The Old Lennensian

CRESCAT IN HORAS DOCTRINA The Old Lennensian

Newsletter of the Old Lennensians Association

Spring Edition April 2021

“Education is the movement from darkness into light.” Alan Bloom

A Word from the Editor One of the great joys of being an Old Lennensian is the fact that I am still in touch with people I knew over fifty years ago. Many of them were boarders too. If I think about it, the reason I wanted the association to continue, and to publicise itself better, was because I wanted other people to have the same pleasure of revisiting experiences and extending friendships as I have. We now have over 300 members and a flourishing Facebook site called ‘Friends of KES’. Our organisation is expanding while others fall by the wayside. Our website has done much to promote us but there is more to it than that. I love nostalgia and I have always believed in preserving the traditions and achievements of KES long after we are all dead. This is not a morbid thought. All I mean is that I hope that there will be Old Lennensians proud of the school in hundreds of years’ time. Adding our memories to those already recorded gives life to the dusty corners of history and relevance to the idea of what great schools represent. More than anything, today’s association works in partnership with the present school. Some have been disturbed by the news that KES is soon to be administered by a different Academy Trust. They should not be. As an OL, Trustee and Governor, I have seen the huge progress made by KES in the last eighteen months. A recent Ofsted inspection, over the way our school has tackled the enormous challenge of Covid, makes great reading for those longing to see the ‘sleeping giant’ wake up and find its way back to the top. The headteacher and staff should be very proud of the way they have gone about a very difficult task in awful and unprecedented times. The OLs congratulate and thank them. And I would like to thank EMAT for the inspired appointment of Sarah Hartshorn. It was far and away the best thing they ever did for KES.

Andrew Stephen, Chairman (School 1964-71)

A Word from the Headteacher

Dear Old Lennensians, What an absolute joy it was to be able to open our doors on March the 8th and welcome our students through our gates once more. As I reflect on the last few months, I am again struck by the resilience, determination and total dedication that has been shown by both staff and students. This second lockdown has not been easy. Staff have adapted to the pressures of live lessons brilliantly, overnight becoming experts in technology and becoming familiar with new ways to feedback remotely with their classes. The added issues of being accessible 24/7 on email and our virtual platforms has been draining for all. Not to 3

mention the juggling act of caring for your own children and assisting them with their own home learning. But still they did and continue to do the best for the children in their care. This lockdown we have seen a large increase in the number of children utilising the inhouse provision for vulnerable and Key worker children. Staff went above and beyond, volunteering their time to ensure we were able to offer all that needed a place in school. The safeguarding team continued to provide their caring arms over this lockdown with over 600 home visits, making sure that our children continued to be safe and cared for. Over 135 laptops, dongles, data, was handed out, compliments of the Foundation Trustees and the Department of Education. 100% of our students had online access during this time so they were able to continue to be educated at home. House events continued over lockdown aiding with everyone's wellbeing. We may have been apart, but we felt part of something bigger. As if a national pandemic was not enough, Ofsted have kept us on our toes with two virtual visits. I was glad of the opportunity to show case our amazing school, desperate for external verification of the fantastic work all have been committed to since 2019. King Edward VII has seen so much over the many years it has been open. It continues to adapt its building to support the community it serves. I never thought that in my career I would see a school hall utilised as a testing centre for a deadly virus. But adapt it did, and very successfully at that. In our first week 1600 tests were conducted that enabled us to open safely and continue to protect the communities both in and outside of its great gates. As we return to our classrooms, we have started to hear the birds sing and can see the beautiful signs of spring in the snow drops and aconites as they push their vibrant yellow to the surface. We are again given hope of a time when we can see our friends and families once more. In the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson - “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier’…” Kind regards, Sarah Hartshorn Principal

Salvete

We would like to trace any other surviving Grammar School staff (initially) and then any long serving staff from KES post 1979. Finding contact details isn’t always easy so we would appreciate your help with this. Expanding our Honorary Membership will take time but we will do it. We are happy to receive nominations of worthy candidates.

A warm welcome is extended to:

Russell Mowbray Edinburgh 1975 – 82 Sarah Hicks Not known 1981 – 83 Kevin Fox Keene 1968 – 75 David Cawdery School 1959 – 64 Chris Manning Thoresby 1958 – 65 Dominic Luckett Keene/Thoresby 1977 – 84 Richard Griffiths Hon Member 1973 – 96 Trevor Lord Windsor 1956 – 61 David White Keene 1948 – 53 Matt Hill Keene/Thoresby 1979 – 86 David King Keene 1975 – 82 Stuart Mackie Keene 1959 – 66 Kevin Wilkinson Edinburgh 1966 – 73 Marcus Rich Gloucester 1970 – 77 Richard Skerritt Lancs/Sch 1978 – 85 Adam Hurlock York 1964 – 71 Frank Tuffs Thoresby 1932 – 37 Tim Anderson Keene 1963 – 70 James Davis Keene & School 1949 - 56 Mark Thorpe Thoresby 1972 – 79 Kirsty Hannant Keene/Thoresby 2000 – 05 Stephen Sauvain Thoresby 1960 – 67 Andrew Leech York & School 1971 – 78 Paul Roscoe Windsor 1960 - 69 John Garfoot York & School 1968 – 75 Neil Kimber Windsor 1976-81 Richard Howard Keene 1956-63 Sharon Scott Honorary member (Trustee)

Valete With sadness we record the deaths of the following former pupils and staff and we offer our condolences to their families:

ARROWSMITH Basil William BANYARD Keith 1941-46 Windsor HAYNES Colin F 1946-53 Thoresby NIXON Kenneth 1963-70 School PEARMAN Douglas 1950-57 Thoresby SAUVAIN Philip 1944-51 Thoresby TAGG Michael 1954-59 York

In the last edition, I should have recorded Terry BLY’s dates at KES as 1952-57. My apologies. It is always sad when we lose one of our number. It is fitting, where possible, to print tributes to their contribution to society. I am always happy to print these in future editions where people feel able to add a few words.

Basil Walter ARROWSMITH Passed away peacefully, after a short illness, on November 25th, aged 85. A loving husband to Maureen. A wonderful Dad to Richard and Suzanne. Father-in-law to Chris and Sandra.

Keith William Albert BANYARD 1941-46 Windsor House His daughter Rosemary has kindly provided this obituary: Born in 1930, Keith’s family moved to Gaywood in 1938 and he entered the Transition Form at KES in early 1941. He had moved around in Norfolk and attended several primary schools, so it is perhaps not surprising that he ranked 20th out of 30 boys in his form at the point of entry, and 29th in Science with the comment in his school report that he “makes nothing of this subject. Should really make more effort to understand”. He moved into the first form in September 1941, with Tom Bromhead as both his first year form master and his house master in Windsor House. By the 4th form, Keith came 1st in Mathematics, and in his penultimate term 1st in Physics. This is the Dad we knew. Clearly the school brought out his talents in these subjects, which he used to the full throughout his life. He left school in 1946 with the Cambridge School Certificate and went to train as a Telecommunications Engineer with what became British Telecom. He worked for BT for his whole career, apart from National Service with the RAF as a radar 7

engineer. He started climbing telegraph poles; moved on to the migration of many telephone exchanges in Herts and Essex from manual to automatic operation; and latterly had oversight of the telecommunications support for enterprises such as Glaxo in Stevenage, Marshall of Cambridge and Stansted Airport. He was also proficient at DIY, not just re-wiring our house, but car maintenance, plumbing, carpentry, welding, you name it. In later life he took a keen interest in his old school, and supported the Old Lennensians’ Association, attending its annual meeting and lunch right up until his 89th year. On his last visit, he guided me proudly round his school and showed me the two boards on which his younger brother Malcolm featured, one as school captain and one with a scholarship to Dartmouth Royal Naval College. He also regularly entertained his grandchildren with stories of his wartime school experiences. Keith passed away suddenly on 13th October, 2020. He was buried, as he would have wished, wearing a suit and his Old Lennensian tie. Colin Frederick HAYNES 1946-46 Windsor House

Formerly of Cape Town, South Africa, San Francisco, U.S.A and Augharan, Aughavas, Leitrim.

The death has occurred peacefully at home at the age of 83 years old of Colin Haynes after a long illness. Colin was a former foreign correspondent, broadcaster, author and PR director and consultant to leading automotive and movie corporations. He served as a bureau chief for the French News Agency and was a BBC correspondent in Africa. He had worked in France, the USA, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

He managed special projects in Europe for the Ford Motor Company, created launch promotions for major movies including Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and King Kong, made over 1,000 broadcasts and wrote twelve books published mainly in the USA and including pioneering works on Paperless Publishing, computing related health problems, industrial counterfeiting and Computer Viruses (this with John McAfee).

He will be sadly missed by his wife Lilian, his children Rebecca in South Africa and James, Emma and Thomas in the United States and his step-children Douglas Medlen, Penelope Jones and Judith Newton of the United Kingdom and his sister Valerie Elsegood and her husband Roy of Augharan, Leitrim.

