EASTBOURNE COLLEGE
The first teaching appointment after a most enjoyable Lent term completing the Diploma of Education
Eastbourne College was a perfect school for me. I was appointed by Michael Birley, who left just before I started my first term in September to be a housemaster at Marlborough College. In his place the governors appointed John Kendall-Carpenter, a former England rugby player. His deputy was an established Eastbourne College classicist, who had played in the same Oxford University team as K-C. He was the first headmaster that I knew and so it was a surprise to me when one summer term there was a rebellion in the Common Room. I was away playing professional cricket for Gloucestershire and the teaching staff, led amongst others by the deputy head, signed a petition which was given to the governing body. It became clear that K-C had lost the support of the Common Room after two years and the decision was taken that he should go. It did not help when, at the end of his first term, he called the staff in gowns (which few wore except in chapel) to a meeting in a chemistry lecture theatre, where he said:"It's clear to me that the problems in this school lie within these four walls". Inevitably this did not go down well, but he was always supportive of me and had allowed me to take the summer terms off from the College, so I was disappointed but not unduly surprised.
Simon Langdale, a Radley College boarding housemaster and one of the many members of staff who grew to become a headmaster during Dennis Silk's 23 years as its Warden, brought a different approach and was a first-class leader of a school that was reasonably happy to remain as a lower tier public school. He had other ideas and tightened up a number of areas, which, I realised in hindsight, needed to be improved. He was a cricketer and all round games player, who never forgot the academic side of the College and improved the attitudes to keeping a balance. He was an excellent role model for me as I continued to enjoy the dual existence of teaching and professional cricket.
It is interesting, looking back, to realise how much one changes from the first days of teaching through the years as a person in more responsible positions. In some ways I felt closer to the pupils than the common room when I started. They were nearer my age. At Eastbourne College, when joining in the 1st XV rugby practices to help Robin Harrison, the Head of Geography, who had represented Cambridge University at Twickenham some time before and remained an excellent coach, the captain Mike Pyrgos
asked whether he could call me Roger in training and practice games, as they all saw the newspaper articles referring to ‘Roger Knight, the Gloucestershire cricketer’. I said that, so long as it remained on the pitch and was not audible off the field, I would accept that. That worked well for a couple of days but, after one training session, I was walking along the cloisters going home to change when he shouted loudly from the other end of the cloisters – ‘HANG ON, ROGER’. The agreement ended!
When he became a Harlequins player and subsequently a successful coach of Bryanston School 1st XV, he ruled with a rod of iron and I suspect no boys called him Mike. I have always felt relaxed in sporting situations, whether cricket, rugby, tennis or squash with pupils and encouraged them to be confident in their approach themselves but, as a schoolmaster, I have always believed in a need for a certain formality.
There were some wonderful characters at the College. The art master, Marcus Lyon, owned a house with three bathrooms and everyone called him Three loos Lautrec. Donald Perrens, who was a successful housemaster who became the deputy head, had had a distinguished war record in the RAF. Robin Harrison, who taught geography, as well as running the rugby, had a stutter, which he used to very good effect in staff meetings, as everyone became silent whenever they heard:" W...... we...... well.....I ssshould like to sssay sssomething". He was a brilliant teacher and an outstanding bridge player. My head of department in modern languages was a very precise bachelor, who had written a French Dictionary of Slang and Colloquialisms. Tony Evans, another linguist, who moved on to Winchester and Dulwich College and was later my head of department at Dulwich, was a practical joker who had a wonderful sense of humour. I was attached to Powell House and then Gonville House as a tutor when the housemaster, John Lush, with Jenny his wife, took on a boarding rather than a day house. Nigel Wheeler and Euan Clarke arrived together and were similar to the television characters, Starsky and Hutch, which became their nicknames.
