Head was a school meals pioneer

Pam, who was the young Pam Jones back in those days, has now got most of the names to go with the faces on the picture. They include a lad who saved her life by pulling her from a well all those years ago.

She was born at 8 Smethcote, a farm cottage in the middle of a field at Atcham, in 1943 and lived there until 1947. The property has long disappeared.

Her father Dennis Jones worked for Mac Walker at Norton Farm. Later the family lived in one of three thatched cottages at Norton which burned down in April 1950, and later in former prisoner of war huts on the Attingham estate, which she says were "dark, cold and wet horrible places." They moved again to Norton Cottage and then, when she was 11, to Shifnal.

But back to the school picture.

"After you put the piece in the paper I had five phone calls, and now have names for most of them," said Pam, who lives at Ketley Grange, Telford.

"We are still debating who the teacher was - we're not sure."

One of the boys on the picture is Jimmy Rochelle - the spelling is uncertain.

"When I was little I fell in a well, which was like a big hole by the pig sty, and Jimmy Rochelle pulled me out, bless him. It was just a hole in the ground with water in. We were there playing. Jimmy was the one who pulled me out."

The line-up, in consultation with the various callers, is: back row, from left, the teacher, variously given as Miss Fox or Mrs Whitehouse, Eddy Jones, Jimmy Rochelle, Richard Adney, Raymond Countney, possibly David Timmis, Tom Dodd.

Middle row, Peter Morris, Anne Walker, Pam Jones, Elizabeth Jones, Sally (surname not remembered), Mary Evans, Susan Bromley, and Anthony Beckley.

Front, Arthur Edwards, Michael Carter, Raymond Poyner, John Bathow, Alan Bywater, Bruce Manley, and "McGowan" - first name not remembered.

One person who does not appear on the picture is the headmistress, Mrs Lucy Ruff.

"She was quite strict, but she was a lovely old lady and I loved her to bits," says Pam.

Mrs Ruff was born Harriet Lucy Newman in 1899 but disliked her first name, preferring Lucy. She taught first at the Lancasterian School in Shrewsbury until her marriage in 1927 to James Ruff.

She became head at Atcham in 1942 and spent the rest of her teaching career there until 1959.

Mrs Ruff was a pioneer too. She noticed how tired and lethargic the children seemed, and soon organised school dinners. The idea was passed on to Parliament and was then introduced across the country.

She died at the age of 100 on May 1, 1999.