Funeral Service in Carrigallen Parish Church on Saturday morning at 11am followed by burial in the adjoining churchyard. Funeral is private for immediate family and close friends only due to Government advice and HSE guidelines regarding public gatherings.

Ken NIXON 1963-70 School House I first met Ken in 1964 when I joined the boarding house at KES. Of course, I would have known him as Nixon since Christian names were rarely used in the school. At that time, had I used his Christian name, he would have been Kendall. I know this because I inherited one of his football shirts when he left. Everything we owned was marked and all our clothes had Cash’s nametapes sewn into them. The relationships with people at school are quite different when you live with them. As a boarder, you were a member of a family, albeit a large one of sixty-odd people. Ours was a hierarchical society and, essentially, you got to know boys who were in your own year. Being team mates blurred the lines a bit. Generally, older boys didn’t speak to you much and there was an element of casual bullying too. Not much, but it was part of an unwritten rule that status was mostly a question of age and not to be questioned. I mention this because Ken didn’t subscribe to the idea at all. He would speak up for younger boys and abhorred bullying in any form. Like me, he wasn’t keen on authority, regimentation or slavish obedience. He always wore a cherubic expression but he was no angel. He would clamber up drainpipes, traverse the school corridors underground and take strolls around the roof. It was as if health and safety hadn’t been invented then. He always said that he was no good at sport but he was. Like most us, he was vey slim and very fit. School House treated sport, and winning, very seriously. We spent a year in the boarding house annex at 141, Gaywood Road. His roommate was always in love and posted sonnets, mostly copied, on our noticeboard. Ken was very loyal and never made fun of these public declarations in the way we did. We met again in 1976 as students working at the Raleigh factory in Nottingham. He recognized me because I was wearing the School House football jersey, mentioned earlier. I showed him the name tape which bore the name Kendall Nixon. “My name’s Ken,” he insisted and I didn’t see him again for over thirty years. This was odd since he, Neil Gunn and I worked for many years in Nottinghamshire schools. Many Old Lennensians were to be found in Nottingham which was a far cry from King’s Lynn, the town we’d grown up in. 9

I met him by chance at a concert in a pub by a band called ‘Working Party’, a band comprised almost entirely of teachers. After that, we met regularly in a pub in the city centre called the Peacock Hotel. We had both spent time there during our early working lives. It stocked a lot of fine ‘real ales’ and the landlord had two record decks on the bar. Ken, it turned out, was a real music buff. He taught, enjoyed sport, loved music and believed that teaching was a way of creating a fairer society. That apart, we had nothing in common. During his working life, his great passions were climbing, running and walking. Ten years ago, he decided to write about his father’s life, expanding this into a family history. It was during this time that he met Christine, who had been adopted by Ken’s grandparents. It’s fair to say that he discovered true happiness with Christine, having said to me more that once that he felt destined never to be happy. They had such a short time together but I am so pleased that he found out that he was quite wrong about this. He had tried to be an accountant in London before spending nearly 40 years in teaching. He was a steward at many music festivals and made many friends doing this. It took me some time to persuade Ken to come to a reunion at KES but, when he did, he loved it. He was looking forward to many more events and much closer ties to the school. Last year he, Brian Reynolds and I went out to dinner with our partners. I shall remember him as a gentle, kind and lovely human being. He had found the happiness and contentment which had eluded him for so long. I am so glad I got to share some of it. Andrew Stephen

Douglas Walter PEARMAN 1950-57 Thoresby House Died on 17th October 2020, aged 82 years. He was the son of Walter and Alice Pearman (née Greenacre) of Gaywood. He was organist at about 5 churches in Lincolnshire and organized continental coach tours to visit organs on the continent on behalf of the Lincolnshire Organ Association. He was formerly a senior lecture at Bishop Grossetest (teacher training) College in Lincoln. He joined KES in form 1A and in Spring 1957 he was Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore at the Guildhall (where his singing was “not up to the high standard of his acting”. He left that year having been house captain of Thoresby and school captain. In 1962 he became a Maths teacher at Cannock Grammar School Staffs. He married a Miss N Longstaff in St Albans in 1962.

Philip A SAUVAIN 1944-51 Thoresby House

Born in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, in 1933 to Alan and Norah Sauvain, Philip came from a family with education at its heart. His Swiss great-grandfather, who had emigrated to Britain in the 1860s, taught languages and wrote French textbooks. Both his grandfathers were teachers and his father was an English lecturer and later the Divisional Education Officer for West Norfolk. Not surprising therefore that he became a teacher, and later a lecturer training teachers, before becoming a freelance writer of geography and history textbooks for schools – almost 200 in total. Phil attended K.E.S. from 1944 to 1951. In his final year he was School Captain, Hockey Captain and Cricket Captain as well as Thoresby House Captain. He was also awarded the Pro Patria Prize at Speech Day in December 1951. The following is an excerpt from the Cricket Notes in The Lennensian (July 1951): ‘The School Xl has been most fortunate this year in having such a fine captain as Sauvain who incidentally also had the honour of captaining the Combined Grammar Schools’ Xl. He made a collection of individuals into a well-knit side by his zeal and keenness for the game and his own untiring example. As a batsman he has done very well at No. 4 and once set his pull drives were most effective in raising the scoring rate.’ In the summer of 1951 he played 7 games for the 1st Xl with an average of 30.5 runs. His highest score was 51 not out. The team retained the Scott-Chad Cup, beating

Paston Grammar School by 45 runs. The previous summer the school was the first ever winner of the Scott-Chad trophy and Philip had also been part of that team. In the same copy of the magazine the House Master of Thoresby House, Stanley Beaumont, paid tribute those who were leaving at the end of the summer term but particularly to his departing House Captain: ‘We shall miss Sauvain especially: he has played hard and worked hard for the House and the School. No small measure of our success in games has been due to him.’ On leaving school he did two years National Service, mainly at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire, before reading history and then geography at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was a scholar of the college and graduated with a first-class degree. After a year at the London Institute of Education he became a teacher, initially as Head of Geography at Steyning Grammar School in Sussex and subsequently at Penistone Grammar School in South Yorkshire. He then turned to teacher training, becoming first a lecturer at James Graham College, Leeds and then Principal Lecturer at Charlotte Mason College in Cumbria. In 1974 he became a full-time freelance author. Whilst teaching at Penistone Grammar School, he married Maureen Spenceley, a fellow teacher, with whom he had two children – Richard, a solicitor, and Rachel, who has herself written and edited languages textbooks. After Yorkshire they lived in the Lake District, then briefly in Snettisham and finally in Stowmarket in Suffolk.

Phil wrote his first book, A Map Reading Companion, in 1961. He went on to write a range of geography and history books, among the most popular being British Economic and Social History: 1850 to the Present Day, used for GCSEs when they were introduced in 1986, and Vietnam in 1997, which was part of the Key History for GCSE series and remains popular today. Having been given a pocket Kodak camera by his grandfather in 1949, Phil had developed a keen interest in photography and he applied this skill to developing his own personal library of photographs to illustrate his own books. This resulted in family holidays being planned to provide access to locations of likely interest to his next or future projects and required increasing patience from his family as journeys were interrupted for visits to hillforts, stone circles and almost anything of historical interest. His photographic library eventually ran to 50,000 images. He also became an avid

collector of books and 19th century magazines – again providing material for his writing - and his book collection at one time numbered 8,000, a library that required its own removal van when he moved house. At school he had developed a love of music and from his study a steady stream of loud music was a constant. This was combined, of course, with collecting CDs. A family music quiz at Christmas was only remotely a fair contest when Phil was the quizmaster. He thus managed to combine all his main interests and hobbies into a lifestyle and a very successful career. Phil was a devoted family man and had a great sense of humour - usually evidenced by loud guffaws and belly laughs. Later in life he sadly suffered from various health problems which curtailed his activities. When he died a fulsome obituary was printed in The Times on 26 September 2020. Stephen Sauvain, February 2021

Mike Tagg, York House, 1954-1959 When Mike died earlier this year it came as no surprise that so many Old Lennensians got in touch with me with their recollections of him and to express their own sadness at the passing of someone who did so much for our Association. One correspondent, who knew Mike and his wife Liz very well, ended his message simply, by saying, ‘They were good people.’ No one in this life can aspire to be more. He was born in Snettisham and died there, something a fiercely proud Norfolk man would have pleased him. Many people leave KES to pursue careers very far away and many return to the county where their career foundations were laid. As a youngster he played football for Ingoldisthorpe and cricket for Snettisham. As a sportsman, his services were always in demand. At KES he began, as I did ten years later, in form 1C as part of the remarkable 1954 intake. He was outstanding in many different sports and played in a number of teams with Terry Bush, Barry Chandler and Chris Free. In 1957 he was captain of the York House team which won the football shield that year by thrashing the powerful School House team 4-1. In the summer of that year, he set a new record for U15 Javelin of 121 feet and 2 inches. He won the 13

event again on Sports Day in 1959 with an incredible throw of 130 feet and six inches. He excelled in many forms of athletics and ran the mile in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Many of his contemporaries have told me that he made competing look effortless.