Every Friday evening there was a drink in the Common Room Bar, which adjoined the Bachelors' Dining Room. The chaplain, who was the spokesman for this group, said he was prepared to share the building, providing nobody interfered with the bachelors' private parts! After the drinks we often went out for an Indian curry with another couple on the staff, Bob and Pip Kirtley. During our eight winters at Eastbourne there were many members of staff with whom we became very friendly and, in many cases, are still in contact with. Simon and Sheila Funnell, went to Shrewsbury to run a boarding house and then to King's College, Taunton as headmaster and wife. Geoff Rees, brother of the Welsh international rugby player and top surgeon in Wales, and Di, his wife, went on to be a Principal of a college in Plymouth. Geoff was a prop forward who made his debut for Neath as a teenager, with Brian Thomas, an uncompromisingly hard Welsh forward behind him in the second row, and captained Cambridge University. In one Lent term Geoff went to play rugby for Blackheath 3rd XV. I asked him, on his return, how it had gone and his reply was that he had lost it. He explained that he was still fit and strong enough, but that, when he found an opposition player on the ground, he jumped over him, which he would not have done in his heyday! The senior housemaster was Philip LeBrocq, a former St Catharine's College, Cambridge man, whom I had been told, by one of the Cath's porters, to contact when I first arrived. He ran everywhere and seemed to be indefatigable in his English and drama lessons.
It was a happy school and a marvellous common room, which was really well led by Simon Langdale, who was decisive and determined, but empathetic. He subsequently became headmaster of Shrewsbury No headmaster could have been more supportive of my desire to combine cricket and education and I felt that, to a certain extent, I let him down when I moved to Dulwich College to continue cricket as Surrey captain and teach French, German and rugby at my alma mater.
DULWICH COLLEGE
A Return to my Alma Mater
It was strange to teach in the same Common Room as my father, who was very much revered at the College. There were several teachers who had taught me and, although they were all without exception welcoming, I did not always feel comfortable calling them anything other than 'Sir' rather than by their first name, which they expected. Rather like addressing one's mother-in-law, it was often easier not to call them anything, but to wait until they were clearly aware that you wished to speak to them.
David Emms, the Master, allowed me to continue with the two-term teaching role with the exception of one year when Surrey planned to tour Australia in the winter to play the winners of the one-day competitions there. He suggested that I take the whole winter off and return in the following winter. Surrey agreed to employ me to look into grassroots cricket in schools and clubs in the county, but sadly, the tour did not go ahead and I could have continued teaching throughout that winter and running the rugby. Nevertheless, it was an enlightening exercise and I enjoyed documenting the number of pitches, net facilities and school and junior club teams involved in proper matches throughout Surrey, which was unknown at the time.
I was fortunate to have joined up again with Tony Evans, as my new head of department. I was also extremely fortunate to have experienced rugby players such as Paul Ackford, an England lock forward, who was famously knocked out by a pile driver from a French prop forward, Phil Keith-Roach, a top-class hooker, with whom I had played at Cambridge and who was an outstanding coach, available to help the 1st XV forwards. As we always joked, Phil was the best coach in the country of the front row, but everything else behind that trio of forwards was a mystery to him. It made me laugh when, after my first game in charge of the 1st XV, which we won, two other members of staff said that I must now feel relieved after taking over a team with such an excellent record. When I replied that it had never crossed my mind and that, if the team played to the best of their ability, that was all I could ask. Winning was not the main aim, but bringing out the best in all the players and helping them to develop their game. They accused me of being far too much of an amateur!
The six years at Dulwich went too quickly. I enjoyed the cut and thrust of the quick-witted Londoners. One September, when I returned after the cricket season, I asked a sixth former how he and the Lower VIth French set had got on with Mademoiselle Delaunay, his reply was that she spoke much better French than I did and was much better looking. Both of these points were undoubtedly true! Instead of being a schoolmaster who played cricket in the summer months, I was for these seven summers a county cricket captain who taught during the winter months. The emphasis changed, but the enjoyment of continuing to follow the two careers and my two passions did not alter.
Dulwich was different from when I had grown up there. As the son of a boarding housemaster, I thought of the College as a boarding environment. As a returning teacher, I realised that the vast majority of the boys were day boys and that, at 3.40pm, there was huge rush to get to West Dulwich or Tulse Hill stations for the long commute home for so many. As a sports coach, my day was much longer and involved Saturdays, which I found stimulating, but the longer term ambition that I had was to become a boarding housemaster and there were by now only three boarding houses, so the prospects of that were limited.
