It was a unique place - a small school with just a handful of pupils - that probably could not exist today, but there are many people living in and around Southampton who still fondly remember Miss Rickman and her single classroom.

She was a kindly lady with snow-white hair and a slight nervous tic who travelled every day by bus from her home in Sholing to her one-room school in the basement of Bursledon Village Hall, in the appropriately-named School Lane.

Back in the early 1950s, Miss Rickman was held in such great esteem that there was strong competition among parents to obtain a place for their youngsters to be guided through early lessons in reading, writing and arithmetic with her seemingly endless patience.

Probably today's set of complex government league tables, rules and regulations would not allow the school to exist, as Miss Rickman was headmistress, teacher, classroom assistant and school secretary rolled into one.

The classroom, with its highly polished parquet flooring, was heated on cold winter days by a large open coal fire, set early in the morning, before any pupils arrived, by the village hall caretaker Mr Maidment, who lived in a cottage at nearby Lowford.

It was next to this roaring fire that the boys and girls would place their small bottles of milk, which were always a feature of morning playtime, so as to be warm when Miss Rickman rang her brass bell to signal break.

Lunchtime was a great adventure and an event that every pupil looked forward to each day of term.

At midday all 20 pupils would form pairs and, with Miss Rickman at their head, be led along School Lane and taken across the road into the then Oak Hill Hotel, where the boys and girls joined other guests for lunch in the restaurant.

A Mrs Pritchard ran the hotel half a century or so ago and she always arranged for a long table to be reserved for the pupils - again with Miss Rickman sitting at the head - where they were served with lunch.

Afterwards, while Miss Rickman enjoyed her coffee, the youngsters would be allowed out to play in the extensive grounds of the hotel before walking back to the school in pairs.

If it was a Friday, it was time to learn tables, with the whole class being tested one by one by Miss Rickman, after which there was always a general knowledge quiz.

However, if the weather was fine, Miss Rickman would take the whole school on a nature ramble around the lanes of Bursledon, explaining the names of different flowers and pointing out the birds' nests in the hedges.

Often during the walk the pupils would call in at a large house owned by a friend of Miss Rickman, where orange squash and Rich Tea biscuits would be brought out on a tray for the youngsters.

Eventually Miss Rickman retired, and in the late 1960s a memorial service was held in the parish church of St Leonard's, attended by many of her former pupils.

By the way, that's me fourth from the left in the back row of the photograph - taken in the old vicarage sometime in the mid-1950s.