The 1959 1st X1 cricket team

The Old Lennensian Newsletter of 1959 makes no mention of his academic prowess and Mike was always characteristically modest about it. His work as a team player does get mentioned though. Ken Gregory, who only gave praise when it was deserved, conceded that Mike, ‘has developed into a defender of quality.’ Bunny Bayfield was less generous when writing about him as a cricketer saying, ‘His batting deteriorated, after a good start. He made real efforts to, and did, vastly improve his fielding.’ I am told by others, who were there, that his batting was pretty good too. Possibly better than Mr Bayfield’s sentence construction! He left KES in 1959 with 5 ‘O’ levels to his name and spent the first ten years of his career at Beulah’s (Anglia Canners) where he became Deputy Chief Accountant. He later worked for Rexcels as a Cost Accountant, moving to Bridport Textron Machine Tools Company. In the early eighties he landed a job at Ruddles Brewery, as good a place to work as any in my opinion! He was made redundant at the age of 55, set up his own company and landed a long contract at Loughborough University which lasted until he retired. On his return to Norfolk, he and Liz were very active socially, becoming leading lights in the Anmer Social Club and other local organisations. Mike joined the Old Lennensians when it reformed under John Turtle and David Cobbold. He soon became a committee member and served as Treasurer for many years. It is a vital job in any organisation and one which is notoriously difficult to fill. He performed the role with great diligence until recent years when his health began to deteriorate. He worked closely with his friend Robin Carter, the Membership Secretary during that time. He really enjoyed

being a member of the OLA, attending many events, being a regular at the Saville Club and at Bowls events. He attended many AGMs and committee meetings, appreciating the opportunities to return to the familiar buildings of KES. He helped and encouraged me a great deal when I first joined the committee. When I returned to Norfolk, he and Liz were very hospitable and helpful to my wife and I. When I organised some reunions, his guidance about financial arrangements was invaluable. The reunions were a bit too informal to appeal to some of his members but he and Liz were always there. All organisations need that kind of commitment. He was very keen that the Association should establish a closer connection with the present school. The great irony of course was that Liz, who was so worried about Mike’s health, should predecease him and much of the light in his life left him. Despite the shock and his enormous sadness, Mike always wanted to know how his old school was getting on. He came to two events at KES last Christmas and I have no doubt that he would have been back there in the summer. The Covid crisis will be over by then and I am sure that many of us will want to gather for whatever events we can arrange. He will be there in spirit, wishing KES back to its rightful position as one of the finest schools in the County. Andrew, Malcolm and Mike, Dec 2019 ------→ It is sad that we lost Terry Bush and Mike Tagg in the same year but what a contribution they made! I was desperately sad to hear of Mike’s death. I know from all the correspondence I received, that many, many people felt the same. We owe it to him to make sure that the fellowship of our Association can be enjoyed by as many former KES pupils as possible and to support the great work being done by the current staff in very difficult circumstances. RIP. Andrew Stephen December 2020

Officials of the Association COMMITTEE

President: His Honour Judge Peter Jacobs Vice Presidents: The Venerable David Fleming, QHC, R. Booth, R. Carter, David Cobbold, D. Oliver, Dr J.B Marsters, T. Valentine Honorary Life Member: W.O. Lancaster Chairman: A.C. Stephen Vice Chairman: M. Whittley Honorary Secretary: N. Fickling Honorary Treasurer: P. Riches Membership Secretary: M. Starling Newsletter Editor: A.C Stephen Website & Media Officer: D. Phillips Ex Officio: Sarah Hartshorn, Headteacher Without Porfolio: B. Childs, M. Fillenham, C. Prior, M. Walker

From the Membership Secretary How many of us would have imagined the pandemic would blight our daily lives for so long? Nevertheless, Spring 2021 brings hope of happier times – much of it due to the extraordinary expertise of the scientists who developed vaccines in so short a time. I hope many members have already received theirs, bringing comparative peace of mind as well as practical protection.

Our association continues to grow and I am again able to report enrolling a significant number of new members since the Autumn newsletter – more than twenty, spanning six decades in their years at the school. It was a particular pleasure to enrol our centenarian, Frank Tuffs, to honorary membership and, for me personally, very satisfying to enrol Richard Griffiths, whose incalculable contribution to the school over 23 years as Deputy Headteacher is recognised by everyone who remembers him.

Thank you to all members who have promptly paid their 2021 subscription. The vast majority now pay by standing order, which is excellent and saves us both time and money. At the time of writing just two subscriptions due on 1 January remained outstanding. As the new website is now over a year old, the first members who joined using the online facility and Paypal are coming up to their individual renewal dates. Many such members selected recurring payments upon joining, which ensures a seamless renewal. Some did not and receive automated emails from the site as the anniversary of their enrolment approaches. If you are in this category, please ensure you follow the process through to the very end (particularly of the Paypal process) or your membership of the association will expire.

It is always a particular pleasure to be able to reunite contemporaries. Several members have asked me to scour the membership database for others with whom they were at school. I’m then able, having gained permission, to supply email addresses. I am always happy to receive requests of this type from members.

On the subject of emails, please remember to advise us if you change yours – we’d hate you to miss anything! As many members will recall Mr Beament, I’ll end with the following story:

One of the joys of the past months has been the opportunity to read. (I’m always reading, but the enforced time on our hands has increased the rate of progress.) Recently I found myself scanning the dustier shelves of the bookcases. ‘A Literary History of Rome - from its origins to the close of the Golden Age’ caught my attention and its back story surged into my mind. JMB was about to depart for a new school after many years’ service. Being of the view that any such book would be beyond the scope of the brave new world of comprehensive education, he had taken it upon himself to thin out ‘his’ section of the school library. So, in a corridor one hot July afternoon, barely pausing in stride, he struck me on the head with the book, then handed it to me. ‘Read it sometime,’ he said, ‘You’ll find it improving.’ There was the merest hint of a smile and he was gone. Forty years later, I flicked the as yet unread pages and resolved, finally, to try it. And it’s wonderful – slightly old-fashioned but elegant in style, erudite without being stuffy, informative, surprising, and just gloriously readable. I hope I’m being watched by its donor, from whichever field of Elysium he now finds himself in.

All good wishes,

Marc Starling (Windsor 1975-82) [email protected]

I once borrowed his copy of Tales of Edgar Alan Poe. He asked me questions to check that I’d read it properly. Thank goodness I had. Ed.

ARCHIVES

We hope many members continue to find items of interest on the website. We have now entered the 'nervous nineties' for how many separate images or articles can be viewed...... but only if you log on to the website! In case you have not done so of late here is a taster of a very interesting biography and appreciation of Bunny Bayfield. The full story is in the Staff Biography section of the archives. We have also invited members to send in any personal memories of 'CMB' as a teacher, cricketer or coach. A composite second part is likely to be composed for the website and/or the next newsletter as appropriate. We always have a list of planned items we are researching or composing. As I write this forthcoming biographies will include Aubrey Hood, George Martin, Tom Bromhead, Dave Perry and Ken Gregory. Other articles include the Lennensian Magazine, "Who built K.E.S.?", "Meat the Butchers" and the Lancasters. Many team and other photographs are also being prepared. Additionally of course unplanned events take priority such as marking the Centenary of Frank Tuffs. ALL involve a great deal of time to research, prepare and check. Thanks are due to a growing team of authors, my co-editor for the Archives, Michael Walker and of course Dave Phillips who looks after the whole website. We aim not just to maintain our high standard of content but also to continue the story of K.E.S. well into the last quarter of the 20th century and ultimately beyond! By serving all members irrespective of age, gender or background and supporting the school/academy of today, we shall ensure the OLA is relevant and worth joining in the future.

HELP needed..

...I managed to miss 2 pages of the 1960 Lennensian when I did lots of photocopies last summer. So if you can either photocopy pages 14 and 15 only (Ist XI cricket) and send them to Andrew or me or of course scan and send in an email it will help correct my over-sight. 19

...I believe 1978 was the last Lennensian produced and would love to have either an original copy, photocopies or a scanned version!

...ANY appropriate images as jpegs, anecdotes, special events or achievements (especially late 1970s/80s and 90s) would help us preserve our shared history.

Thanks in anticipation...... Bob Childs. 1966-72.

