Updated 14 Nov 2023 - John Cranna, Keith Smith comments
Boarding school food could never be termed ‘haut cuisine’ indeed it was closer to the other end of the culinary spectrum. Meticulous preparation and careful presentation were usurped by the modern ideals of the machine age - mass production and fast food.
Red haired Ruth was a cook not a chef but she excelled in producing meals of a consistent quality for 60 boys and their masters (‘mass’) year in year out, served punctually at set times each day (‘fast’). There must have been helpers but we were not aware of them. Ruth was Kitchen Queen and deserved a place on the annual school photo but never got one!
The delights of a vindaloo curry and the health giving properties of a Mediterranean diet had yet to be discovered in the provinces although in the 1950s somewhere on Lumb Lane, Bradford the first curry houses were opening their doors to curious young Yorkshire folk.
Charney food was as a general rule of a good standard, wholesome and nutritious. Remember this was less than 10 years after the end of WW2. There were certain notable exceptions.... Some, if not all of the vegetables were grown in the kitchen gardens in the school grounds by Charlie and Herbert, sons of Mother Earth, brothers in arms, groundsmen and gardeners two.
They were into ‘organic’ (we have to thank them for that) as evidenced by the copious number of greenflies that hung on for dear life on the lettuce leaves as they slipped through the washing and sieving process in large square stainless steel sinks in the school kitchen. Less fortunate were the slugs and snails. However some did manage to complete the voyage and end up hiding on some poor boy’s plate of salad. Death by knife or fork was unusual as everyone was aware of the possibility of stowaways and each lettuce leaf was carefully inspected before consumption.
A line of 10 drunken greenflies, doused in Ruth’s famous salad dressing, neatly arranged around the edge of a plate was not an uncommon sight. Coming across a slug was a once in a lifetime experience - never to be forgotten.
Scheduled below are just some of the dishes served up at Charney Hall in the ‘50s. Thanks go to John Cranna whose contribution has been added below.
If my imagination has failed me, please correct.
The extensive menu is open for comments and augmentation....
For some unknown reason I can remember more puddings than main courses...even looking through the emojis for inspiration doesn’t help! 🦴
Breakfast:
Porridge topped with sugar and milk
Cornflakes(?)
Bacon, egg, tomato and fried bread
Scrambled egg and fried bread
Baked beans and fried bread
Boiled egg
Toast made with square sectioned white bread, butter and marmalade - the loaves must have been at least 1’6” long (450mm for those who have converted).
Lunch:
Brown peppered soup (coloured water - what was it made from?) supplemented with plain white bread
Toad in the Hole
Salad with greenfly or slug lettuce
Sunday Lunch:
Thinly sliced roast beef, boiled and roast(?) potatoes, cabbage, carrots and gravy
Puddings:
Squares of Yorkshire pudding and syrup
Fried bread with sugar - disgusting
White blancmange with home grown hand picked red berries served in season with the occasional Magpie moth caterpillar 🐛- my favourite
Chocolate blancmange and single cream
Gooseberries served in season with custard - delicious
Spotted Dick and custard
Jam Roly-poly and custard
Jam sponge and custard - my favourite, a close second
Rice pudding with creamy brown skin
Sago pudding (frogspawn) - disgusting, a close second
Drinks etc:
Lakeland ‘spring’ water (the first of its kind and it was cheap then) drunk in Duralex glasses
Tea served in large spun aluminium teapots
Ruth’s famous salad dressing (vinegar, oil and mustard)
A desert spoonful of malt extract administered after breakfast by Matron or Barbara Duncan - a welcome extra treat for those who had successfully persuaded their parents to provide it on health grounds
Sweet ration - 7no. per week issued after Sunday lunch - a truly miserly amount or were
they being cruel to be kind?
14 Nov 2023: John Cranna comments :
‘Reading people's experiences of boarding school many years ago can sometimes read like horror stories of deprivation, starvation, regular beatings and humiliation by teachers and boys alike.
I remember reading, either here or on the Cumbria War Memorial blog, about some Charney Hall boys being driven to eat food direct from Charlie and Herbert's kitchen garden as they were so hungry and then getting the cane from Maxwell Duncan.
During my period of involuntary incarceration I cannot remember ever being that hungry or desperate. We were given five sweets to eat in our free time on I think, both Wednesday and Saturdays. A bowl of wrapped sweets would be on the table and they were dealt out evenly at the end of lunch.
Breakfast was generally porridge with the hardest hard boiled eggs on Sunday mornings. Lunch was the main meal and there was a set meal for each day of the week. Liver on one day was the
only food that I vehemently hated, but of course an excellent source of iron for growing boys. Tea was generally tea and bread and butter with jam. But some nights we had oxtail soup which was only slightly less poisonous than liver. I remember Fawcett prowling around the dining room with a jug of the brown gloop, swooping down on anyone not drinking their soup - we were given it in mugs - and as I took ages to drink mine he thought I liked it ! (more fool him!) and it was only by strident protest that I stopped him from adding more of the vile stuff into my mug.
