Burnley Grammar School

Comment by: Robby on 15th June 2022 at 04:13
Craig,
Don't you think it was unfair for the girls in your class that only the boys were allowed to take their shirts off in class during the heatwave, especially considering that it was just a primary school?
Or were the girls also allowed to take their shirts off?
I don't think that this would have been a big deal for the girls at 10 years old.
In some primary schools it was also common for both boys and girls to take PE classes together in just underpants.
We didn't have this custom at our primary school but I know that some schools did.

Replying to Robby's comments above;

No I don't think it was unfair at all. It would be a big deal even at 10. I've never even thought about it actually. Age 10 is far too old to suggest girls could do the same as boys and work at school in a heatwave without tops like that. Even if they were allowed I could never see a single one choosing to do so. There are differences between boys and girls despite what some lately try to maintain. It may be quite some time ago now but looking back to 1976 when I was at school and we did things like that when the weather was unusually hot for a long period of time it just seemed almost the expected normal thing to go and do if you were a boy and were given the chance to do so. Certainly no big deal.

I don't remember much about what girls in our class made of boys being given the chance to keep cool like that but it's ages ago I might have forgotten but nothing dramatic hits me.

Every single boy in my class seemed to willingly hang their shirt on the back of the chair for the day, but only because we were told we could. I remember being told I had to put it back on on to get my dinner at lunchtime while I sat down for 20 minutes or so but taking it off again afterwards until the end of the afternoon around about 3.30pm. Many of us also walked home without our top on and probably never put it back on for the rest of the day, went back to school next day and took them off for the day again by about 10.30am at mid morning playtime break.

I suppose it might raise a few eyebrows from some people nowadays if you saw a lot of ten year olds walking out the school gates at the end of the day minus their shirts even during a long heatwave but these are really quite fond memories for me and a lovely period in time.

After school I also used to walk half a mile to the local sweet shop and thought nothing of doing that at the time to get sweets, an ice cream or lolly with my friends with none of us wearing anything on top. Completely carefree and unbothered. A shame we can't stay our 10 year old selves isn't it.

You mentioned PE lessons where kids of both sexes wore no tops. I never did that at any age but up to the age of about 6 or 7 my parents used to go to a beauty spot near home with other parents who were friends and all the children, me included, boys and girls would paddle and splash about in a shallow stream without our tops on together and think nothing of it. We would also dry off and change afterwards briefly with nothing on in front of each other. I also know there were other people nearby unconnected to us. There was nothing like the hysteria that someone might see you like that back then and yet I don't think things have fundamentally changed except in some peoples heads nowadays with how they perceive the world around us.

Remembering school in the hot summer of 1976 like Rose & Craig have done.

Because of the hot weather a number of our usual P.E lessons got turned over into a swimming lesson instead which as far as I was concerned was brilliant news. We didn't need to book the public pool as school had already got a nice small pool of its own installed which wasn't that old and we had easy instant access when our P.E teachers wanted us to use it.

The boys at my school were used to doing P.E topless generally away from the pool already because gym stipulated either a simple white vest or nothing. Most of the time we wore nothing on top.

I do also like others have said definitely know we did some lessons outside in that weather because inside was just so stuffy and that many boys, and some girls would be loosening up the regular uniform and boys allowed to completely undo the buttons on the front of our light blue shirts so they hung completely open as we worked. I am quite certain that some took them off completely for a short while too.

None of this seemed to create any problems and just seemed an obvious thing to do. I don't even remember it creating any distractions.

Nowadays this same school expects everyone to wear full blazers in the classroom and you have to ask permisssion to even take the blazer off while you work which seems excessively demanding. When I was told this by a fifteen year old daughter of a friend a couple of months ago I was astonished at the lack of freedom they are now given.

Ron: For what it's worth, our local town centre was full of shirtless bra-topped women of all ages and sizes yesterday, with not a sign of "safety-shirts" anywhere. And some of them were "randomly" tattooed in various places. Again, a sight you wouldn't have seen in the 1960s/70s.

Autre temps, autre moeurs, a they say.

In reply to John about how many people are out and about shirtless nowadays.

Well I was out this morning, in a short sleeved polo top I might add, and walked into my local co-op store behind two lads in their 20s, neither had tops on or were even carrying one in their hand incase they should need to wear one. Our local co-op fires up the air conditioning a treat in hot weather and today was no exception, so when I bumped into these two guys on my way around I heard one saying how nippy and fresh he was feeling to his mate. I had to chuckle and one noticed I think. Who in their right mind goes out like that with the intention to walk into a supermarket for pity's sake. You'd never have seen that once upon a time in say the 60s/70s. When I came out and crossed over to my local Nationwide branch there was yet another in scruffy shorts and his bare upper body with associated random tattooing across a huge stomach on view to the rest of us.