In addition, it was clear that my cricket career was bound to come to an end relatively soon, so Chris and I often discussed the options and spoke about the kind of boarding schools, which we might consider applying to as a next move. I had thought that, like my father, I might spend my whole career in one school, but the move from Eastbourne to Dulwich College had changed those horizons. Now a third school was something to be considered, if the boarding life was something for the future.
CRANLEIGH SCHOOL
Loveday House Cranleigh School
An Opportunity to become the Housemaster of Loveday Boarding House at Cranleigh School
We moved to Cranleigh towards the end of the 1983 cricket season, and I travelled to the Oval each day. The senior housemaster was Andrew Corran, the former Oxford cricket and hockey Blue and Nottinghamshire fast bowler, and he, Gay, his wife and their family welcomed us all to the school, taking us under their experienced wings. We lived in a modern four-bedroomed house for the first time in our lives and we were surrounded by the fields of Surrey. The boarders’ accommodation took up three sides of the quad, and our house adjoined the fourth, with a resident married deputy house master and another bachelor tutor on the opposite side. We were responsible for sixty resident boys and ten sixth-form boarding girls, who were with us from after
breakfast until ten o’clock in the evening, when they went to their sleeping accommodation elsewhere on the campus. It was a large family to take on, but John Thompson, our deputy housemaster, and Christopher Mann, our house tutor, were both experienced, dedicated schoolmasters and helped us through the first couple of terms, aided by an excellent set of house prefects
and an outstanding school captain, Andrew Hobbs, who was a member of the house but, in his position, had a study bedroom in the main school.
They ran the house during the summer term of 1984, while I completed my last season and tried to be available for my benefit manager, Alan (AC) Shirreff, a great friend and a former county cricketer. It was a busy term, but I tried to be a cricketer, beneficiary and schoolmaster all at once. There was no teaching programme, but being in the housemaster’s house meant that I became very involved in the life of the boarders. What I forgot at times was that I was also a father and I was brought back to reality when Chris said that our daughter, Katie, who was by now eleven, had asked whether she needed to make an appointment or go and knock on my study door to speak to me.
Everyone was very supportive and, when we reached September 1984, I said goodbye to professional cricket and embarked on the career that I had always envisaged as a schoolmaster in a boarding school. I was able to teach examination classes, whereas, when I was teaching for half the year, I was restricted to the younger classes and the Lower VIth. Having started after Cambridge as a schoolmaster who played cricket, changing to a county cricket captain who taught, I was now going to be a schoolmaster who was a former professional cricketer.
Chris was invaluable as the housemaster’s wife and later as matron as well. She greeted the parents, entertained other staff, friends and the boarders in our home and listened in the Laundry Room at nine o’clock in the evening to the worries of the junior boarders. Katie changed schools and, after a year at a local preparatory school with a delightful headmistress, Miss Ursula Fairfax-Cholmondley, known by everyone as Chum, she went to Cranleigh’s sister school, St Catherine’s Bramley. Graeme, who
had enjoyed the competitive and hard-working life at Dulwich College Preparatory School, moved to the Cranleigh Preparatory School, which was less disciplined and less competitive. He was already developing as a talented sportsman and, although he was clearly academically able, he was not pushed in the classroom as he had been before. The SG Smith-sponsored Volvo, with my signature on the front doors, was a hit with the pupils in that first year and when we decided that we should have a dog, a retriever, we thought that we had really joined the M25 commuter belt set. Sydney was in his element with rabbit-filled fields in which to roam, kitchens to explore, biscuits and socks to collect and endless boys and girls who loved to take him for a walk. He was also a comforting presence for some of the homesick youngsters when they started as boarders.
Marc van Hasselt was an excellent headmaster, but sadly he retired after our first year. He was a true schoolmaster and understood the issues which arose. His successor, Tony Hart, came from the Treasury, with little experience of teaching. In the view of most of the boarding community he struggled at first and yet chose not to ask for advice. There were a number of tense moments, and the atmosphere was not as relaxed in the common room. Nevertheless the staff pulled together, and the school continued to run relatively smoothly.
