Bradford & District | Archive | 2007 | November | 16

Centenary dinner!

From the archive, first published Friday 16th Nov 2007.

Pupils and staff at an inner-city primary tucked into centenary celebrations to mark 100 years since their school became the first in the country to dish up dinners.

Green Lane Primary and Nursery School in Manningham turned the clocks back to 1907 when 750 of its hungry youngsters got hot meals - thanks to a national campaign by Bradford educationalist Margaret McMillan and city MP Fred Jowett.

From Bradford beginnings the scheme soon spread and yesterday 21st century pupils got a taste of a 1907 menu - baked macaroni and broth, followed by helpings of stewed fruit.

To help get into the Edwardian spirit, children and staff dressed up, exercise books were swapped for slates and chalk and games in the playground included hoops and whip and top.

Special guests were also invited to join them for lunch including former pupils and the architects who designed the school's new £3.5 million building which houses their canteen and more classrooms.

The new state-of-the-art addition to the school was built on the site of the old canteen which was powered by steam from an old swimming pool's boiler, heating up huge 100-gallon pans. Meals in those days were subsidised and cost three halfpence each.

Two years after the first meals were introduced, the Green Lane kitchens were supplying 13 other feeding stations set up in the city giving about 2,000 youngsters what was probably their only hot meal of the day.

Vans delivered the food in boxes lined with cork dust and liquids were transported in cans lined with cotton to keep them warm.

Nowadays Bradford Council's meals provider Education Contract Services delivers more than 35,000 meals to schools across the district and employs 1,000 staff.

One of the special guests was 87-year-old Betty Brodie, who was at the school in the 1920s and still lives nearby. She ate up all her baked macaroni but confessed to never having school meals in her day.

"I was Jewish you see and they never had kosher meat so I couldn't stop, I had to go home. I'm not sure what my friends thought of the dinners, they were always so hungry at home that they would have just scoffed it up, food was food."

Idris Anwar, ten, said he is a big fan of school dinners and his favourite is pizza and chips.

"I'd rather have that than broth and I'm not sure about macaroni. It doesn't taste as good as pizza."

His friend Saheb Mir, also ten, said: "We get all sorts - samosas, kebabs, salad, fruit and cakes. We get lots to choose from. They're really tasty."

Assistant head teacher Gaynor Kilmister said: "We've had such a fun day, it really will go down in our history. The 1907 lunch has been a big hit too - we've had lots of clean plates."