Forthcoming Events To some extent, you need a crystal ball in order to predict which events will happen. However, failing any other unforeseen disaster, it has been agreed that we will have our AGM at the school on Saturday September 12th – probably between 11am and noon. After that there will be a presentation involving the work of former KES art master, Walter Dexter. Later still, there will be a reunion event involving a meal. Times and details are still to be worked out and finalised. Ticket information and prices for the reunion are yet to be determined. We will let you know via email. If you receive the newsletter by post, please contact me on 07748015464 if you are interested in attending. If there is sufficient demand, the Friday evening pre-AGM meal at Marriott’s will take place. We would hope to book the first floor for the event which was great fun when we last did it. Sunday 12th is Heritage Day in King’s Lynn and KES will be open to the public. Members of the OLA will act as marshals. So there you have it. After a year of restrictions, you could have an entire weekend with other Old Lennensians. Save the dates!: Marriott’s Warehouse 7-9pm Friday September 10th I have booked an upstairs room for 30 of us to have a meal together. The first 30 to let me know that they will definitely be there will get the places! 20

AGM Noon Saturday Sept 11th Boarders’ Dining Room

September 11th 1.30pm Walter Dexter event.

Sunday September 12th All Day Heritage Day. It will also be an opportunity for those who have never been back to have a good look around. Much will be familiar.

Reports of Events Former King’s Lynn Pupil Receives a Special Message and Toast for his 100th Birthday By Greg Plummer - [email protected] An online toast on Zoom and a specially made video message made a former KES pupil's 100th birthday even more special. Frank Tuffs, who attended KES between 1932 and 1937, is the only current centenarian of the Old Lennensians Association (OLA) – a group that has enjoyed a relationship with the Grammar School since 1906. The sprightly centenarian, who received lots of cards and messages to mark the milestone, was treated to a special online toast by the OLA before being presented by a video from KES principal Sarah Hartshorn. Mrs Hartshorne was contacted by Frank's daughter, Kathy Fidgeon, to see if the school were able to do something for his special day last Friday. She said: "I joined in with the toast to Frank and showed him the video message from the school. It was such a lovely thing to do. "He was overwhelmed with all of the cards and messages, everyone has been really fantastic." Andrew Stephen, OLA chairman, said: "In addition to sending Frank a card, I had great pleasure in informing him that he has been made an honorary member of the Old Lennensians. "I am assured that his daughter will keep him up to date with via the website and the newsletter."

Sharing the same birth year as Prince Philip and the actor Charles Bronson, Frank was born in Edinburgh while his parents were on holiday. As a child, he was brought up at first in Hampshire until his parents moved to Norfolk when his father, Robert, became Head Gamekeeper at Houghton Hall. He attended the village school in Great Bircham before winning a scholarship to attend KES. Later, the family moved back to Hampshire and Frank began his working career as a clerk for Southern Railways. On the outbreak of World War II he joined the Home Guard as he was in a reserved occupation, until he was called up into the RAF in 1941. He trained as an aircraft electrician and was posted to a number of RAF bases in the UK, including RAF Odiham, before being posted to Belgium in late 1944. As a young man, Frank had enjoyed sports, particularly hockey. He and his wife, Maureen, were also founding members of the Oakley Bowling Club, near Basingstoke, before he later served as its president. He continued to be an active member and player at the club before the coronavirus pandemic and, despite failing eyesight, hopes to return to the greens later this year. In 2015, Frank and his daughter Kathy paid a visit to the school – a trip they would like to repeat once the pandemic has ended – which stirred up many memories. The OLA has had an association since the Grammar School moved to Gaywood in 1906. It almost folded two years ago but a new committee have transformed its fortunes. Mr Stephen added: "We exist partly for reasons of nostalgia but our prime purpose is to support the current school with which we have an excellent relationship. "They, like us, have a profound respect for the fine traditions of the school. The Old Lennensians were, for a long time, an exclusively ex Grammar School boys’ 22

group but we have succeeded in attracting and enrolling both girls and boys from much more recent times. "Everyone who goes to KES should be proud to be an Old Lennensian. We are and I know that Frank Tuffs is." The group, which boasts a membership of more than 300 ex-pupils, currently has 25 members living overseas, in 11 different countries, spanning four continents. When Bob Childs was looking into what we knew of Frank Tuffs before celebrating his centenary, he came across this interesting tale. It's a strange world when you come to look at it.

Neither Frank nor any of his colleagues at RAF ODIHAM will have been aware of a strange twist of history. The airfield at Odiham like many in the 1930's needed to be modernised to prepare for heavier planes and possible future conflict. This was carried out and completed in 1937....the very year Frank Tuffs left KES. On 18th October 1937 the Air Ministry organised an official opening and as a goodwill gesture asked Erhard Milch, on a visit to London at that time, to be the official guest for this ceremony.

At that time Erhard Milch was Secretary-General of the Luftwaffe in charge of Germany's Air Rearmament (itself in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles) and in WW2 their Aircraft Production! Fortunately Odiham was not a major target when the Luftwaffe bombed England. Frank survived his war years as an aircraft electrician at Odiham and later in Belgium and has outlived Erhard Milch by many decades.! It seems ironic that Milch's father Anton was Jewish and by deception survived an investigation into this by the Gestapo in 1935.He became Albert Speer's right hand man as evidenced in this picture showing Speer, Milch and Willy Messerschmitt. In 1947 he was sentenced at Nuremburg to life imprisonment but later commuted to 15 years. He was released the year I was born, 1954 and died in 1972, the year I left KES.

If you have been, thank you for reading this true story. Bob Childs.

Obviously, the Pandemic put paid to any events we hoped to hold and even our committee meetings were held on zoom. However, as the Lynn News report shows, we were able to make a fuss of Old Lennensian Frank Tuffs on the occasion of his 100th birthday. We enjoyed toasting him on zoom and look forward to reporting more ‘real world’ events in the future. Ed

Correspondence and Articles

Rites of Passage

I loved to saunter. Although I was only a boarder in a provincial boys’ grammar school, my glaringly maroon blazer and cords and unkempt mane of ostentatiously long hair made my pose to the world something like a strutting dragoon’s. My dictatorial Headmaster believed that he had created a kind of minor public school in antiquated Norfolk but this was the year of Woodstock, the Beatles’ rooftop concert and man landing on the moon. Things had to change and my generation was determined that we would be the ones to make the world a better and less restricted place. Like every generation we thought that our ideas were entirely original and somehow better than any which had gone before. Every day I was faced with a competitive and hierarchical world. For five years I had been known exclusively by my surname. Fortunately, when your surname sounds like a Christian name, this address doesn’t feel quite so dismissive. I wouldn’t be the one to bully little kids or impose the values of a forgotten Empire. I had been content to explore the cellars 24

beneath the school, climb on the roof and touch the lantern at the top or climb drainpipes to get into my dormitory on the third floor. It was terrifying beyond words but I would sooner have died than show it. Indeed, I might have done! Others did these ridiculously dangerous things with smiles on their faces. Status was everything and failure unthinkable. I was young, inquisitive and apparently fearless. I knew there were boundaries. I just needed to find them. Sometimes this meant crossing a few. One man who impressed me, for ever as it would turn out, was my PE teacher, who had been a gunner and navigator on a Halifax bomber during the war. After a near suicidal attack on the Tirpitz, the plane had crash landed on a frozen lake in Norway. He and his companions were taken prisoner as they walked thirty miles, in chest deep snow, towards neutral Sweden. Their Latvian guards were armed and yet, somehow, he had killed them with his bare hands. How he had got out and overpowered both of them was never explained but they had to get away quickly before the Germans arrived. He never talked about it and, had we known about it earlier in our school careers, we would have been even more in awe of him. This was the man who ordered me and my fellow pupils into the open-air pool if the temperature was above 54⁰F – which it always was. At least he always cleared floating debris from the icy surface before ordering,” One width and out”, assuming that this method would teach some of us to swim. Oddly enough, it somehow worked for me. He believed that you would be supremely happy to run round the school field in the snow and never show any signs of pain to an opponent – particularly one at a posh school. I was expected to routinely hurdle frozen dykes. If I didn’t quite manage the necessary and energetic leap, my feet went through the thick ice and I had to run the remaining miles with frozen, wet and bleeding legs. Sometimes our coach would wait in his station wagon at various points along the course. There would always be a window open to allow the clouds of cigarette smoke to escape. Woe betide you if you slowed down while he was watching. Anyway, the more sport you did, the more coloured braid you could get sewn onto the cuffs and lapels of your blazer. I thought that winning colours would make me a desirable and visible success everywhere. My blue braid and big white badge were bound to attract the most beautiful girls from the High School and the Convent. I didn’t really know in those days where else suitable girls were to be found. I particularly enjoyed trips to the darkly Dickensian Alderman Catleugh’s, gentleman’s outfitters, the only place where our impressive uniform and subsequent embellishments 25