I was coming to the end of the 4th form in 1976 and Rose is accurate. Me and my mates just wore shorts as soon as we got in from school and in the holidays later in the summer. It becaame the norm for a few weeks. I remember it being just too hot to do much really active PE outdoors as well. One thing I do remember was that we actually wanted cold showers afterwards and got them too but the water in the pipes had been warmed up so much that what came out didn't even feel that cold but lukewarm. It was the same at home when we ran a bath to cool down that even the cold water seemed fairly lukewarm, but we didn't waste too much as I'm sure there was a neighbourhood standpipe near to my street at the time and there must have been some kind of water ration going on at one point. But it didn't stop school giving us cold showers though. I also remember our school gym which was often freezing cold in winter but that summer was dreadfully hot and you couldn't open the windows as much as you'd want to because of the design. Just standing about you'd be sweating and glistening over your body or drenching your top through.

Craig, I remember the summer of 1976 very well. It was my last term at Primary School, the weather was absolutely torrid for the last few weeks of term and all uniform regulations were suspended for the duration. I don't think we ever took desks and chairs outside, and we didn't have an official shirts-off policy, but we did spend more time than usual out of doors as our playground had a large grassy field with a row of mature trees along one side providing shade for lessons which didn't need desks.

Teachers on playground duty generally turned blind eyes to boys going shirt-less at break and lunch-times, but the nearest we girls came to that was either tying up the bottoms of button-front shirts in film-star mode or, for the more daring, repurposing long-abandoned cotton vests by tye-dying in school colours and then either wearing them with the hem turned up as far as we could get away with, or cutting the bottom off ditto.

Outside school, more practical rules applied. Almost all of us playing out in the estate where we lived (me included) went topless, or nearly so, from the time we got home from school until bedtime, and often until school the next morning, with almost everyone in swimwear or the shortest possible shorts. Inside the house, Mum and Dad rarely wore more than shorts, Mum adding a bra or sometimes a t-shirt. Bedding was reduced to just a cotton sheet, often only used in the cooler early hours of the morning.

It was often uncomfortable while it lasted, but fun to look back on from a distance.

Paul how many people were at this cafe where you stated that 9 out of 10 of them were not even wearing shirts today? It seems a very high percentage even accounting for such hot conditions.

I've never actually thought about that question John posed and now it will be raising my awareness in the next couple of days and through the summer. I wonder if it is true.



The boys in school always used to come out onto the playing fields for PE without shirts on in this kind of hot weather. I would be lying if I said I like to see a nice looking well maintained chap out in this weather like that maybe at a park or in the street because it means they have a high degree of self confidence which is nice in itself. I would not expect to see anyone turn up at the local library, in an office or at the shops like it though.

John, in answer to the question you pose. I've just been in my nearest park and walked there and back which is about 2.5km both ways. In the park, I would say most men were bare chest as was I. I had worn a T-shirt to walk there through the streets but once in the gate I took it off. I stopped at the cafe where I would say 90% of the men were bare chest regardless of whether they were alone or with someone.

I set off home bare chest but did put my shirt on not because of any sense that it might be expected but because my shoulders were beginning to burn and it was wise to take a precaution.

Tomorrow I will do the same but will remember to take some sunscreen along and equally tomorrow I won't be wearing underpants with my shorts because all they got was sticky and they are completely unnecessary in such warm weather.

Yes indeed, pyjamas were on the school uniform list and in the main they were very welcome. We slept in open dormitories and the windows were open no matter what the weather outside so for much of the year pyjamas were worn. At bedtime we had to undress, put blazer, pullover and trousers in our lockers or over the bedside chair and socks, shirt, vest and underpants had to go in the laundry bin so even on the coldest nights it was pyjamas only. On a very few nights in the summer term it would be warm and on those nights many did used to sleep naked, we didn't have to wear pyjamas, it was just wise to but in the morning they had to come off as you got out of bed and you then wrapped your towel around your waist to go to the washrooms where there was always a shower which was at best luke warm but usually cold - as were the ones after sports.

Robby, as a boarding school back then parents only came at the beginning and end of term if at all. Many did not have cars and so we made our way by coach from school to the station and took the train home. I can't remember my parents visiting apart from the very beginning of my time there when they came with me but it was an expensive trip as they had to stay the night in a hotel and not something they could afford to do often.