The boarders in Loveday House were a joy, and the vast majority of parents appreciated all that the school did for them. The house competed in every sport and provided quite a few school team players ranging from rugby, cricket and hockey to tennis, clay pigeon shooting and cross country. We had an outstanding polo player who went off to matches outside the school and a variety of musicians, actors and artists. One of the musical highlights was a wonderful evening when Oliver Strauss, a good cellist, played cello duets with Caroline Dale at a dinner party, which we gave for a few parents and sixth formers. Caroline was the Young Musician of the Year and came to teach at the school. The academic standards were strong, and the girls played a full part in the life of the house, especially in one year when I appointed one of the sixth form girls, Shani Peters, as house captain.
I have heard it said that teachers do not see real life, but we encountered so many of life’s difficulties from death to divorce from serious illness to drunkenness, the blight of cigarettes and the ups and downs of adolescent relationships. We were perhaps fortunate to have no contact with drugs and, of course, there was no internet with social media and the readily available
distractions and dangers, which are around today.
I shall never forget our having to contact a parent in Kenya to say that his son had suffered an aneurism and was in the Atkinson Morley Hospital. Hasit Dodhia was a charming boy whose family had had several early deaths and he was seriously ill in the hospital. Mother and father arrived within twenty-four hours and, miraculously, Hasit recovered though remained
hemiplegic. He returned to the school about eight months later after his recovery and the other pupils were brilliant with him, carrying his tray in the dining room, making sure that he could cope with whatever he was doing. In his final year he and several other sixth formers, led by Shani Peters, our inspiring house captain (not easy for a girl to lead a boys’ boarding house
after only one year in the school, but she was a natural leader), abseiled down the multi-storey barracks in Kensington and raised a fair amount of money for charity. He was a very game boy who passed his A Levels well enough to gain a place at Bath University. It was an appalling moment when we heard that two years later he suffered another, more serious aneurism and died.
One of the delights of the house was a senior common room which had its own kitchen. Some of the lower sixth form boys chose to have cooking lessons and, on one occasion, three of them asked whether they could cook dinner and invite three girls from other houses to join them. They intended to wear black tie and the girls evening dresses. I was always keen to support initiatives such as this and agreed that they could and accepted that they could have one bottle of wine. I thought there would be little problem with six people sharing only one bottle. During the evening I went up to see how they were coping and saw that they had only drunk half the bottle. Half an hour later I went up again and there were only five of them at the table. I found the sixth, one of the cooks, lying on the grass outside, considerably under the weather and clearly having drunk too much. As I questioned them, they insisted that they had only had one bottle, but they then admitted that it was topped up regularly from a wine box under the table. Boys will be boys, but school housemasters have to be housemasters and so I punished them by stopping their exeat weekend at home and getting them to do some gardening around the house. It was not a major crime, but they understood that they had let me down and betrayed my trust. I had to smile on the following weekend, though, when we found a washing line stretched across the quad with countless wine boxes hanging from it. There was a sixth form bar in the school at that time and
the whole of the upper sixth had access to it, so the empty wine boxes told the story of how the senior pupils spent their Saturday evenings.
Whether we live in a safer environment nowadays when there are many fewer, if any, bars in schools and yet still quite a lot of illicit drinking, I am not sure. There is no doubt that too much alcohol was consumed, but it was accepted that boys and girls over the age of eighteen were entitled to spend time in the sixth-form bar, served by other sixth formers and overseen
spasmodically by a member of staff. When we reached the end of term I received a Christmas card in the shape of a wine box from the guilty trio of boarders, which was a good touch.
On another Saturday morning Chris had asked one of the sixth-form girls to show some prospective new parents round the house. When the parents arrived, the girl had not appeared, so Chris went up to her study, which was empty. However there was music coming from the study at the end of the corridor, so she knocked and went in. She was faced with four bare feet poking out from the end of the duvet and one of our sixth form boys and his girlfriend lying in the bed. She called me and I went up to find
the culprits hastily trying to pull on more clothes. Sadly the headmaster had little alternative but to ask them to leave the school, particularly as the boy in question had had a slightly chequered disciplinary career at the school. As they were both in their last term and in the middle of A levels they were allowed to return in the following week for their last examination. It was ironic that this examination was a biology practical, for which they had presumably revised thoroughly! The headline which appeared in the Sun newspaper was ‘Matron interrupts saucy romp in public school’. We never thought that Chris would appear in the Sun, but at least it was on page seven, with all her clothes on, and not topless on page three.
