A midday supervisor received a special surprise as part of celebrations held to mark 40 years of working at Saint John Houghton Catholic Voluntary Academy.

Pat Limb was presented with a Manchester Tart, a dessert which she loves and remembers from her early days in the dinner hall but is no longer on the menu at the Kirk Hallam school.

Ilkeston-based Stacey’s Bakery heard about Pat’s love of Manchester Tart and made one especially for her.

David Stacey, Managing Director at Stacey’s Bakery, said: “Manchester Tart isn’t something we currently make at Stacey’s, but we were happy to have a go for Pat. 40 years as a dinner lady is quite something! The taste testing in the bakery was very positive so it’s a bake we might add to our repertoire.”

Pat initially joined Saint John Houghton to provide a week of cover for a staff member who was off ill but 40 years on she is still at the school, in Abbot Road.

She said: “The lady who was off sick never came back and I became a supervisor and then a senior supervisor. I had to do the rotas and deal with any problems and I was always in the dining hall when the children were eating.

“I’m still a midday supervisor now and I also work in the school office a bit too. Things have changed a lot, years ago we didn’t have the café that we have now. Children’s dinners were like a proper sit down meal and the food was very traditional. They would eat what they were given.

“I loved Manchester Tart, that was a nice dessert. They always used to save me a slab of that when we had a roast dinner. It was so lovely of Stacey’s Bakery to make one for me, it was delicious and brought back lots of good memories.”

Pat has seen generations of Ilkeston families go through Saint John Houghton and was a midday supervisor when lots of current staff attended the school.

She said: “I remember lots of members of staff when they came here as pupils and lots of the children’s parents, even a grandparent. I was a midday supervisor when she came here.

“Sometimes when there used to be anyone misbehaving the other supervisors would tell the children ‘I’m sending for Pat’. I remember one child who went to the front of the dinner queue and I told him to go to the back. Years later I went into a bar in Ilkeston and he was in there and he shouted ‘Get to the back Pat’.

Memories that Pat recounts include a fire at the school in 1995 and an eight-hour sponsored walk from Saint John Houghton to The Briars, a Catholic youth retreat centre in Crich.

She said: “We had a fire at school in 1995 at night and it was quite bad. I organised a charity evening at a local social club and we raised £4,000 to replace lecterns on the stage in the hall that were burned.”

Pat said she can’t believe that 40 years has passed so quickly and has no plans to retire any time soon.

She said: “I keep thinking, where has the time gone? This school is like a family and everyone is so friendly, sometimes it feels like I’ll be here until I’m 90!”

Steve Brogan, Headteacher, said: “We are so pleased and proud to celebrate Pat’s 40 years with us as a school and during that time, she has served in a number of roles with us. There are very few of us, especially in 2025 who will serve one single place of work for that amount of time, but that is exactly what Pat has achieved.

“We recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of our school and it is amazing to think that Pat has worked in our school for two-thirds of the time our school has been opened. She has been an incredible servant to our school, and we are so lucky to have people like Pat who serve our school and our students with such dedication and commitment.”

Pictured left to right: Sarah from Stacey’s Bakery with Pat and the Manchester Tart.