On swimming instructors, all the staff at school were men apart from two teachers - one French and one German and of course Matron and the housekeepers. They never came near the pool but of course Matron was around the dormitory at times and always present at medical inspections which happened with the school doc every year.

Is it my imagination or do you see far fewer barechested men and especially school aged boys walking around outside during hot summer heatwaves in the UK nowadays than you used to see back in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's. Are men slowly but surely being body shamed into covering up or genuinely becoming more shy, insecure and all round self conscious about how they appear to others?

Hugh,
About your comments of swimming traditions in Victorian times, I did some quick research about it and it is true that men swam naked even on public beaches at that time.
But one must remember that swimsuits, either for men or women, did not exist at the time till later.
So women just wore modest dresses while the men and boys swam naked.
In spite of the separateness they were still in close proximity on the same beach in many places.
When local bye-laws started to be introduced slowly it forbade men to swim naked on public beaches, obviously because of several complaints by women especially if they had daughters with them.
However these laws applied only to men and boys up to about 16 were still allowed to swim and play naked on the beach in front of everyone.
As you say some women would take their daughters to these public beaches to educate them about boys. This is taken from some journal accounts and articles of the time.

Craig,
Don't you think it was unfair for the girls in your class that only the boys were allowed to take their shirts off in class during the heatwave, especially considering that it was just a primary school?
Or were the girls also allowed to take their shirts off?
I don't think that this would have been a big deal for the girls at 10 years old.
In some primary schools it was also common for both boys and girls to take PE classes together in just underpants.
We didn't have this custom at our primary school but I know that some schools did.

Hugh,
Thanks for the information about your boarding school where you said that throughout your time there all boys had to take swim lessons in the nude.
It may have been a boys only school but I have looked way back on this forum and there are some posts which say similar to you but had female swim instructors, at least for the young boys up to age 12 or so, and sometimes even female teachers supervising the boys swimming nude.
They also say that even for swimming galas in front of parents and sisters they had to be nude.
It is hard to believe today that this really happened in some schools where it was normal.
But as another poster said this was a long tradition going back to Victorian times or even before where it was normal for boys up to teens and even men to swim naked on public beaches and sometimes even in public park ponds, especially for boys.
So it is no surprise that this tradition went on in boys schools till the 60s or 70s in England.

Not 1976 but 1983 but similarish to Craig actually. That summer I was at the end of my final middle school year and it was sweltering. On a number of days lots of us were allowed to take our desks and chairs outside and place them under a large tree in a shaded area and were allowed to take our shirts off while we sat at our desks the whole afternoon. Nobody was forced to do so but very many boys actually did this in my class. I did. A fond experience of mine.

I also remember that it was considered too hot to go outside for a PE lesson that summer on a couple of days so we stayed inside in the cooler hall.

I certainly know how hot playground surfaces could get in summer. I used to bring a magnifying glass to school with friends and enjoy focussing the suns rays at a thin point on a piece of paper, wood or plastic, making it smoke and burn, or if being really cruel it could be an insect if it stayed still long enough to be cremated alive.

Fiona, this might be TMI (too much information) as they say but if I'd had my own way I'd probably have just worn the bottoms and not the top like I did at home. I don't think there was anyone who would have slept with nothing on at all if it was up to each of us, but who knows. There was plenty of casual nudity on this trip in our dorm and between it and the bathroom so the not nude while sleeping rule sounded silly I suppose. What the few days I spent away from home did prove was how some so called very cool lads in school actually wore some fairly dreadful pyjamas, such as one with me whose bright red ones with a disney character on it I still to this day remember seeing each morning as he jumped off the bunk opposite me. He would definitely have been better off without them at all.

As an adult I never wear full PJ's, I haven't since I was about fifteen, just some airy night time shorts. Men don't need tops in bed do they?

That's your answer more than in full.

Forgive me Fiona but your line of questioning seems a bit strange.

But if you must know about such things, as we're going to be having a few hot nights to come I'm sleeping in just my skin tonight with a 4.5 tog duvet. ;-)

Richard

~What would you all have worn to sleep in if you hadn't been "absolutely forbidden to sleep naked in our bunks for the ten days we slept together" and had been instructed to "bring and wear proper pyjamas or equivalent and wear both tops and bottoms".

Paul J, I actually agree with you. Whilst we should learn from the past what we should not do is attempt to redraw the past based on today's values and erase the parts that we deem inconvenient.