The position of housemaster was a very fulfilling part of teaching. I still enjoyed teaching French and I was fortunate to have another outstanding head of department in Michel Marty. His approach was to get to the photocopy machine at 6.30am and print out all his paperwork to share with the department. He had no time for other heads of department who moaned about not being able to use the photocopier and suggested that they should get up earlier and beat him to it.
I found immense satisfaction in running first the rugby and later the cricket, coaching squash and even producing a couple of plays, helped by a first-class senior boy, whose father was a film director. He knew far more about the direction of a play than I did, so we agreed that I would book rehearsal times and ensure that the cast appeared at the right time and he would do all the directing.
As a housemaster there is always variety and the chance to deal with young people who have so much energy and enthusiasm. Table tennis after prep was one favourite, making and tossing pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was another. This was the dog’s favourite, as he lay drooling near to where any misdirected uncaught pancakes would land. There were some very talented pupils, and the majority of parents were delighted with the end results. It was, though, sad to have one parent who complained that he had wasted his money because his son had not got into Oxbridge, had not played in a school first team and generally had not reached this parent’s expectations. I did explain that Jeremy had gained three good A level grades, had a place at Exeter University, had taken the lead in the main school play, had enjoyed his rugby in the 3rd XV and had made many good friends during his five years. The boy was pleased, but little would convince his father. At least his mother had the good grace to say thank you to his teachers.
We had a memorable incident when we were just leaving for a day away over an exeat weekend, when all the boarders had been dispatched to parents or guardians. We had forgotten something and returned to the house, only to find a painter’s ladder up against an open upstairs window to a dormitory. I went to investigate and found a parent, a barrister, collecting his son’s tennis racquet. As he had found the house locked he had decided to go in through the open window. I just wished that I had removed the
ladder and not gone into the house, because there was no way out from the locked door of the dormitory. He might have learnt a lesson and would have had to jump or wait until we or the boarders returned.
After six years under an uninspiring headmaster, I felt unsettled and thought that, if he could do it, perhaps I could be a headmaster. It had never been an ambition, but there was something appealing about being in charge of your own destiny and leading a team rather larger than a team of house tutors, which by now had grown to six, with two living on site. The
other four came in as academic tutors to do an evening’s duty.
WORKSOP COLLEGE
Headship 1990-1993
The College, a Woodard school, is situated in 350 acres of Nottinghamshire countryside close to the town of Worksop, which lost some of its soul when the coalmines were closed. It is part of the Dukeries and, by the time we arrived, had been transformed from a tough all-boys’ boarding school to a co-educational school of boarders and day pupils. It was totally unpretentious, and the pupils and parents were very different from those in the commuter belt of Surrey. They were happy to hand over their children to be educated, rather than acting as consumers and expecting results, as was becoming more common at Cranleigh. It had a proud history of producing top sportsmen and in the last twenty years has produced, amongst others, Joe Root, the England cricket captain, his brother, Billy, a developing county cricketer and Samit Patel, an England one-day international cricketer, as well as some outstanding hockey players.
There were 350 pupils and, as with most independent schools, the headmaster’s main task was to keep the school full. It did not help that I had inherited a difficult ‘O’ Level year group in the fifth form, with seven on final warnings. Inevitably they were unable to keep to the straight and narrow for the year, and I was faced with deciding whether the latest misdemeanour had any mitigating circumstances. The boarding house staff were united in agreement that it was more than one step too far, but the bursar kept on mentioning the lost fees, which we could not really afford. The decision was made, and then I spent hours trying to find new schools for them to attend so that they could complete their O Level examinations. However much a schoolmaster tries to keep rebels safe during their school years, there will always be some who refuse to listen and go too far. I have always believed that school children need firm guidelines and must understand where the ultimate boundaries lie. I dislike the analogy
of discipline being like a balloon, which can stretch and extend in some directions, often dependent on the mood of the teacher, and then quite suddenly burst because the teacher at the time has not felt at all empathetic. I prefer the analogy of a fort with solid walls, where pupils can climb the wall and look at the world outside, but if they jump down on the other side it is extremely difficult to get back and be accepted by the community. A disciplinary structure needs to be clear. It can take a long time to cultivate links with other schools and to feel able to call the Head to ask him to take on someone who has been expelled, but there was a very good relationship between independent schools and most were very accommodating, provided they knew the full story.
