SHEFFIELD EDUCATION: Amazing women built up nursery from humble start 50 years ago
Children blew out the candles on a half century of happy birthdays to celebrate their nursery’s golden jubilee.
Mylnhurst Nursery, the pre-school section of Mylnhurst Preparatory School in Ecclesall, first opened its doors 50 years ago in September 1976.
In the five decades since it has seen hundreds of youngsters blossom in its care, many of whom have grown up to send their own children to the school on Button Hill.
Jeannie Fojut, who worked at Mylnhurst from 1968 in Reception – kindergarten, as it was then – and later in Nursery from 1978, was among the friends invited to celebrate the 50th anniversary with lunch and a golden chocolate cake.
She recalled her Nursery years as ‘just perfect’.
“I would play the piano and we would have the children singing and dancing,” she said. “We had stories and painting, and playing outdoors and in. I loved it.”
The Nursery was based initially in the gym of what was then a convent school, and a mix of nuns and lay staff worked together in a corrugated wartime building once used by the Home Guard.
Jeannie remembered the occasional howling gale blowing in through the flimsy pre-fab walls, and her meagre Sisters of Mercy wage of £5 a week.
“To save the Sisters some money, I would go to the offices of The Star and come back with enormous end-of-roll news-print paper for the children to draw and paint on,” she said.
“I’d get a huge roll for about 50p and we would roll it out and cut it into sheets and it would see us through a whole term.”
Soon Mylnhurst Nursery was thriving and started to expand.
“We started off with one class, but when Sister Aquinas came she split the intake in two,” said Jeannie. “The very young children were with us, and next door were the older children soon to be starting school.
“We were partitioned off from the gym and, as the Nursery got bigger, the gym got smaller!”
By 1982 Mylnhurst Nursery was so successful the pre-fab was demolished and a new infant block built, opened by the Bishop of Hallam, Gerald Moverley.
Former Nursery Manager Clare Gleadall, who worked at Mylnhurst for 31 years, was also among the guests invited to join current Headteacher Kirsty Holland, and Nursery Manager Valerie Clarke, for the anniversary celebrations.
Clare started working at Mylnhurst as a Nursery assistant, later becoming Nursery Manager for 10 years until 2020.
Her own three children passed through the Nursery, as did three of Jeannie’s grandchildren.
“My memories of the Nursery begin in 1989 when my son Ben started in ‘Nursery 2’,” said Clare. “Mrs Anne Hawley ran ‘Nursery 1’ for the three-year-olds, and Sister Anne Mary led ‘Nursery 2’ for the four-year-olds.
“There were no language classes for the Nursery then, or computers!
“But they had music with Jeannie, who would get an enormous keyboard out of the cupboard.
“The two Nursery classes would join together for a packed lunch each day and, I remember, they also attended Mass – when several children would regularly and understandably fall asleep!”
Other anniversary guests revisiting the school – which hosts its Mylnhurst Open Morning on Saturday, October 10, from 10am to 12noon – included two former pupils turned long-serving teachers.
Bernie Pathe was a 10-year-old when the Nursery opened in 1976 and still works at the school as PA, and Mairead Shipley was a pupil during the 1960s and later became Mylnhurst’s longest-serving teacher from 1978 until 2021.
Mylnhurst Nursery is now housed in a modern Early Years Centre off Woodholm Road, opposite the school’s 25m swimming pool and sports hall. Children are admitted from their third birthday, and families can choose to stay on for primary school until the age of 11.
Headteacher Kirsty Holland, who celebrates her own 20th anniversary with Mylnhurst next year, said: “Our wonderful Nursery is the foundation on which the rest of our school stands, and its success today is in no small part thanks to the amazing women – mostly women! – who built it up from those humble beginnings 50 years ago with such love and care.
“We were so delighted to honour the past by welcoming Jeannie, Clare and Mairead to our celebrations, as we look ahead to a bright Mylnhurst future.”