Well Fiona going on a Northumberland school field trip in sixth form at seventeen there were fourteen boys, me included, in a youth hostel dorm and we were absolutely forbidden to sleep naked in our bunks for the ten days we slept together. We had to bring and wear proper pyjamas or equivalent and wear both tops and bottoms. Our male teacher did share the place with us too. Funnily enough we were allowed to walk along the landing to the open showers naked with our towels when we got up at 7am after stripping off our nightwear despite the fact we could have accidentally bumped into any of about ten girls the same age who came with us but were in another separate room with a female teacher not too far away. I actually think one or two of my friends wanted that to 'accidentally' happen but were disappointed. Waking up with many of your class day after day and staright into a shower with them was an experience in itself, the nearest I got to imagining what it must have been like being a full time boarder but coming from a regular school made it feel a bit weird.

I'm sure many users on here can still remember the very hot summer of 1976. I do because we were actually allowed to take our clothes off in normal classes, something that you just could not imagine happening now. I was a primary school kid of 10 that year and in the month before we broke up for summer, day after day the heat was unbearable even with the classroom windows wide open and there was no air conditioning. There probably isn't even now in most classrooms.

Our class teacher told boys who wanted to that they could work in the classroom with no tops on and our shirts, T-shirt or whatever we wore just hanging on the back of our chairs. Most of us were already coming to school in shorts as it was due to the heat, although you could wear shorts or long trousers as personal choice at any time.

It wasn't just my own class teacher who did this but all the boys in school were allowed to I think. In my own class over a couple of weeks from late June into early July around mid morning we all by choice took our shirts off and worked for the whole of the rest of the day bare chested and went out on the playground like it at lunchtime. Only school dinner kids who went to the canteen for lunch had to put their top on to eat but then it came off again as soon as finished. This went on for at least a couple of weeks or more, maybe 15 actual school days or so. Our school teachers were mostly ladies and we shared our class with girls the same age.

I think there might have been a bit of very young peer pressure even at that age when the majority of boys left our tops off and others felt they had to do so not to be different but my class everyone did and I really remember liking it and not feeling any self consciousness whatsoever.

The last days of total unconditional innocence. I think if the same thing had been proposed in class about three or four years later in high school then it would have been a very different outcome all round.

Another thing from that hot summer I also remember was that when we did PE outside on the school playground the heat of the tarmac surface on our bare feet was incredible to feel and almost unbearable.

Hugh - given all of the openness that you describe in your school environment, did pyjamas figure in your clothing list or did you and your dormitory mates leep naked.

Hugh, isn't that difference in Victorian England between the sexes quite striking in the complete extreme between the male and female persons. You made a fairly good and accurate point about it however they were not always segregated. Well off Victorian mothers who could afford day trips to the seaside around about the 1870's and 1880's would often use these trips as a subtle kind of sexual education for their daughters who while they were modestly attired at all times were allowed in close proximity to fully naked young men, including post puberty, in order to see them up close while they were on the beach or swimming while naked. Quite what some of the young men would have made of this I've no idea but it seems they were actively encouraged not to hide themselves if they came near to some of the opposite sex on the beaches in this era and it was tolerated. Quite the contrast. I presume if a well off family with a son and daughter went to the beach then the sister got a chance to maybe see her brother like that with it seeming perfectly acceptable, whereas if he had just stripped off naked back at home for her to take a look at it was probably thought of as immoral and unacceptable.

As for naked swimming in a British school setting as has been mentioned, I do remember seeing a documentary about 30 years ago now featuring a school where the pupils could turn up to lessons or not whenever they felt like it, and it had no uniform and looked like a free for all kind of place but seemed to ultimately work out quite well despite the anarchic nature of the rules. In this profile of the school they definitely showed the school swimming pool and it had completely naked boys swimming in it and beside it, in a mixed gender setting with girls alongside them in their costumes. Although from what I remember of this I think to call what went out on screen an actual swimming lesson was probably pushing it a bit. I think this went out on Channel 4 circa about 1992 or so. Maybe others can fill in a few more details if they have any idea what I'm talking about. As for wider naked school swimming I'm doubtful of that outside of boarding schools maybe. The thought of anyone doing that in a comprehensive or secondary at any point seems a total no go area.

Certainly Mr Dando is well known for his cut and paste jobs. So much of the latest effort seems to be fictional to me where any elements of truth have been muddied by wilder embellishments. The UK in this regard is most certainly not the USA either.