Three years in the post of headmaster is too short, but we did manage to make a few essential changes in the staff and in the boarding and day accommodation, as well as persuading the staff and pupils that the academic results needed addressing. The grades improved, without the sporting successes lessening. While we were at Worksop Chris helped the Sister in the sanatorium, entertained staff, pupils, parents and governors and took over running the Centenary Fundraising Appeal when the chemistry
teacher, who had recently retired to run it, had health problems. She worked incredibly hard at a role which she had never undertaken before and created databases, contacted alumni and raised considerable funds, helped by the wife of one of the housemasters.
The year after we arrived I needed to advertise for a historian, a housemaster and a rugby coach. I was extremely fortunate that, when I was at Cranleigh, a New Zealander had been attached to my team of tutors, while on a term’s sabbatical before taking on a boarding house at King’s College, Auckland. He had left us saying that, if I ever became a headmaster, he would love to teach in the UK. He was a historian, had been a housemaster for some years and was a typical New Zealand rugby coach with plenty of experience. Nobody was better suited to the position that was advertised. Warren Lincoln and his wife, Lyn, moved into Pelham House, which was in the same part of the main building above the headmaster’s house, and Lyn immediately joined Chris on the appeal.
The main facility that we were able to build with the money raised was an Astroturf hockey pitch, which has had tremendous results for the College hockey players, two of whom, as I write, represent England, one as captain. In addition we had taken the decision to change from renting 150 of our acres to local farmers at a very low rent to allowing a golf professional to design a golf course and make use of it as a public course for 25 years, when it would revert to the College. The pupils and staff were permitted to play a certain number of rounds free of charge each year. It was beneficial to all concerned, especially as the farmers were not making much use of the land.
Warren and I were good friends, and he was immediately well accepted in the staff common room. We went running together to keep fit and I played squash against the first team boys, so I was not stuck behind a desk. There was a lot of travelling to local preparatory schools, and relationships to be formed in the local community. Life was never dull. The staff were excellent, hard-working, mainly uncomplaining and prepared to run the many extra-curricular activities that took place.
My deputy head for the first term was Ricky Winn, the former England rugby player. He had only stayed to see me in, as his health was not good and he had been due to retire at the end of the summer term. The first major decision was to appoint a new deputy head and I chose a member of staff who had been at the College all his teaching life, was sixty-three and would
retire after two years. It seemed sensible to go for experience, as opposed to choosing an outstanding young housemaster, who was keen to extend his experience and move towards becoming a headmaster. I felt that he had time on his side. Arthur Caulfield was a creature of habit and self-discipline and the right man to be the link between the new headmaster and the common room. He told me from the start that he would tell me privately what he thought about my decisions but that he would always support me outwardly, which is exactly what I needed and expected. I did, though, clearly upset him on one occasion early on. In the College Dining Hall there was a long high table on the platform at one end of the hall. In the middle, facing the pupils, there was what could only be described as a throne. I had decided that I was not going to occupy the throne and chose to sit, along with staff members, on the chairs at the table wherever there was a gap. One day I collected my lunch from the canteen and joined four senior masters. There was a lot of huffing and puffing and, when I asked whether there was a problem, they said that I was
sitting on Arthur’s seat. He always sat there. Apparently, during the meal, Arthur came into the dining hall, saw the seat was taken and walked out, missing his lunch. When I caught up with him in the common room, where he was having his daily toast and jam, I said that I hoped he had not missed his lunch because of where I sat. His answer was that, when he arrived at the College as the youngest member of staff, the then headmaster had told him that he should sit at the end of the table, and he had done so ever since. He was not nearly as concerned as the other four members of staff.