We must have eaten a lot from the garden ie. beetroot and rhubarb and salads with extra slug protein but even Charlie and Herbert could not grow semolina which was a regular dessert with a dollop of strawberry jam stuff in the middle.’
A slug and lettuce
‘Cabbage’ white caterpillars?
On one day of summer term we would get strawberries for pudding which was an incredible treat. Was it on Sports Day or Father's day cricket match?
The first week of any term meant that all tea tasted of mild bleach as they must have soaked the aluminium teapots in a bleach solution for a week beforehand!
14 Nov 2023 : Keith Smith comments :
The internet is a marvellous thing - if we had known then what we know now - ingesting slugs or slug slime can have consequences…
Aah now I understand! At 78 I suffer from the majority of the above symptoms on a regular basis….
9 Dec 2023 : Keith Smith comments:
A wonderful tale in Comments Andrew! - well worthy of inclusion in the main text of this post so nobody misses it!
Andrew Holmes-Higgin said...When I tell people about my time at Charney, the "food" is always the first thing I talk about. TO THIS DAY I will eat neither soup or stews because of the trauma I suffered there during those years being forced to consume those.
Though as I recall the breakfasts and suppers were not as bad as the lunches. As I remember they followed a regular pattern: Monday lunches - mince. Tuesday - corned beef and mush peas. Wednesday - stew. Thursday - ??? Friday - Fish and chips. Saturday - sausages and chips. Sunday - roast beef. This was early 1970s. I was taught a trick by one of the other boys which involved putting your handkerchef in your jacket pocket, and when you encountered something truly ghastly on your plate, like a magician you would "palm" the object and transfer it to your pocket, to be carefully disposed of later. Leaving ANYTHING on the side of the plate was totally forbidden. About the only thing I genuinely enjoyed was the "Radio Malt" mentioned in your original story. Not sure what made it "Radio", it probably was treated with radioactivity from Sellafield or something.*
Also yes I confess to having dug up things from Charlie and Herbert's gardens to eat. Radishes as I recall, which we ate raw. Never got caught though.
And since a number of you have mentioned the sweets ration, I will share a massive discovery we made shortly before the school closed. We were in Dorm 3 (or whichcver was the one overlooking the Memorial Hall) which contained a large locked wooden cabinet that held the sweets that would be dispensed in very limited quantities on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. One of the boys observed that the padlock on the cabinet appeared identical to the one on his school trunk. And he just hapened to have the keys in his pocket. He whipped it out making sure the coast was clear, and CLICK the lock popped open. This was life-changing to us at that time. The question was not SHOULD WE, but how can we get away with this? It contained a number of large jars of boiled sweets and other things, so a few going missing probably wouldn't be noticed. And to our collective credit, we never told any of the other boys about it, we only occasionally raided the supply, and never took enough to arouse suspicion. I have lived a mostly law-abiding life since then.
* KS comments : See Charney Hall Nuclear Fallout - it really did happen!
Andrew Holmes-Higgin said...
Comments
I was at Chaeney Hall 1959 to 1964 with my older cousin Anthony Reed (A J F Reed - 15 months older) and my youger cousin --Michael Reed ( 15 months younger)
Though as I recall the breakfasts and suppers were not as bad as the lunches. As I remember they followed a regular pattern: Monday lunches - mince. Tuesday - corned beef and mush peas. Wednesday - stew. Thursday - ??? Friday - Fish and chips. Saturday - sausages and chips. Sunday - roast beef. This was early 1970s. I was taught a trick by one of the other boys which involved putting your handkerchef in your jacket pocket, and when you encountered something truly ghastly on your plate, like a magician you would "palm" the object and transfer it to your pocket, to be carefully disposed of later. Leaving ANYTHING on the side of the plate was totally forbidden. About the only thing I genuinely enjoyed was the "Radio Malt" mentioned in your original story. Not sure what made it "Radio", it probably was treated with radioactivity from Sellafield or something.
Also yes I confess to having dug up things from Charlie and Herbert's gardens to eat. Radishes as I recall, which we ate raw. Never got caught though.
And since a number of you have mentioned the sweets ration, I will share a massive discovery we made shortly before the school closed. We were in Dorm 3 (or whichcver was the one overlooking the Memorial Hall) which contained a large locked wooden cabinet that held the sweets that would be dispensed in very limited quantities on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. One of the boys observed that the padlock on the cabinet appeared identical to the one on his school trunk. And he just hapened to have the keys in his pocket. He whipped it out making sure the coast was clear, and CLICK the lock popped open. This was life-changing to us at that time. The question was not SHOULD WE, but how can we get away with this? It contained a number of large jars of boiled sweets and other things, so a few going missing probably wouldn't be noticed. And to our collective credit, we never told any of the other boys about it, we only occasionally raided the supply, and never took enough to arouse suspicion. I have lived a mostly law-abiding life since then.