to it could be obtained. Dark-suited and obsequious attendants would whisper, Uriah Heap like, grateful for the custom of young gentlemen. That fleeting sense of importance made me feel a kind of exhilarated guilt, a feeling which would reappear at intervals throughout my life. Even now, when I am in some upmarket restaurant or smart club, I half expect to be asked to leave. The ruling classes have always been a mystery to me. I know that they’re there but I can never be quite sure who they are. I only know that I could never quite fit into their exclusive ranks. I was encouraged to aspire to the title of ‘gentleman’ at every turn. My Housemaster and History teachers were the most insistent of all, but it was a view supported by visits to other schools, most of which were private and obviously so. The boys who understood girls to be a different and mysterious species, worthy of pedestal status, understood the full value of an unchallengeable class system. I couldn’t understand the insistence everywhere on ‘ladies first’, although there were no ladies in my school, except Matron and the fearsome school secretary. No one ever wanted to spend more time than necessary with Miss Howard. Ladies did enter the curriculum as a worrying and distracting temptation as ‘O’ Levels approached – not in Biology, or in any formal way, as you might expect, but in increasingly frequent and optimistic walks to the West Norfolk High School, a mile or so away. I was delighted to see that, sometimes, girls from the High School turned up on Saturdays to watch the first XI in action. I wondered why they were there, since girls in those days weren’t supposed to be interested in boys’ sports like football. Sporting prowess did seem to act as a kind of currency though. Once, memorably, a High School girl was smuggled on to the team bus, while one of the boys distracted the teacher. The bus driver smirked when he realised what was happening but said nothing. Later, as the bus approached Spalding, she was discovered as the hapless teacher did a round of the bus searching for a suspected smoker. I sat next to her all the way back to school, enjoying the undoubted jealousy of my friends who told me how well I had done to find favour in the eyes of Abigail. She was known as a bit of a rebel and I could see that she was happy to speak her own mind and take risks 26

with convention. More than that, she was lovely and had chosen to sit with me. I knew that it would be talked about for weeks. I was an aspiring rebel, if a slightly shy one and I began to enjoy a kind of half-imagined notoriety. I had paid close attention to the rules of the game and looked forward to going to Inter Sixth the following year. This was an inter-school club, which alternated between social and ‘cultural’ activities each Friday night. I had seen some of the cultural activities going on behind the cadet hut and heard of long snogging sessions in the gym at the High School. I thought you should get school colours for that too – but the novelty of spending a regular three hours or so with real girls was a lovely prospect as it was. No further incentive was ever necessary. I had been going out (in the loosest sense) with a girl I had impressed when playing volleyball against the High School. She lived in a village some miles out of town. My revered English teacher, Mr Gregory, used to lend me his bike at the weekends in return for fetching packets of Capstan Full Strength from Alex’s, the newsagent nearest to the school. Alex’s was a wondrous place. I would buy sweets, James Bond novels, the odd Parade magazine and Players Number 6. Neither boy nor man, I had catholic tastes and the newsagents seemed to supply all of them. The shop was divided into two rooms. The stock in the back room was always the most interesting as I got older. The young kids never got further than the sweet counter just inside the front door. This arrangement sometimes worked out well but, twice in recent weeks, I’d been stopped by police at the Hardwick roundabout because the bike had no rear light. It was the same policeman and he was fierce. Walking the A47 in the rain and the dark for hours is as good a way as any to blunt romance. I didn’t have the heart to ask Mr Gregory if he would consider getting a new rear light. He had told me that I could use his bike whenever I liked. If it was in the bike shed by the staffroom, it meant that he didn’t need it. I didn’t push my luck with the rabid policeman or by asking any more favours. I did a lot of walking for some months though. My parents, like so many parents of boarders, were in the armed forces. M y dad was in the RAF which had decided that my family were now going to live in Cyprus, while I stayed behind in the boringly familiar world of King’s Lynn, 3,500 miles away. The prospect of spending weeks on Aphrodite’s island and sunning myself on endless sandy beaches seemed more intriguing than thinking about the other gender – there was, after 27

all, only one other gender in those days. I spent the final afternoon of the summer term impatiently packing and anticipating while my friend Michael Rose helpfully played John Mayall’s ‘Fly Tomorrow’ over and over again. I loved ‘Blues from Laurel Canyon’ – but this was beyond endurance. I had forgotten all about the O levels I had just finished and was looking forward to a much more exotic summer holiday than those I’d had in Hampshire and Wiltshire. At that time, I was living in a less tightly ruled enclave of boarders at 141, Gaywood Road, which had created the illusion of a more normal life. I was due to return to the senior dormitory in the main building after the holiday but the next few weeks were all I cared about at that moment. The prospect seemed less glamorous the following day as I lugged my ridiculously heavy, grey suitcase half-way along Cromwell Road to the air terminal. I had hugged it to me on the crowded train all the way to Liverpool Street for three hours before facing the inevitable battle through commuters on the Tube to Gloucester Road. I had done this several times before but I hadn’t flown very often – and never alone. I had projected a kind of blasé indifference but I was both anxious and excited. I loved the unknown and was endlessly curious but I was not quite ‘gung ho’ about it. Knowing this, my parents had arranged for a ‘greeter’, a less glamorous kind of escort girl, to show me the ropes and get me to my plane at Heathrow. She was a kind of Lady Bracknell in blue serge and, having handed in my suitcase, I told her that I felt insulted and that I didn’t need her. I lost her, with some panache, and sat smugly on the bus which took me, irritatingly slowly, to the airport. My face fell as I encountered her yet again at Departures. She instructed me, icily, to sit and wait in a roped off area, designed for less independent beings. I asked to go to the bookshop – and never saw her again. It was odd really. I had wanted reassurance and company but I hated being treated like a child. I would never allow anyone to interfere with my burgeoning independence again. Life for a sixteen year old seemed to be an untidy collection of apparently random experiences (to use the use the word random in its correct sense). Until then, I had had no interest in finding meaning and pattern in things. Later in life I would look back with longing to this time of living in the moment and taking what comes. Mindfulness hadn’t been invented then. Everything I did seemed to me, in my teenaged self-deception, to be a question of common sense.

The flight was fascinating, a series of treats supplied fairly constantly by the cabin crew, views of the Alps and the Acropolis and observing neurotic adults far from their comfort zone. I chuckled as the plane was tossed about by turbulence while a multi-coloured electrical storm raged. At times green fire seemed to creep up the very wings. I was too young and inexperienced to take death seriously. Fear comes later in life as an unwanted burden which comes, unbidden and invisible, with experience. For now, mostly, everything was a bit of a laugh, which, I suppose, was just as well. At last, the plane landed at Nicosia and, as the doors opened, I had the sensation of being too close to an open oven. There was an odd smell of strange vegetation and a deafening sound of some kind of insect. There was a lot of tutting and complaining among the parents as their long-absent children wandered through Arrivals. “You look like a bloody woman!” one particularly grateful serviceman said to his son, who was dressed in a kaftan and wearing fashionably long hair. I hoped that my notoriously inflexible father wouldn’t notice the cowbell around my own neck or my extravagantly flared and patched ‘loons’ but it was a vain hope. I walked to the car on my own, ostentatiously disowned. And then, seven weeks of paradise. The boys from England seemed highly desirable prizes amongst the resident girls who, sensibly, seemed to spend much of their time in bikinis. They taught me how to smoke, how to drink and how to snog. They even tried to teach me to dance – often to quite gentle ballads like Thunderclap Newman’s ‘Something in the Air”. That was just as well since co-ordination has always been a bit of a problem for me. I was always modestly and genuinely bemused by the fact that I didn’t need to ask. I just seemed to find myself dancing with girls who seemed to get very cross with each other. I was glad that I was able to run fast. I discovered that squaddies from the Prince of Wales’ Own didn’t like the fact that girls found me more interesting than them. Their attitude to girls always seemed pointlessly primitive and aggressive. I worked hard on my tan, read novels by Herman Hesse and pretended to be a Vietnam War-hating American hippy, steeped in the music of Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds and Bob Dylan. The more pretentious, or obscure, the musician, the better. My father wasn’t keen on my choices of reading, music or clothing. He was ashamed of me when we visited the army Mess when a very unpleasant Sergeant Major gave me a tie and barked that I’d “bloody well” wear it. For about a week, he took me every day to 29

the barber’s shop and left me waiting for it to open. Sometimes I would tell him that I’d had it cut but he never believed me. Surely he could see that my bleached, blonde locks looked better with my aviator’s sunglasses. One day the SWO (Station Warrant Officer) saw me with my friend Tim Shaw on the officers’ beach. I picked up two handfuls of sand and asked him how he could tell the difference. He did a strange kind of dance, waved his swagger stick around and grew very red in the face. He used some words which were more or less unknown to me and said that my father would hear about it. I said that I hoped that he would be impressed. He wasn’t and he left me in no doubt that being responsible for me was the toughest job he’d ever had. I loved the heat and the unfamiliarity of the island. I enjoyed jumping on a bus and spending the day where I liked. Apart from the armed forces, life was very laid back. I liked being an object of interest and making friends with girls who turned out not to be so strange after all. I played a lot of football for the Youth Club team, beating most of our opponents very easily. We beat a very physical sergeants’ team who were noisily supported by blokes who didn’t seem to like the visitors from Blighty. I began to miss my friends and the life I’d left behind. I suppose all novelties wear off eventually and, before my stay came to an end, I realised I missed feeling cool, watching television and even familiar shops and coffee bars. It was time to return to reality. Once home, since that was how I really thought of King’s Lynn, I felt like a more fully- fledged dragoon, ready to saunter and strut in the best of company. I took great delight in displaying obscure collections of poetry in my blazer pocket. I took to playing football in an all-white kit to show off my extraordinary suntan. I was ready to take on the world. One Friday night, I was at the St Faith’s church rooms at what seemed a hugely popular disco. Some of the High School girls looked much older out of their rather fetching green and white uniforms. The dance floor seemed much less threatening now and I felt the model of sophistication. Armed with new-found sophistication and confidence, I had devised an infallible plan to win the affections of the tall, willowy Julia Cann, who would no doubt be the centre of attention with her two inseparable friends. I had walked her home to the Reffley Estate one night and thought, unwisely, that it was only a matter of time until she noticed me. How strange that girls sought strength in numbers.

