Started 3 July 2015
Tom memories Chapter 15: Starting secondary school, mainly about classes
So I’ve written a chapter about the first 18 months of being a boarder at LRGS. And now a chapter on the first two years of school, 1947-8 and 1948-9. What was I like in Sept 1947 when I arrived? Certainly very idealistic, very keen to do my best, very keen to fit in and to be liked and accepted. I was one of the younger in the class/school (apart from the prep department that still had two years to go as it was being phased out); my year was for kids with a date of birth between 1 Sept 1935 and 31 Aug 1936, so with a September 1936 birthday I was a year ahead of where I should have been. I don’t know why this happened. In my last year at Hollins Grove the kids in my situation, for example Tony Collins whose birthday was 4 Sept, had to repeat the final primary school year. Being the youngest, or one of the two or three youngest, made me feel I’d never be form captain or anything, and tended to make me feel a bit irresponsible and to see myself as the baby, sometimes even the clown, of the class; Not at all good for me.
LRGS was a four stream entry school, and so we would have been about 120, perhaps 30 coming up from the prep department and 90 new boys. On the first day, we were told which class we were in, and I was in 2α (2 Alpha), the top stream. I must have felt pleased about that but I don’t remember. The first year was the second form because the first form was the upper two years of the prep department, called Lower 1 and Upper 1. The four streams were 2α, 2A, 2B1 and 2B2. 2B1 and 2B2 was said to be parallel. So we were then sent to our form classroom where our form master gave us our initial briefing on how things worked. Our form master was Mr Shief, always referred to as Nat Shief. He was also our Latin teacher. He turn out to be very firm, pretty serious and a super teacher The teachers all wore academic gowns, and Nat, who was a tall, middle aged guy, thinning on top, wearing horn rimmed glasses, was pretty imposing. He was a Roman Catholic and so did not appear at the morning assemblies.
We were sat (or is made to sit more elegant?) in alphabetical order and always had to sit in the place we were thus given. I can still remember the roll call perfectly (maybe; there’s nothing certain in memories). Bannister, Barker, Brew, Cliff, Clifton, Cocking, Dillon, Dobson, Dyson… all the way to… Walmsley, Walters and Williams. We were given our timetables; school always began at 09.00 am with assembly, the whole school except the Roman Catholics, who waited across the road in the Bell Room, together with the latecomers. Assembly was taken by the Headmaster, Mr. Timberlake, (always known as Joss by us kids; and as Tim by at least some of the staff), and consisted of a hymn (the music master at the grand piano, having played some decent 18th or 19th cent piano music for ten minutes as people were arriving), a Bible reading (AV, “… the grass withereth and the flower fadeth… ”) by a prefect and some prayers, followed by the notices.
So, as I started to say, we were given our time tables; the school hours were four full days, Mon, Tues, Thurs and Fri, from 09.00 am to 04.20 pm with a break from 12.20 till 1.45 for lunch, and two half days, Wed and Sat, just 09.00 until 12.20. There were four periods every morning plus a ten minute break, and three in the afternoons with no break. So that made 36 periods per week. There was lots of English, Maths, General Science, French and Latin, rather less History, Geography, PT, Art (or Woodwork), Games – “Organised Games” on the timetable – (a double period on a sports field I think), and rather less again Divinity, Music, Special Topics. We were also told that we would be graded four times per term; there would be a grade from A to E in each of the main subjects, and an overall grade based on these. The overall grade could also have a + or – e.g. B- to allow for some shading. Outstanding word would earn an A* (A star) grade, and if you got one of these, or an overall grade A, you would have to go up onto the stage to sign the Distinction Book, and all the school would applaud.
We were also told that the classes we were allotted to were provisional, and people would be moved up or down according to their grade. We were told an overall C was satisfactory, but in practice if you weren’t getting C+ or better regularly, you were in danger of the drop; this was tactfully and kindly said of course. And if you were getting poor or even good grades but were thought to be slacking and capable of better, you got put on Satis. Then you got a Satis card, and this had to be handed to the teacher at the end of every lesson, for your performance to be classified as B (bene), S (satis), VS (vix satis) or NS (non satis). And if you didn’t show an improvement while you were on satis, or if you picked up an NS or two, you were even in danger of being tanned (our word for caned) by the headmaster. Happily, I was never in danger of bring put on Satis. During the first year and even a bit in the second, people were promoted and relegated between classes from time to time; by the end of the second year, there had been about six of each to/from my form. There were also exams twice a year, at the ends of the Michaelmas and the Summer terms; and a report at the end of every term. I’ve still got all mine, which give my four overall grades each term and my twice yearly class position and overall mark in the exams.