Robby - he didn't type it all out manually, just copied and pasted it verbatim. if you must look, it's at:

https://asstr.org/files/Authors/puericil/www/2019/Reports_Forced_Nudity_03to05.html

but I wouldn't bother if I were you.

I think being made to do circuit training (press ups, sit ups, squats, bench lifts, burpees, wallbar leg lifts) or proper PE (vaulting, hurdles, ropes, heavy medicine balls) good teaching, rather than abuse. Corporal punishment was a physical punishment appropriate to a physical activity and my father approved of my master's approach.

Robby, I went to boarding school in 1965 at the age of seven. Throughout my time there we swam naked in the school pool. Given that we also slept in dormitories where there was no privacy, used washrooms with communal showers, had toilets that had no doors on them, only waist high partitions between each can, medical inspections we all had to line up naked for and the ultimate sanction was a bare bottom caning, swimming naked didn't really rate as something to be bothered about.

Remember that from Victorian times, women used to go down to the sea in bathing machines all dressed in their voluminous costumes. Men did not and there was certainly no mixed bathing. Men went to a separate part of the beach where they stripped off and swam naked and most probably thought nothing of it.

Trunks only became normal when 'mixed' bathing became normal when swimming pools started to be build for the masses which was definitely a late 1960s and onwards thing.

Even if we had a swimming competition against another school - of course only a boys school, naked was normal and I don't remember seeing trunks in my time at school. I think I got my first pair when I went to university and the pool started to have mixed sessions but at the beginning there were men's days and women's days. I don't know what happened on the women's days but the men's days were naked in 1973. By the time I graduated in 1979, all sessions were mixed so trunks were always worn.

It's just a measure of how things have changed, it's not necessarily better, swimming naked feels very free compared to either tight speedos or the drag of wet shorts.

Tom F, I don't think we should view the past through the lens of the present in the way you suggest. I don't regard my time growing up as despicable in any way. Times and values change. When I was a boy, I experienced nothing other boys didn't, it was all quite normal and I was a very happy child.

Attempting to reframe the past in the time of the future is misguided and wrong. Please don't do it.

I was amused by Mr Dando's last post of 2nd June about the compulsary nude swimming for boys in schools, although it seems to be exclusively about American schools in the past.
I didn't read all of his long, endless post which must have taken him all day to type. :)
But I wonder, how common or rare was it for boys in British schools to take swim classes in the nude?

Things have certainly changed in many ways in today's schools.
I went to a state school in the 60s. In primary school we didn't have any gym or PE coach and we did our PE lessons in the schoolyard with white PE shorts and t-shirt, sometimes shirtless if the weather was fine and our normal class teacher was our coach, although we did just basic body exercises and running around the schoolyard. I think this was normal in non-private schools at the time.
Did any posters here have an actual gym at their primary school?

In secondary school it was different, with a fully equipped modern gym and showers with individual cubicles, although they didn't have any curtains so it was more like semi-privacy, but probably better than the gang showers that many describe here at their school.
Also as against primary school where corporal punishment was very common, it was quite rare at secondary school.

Time passes and reconditions us to what is acceptable. What now reads as quite dispicable would have once read as acceptable.

To teacher Robert. Good post, confusing and contradictory but communal showers definitely have not been phased out like your late 90's item suggested they intended at that stage. My eleven year old will be joining Wootton Park school in Northants in September this year and I've just received the details of the uniform and other required bits and bobs. I'm being told he needs as they put it, a towel for showering, as part of his P.E uniform and having made my own enquiry I'm told it's a single shower room. I'm fine with that if he has to use it. I haven't broached the subject with him direct as I see no point in making a big deal of such a thing. I'm 44 and did this in school throughout the first half of the 90's and although I remember feeling somewhat apprehensive over the summer holidays after the first time I took a communal shower with my class together fully naked I walked out the changing room afterwards feeling really pleased with myself and wondering what all the worry had been about as it just seemed a sensible and normal thing to do. I know not everyone feels the same obviously.

There is nothing on his P.E uniform that openly suggest any element of non shirted lessons but I did quite a few lessons in school with no shirt at times and I think most senior school kids shoud surely expect it at some point in time, swimming aside. Some ladies on mumsnet that I read seem to have a problem with it but as a father I don't and I wouldn't really expect my own to be concerned if he was told to do so. I'm sure my own would still be the mainstream opinion on things like this.

One thing that is grotesque is the physical abuse of kids just for under achieving tasks in P.E. The comments about that like the one from Roy C or teacher Robert, or Ian 2 beggar belief even by the attitude of those long past times.