My ‘wing’ man, Tony, had gone home early, having been beaten up by a couple of large boys with short hair and big boots. They had innocently asked him, as he passed the Gaywood Clock, “Are you a hard man?” Since his name was Hardman he had replied, “Yes, I am, why?” He had taken some hefty slaps as a result. Needless to say, I had used my speed of thought and movement to get away fast. I felt vaguely guilty about leaving my former friend, Tony, who I realised was too naive and gentle for his own good. The feral-looking locals showed no interest in me and there was no point in both of us being hurt. Anyway, I fancied my chances. What could be more important than that? I would make my excuses later. Much later, it turned out since he wouldn’t speak to me. He had a very soft voice with a pronounced Lancashire accent. The Gaybies with their extraordinarily tribal accents were no doubt affronted by it. Anyway, Tony didn’t return for the sixth form and I never got chance to make it up to him. People just came and went. Mostly they went. The evening looked up after that. I spent time dancing, chatting and insinuating my case with the delectable Julia, who asked me if I would mind seeing her back safely to her home. I agreed, rather too quickly to be a cool sophisticate, on condition that the other two didn’t come. My confidence was outrageous and unfounded. I had a regular curfew of ten o’clock so I returned to the boarding house, greeted my housemaster cheerfully and lay, fully clothed under my maroon candlewick bedspread, until ‘lights out’ on the top floor. I was relying on a strategy which I had used very successfully many times before. I waited until all was quiet, then padded down the shadowy corridors and out through the library window using my customary, unofficial exit. Moments later, I strode back into the party, nodding arrogantly to my day-boy friends. My foolishly grinning face altered abruptly as I noticed the object of my cunning, and rather complacent planning, in the arms of Dickie Stark, a former boarder now enjoying the highlife at university. Dickie was an artist and knew about music and fashion and seemed far more than two years older than me. He was tall, thin, assured and had long black hair halfway down his back. He wore strange and highly coloured clothes, including a suede jacket, fringed cowboy style. In short, the competition was just too fierce for me to compete with. Life could be so unfair. I couldn’t let my disappointment show so I started to regale Dickie with stories about dumping girlfriends, startling drinking bouts, becoming a classroom wit, being widely 31

travelled and hugely fashion conscious. I even had hippy friends at Cambridge University. I was desperate to hold my own and prove that I too was grown up, sophisticated and confident. Brutally, he cut me short: “You were so nice as a young boy, keen to ask for advice, modest and unselfish. You’ve turned into a posturing, boastful empty head who just wants to impress. Well, you don’t impress me.” Julia tried to intervene, thinking that Dickie was being too harsh but I was already on my way home, my head buzzing with accusations. Was he right? Had I gone backwards? He really didn’t know me did he? I was weary and dizzy with shock. As I squeezed in through the library window, the light went on and I saw my chubby, normally avuncular housemaster sitting there. He looked severe and quite pleased with himself. “I suppose you think you’re clever?” I didn’t think so at all. I had an idea that this was a lesson I’d remember all my life.

It’s My Heritage Too

Here, in a scholars’ dusty palace, Given leave to think my own thoughts I am listening to another generation’s pride Between the fact barrage and instinctive denial. We, the unappreciative, Are slack And exact In our differences.

And wasn’t it always Chalk and chairs And longing for a better past? Preservation seems like a king of death Based on a lie And the security of habit.

Sitting in this too sober silence Chatter mounts in my head As our betters try, Yet again, to impose their youth On us Like some sort of favour. A beginning is waiting for us, A deliverance from The endlessly sly Character tests Which are imposed on us For our own good. This fear of change Calls itself Authority and sneers At the inevitable

I wrote this when I was eighteen. I have revised it. My son says I should write an equivalent one 50 years on.

An Early Bath

Life is a curious thing and sometimes it seems to go, almost deliberately, in cycles. Recently, I was chairing a meeting of my old school’s Foundation Trustees. I was sitting in a room where I had last been in the Summer of 1971. It would have been an A Level History lesson, probably about the Thirty Years’ War, and the teacher would have been John Smallwood. He might well have complaining about Princeps Facultatum, who was based next door and who, we gathered, wasn’t much of a boss. Fifty years later he was sitting next to me being splendidly curmudgeonly about the unreasonable demands placed on schools. The class was small, exclusive according to Mr Smallwood, and we were a varied bunch. Our futures would vary too. One of us, failing anything else, became a journalist. Another became a teacher in nearby Methwold but hated it and changed career. Yet another hanged himself by mistake during some curious sexual role play. As for me, things looked far from promising when I left school hastily and unwillingly. I didn’t think much about King Edward VII Grammar School for Boys (KES) for nearly forty years after that. I stayed in love with Norfolk though and spent many holidays there, always studiously avoiding King’s Lynn, the site of my uneven adolescence. One year I found myself in that beautiful town amazed at the contrast between Nelson Street, The Riverside and the appalling Vancouver Centre. Modern architecture can be very exciting but most examples of it in Lynn are functional, poorly designed and ugly beyond belief. The Borough Council operate out of a kind of shed and the less said about Hillington Square

the better. It would be enough to make John Betjeman weep. In fact, it did. However, I digress. I decided to show my wife the church that we were marched to every Sunday, until we were old enough to decide which service to go to. St Faith’s Church, Gaywood is a fifteen minute walk from the school, if you take the direct route. I remember the very first time I went there in September, 1964. I was very impressed that a reminder was etched into the stonework above the door that we were entering the House of God. It was always packed to the rafters and we boarders always used to get there early to make sure we got a seat. We left standing to the Scouts and Guides. An hour and a half can seem like a long time. All sixty of us sat in a group at the back on the right hand side. From there I had a good view of a favourite stained glass window and two ancient and very dark paintings on wood. They were huge and showed detailed scenes of the defeat of the Armada and of the arrest of Guido Fawkes. They are probably priceless but I didn’t think about that then. I assumed that every church had paintings like this but of course they are unique. Frustratingly, on my return all those years later, we couldn’t get into the church but a pair of delightfully dotty old ladies told us that the rector was in the rectory close by. They told us that she’d just been to Australia, which she hadn’t, it turned out. I wasn’t bothered by that though. They had said she! Things had certainly changed since the days when the Reverend Fazackerley had led our services. Sometimes he would visit us in the boarding school and talk to us about CND, starvation and poverty and staying on the right path. In some ways, he was the archetypal vicar, complete with aristocratic bearing and immaculately received pronunciation. We found the Rector looking bleary and sorting through a mountain of washing. She gave us the key and at last I was in that familiar space. It was much lighter than I remembered, although the paintings were as dark as ever and peeling a bit too. A bit like me I thought. I sat in my old place and tried to hear the choir from all those years before. An elderly man used to sing the line “Oh, Lamb of God” in the deepest voice I have ever heard. I can hear it now. What a wonderful choir they were. My reverie was disturbed by the appearance of Michael Fillenham, the Rector’s fiancé, who turned out to be an ex KES pupil like me. We talked for a long time, comparing notes. Eventually, he broke down my reluctance to revisit the school and, some months later, we were given a tour of the school by the caretaker. I revealed the routes which boarders had used under the school and onto the roof and a few other health and safety 35

concerns besides those. I was appalled by the state of the headmaster’s house, which was now the Sixth Form Centre. The boarding house was no longer separate and inviolable and my dormitories now housed computers. A huge room which had housed a model railway and two bathrooms now contained the school archive including the bell which used to be rung for our mealtimes. We smirked on the headmaster’s lawn and imagined the snowball fights between dayboys and boarders. It was cathartic. I enjoyed my time in my old home and felt none of the bitterness associated with my departure. I joined Michael in the Old Lennensians, as he suggested, and found myself at a reunion on a table with a bishop and two former headmasters. In time I smuggled my way on to the committee, the Foundation Trustees and the governing body. There was a lot for me to pay back I realised. I enjoy being newsletter editor but in one edition I revealed that I had left under a cloud. This seemed to surprise people, not least many of those I had been to school with and had got to know all these years later. I had had a reasonably successful career and had, apparently, become a pillar of the establishment, without really being old enough. All this, having been told that I would never amount to anything. Of course, I know now that much of what we learn at school makes us the people we become and I believe that I have carried many of the lessons learned at KES into later life. I have learned to be grateful for it. I had, after all, been reasonably successful at school. I had won some prizes and been in some school sports teams. I was quite good at distance running and won some races. Of course, no sensible person ever volunteered for cross country so perhaps I wasn’t up against the best. I still have the record for the 5,000 metres at the Lynn and District Sports because the event was discontinued a few years later as too taxing! I’ll take the credit though. I loved the solitariness of running across wild heathland or amongst the lonely creeks of the salt marshes with the oozing mud squelching under my feet. I learned more from these vivid experiences of nature than I did from most of my formal lessons. I fancied myself as a raconteur, rebel and actor. I was a bit of a dreamer too but idealism comes with self-discovery, which wasn’t a popular notion in schools at that time.

