetles, larvae, or, the worst discovery of all, half a caterpillar. There are ways of cooking swede to make it delicious; the addition of butter, apple, and nutmeg are mentioned. Pop Art started in London in the mid-1950's. school for which all pupils had passed the 11+ exam from a wide catchment 'Dinner' of course was the meal problem. When compulsory education was introduced in the 1870s, thousands of poor children went to school hungry. been even worse for the teacher always served with thin custard. Nothing ever went off in the refrigerator because we didn’t have one. topped with cooked cheese. So if more pupils were in school than the day before, the last table to be served had tinned pilchards. If you can add anything to this page or provide a photo, Rationing continued until July 1954, with meat the last to go. was probably supposed to be good for us because it supplied protein. A member of the sixth form was on the home page. probably like the pages on life in the 1940s and 50s - see the top menu More recently, food writer Bill Marsano gave his opinion that “All in all, I think the British actually hate food, otherwise they couldn’t possibly abuse it so badly.”, The same gentleman rendered the opinion that the nation’s cooking was the reason why the United Kingdom was such a major world power for a while: “The British Empire was created as a by-product of generations of desperate Englishmen roaming the world in search of a decent meal.”. School meals were introduced at the turn of the century to combat mounting concern over the health of British men and women. The 1950s were the age of spam fritters (now making a comeback! Mince roly poly with mash and veg; Liver with mash and veg English schools provide a meal to students at lunchtime, so, of course, they call it dinner. It was common to eat a dessert at night with milk and people did not seem to get heavy from eating these foods. School dinners were cooked at Granton and brought to the school in large metal containers. What about us poor wretches who had to eat it? Students sat on benches creating a tableau that might well fit into a Victorian workhouse. So there were two sittings. and jiving was banned. area, and most of us lived some considerable distance from the school.). We called them 'stodge'. had to be outside during the mid-day break. The humanity – a vile concoction of stewed prunes and figs; served up on the premise that a boy with healthy bowels was a boy with a healthy mind. given one for trying to hide in a cloakroom during a break when it was really cold. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. The place of learning to which I was sentenced for ten years during the 1950s was a minor public school for boys; again, the perversity of the language raises its head—public schools, as they were then known, were private. The UK government has defended not extending the scheme over the half-term holiday. © 2021 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. I am writing a family history blog, Gerrard 1813, and this describes exactly my experience. Inside the canteen were rectangular tables of varnished wood, set against Detail of photo courtesy of Sally Lawson The awful school dinners in the 1950s must have been due to You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. The School Broadcasting Council for the United Kingdom had been set up in 1947 and the wireless or radio played a great part in the education of school children in the 1960s. assigned as the table head, presumably to keep order, but order was never a halfpennies, yet not particularly rare. Happy to have you quote some of my article. School dinners - like eating out in British Restaurants, canteens and other restaurants - were off-ration in the rationing period in and after World War Two. all. The reason I feel this is in the 1950's we ate good meals and we frequently ate desserts. We would long for rain because then we were allowed to An example of a week’s menu in a primary school. The dinners were served in front of an open fire in the Football Pavilion beside the Tennis Courts in the adjoining recreation ground. The mid-morning breaks were not so bad because Free school meals are currently available to around 16% of children whose family income is below the current threshold for qualification. 1950, the family dinner has started to decline, and needed some help from film. War Two. Christine Tolton (nee Culley) remembers that when it was raining, the mid-day break was in the Hall, I've spent half a century (yikes) writing for radio and print—mostly print. Slabs of cod (perhaps) floated in a yellowish, pallid, and oily residue. “Tapioca Tops BBC Good Food Magazine’s ‘Most Hated’ School Dinners Survey.”. School meals have a long history in the UK. 1 decade ago. Physical Education was done outside unless very cold, wet or snowy. Okay, so that was probably not the source. We had to take it with music for ballroom dancing. It is putting cabbages in water. reported that if someone didn't like something, someone else on the We were assigned our tables for a year. that I was a vegetarian. And then there were Spam fritters. The result was that “Tapioca is the most hated school food of all time … cabbage, overcooked vegetables, lumpy mashed potato and, lumpy custard closely followed ...”, More than half of the respondents (51%) revealed they had “been so scarred by school dinners that the experience still affects their everyday eating habits.”, The Guardian reports that many of those surveyed recalled the nicknames they had for what appeared on their plates: “The school slang of the time resurfaces in answers to the school dinner survey—custard was ‘cat sick,’ peas were nicknamed ‘bullets,’ and Spotted Dick (sponge pudding with raisins) was better known as ‘fly cemetery;’ ” to which can be added semolina with a dollop of jam in the middle of each bowl known as “nose bleed pudding.”. If the mid-day break was unpleasant for us girls in winter, it must have The money for the school dinners was collected by the We have come a long way. The 1950's saw me going to three schools. The row over extending free school meals over the school holidays has continued into its second week. Roast dinners were a firm favourite and, in the 1950s, the meat ration was 1½oz per child (160lbs of roast meat provided 800 portions). 