Hesketh Fletcher Gym Team

Julian, when I started at an all boys grammar school our uniform list stipulated T shirt and shorts for PE, but when we arrived for our first gym lesson we were told to get changed into just shorts and plimsolls, no pants or socks and stripped to the waist. This continued throughout our time at the school. When we were in the sixth form, a group of boys from the local secondary mixed school joined us to do A levels.They had all worn vests and shorts for PE and it was they who now had to be stripped to the waist. They all agreed that it was much more comfortable, especially when they were able to enjoy the freedom and fresh air outside on a cross country run.

Julian,
Really interesting post. It’s great that your PE teachers allowed you to choose to be barechested for PE after being positively influenced by the new group of lads. Doing PE shirtless is much more comfortable than having a hot, sweaty shirt sticking to your back, it just makes total sense. I feel sorry for lads in the present day who are made to wear shirts or vests for PE.

Julian, how did your PE teacher respond to the newcomer going topless? And then to the rest of you doing likewise? Encouraging, tolerant or against the idea?

Philip, thanks for confirming what I thought was probably the case.I could imagine the boy, who was not a disruptive chap,may have gone to his next lesson at one of his chosen option subjects looking decidedly'unhappy'and telling the master why and setting off a speedy investigation which led to the student teacher's instant dismissal.

When I started secondary school the uniform list stipulated vest and shorts for PE but in one year a new boy joined us and he always stripped to the waist.
In Fourth Form(Year 10 today)a group of boys joined us to do O levels and they came from a neighbouring school that didn't do O Levels.They all did PE bare-chested and gradually the rest of us went topless as well and so we all ended up stripped to the waist and many of us went barefoot as well.

To Rob. A student teacher would not be authorised to administer corporal punishment. What he did obviously became known to the management of your school and he would be removed so that would be why you never saw him again.

Hi Andrea

I couldn’t imagine any school forbidding PE kit at that age nowadays! I guess that all have kit and even have spares for anyone who forgets theirs.

Once I was in year 8 I normally did wear a vest on PE days. I still didn’t need a bra so it was a choice of vest or going bare. A few times when we had PE when it wasn’t timetabled we had to just undress and then some of us without bras weren’t wearing vests, so maybe 10 or so of us would have to do it in just our knickers.

Alfie A, That's why I remember it so vividly.I don't know why he was wearing underpants; we had all been at the school long enough to know that we were not allowed to wear anything under shorts for any activity,in the gym or on the playing fields. It was the first, and indeed, the only time that I can recall anyone being discovered wearing anything and I believe we were all shocked at the punishment and the manner in which it was carried out in front of us all. We never heard any more about it, but also we never saw the student teacher again in the school.

Re that last comment about punishment, that was savage

With regards to shorts for pe, in my secondary school (1961 to (1966) there was no specific uniform design or colour and so there was quite a mixture. At one games session one lad who always had to be the first to have any new design, wore a pair of white nylon shorts. The problem was we were outside and it started to rain hard and because of the no pants rule his shorts very quickly revealed everything. After that lesson he went back to wearing black shorts. Most of the lads wore shorts that were quite baggy and when we had to do handstands with a partner supporting our legs in the upright position these shorts became quite revealing. However we were all had to take our turn doing the handstand and of course after the lesson we would all be stripping off in the changing room and no one was bothered. I understand it is quite different.
these days.

A student teacher took our PE class once when we were about aged 15 and caught a boy wearing pants under his shorts. We all had to stand in a circle around the boy while he was told to remove his shorts and underpants plus plimsolls and he was given six of the best on his backside with one of them. He was then made to stand under a cold shower for the remainder of the lesson.

Alan, it's good to know that cold showers as punishment wasn't unique to my school. It was certainly an experience.

Alice,
Can you imagine the reaction if any school tried to impose that rule nowadays!

Like you, I was still flat chested when I started at secondary school, but some of my classmates weren't. I would estimate that about half were wearing bras by the end of the year. Some could probably have done without, but some definitely needed them!

Did you wear a vest for PE in Year 8?

Andrea,

I don't remember our PE teacher ever actually saying why we had to be topless in Yr7. I thinkw e were all quite shocked when she first told us so no-one thought to ask, even if we'd been brave enough, and afterwards it was just accepted as what was required.

I think it might have been uncomfortable for the more developed girls, but I don't remember anyone in my form being that large. I myself was basically flat chested until I was much older, so having to do gym with no top on wasn't physically uncomfortable.

I started senior school in 1992, and I know the "no PE kit" rule was still in place when I left in 1996.

FrankC,we must have been brought up in similar backgrounds where we had to wear short trousers past the rite of passage ,usually about 13.
My mother also'thought it was healthier having legs open to the elements'but in freezing weather it was bitterly cold on our bare legs.Probably the reason I had to wear shorts was so my mother could impress her authority over me and took delight in keeping me in short trousers through adolescence.

James,I was afraid that your shorts were loose and short like ours in the late fifties and the girls would have been able to see more than they were supposed to.Being at an all boys school it was of no consequence to us. No doubt your shorts would have been white, very brief, but tight, like the 1966 England World Cup team.I can understand how the girls enjoyed seeing the boys up close wearing nothing ,but their shorts, leaving very little to their imagination.

Nice to see the Hesketh site filling up with comments once more! Hi James,Last year I published a comment on the Burnley site about me being fourteen at Grammar school before I wore long trousers to school mainly Due to my parents preference.I think my mother thought it was healthier having legs open to the elements!My Scottish cousin visited us in the summer holidays and was quite jealous of him! After a meaningful discussion they relented to my preference.

Rob

Yes, it was colder where I grew up. In those days kids didn't travel much, so we really only knew where we lived.