My first significant clash with authority seemed very trivial to me at the time. Miss Howard, the school secretary, drove past me at the school gate. I was holding the hand of a girl who was in distress about some family event which I don’t recall. Later, I was summoned to the headmaster’s office where I was given six strokes of the cane for ‘canoodling’ whilst in school uniform. That was the reason given. I don’t think I’d heard that word before. As I left, I heard Miss Howard sniggering. I wasn’t hurt but I was affronted and baffled. It seemed an odd punishment for a sixth former. Soon after that I managed revenge of a sort during a production of Reluctant Heroes, a Brian Rix farce. Mick Breen, who played a gormless Lancastrian, and I, a disrespectful cockney, hatched up a plan involving changing some of our lines. She was mentioned several times by name and the audience encouraged to laugh at her. She had started the evening in the front row. After the Interval she had gone. I felt much better and she never spoke to me again. I was ‘gated’ periodically for being out of school without permission. My social life didn’t really suit a ten o’clock curfew. Mr Beament, my Housemaster, thought me wild and unruly. The more I tried to explain how difficult it was at times to be a boarder, the angrier he seemed to get. The sweat would start to form on top of his head and then I knew that it was time to stop talking. I had also started working in the print room producing tickets and posters mainly. I did produce some broadsheets too and, because the room was far above a courtyard, I used to deliver them through the window. They would be read by whichever boys were in the courtyard below at the time. From time to time these were banned for containing subversive content. In a strange foretaste of things to come, I simply changed the name of each newsletter as it was banned. Ratz Alley and Onan’s Lump are two titles which spring to mind. During this time I joined the Young Liberals and became involved in campaigning. During the furore created by the visit of the South African cricket team, the YLs ended a Test Match by damaging the pitch. I didn’t agree with this action. I would always rather win the arguments but it is surprisingly easy and tempting to label people if you don’t understand them - lazy but surprisingly common. So it was that when our First XI cricket pitch was damaged in a similar way, suspicion was cast on me. The head, who was a

true cricket fanatic, interrogated me several times but seemed satisfied by my explanations and insistence that I was innocent, which Indeed I was. After that, my every action seemed to be open to scrutiny. One member of staff claimed to have seen me engaging in carnal relations on the south field, close to his house on George Vth Avenue. Mr Sleigh arrived very quickly with his corgi, Jones, in tow. I was sitting outside the pavilion revising - and alone. I explained that, much as I liked the idea of some kind of sexual frenzy, the middle of the school field, where anyone could be seen for miles around, would not be the ideal venue. I explained that the member of staff concerned didn’t like my long hair or the fact that he thought I’d been laughing at his Oxford bags and ice cream man’s jacket - which I may have been. Again, he seemed to accept my explanation but rang my girlfriend’s mother anyway to explain that her daughter’s moral welfare was in danger. The next day I was brought before Ernie Shipp, the school’s barber, who was instructed to take four inches off the length of my hair so that I would be fit to compete on sports day. There is a photograph taken after the 880 yards which shows the damage. When I competed in the mile, I led for the whole race but was overtaken at the end. I was disappointed, as I took my running very seriously. The teacher who had made the damaging accusation about my behaviour on the school field announced, very loudly, that I deserved to lose since I was a degenerate. Ah well. The storm was gathering. Some staff encouraged me. I was nominated by some for school prizes. Ken Gregory told me that the chief point of education was to teach people to think for themselves and to express what they felt as well as possible. That thought 38

stayed with me throughout my career and beyond. I was found to have been making a phone call from a call box outside the school during a fire practice and it was clear not only was there to be no leeway but I was also being closely watched. Finally, someone painted the statue of Edward VII, which was a very prominent feature in our grounds, luminous yellow. A passing motorist, apparently local alderman Herbie Fisher, who was a regular visitor to the school, drove into the school wall, so startled was he by the strange apparition. I was seen laughing by the statue and that was more or less it. I was summoned. The headmaster claimed that, even if I wasn’t guilty of these offences, I knew who was. I was no grass but shouldn’t have said, “I don’t but even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you”. I knew that he didn’t like to be challenged and that he felt his authority could not be questioned. I threw down the gauntlet for a duel which I knew I couldn’t win. I had left within the hour. If I left voluntarily I would be allowed to return to do my remaining A level exams. I had nowhere to go. My parents were three and a half thousand miles away in Cyprus and oblivious to events. I told them some weeks later. No one bothered to find out whether I had anywhere to go or what I would do. I am still staggered by the lack of basic care. I now know the names of the guilty boys. Both are Old Lennensians and remain friends of mine. I am happy with the way things turned out. I tried to treat the children I taught better than I was treated. I have thought long and hard about what education really means. My school played a big part in making me who I am and now I do what little I can to help to make sure that current pupils get the best possible preparation for life. There are many other episodes of life at grammar school that I could have written. I probably will. I hope I have given you a flavour though. MEMORIES I was interested to read the well deserved praise paid to Ken Gregory in the last edition, although I realise that I didn’t fully appreciate him at the time – I achieved a top grade English Language O level in the 4th form, and am still unsure whether he or I was more surprised! I do recall one piece of work, which he generously commented was ‘sentimental twaddle’ – and he was correct. I also had him for O level English Literature –the main book was ‘The Woodlanders’- I have long since meant to read that book again, as I never finished it, so don’t know how it ends, still managed a grade 2 though.

People probably remember the tiered seating in the physics and chemistry lecture theatres, there was a hollow space beneath them, I spent a number of lessons in that space having been put there by my ‘friends’. ‘Bunny’ Bayfield was a real character, and a very good maths teacher. He used to distribute marked exercise books by throwing them to pupils from the front – he was also pretty lethal when throwing chalk at us – doubt he would get away with that now. One day he was distributing the books, one hapless soul went to catch is book, failed to make a clean catch and knocked it out of the first floor window. He was sent down to fetch it, and upon his return was given a detention for missing the catch! There was a specific school rule that forbade one to take a driving test during school time, however, we all did it as there was no alternative. I was no exception, and all was going well until I came to the three point turn. A car coming the other way kindly stopped whilst I did the manoeuvre, but as I straightened up, to my horror, I saw that the car that had waited for me was driven by a teacher. I immediately realised that I had a problem, but then it dawned on me that the teacher concerned was the one whose lesson I was missing, so we were in the same boat. I sought him out upon my return to school, he just said ‘it didn’t happen’! David Moore 1964-71 Thoresby

The Day I Met the King. Eric Frederick Thurston (1917-1999) was a student at K.E.S. from 1928 to 1935. He won the King’s Gold Medal in his final year and then studied Chemistry at Imperial College, London. For many years he worked as a research scientist at ICI and then in 1960 was appointed their first Environmental Officer, a post he held until he retired. His brother, John Albert Thurston, was awarded the Gold Medal five years after Eric but was one of the unfortunate winners who, because of the war, did not get to meet the King. What follows is an edited version of a talk Eric gave on a number of occasions to groups such as the Women’s Institute. Even when I was a little boy wearing short trousers - which chapped your legs in cold weather - I used to say I’d like one day to wear a red cap like the bigger boys I saw around the town when I was there with my mum. She’d tell me they were Grammar 40