I don’t remember, of course, how much of all this we were told during that first form- meeting. But as I’ve already mentioned, during that first week, there was a roll call each time we came to a class for the first time, which meant that I had to tell each new teacher, as my name was called out, that it was no longer Grunwald (no umlaut), but Greenwood. So that makes, I think, thirteen embarrassing moments. And of course, we were also told that the α stream was the express stream so that we would be taking our School Cert (no GCE in those days) in four years and not five like everyone else. So in the first year, it was the second form, then the third, then the fourth, then there was the fourth year, which was called the shell year – I never found out why – then the fifth year (called the fifth year – sanity at last!) The α stream would be skipping the second year, i.e. the third form year, and we would thus go from 2α to 4α.
To quite a large extent, we had the same teacher for the first two years. We had Nat Shief for Latin, just a lovely guy, who really made me like Latin very much. He had a deep voice and used to tell us, “Get our your Lat’n books boys.” Tons and tons of grammar, which I was good at and I just loved the structure and order. Lots of reading Latin authors, not too difficult, round the classroom. I can only remember Caesar’s Gallic wars. I really remember lots and lots of the grammar; learning about final causes, ut and the subjunctive, “They want to the city to (ut) buy bread”, then consecutive clauses…
Nat regularly used to disappear for short periods during lessons, and it was only years later that someone told me it was to have a quick smoke in the small storage room just behind his classroom. He died suddenly of a heart attack a couple of years later. We really were very shocked and saddened by that. And he had a son who was a few years younger that me, who later came the the school as a boarder.
Our maths teacher was called Le Mesurier, pronounced Lemeasurer, nicknamed Lemmy, a Newfoundlander. He was also super, never a discipline problem, without any seeming effort to be strict. I was basically very good at maths and liked all the work very much. Often I found new concepts difficult to start with, but once I got the hang of them, it was easy all the way. I must have had difficulties with proofs of congruent triangles because I remembered, it seems like week after week after week, all the 2 (or was is 4?) α boarders getting help from Mr Dickinson, always called Olly Dickinson, and who was always the master supervising prep the evening that we had that geometry homework. He was a divinity and I think history teacher, and he must have found those congruent triangle proofs difficult too, but he never gave up and always got there in the end. Lemmy sometimes chatted with us in lessons, and I can remember him talking about the poverty in the Canadian east coast provinces. He was very fond of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and I think he sang in an amateur opera society.
For English, also for the two years, we had Bobby English, a small, thin man with a quiet voice, who was close to retirement and was second (deputy head) master. And again, I can only say he was super. He taught me – and made me work on – so much, grammar, comprehension, drama – Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice – poetry… He must have been a pretty private person; no one knew much about him but he was certainly well liked and respected.
So now we come to our French master for those two years. Mr Holcroft or Holdcroft always called George though his first name was Greg. A very strange man, though not a bad French teacher. His classes were often very entertaining. Where to start? During the two years he taught me, he must have been in his late forties. He was a bachelor, average height, horn rimmed glasses, straight hair parted and combed back, very 1940s. He wore a different tie every day. He was never known to have worn the same tie twice. Sometimes he would cut the front of his tie in half and give the cut-off piece to some surprised school boy. And he had a string of catch phrases which he would repeat every now and then, often out of the blue, “Such a pretty girl, white hair, curly teeth.” “Those chateaux on the Loire, all front and no back.” (meaning the loos were hopeless). “Toute de suite, the touter the sweeter”. “A gateau is a cake, nothing else. Yet people will say of something fancy, ‘It’s not a cake, it’s a gateau’ ” “Cherchez la femme”, “Hurry Harry”.
Once he set us some homework and promised that any one who got everything right would be given an A* grade for French. Well, about half the class got full marks, so he gave us all an A* grade, and we all marched up onto the stage one assembly to sign the distinction book. Joss (the headmaster) must have been furious, and George must have been in trouble for that. My memory of the lessons is that they was pretty chaotic, but a lot of fun. I reckon I still learnt a lot of French; grammar, phrases, vocabulary. In those days, French classes were not very different from Latin, not much speaking.
Science was different; in the first year we did General Science. The science master, actually a biology master, was C. R. Buxton, no nickname. He was also one of the house-masters, in fact the senior house-master, quite young, single I suppose. Pretty serious, no jokes in his classroom. I remember his moustache – distinctly tooth brush – and turquoise sports jacket. He taught us some biology, some chemistry, some physics. The only lesson I can remember vividly was the one – or two – in which he dissected a rabbit, the dissecting board, the pins to pin the rabbit to it, the smell of formaldehyde. Very interesting, especially the amazing length of the small intestine. In 4α we did biology, physics and chemistry with three separate teachers. Or so I think, but I can’t remember much; I could find out by looking at my school reports for 4α. But then it wouldn’t be my memories any more.
We had a Miss Taylor, always known as Miss Taylor, who certainly taught us chemistry. She was very young, Irish, single, pretty, and during a visit to Lancaster gas works, fainted – into the arms of Terry Dyson, at the time the largest boy in the class. A never to be forgotten moment.
