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I was born in 1951, and was at school from 1956 to 1969. These notes describe my memories of the clothing I wore as a child: at home, at (all boys) prep school and at (mixed) grammar school. I refer to girls’ clothes only when relevant for comparison with boys’. I remember little of my clothing until I was about five. Beginning about that time I have a fairly detailed recollection of my boyhood clothing. I go into some detail about PE kit, which is often not mentioned in many HBC personal experience articles and not covered in detail in the school garments section. I've tried to use terminology that will not be misunderstood by American readers (notably I always refer to underpants, rather than as I would always have called them--pants). Otherwise, I use terminology more or less as I would have at the time: this includes the inconsistency that what I called a jersey at home would be a sweater as part of PE kit!
I know a little about my father's generation. He was nearly 46 years older than I was, while my mother was 37½ years older, and the enlarged generation gap occasionally caused difficulties in mutual comprehension. My knowledge of what boys of my father's generation wore is very limited. I don't ever remember discussing it with him, and I have very few photographs to go on. This is somewhat odd, as my father's father was a keen photographer, who processed his own films and prints. Unfortunately, his skill did not match his enthusiasm, and many of the photographs are now in very poor condition. Apart from the one of my father, they've been edited a little, but only to remove blemishes. I know very little of the chilhood of either of my parents, but I've been able to find a little about my father.
I was born in 1951, and I remember little of my clothing until I was about 5 years old. I dimly recall that at some stage (winter?) in those early years I wore dungarees, but that’s about it. At the age of 5, then, in the summer of 1956 I wore shorts, with a button-up short-sleeved shirt and (when it was cold) a cardigan or, if less cold, a (sleeveless) pullover. I had ankle-socks and sandals. For underwear, I would have worn both vest and underpants. Over the next few years, little changed: I stopped wearing cardigans, but otherwise it was much the same. Outside, I would wear a long gabardine coat - the same one I wore for school if I had to be smart, the old one I’d more or less grown out of for rough wear. For snow or seriously wet conditions, I’d wear Wellington boots but otherwise lace-up shoes outside and sandals inside (outside as well in the summer). At one point I had a pair of jeans. In the summer of 1963, all changed. I’d been wanting to wear long trousers for school for some while, to try to avoid some teasing which was occasioned by the facts that 1. I was an easy target and 2. my shorts were an inch or two longer than everyone else’s. That summer, my parents decided that it was time that I wore long trousers, so long trousers I wore, except on the beach while on holiday. I remember not being entirely happy about this change, but it did get round the difficulty at school. Into my teens I continued to wear long trousers almost all the time, except on the beach while on holiday. I would wear button-up shirts, long sleeved in the winter, short-sleeved in the summer, with a jersey if it was cold. I generally wore sandals indoors, and outdoors as well in the summer, and normally without socks in warm weather.
My school life began at a boys-only (private-sector) prep (sc. preparatory) school. Such schools are different to American prep schools in that they are for younger children. This school was fairly typical of smaller British prep schools in that we were all day pupils, aged from 5 to 13. Pre-preps today often have different uniforms or varied uniforms from the prep schools to which they are attached. At our school as there no separate pre-prep section, the uniform was the same for all the children. Our uniform was a plain grey suit (winter) or grey trousers with purple blazer (summer term only). Having passed the 11-plus exam, in September 1962 I moved to the local (public-sector) grammar school. This was a fairly recent school - opened in 1954 - and coeducational. At my new grammar school we wore dark grey trousers, dark green blazers with a coat of arms on the breast pocket, and grey shirts with a plain maroon tie. As before, in cold weather I wore a pullover - green to match the blazer - under it. Grey socks and black lace-up shoes (worn indoors and out) completed the uniform. At that stage, navy-blue gabardine raincoats were generally worn but later other dark blue to black coats became more common.
I started at prep school at age 5. This was completely normal at the time. I've still got the termly reports from my prep school and they are all in the same format; there is no mention of a junior section of any kind. What has happened since is that private-sector schools take children from about age 3. The pre-prep section lasted up to age 7, and beyond that they were in the prep section to age 11. This sort of thing is, so far as I am aware, a relatively recent development - i.e. recent compared to when I was at school! I find it interesting to compare my preferences as a boy to that of my sons. The uniform at my sons’ school was qualitatively the same as mine – dark grey trousers, blazer (basically black, with coloured edges), white shirt, and so on. They were allowed to wear shorts in the Pre-Prep and prep departments, i.e. up to age 11. Both did so, both summer and (mostly) winter, as did some of their contemporaries. PE kit was somewhat different to mine. At home, they never had the same objection that I did to anything that fitted tight over the ears, and so wore T-shirts most of the time. Shorts in the summer and jeans in the winter were their general preference: these days they only wear shorts in particularly hot weather.