There was an issue regarding the cricket that needed to be decided when I arrived. The master in charge, who had retired from all teaching duties to run the appeal, said that there was no other member of staff with sufficient cricketing credentials. I suggested Alan Kettleborough, who was a Yorkshireman, an excellent cricket coach and first-class groundsman, but apparently he would not be allowed into the Repton common room when he took our team there as he was not a member of the academic staff at Worksop. Alan and I agreed that the answer was for me nominally to be the master in charge, for him to undertake all the coaching of the 1st XI and a young languages teacher, who was a qualified umpire and loved the game, to take on all the administration. I also joined Alan in the nets, whenever other duties did not intervene. On the Saturday when Worksop played
away against Repton, I travelled with the team and Alan, dressed in a jacket and tie instead of his usual tracksuit, came with me into the common room for lunch and a drink after the match. Suddenly it did not seem to cause any problems, but perhaps a head magisterial presence helped!
Chris and I have many happy memories of our short time in Worksop, not least one Michaelmas term when we were almost cut off by snow. We had power cuts and I was writing reports by candlelight, concerned that a draught of wind would blow the flame on to the pile of completed handwritten reports. The pupils went home early, and we had the staff and their families round to the house for party games and Christmas cake in front of the log fire. I also remember well an inset day, where a friend and former colleague from Eastbourne College, who now ran leadership courses at schools, suggested that his course, which had been successful amongst the prefects at Cranleigh and other schools, would work well with staff as well. He persuaded me to let him use Worksop staff as guinea pigs. On the evening before the course, we invited all the staff for a drinks reception in the garden, and Philip Le Brocq explained the objectives of the following day. He asked everyone to wear loose clothing or a tracksuit, as we would start with exercises in the gym. This caused quite a stir. We had several new members of staff about to begin at the College and they were enthusiastic, whereas the Director of Music and the Head of Classics were less impressed. The next day the former wore a suit and the latter a bowtie. The sessions went well, and I felt that the staff gelled and enjoyed them once they had overcome a few inhibitions. The new members of staff thought it helped them to integrate. It helped that they saw the Headmaster and his Principal Mistress make an attempt, not always successful, at some of the exercises. I always embarrassed Mary Simmonds when I introduced her as my Principal Mistress, but she was an invaluable part of the senior management
team, along with her husband, Neil, who was Director of Studies.
As every leader will know, it is impossible to please all the people all the time. One set of new parents, whom I showed round a dormitory had very opposing views. The father, an Old Worksopian, regretted the changes from his day, thought the school had gone soft and doubted whether it was the right school for his son. The mother said that she would not have let her son come to the school if we had not put carpets on the floors and curtains at the windows in the dormitories. Meeting parents and showing them different parts of the school was always better if the pupils took them. However, my predecessor told a wonderful story of one such visit, when he and the bursar led prospective parents through the swimming pool. After they had left, the bursar asked
why he had spent so much time telling the mother to be careful about the slippery area round the pool, so that she continually looked down. The head pointed out that he had noticed the large amount of rust on the ceiling and did not want the parents to look up!
There were some interesting characters on the staff. Dennis Hackett, the head of PE and a former Loughborough Colleges rugby player, coached the 1st XV very well and could be heard everywhere on campus as he barked out his loud instructions with no need of a megaphone. The Director of Art had a tattoo and an earring, coached the 3rd XV rugby team, which encouraged
sportsmen to consider art and vice versa, and was always positive and enthusiastic. The chaplain had been a prop forward for Wasps Rugby Club 1st XV, tended towards the outrageous and was not on very good terms with the Senior Woodard Provost, who visited once a term. The boarding house parents were incredibly dedicated and served their pupils really well in their different ways. One was always keen for his boys to achieve the top academic marks and beat other houses; another, who ran the mixed day house with his wife, always had a wry smile and a sardonic comment. Wendy Bain in the girls’ boarding house protected her girls and supported them extremely well. The Head of Physics, who also ran the sailing and the naval section in the CCF, unfortunately had a lisp, which was highlighted by his insistence on referring to physics, sailing and the CCF, in which he was involved, and which the younger boys mimicked. He was an excellent sixth-form physics teacher, knowledgeable and much valued by those who had chosen his subject at A Level, but he struggled with disciplining the junior classes. Nobody was more dedicated to helping the pupils than he was. In a discussion about his future plans he told me that the only other school
which he would consider joining apart from Worksop was Strathallan in Perthshire. When the head of science position came up and he applied, he was asked to travel there overnight for an interview. He was excited and it was quite a surprise when he returned and said that, although he had been offered the post, he had declined it. Apparently, his father had advised him that it was not a sensible time to be teaching abroad!