We'd seen boys from the school out running, and it seemed very grown up for them to run stripped to the waist - so in some ways when we wanted to be like this. When we got the kit list, I remember my Mum questioning the fact there was no t-shirt/vest (or socks), and my Dad saying soemthing like "he doesn't need a shirt, it won't kill him"

Yes we had hot showers, kind of hot anyway. One teacher used cold showers as a punishment, and I got punished like this a couple of times.

Rob,we weren't segregated from the girls and participated in the same activities.The shorts that we wore were we also absurdly brief and that was the fashion in the sixties and strict rules didn't allow us to wear anything under our shorts.Wearing shorts that were so short often led from derogatory remarks of mockery and derision.

Alan, thanks for your response. Yes, very much further north than us living in the shelter of the South Downs in Sussex; I can imagine how cold it gets in winter. I was at a grammar school in the late fifties and like you we had to do as the teachers told us without question.
We wore the same as you to school and had to strip off completely in the changing room and then back into the gym or outside in just our PE shorts and plimsolls. As you say, it was normal for boys to run cross country shirtless, and we also ran on local roads and onto woodland and fields.I hand it to you though, Alan, I reckon you had it a damn sight tougher than us down south. I hope you had some decent hot showers to get under when you returned.

Fiona,
I was rather surprised at first, but didn't really question him about it. He started doing it during the summer when it was warm. I did worry about him being too cold in winter, but I think he sometimes wore his pants and a T shirt in really cold weather.

Alice,
Did your PE teacher say why you had to be topless in Yr7?
I would imagine it would have been uncomfortable for the more developed girls! What era was this?
In contrast to yours, our PE teacher encouraged several of my classmates to start wearing a bra.

James, When you had mixed PE lessons were boys and girls segregated at either ends of the gym? If you wore just PE shorts with nothing underneath, as we did, little wonder some of the boys were very shy and embarrassed. I remember the problems we had, and we were an all boys school.In the fifties our parents bought us a pair of gym shorts and most of us continued wearing the same pair all through the school and they became dangerously short.

Andrew,I attended a mixed school and we often had mixed PE lessons.We wore just our shorts, as usual and as there was no alternative we accepted it,although some of the boys were very shy and embarrassed.
I'm sure the girls enjoyed the spectacle of seeing so many boys participating in the games wearing nothing,but their shorts.

Although our school was mixed the girls would see you stripped off outside on the yard from whichever classroom you were in for they all looked out over the yard and field or through the huge reinforced glass panels that separated the corridor from the gym. Alan, like you, we were expected to strip strippto the waist for x-country and for outdoor fitness sessions too which in winter were held weekly regardless of the weather or temperature. It made you appreciate the luxury of the heated gym all the more. It was always common for cold showers to be given as punishment. You would spend a set period of time, usually 5-6 minutes, with your your shorts on and freezing water hit your back and chest together. You didn't come out until your time was up which felt an age. During my time at school I received two cold showers. My first came age 12 and the last at 14 for being lazy and not showing sweat on my upper body following gym.

Much like Alice we were a mixed school but separate PE lessons but I wonder how many here would have felt differently about how they were dressed had their lessons been mixed though?

I got used to our PE kit in the end, but I wonder if in a mixed lesson may have resented it.

Andrea

"I think my son was influenced by some of his friends who he saw going without PJs at a sleepover."

Did you have any opinion on this development, one way or the other?

Hi everyone, I thought I'd add my school experiences. I went to a mixed secondary school that had single sex PE lessons. When we were outdoors the boys used the gym, and when they were on the field, we were inside. Because of this we never saw each other, and that meant our teachers didn't worry about what we wore. In Year 7 we weren't allowed to wear our new PE kits in the gym, and we had to undress right down to our knickers, and the girls who had bras even had to take them off as we all had to go topless. In Year 8 we were allowed to wear our vests or bras for indoor PE, along with our knickers. A lot of us chose to wear a vest on PE days as they covered more than a bra, and it was strictly one or the other. After Year 8 we were finally allowed to wear PE kit.

Rob,we too had to participate in games in very harsh conditions and we were only allowed to wear shorts.
Shorts in the sixties and seventies were inexorably short with an inside leg of about three inches,very similar in length to my shorts that I wore for school.
It was amazing how we withstood the bitterly cold weather wearing nothing but our shorts, while teachers who supervised us wore every item of clothing available to keep themselves warm.

Rob

I went to a grammar school just outside Newcastle, so east side of the country, and very cold winters.

As other people have commented, the world has changed, one room heated at home, ice inside bedroom windows etc. The other difference is that basically we did as teachers told us without question, or faces the consequences. When I was caned, my Dad 110% supported the teachers, in fact he often thought I got off light !

Cross country was always done shirtless, so it wasn't unusual to see boys from the school out running (woodlands, fields as well as local roads around the school). It was “normal” - that's how boys did cross country.

You were freezing of course. At school in the winter you wore vest, shirt, sweater, blazer etc, then into the cahnging rooms and strip it all off, and outside in just your shorts. Usually the wind was biting as well, but there wasn't a debate, it was “right boys, cross country today, just rugby shorts, plimsolls if you have them, MOVE”

Lined up waiting, all you wanted to do was get running.

If anyone had complained or wore a vest/shirt, they would have been made to strip it off and caned, so you didn't.

Andrea

Looking back from this distance, it was probably a bit of both. I was about in the middle of my class age-wise and development-wise, so seeing older boys wearing their newly-acquired jock-straps was intriguing, as I had never heard of these garments before. Having borrowed one to try, I lost no time in getting my parents to get me one of my own. I found it comfortable to wear and it made me feel more grown-up.