04/08/2026
ROOTS AND RAMBLES: 📝
Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck —
Well, in this case it was a ticky, found by Grade 4 pupil Megan Holmes last year. Whilst Megan was out exploring the leafy paths of Top Woods, as Clifton children often do, something unusual caught her eye. Nestled in the soil near the Maple tree — once the original school car park — she picked up a coin dated 1943, minted just a year after Clifton, Nottingham Road, first opened its doors. As interesting as it was the immediate questions raised by the children were ‘how much tuck could that coin buy?’ Sadly, nowadays not very much. If you could magically use a historical ticky at a modern store, its legal face value would be worth less than half a cent.
On a recent visit by Mr Esmond Dowse, one of Clifton’s founding boys from 1942, we shared our findings with him. He smiled and confirmed that a ticky would have been generous pocket money — probably a week’s allocation of tuck! Walking down to the local trading store in Nottingham Road village, he might have bought a soda pop or a handful of hard boiled sweets with it. Some boys, he recalled, had interesting strategies: spend it all on one chocolate log, or decide that volume was better value and buy a paper bag of sweeties — perhaps toffees or pinkies — to last the week ahead!🍫🍬
These small finds remind us that Clifton’s history is not locked away in books or cupboards but is still living, surfacing in unexpected ways. Each coin, each relic, carries with it a story of legacy, nostalgia, and the enduring spirit of the school.❤️🤍🖤