The seven years at Cranleigh and the three years and a term at Worksop were the period when the educational world was the centre of my life. It was where I thought I would always be and I felt thoroughly at home in the school environment whether as a classroom teacher, a sports coach, a boarding house master or a headmaster. There was a formality with which I felt comfortable. In fact it would be fair to say that I was ‘suited and tied’ to the profession! Chris played a huge part in the last two roles and our
children grew up surrounded by marvellous facilities and the children of other staff members, although we had decided that it would be better for our two not to attend the schools where I was teaching.
With improving examination results, an artificial hockey and tennis surface and an eighteen-hole golf course and, most importantly, some positive new younger members of staff, whom I had appointed, I hope I left the College in a better place than when I arrived, but then all headmasters need to think that. I should have liked to stay a little longer to see a whole generation of pupils through the school, but it was not to be.
As Headmaster of Worksop College there were, as with captaincy, moments when important decisions had to be made. The staff, the pupils, the parents, the alumni and the governing body all had views on most aspects of the College’s life. Shirley House had been a boys’ boarding house since the College began, but boy boarding numbers were down and spaces for day girls were limited at a time when more girls were applying to come into the VIth form. After much thought and consultation with staff and governors, it was decided that Shirley should become a day house for both boys and girls. This would allow different facilities to be made available and would solve the problem of lack of space for day girls. It was a change to the school’s ethos of merging boarders with day pupils in the same houses, but logistically it made sense. The housemaster and his wife were supportive
and were the right option to run the new house, both of them full-time teachers and keen to take on the pastoral side of education. The announcement was met with hostility from some alumni, inevitably perhaps after their memories of life as boarders in Shirley House. The current boy boarders were also opposed to the change, and this spread to some parents. Opposition was vocal and extended to anti-headmaster slogans on a wall. Nevertheless, the decision had been argued fully, and I
stuck to my guns. The change was welcomed by the new inhabitants of the house. Boarders from the original house were transferred to other boarding houses of their choice and, very quickly, the new situation was accepted. This decision affected more people than the choice between the Surrey overseas players in the county cricket match, but managing the decision was
similar in that individuals were bound to be affected and needed to have their concerns eased and the reasons for the change explained. I had learned a lesson, which helped on this occasion.
Teaching in four schools brought so many friends and acquaintances amongst the staff and pupils. I am still in contact with many of them from the different generations. In fact recently I was telephoned by someone, one Friday evening when I was in New Zealand, who wanted to remind me that I had taught him French. He did not give me his name but asked whether I wanted to see him when he was ‘on in Auckland’. He said that he enjoyed ad-libbing both in French and German, and he recalled our
French lessons. As I did not recognise his voice and he gave no name, it was difficult to place him. However, Chris and I scoured the local newspaper and the internet to see who was appearing anywhere in Auckland on the following day. It did not take us long to find out that it was Eddie Izzard, whom I had taught French very briefly and who was spending the evening with another
former Eastbourne College schoolmaster in Christchurch. A Dulwich boy, whom I had taught French in the VIth form, has a house on Waiheke Island, where Chris and I now spend most winters, but he and his wife live more permanently in the South of France. As he said, I must have taught him something about the language!
THE KING'S SCHOOLS, TAUNTON
Governor, Chairman of the Education Committee and then Custos (Chairman of Governors) of the King's Schools, Taunton - King's College and King's Hall
King's College Kings' Hall