11:40am Wednesday 8th July 2009
I’M sorry to learn of the recent death of one of my old Leigh Girls’ Grammar School teachers.
The mysterious Miss A G de C S - as she signed herself on reports - was a brilliant English teacher, so good that all thirty odd pupils in her fifth year form passed both English language and English Literature GCE exams. That’s some achievement.
Miss Smale, was always something of an enigma. She was tall and attractive and swept into class swishing her black academic robes before her like a ballet dancer.
Our class always thought her name was Adelaine Geraldine de Courcey Smale and that she must be ever so posh, but her death notice revealed she preferred plain Audrey Smale.
The truth is out. It was more unusual than we believed - in fact Audrey Garde de Courcy Smale.
Thank goodness I’ve found that out after 40 odd years. I always wondered.
MIss Smale, who was 78, taught at the grammar school from 1954 to 1976 when she moved, through changes, to Leigh College as a principal lecturer and head of the English division.
There she had to teach a wide range of students the correct use of it’s and its and my goodness she was a stickler for correct punctuation.
After her sister, Margaret, was killed in a car accident she moved from the family home in Wigan to Culcheth and since retirement from teaching-lecturing she has worked almost full time in the Church of England as a parish administrator at Newchurch Parish Church, a church treasurer and working in the Winwick Deanery as well as the Liverpool diocese.
I was surprised years after I left school to discover she lived almost next door to me when I became a Wiganer for six years in the early 70s.
I would rate her as one of the best teachers of her generation, a dedicated professional who gave her all to pass on her knowledge.
It always astounded her - and me - that I was so good at translating passages into reported speech when I was the world’s worst essay writer. I either had no imagination or just couldn’t be bothered at the time, but she still got me through those important exams and my ability was put to good use when out of the blue I took a job offer as a journalist.
There’s only one of my top four LGGS teachers still alive now that the Misses Smale, Norminton and Bannister have passed on and that’s Mrs Avis Freeman. Long may she remain doing her good work in the town.
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