1950's - Going to your first School A walk accross the fields, beside the railway track !! Rupert Taylor (author) from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on March 01, 2019: Hi Richard. Crab Louie Salad? Each week day, millions of children from all standards and grades receive meals at their respective schools. Here are some of his descriptions of what food was like in Britain in the 1950s: For more than 20 years, a London restaurant has been using school dinners as its theme. they were shorter. It is cutting off delicious skins of vegetables ... A whole French family could live on what an English cook throws away. Angela Southern, Street, Somerset, UK. Figs and dates appeared at Christmas, and no one ever ate them. Prefects took it in turns to stand by a bin for left-overs as we filed These invariably I think that the mixing of the years worked well. large containers. our tables for a year. 50s fashion. It should have been only two, but a move of house intervened (something I always blame failing the 11+ plus on!! The school did not have the prestige of Eton or Winchester, but what it lacked in status it made up for in the gruesomeness of the food it served its students. Tables were set out in long rows in the dining hall, although the word “dining” is highly inappropriate. Given recent revelations of horsemeat getting into Europe’s food supply chain, I have suspicions about the provenance of the meat. (excuse the risqueness but these are actually recipies). Around my third or fourth year, I managed to persuade my dinner break-time. However, estimates have put the number of children missing out on school dinners due to cost at a staggering 400,000 - this means that they are not benefiting from a nutritional meal purely based on the cost. You may wonder if meals were better at home in spite of the rationing. At one side of the canteen was the hatch from which the dinner ladies A row of ship halfpennies, as collected in charity It was always served as a pudding but is actually more like a hard crunchy cookie. too old to want to do this. Forget it. these menus are rotated on a four week cycle so the choices are not the same every week. The cost of a school meal continued to rise and to have it. Shudder. It was a simple process, it implies a choice. "School Dinners" is replete with full recipes to make over fifty dishes, including both traditional favourites and meals that were strictly school-canteen-only. quite pleasant, in that the mince was replaced by mashed potato in a pastry case In the 1960s, school dinners were ordered for those on the roll call the previous day. lines and aiming to get longer lengths than other classes. rationing and other shortages as, according to Julie Vanstone who was in As a pupil right through the 1970s, the school dinners my contemporaries and I consumed can be easily categorised in one word - “stodge”. dinner money collection, there was a weekly collection for Save the Children of some sort. halfpennies that showed a ship on one side. We look back at some of the best bits of old-school midday meals. May I quote some of it or cut and paste some extracts into a post? School started at 9am and didn't finish til 4pm as a rule. Second We were assigned As everyone stayed for school dinners, the canteen could not house us In 2003, the BBC’s Good Food magazine surveyed more than 2,000 people who had stoically endured school dinners. Buy School Dinners Recipes: Old School Recipes of the 1960's, 70's and 80's by Berry, Sally (ISBN: 9781723086298) from Amazon's Book Store. aerial photograph. particular friend, but I can't remember the mechanism for this, but 50s fashion. Brits are like that with their own language. The school canteen. only was it inedible by today's standards because it was mainly fat, skin and gristle, considerable moral force was applied to make us eat it. They are all tried and tested, prised from the apron pockets of school cooks or otherwise recreated as authentically as possible. being taught ballroom dancing as part of the curriculum. It is the country [Great Britain] with the worst food after Finland. Back in the 90s and 00s, a school dinner menu was a thing of beauty - from turkey dinosaurs to school dinner cake, aka sprinkle cake. This was torture in the winter We had our dinners in the school canteen which was outside the main Pound cake is a favorite southern cake and it is full of butter, sugar and flour but we did not get fat eating pound cake. involved collecting what were known as 'ship ha'pennies', laying them in Salade Nicoise? It is not possible to fall farther off the Epicurean wagon than coating ground up pig’s eyeballs, ears, and whatnot in batter and deep-frying it in a boiling vat of beef tallow. - PPEBY0 from Alamy's library of millions of high resolution stock photos, illustrations and vectors. School dinners (that means ‘lunch’) are a hot topic in the UK these days and there are lots of different opinions about what young people eat at lunchtime. In 1945, George Orwell wrote that, “It is commonly said, even by the English themselves, that English cooking is the worst in the world.” He then went on bravely to defend the island’s chefs, listing such delicacies as kippers, treacle tart, and suet pudding. School Dinners. Between 3rd and 7th of November, schools and school caterers across the UK are … The UK government extended free school meals to eligible children during the Easter holidays earlier this year and, after Rashford's campaigning, did the same for the summer holiday. Take up rates of school meals vary across the UK. If the prefect deemed that For some reason she didn't question it, although it They were less common than other was school policy for her to require some sort of document for confirmation. good luck in your search, but remember, no lumpy grey mashed potatoes! We could play our own records - until Bill Haley and Rock Around the Clock came out. This decade also marked the rise of the fish and chips dinner, which is now a Friday staple for schools across Britain. School dinner afters were usually puddings This would never have happened Inside the canteen were rectangular tables of varnished wood, set against the walls, and seating - I think - four on each side and a 'head of table' at the end. Some people think that school meals are unhealthy, some people say that they are much better than in the past and others say that midday meals should be free for all school children. Non. past to stack our plates and queue for pudding. who had to stand around to watch over us. form teacher on And, the proceedings got underway after grace was said in Latin. my blocking out memories of anything to do with noise, but I do remember Insalata Caprese? when it was really far too cold.

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