CHILDREN on their way to a new school at Headington, Oxford, were often guilty of riotous behaviour.

Two double-decker buses ran daily to take pupils to St Joseph’s School in Headley Way when it moved from its old premises in St Clement’s in 1969.

One bus ran from Iffley, the other from Cowley.

Some of the dinner ladies travelled on the Iffley bus and behaviour was exemplary.

But the Cowley bus, which picked up children at Nazareth House (a children’s home in Cowley Road) and Divinity Road, was “like St Trinian’s”.

The story is told in a new book celebrating the centenary of the Catholic Church of SS Edmund and Frideswide in Iffley Road, popularly known as Greyfriars.

The book gives a comprehensive account of the church’s history, personalities, schools and social activities, including May Day ceremonies, since it opened on July 15, 1911.

Strangely, the church was never formally consecrated. Church law forbids consecration of anything on which secular bodies such as banks have a claim.

Church officials had planned to combine consecration with the centenary celebrations, but then realised that the church had been consecrated in 1967 without anyone realising.

Consecration of a new altar that year counted in canon law as a consecration of the whole church.

In an introduction to the book, parish priest Father Ambrose May recalls his memories of living in wartime Oxford and studying at Salesian College.

He writes: “We had to take gas masks to school and I remember someone getting into trouble when he somehow broke the window of his mask. School discipline could be harsh, but I had good friends and I rather enjoyed the war.

“Before the war, we didn’t get any sweets, but in the war, we had a sweet ration.

“We got a Morrison shelter and a reinforced table we could sleep under. My mother kept an iron bar in case the Germans came.”

Copies of the book, An Oxford Parish, The Church of SS Edmund and Frideswide 1911-2011, are available from the church.