Once she showed us an educational film, and she caused a sensation by pronouncing “film” “filum”. Later I came to realise that a lot of Irish people do that. She was the only woman teacher that I had at LRGS, and I don’t think that she stayed for more than one year. It can’t have been much fun, being the only woman in the staff room. There was a Mrs Lee who had once been a maths teacher at LRGS and was called on whenever a maths teacher was needed in an emergency. She was not old so she must have just been happy to be a wife and mother. She was well liked it seems but she never taught me.
For history we has C W Hutton, always called Charlie Bill, elderly, the deputy deputy-head. I can’t at this moment remember anything at all about his lessons. It must have been British history, and it must have been the middle ages. In fact the only thing that I can remember was that in the very first one, he gave each of us a copy of the text book we’d be using that year and then made fun of it, saying how silly it was.
For geography we also had the same teacher the first two years, a Mr Dowthwaite, always called Dally; don’t remember his initials. He was also a sports teacher and refereed school cricket and rugby matches. He was an old boy of the school, got an open scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he presumably read geography for three years, then he returned to LRGS as a teacher and taught geography and sport until he retired. He became deputy-head after Bobby English retired, and something was named after him, a sports field or perhaps a pavilion. That was after my time. He really seemed to be making no effort to be a teacher. In most/all of his lessons, so far as I can remember, he just read the text book out loud to us the whole lesson. Strange, but that’s how it seemed. Still, once again, a lovely person.
We had one period of divinity a week and in the first year we were taught by the headmaster. He explained to us that he always taught 2α because he wanted to get to know the brightest new boys each year. I remember that he taught us that the five books of the Pentateuch was made up of writings by four groups of authors, referred to as J, Javist because God was called JHVH, E, Elohist, because God was called Elohim, the Lord God, P for Priestly, written by a group of priests and D for Deuteronomist, I think the latest in time. I found all that extremely interesting.
We did art in the first and third terms in the first year with Nat Ball, and woodwork in the second term with Charlie ??? can’t remember his surname, nice enough, a good teacher, always wore a grey smock. I really was not at all good at either art or woodwork, I quite liked both and did my best. In woodwork, one project was to make a puppet head, and I tried to make a Mickey Mouse head because I thought that it would be easy, but it wasn’t and I got nowhere. I did make a reasonable nut tray, using a gouge, but I don’t think it ever saw a nut. In 4α I was one of the kids that had no art or woodwork in his timetable.
For PT, and swimming in the summer term, all through the lower school we had Mr Holborn, quite young, quite bald, always Egg-head. A great gymnast, but once again, I was not much good at anything, not at vaulting, nor at doing a hand stand, never mind a head-stand, nor at climbing up a rope. At the end of each term, he would set up the gym for playing coastguards and pirates. There was one coastguard to start with and everyone else was a pirate, whom the coastguard had to catch, just a touch was needed. The thing was that you were not allowed to touch the floor, but to get round on the set-out apparatus, the vaulting horses, benches, wall-bars, ropes, etc. When you were caught or touched the floor you became a coastguard, and the last pirate to be left was the winner.
Egg-head commuted to Lancaster every day from Preston, about 20 miles away, a good way in those pre-motorway days. He had a pre-war Morris 8 tourer, and once as a prank we picked it up and put it down a few yards away, facing in the opposite direction. No harm was done and no one got shouted at.
When we were living in La-Tour-de Peilz (2000-2003), one of the people we got to know a All Saints’ Church, Vevey once heard me mention that I went to school in Lancaster, and she asked me if I’d know Mr Holborn, who was her grandfather. She told me that he’s died relatively young; sad and surprising when you think how super-fit he’d always been when I was at school.
A few works about music. There was just one music period per week. In the first year we has a Mr. Walmsley, in the second Mr Thewlis (Stan). Both were my piano teacher. Music was great. We learn a bit of music history, from plainsong and Gregorian chant through baroque, classical, romantic to the beginning of 20th century music, with gramophone records to illustrate each sort. We learn about the instruments of the orchestra, ancient and modern. We sang songs and choruses from whichever operetta or other music that was being rehearsed in the school, certainly “The Pirates of Penzance” in my first year, perhaps “H.M.S. Pinafore” in the second. We also learnt about Cecil Sharpe and Co. who collected old English folk-songs from all around the country at the turn of the 19/20th century, as they were in danger of dying out and being forgotten for ever. Not forgetting that we sang “Jesu joy of man’s desiring”, “Nymphs and shepherds” and many more such songs. And of course, as with woodwork and art and gym, I was really not much good at singing. And it must be said, being bad, one of the worst, in these subjects did cause me a lot of suffering and disappointment. Thank goodness that I was good at Latin and English and French and maths and the rest. I was also not specially good in chemistry and physics, though OK and enthusiastic about biology.
That’s enough about teachers for now. During those first two years, I don’t remember having any problem or conflict with any of the teachers. In fact, in addition, we really were a decent well-behaved class.
Greenwood family history 