School boys and that you had to pay to go there and that we’d never be able to afford it. (Eric’s Dad was a labourer at Savages.) But one day when I was at the St James’s Senior School by the old hospital, we were given a message for our parents to the effect that we must each decide whether we wanted to ‘go in for the Scholarship’ – which meant taking an exam, needing homework and attendance at school a whole 15 minutes before the other boys had to begin study for the day. Mum & Dad said I should - so I joined with the others and we did our papers on arithmetic, English etc and eventually got the results. I’d got through but there remained an oral exam at the Grammar School. On the appointed day I and a boy called Osborne were both ill and could not go. Dad was especially upset over that and decided he’d go and visit Mr Howard, the School’s Attendance Officer – whom he knew well. I was a poorly boy often and had sizable spells off school. Mr Howard said he would see what he could do and eventually a letter came to tell us that he’d got an interview for Osborne and me and that if we passed there would be a Borough of Kings Lynn Bursary for us. We both got accepted and soon I was wearing the little red hat I’d liked when small. That was 1928. I slowly settled into the regime at the lovely school which King Edward VII Grammar School was at that time. Scholastically I began to do well - with class positions in the first year: 8th, 8th and 4th and in the second year coming top and thus getting the two heavy volumes of Trees and Flowers of the Countryside as a prize. By the time I was at School Certificate level I was thriving – but a wash-out at sports! I came top of my year and we had to have a family discussion on whether I should go on to the Higher School Certificate. I knew practically nothing of the pros and cons of this but Dad’s view was plain: I was to go on and he’d somehow find the ways and means of supporting me. In fact, he took on extra jobs in the Independent Order of Oddfellows Friendly Society in Lynn – he became secretary, sick-pay officer, and I think more besides – to bring in a bit more money. Then too, by judicious enquiry, a bursary for buying extra clothes was obtained for 2 years. I enjoyed my Higher School Certificate (HSC) work, and although I comfortably secured a Norfolk County Senior Scholarship in 1934 at £120/year, that was insufficient to cover costs at any university. Should I stay for a second go at it? Yes, said Dad, and I did. I’d booked a place at Imperial College, Royal College of Science – largely because I could take an entrance scholarship exam there even as late as August of the following year. It would provide a fall back, so that if I didn’t get a State Scholarship - which was worth all fees + £80/year - I could go all out in August and hope to get into college 2 months later. In the event I took the exam before the HSC results were out and did well, so was I shortlisted for a scholarship, but took it no further on hearing of my success with the State Scholarship. My second attempt at HSC gave me distinctions in Chemistry and Physics, and a State Scholarship, and the Richard England Prize for topping the lists of Norfolk entrants for HSC. I felt pleased and so did Mum and Dad!

I prepared to go off to London and to the digs which my Aunt Flo had got for me – with a Mrs Kemp of Clapham Common, who said she’d never had lodgers before but if the young man was nice, she’d try him! ------Eric Thurston at Imperial College (in the centre of the second row) Only about 10 days before departure from home, I received word from C J L Wagstaff, the Headmaster of King Edward School, that he’d like to see me on Thursday 3rd October 1935, and would I call at his office at 11 am. He received me affably and revealed to my great surprise that the School Governors had decided I was to be the King’s Gold medallist for 1935. I’d hardly thought of this outcome of my scholastic achievement. I’d never been clear as to the basis of the award. Certainly some of the best brains in earlier years had got it, like Way, son of a Sandringham estate worker, and Seapey but a previous Head Boy had also sometimes ‘been it’ – like Langley who I thought wasn’t that brilliant but a good sportsman. I had guessed the Head Boy, Derek Dereham, would be medallist this year as he was excellent sportsman and bright. Anyway it was me! Mr Wagstaff told me that (a) the public would know when he announced it at the end of school on Saturday morning, and then the photographers and reporters would be after me (b) I was to tell no one until then – except close family (c) he would have to telegram me in London when he knew when His Majesty would want me to go to Sandringham to receive the award (d) the BBC had said they hoped to get someone there on the Saturday so as to get an item on the news. Nothing came of the last mentioned, but the rest proceeded smoothly. I was in the school hall at the time of the announcement, and on the Saturday afternoon the local rep from Reuters, or whoever it was, called at my home to get an interview with me. There were articles in the local and national press to set the scene on what was to come! I went off to university in London on the Monday or Tuesday and had my photograph taken a day or so later by a London agency photographer who asked me for the honour of photographing me on the day I was to leave London for Sandringham. I agreed – I didn’t really know what else I could have done! I said I’d phone him as soon as I knew. There wasn’t to be much delay for the telegram came from Mr Wagstaff on Thursday 10th Oct to my digs ‘wanted Sandringham Sunday 13 Oct: please acknowledge’ – which I did.

I decided to travel to Lynn by train on the Saturday morning. I asked my landlady how long it took a bus to get to Liverpool Street Station and she reckoned an hour was adequate. I followed her advice, but we were still far from the station at 8.25 and the train departed at 8.30! I thought of that poor photographer waiting for me as we’d planned. Anyway, I was minutes late as I ran down the steps to the barrier with ticket in hand and there at the barrier was a gaggle of people – the photographer, train guard and ticket collector all arguing heatedly. As soon as I was spotted, there was a flurry of pushing and pulling and I was stuffed into the first compartment we came to, and the photographer focussed and shot – but the flash didn’t work! He tried again as the whistle blew and we slowly eased away from him. He tried two more, with no more success, and we were away. He shouted that he’d do his best, and he did. He told me afterwards that he’d used warmed-up developer and he got a reasonable picture. I knew that at about 5.30 when I bought a copy of the Evening Standard in the High Street and there it was – a picture of me leaning out of the carriage window, and it was pretty good! Insert photo: Eric Thurston about to leave London for Sandringham → I have an idea that the new suit, bought for the occasion, was acquired that afternoon. Mr Wagstaff had said that I should go in a dark suit if I had one, but he was sure that HM would not wish us to impoverish ourselves if that was not so. ‘Look smart’ he said – and that’s what I told dad. But dad insisted that no suit of mine was good enough for the occasion and that we HAD to have a dark suit – so that’s what we did. As likely as not, we went to Hepworths in the High Street to see what they’d got. I think the rendezvous at the Headmaster’s house on Sunday morning was at 10.30. Certainly we were needed at Sandringham at noon. Father walked with me and told me how happy and proud he felt! I’d never been to the Head’s house, but I knocked on the door – and how posh he looked when he opened it to me! Tails and topper, and looking fine but evidently nervous. We sat for a while and rehearsed a few points – at the first response, add ‘Your Majesty’ and subsequently ‘Sir’ clearly, every time; on departure, always retreat without turning away, bowing as appropriate. Got all of that, I think . . . I hope. We went to get into his car – well, not his car. His car was under repair and this was one which the garage had lent him. It was lower and sportier than his own, and different

in various ways. For example, the brake and accelerator were the opposite way round to those on his own car. Which was worrying! He tried to get into the driving seat wearing his topper and rising and wriggling a bit to adjust his tails. More than once his topper was pushed down to beyond his eyebrows and took some releasing, and eventually Mrs Wagstaff had to care for it till he had settled. Then away – down the long drive on to the main road, quiet on a Sunday morning – but what traffic did come, came fast! The final approach was gently downhill. Would he get the footwork right? He didn’t, and we ran straight into the back end of a passing milk lorry! Both drivers got out. ‘I’m sorry my man, I’ll be in touch later. We are on our way to see the King!’ ‘But what about my ****ing milk lorry’ was the predictable reply. Anyway, they exchanged names and addresses and we were off again. There were no more problems and soon we were entering the ‘tradesman’s entrance’ of Sandringham. We made our presence known and were met by Col. Beck, a burly man, well known to Mr Wagstaff, who was both Equerry to the King and Estate Manager at Sandringham. We were taken onto the library with its enormous log fire sending flames up a gaping chimney, where we stood and chatted. At least, they chatted and I listened. Col. Beck said he’d go and see if HM was ready to receive us. He returned and said all was ready and he’d take us along. We followed him to a door along the corridor, which he opened and we stepped it. There was the King, standing, smiling, behind an ordinary office-type desk in a small room best described as a study – and he greeted us with a handshake whilst Mr Wagstaff introduced me. I was struck by his appearance: he looked older than the pictures on the stamps and coins and greyer and seemed small, somehow, for a King. Indeed, how ordinary he seemed to be in his grey suit. A small terrier dog was there too but it played no part in the proceedings. When first I spoke, I got it wrong – I failed to say ‘Your Majesty’ at first utterance, and realised it keenly so I resolved to I’d say it at the second and revert to ‘Sir’ at the third – which I did, and it didn’t seem too bad. We were there for around ten minutes. The king asked what I was to study, and where, what I wanted eventually to do, what my dad did and whether I was good at games. But he asked the Head many more questions than me – how big the school was now and what had happened to various medallists of earlier years. He either remembered their names very well, or had kept records and revisited them for the occasion. I was greatly impressed by the real interest he displayed in the school and its goings on and in the pupils he’d met and encouraged. I remember him specifically mentioning Way and Seapey. When eventually there seemed to be a slight lull, he glanced over at me with a smile and leaned a little to his left, opened the top small drawer, took out of it a red box with the gold medal in it and, handing it to me said ‘I think this is what you’ll be waiting for.’ Then after a few more words he shook hands with each of us, bade us farewell, and we began to retreat. I reckoned that the Head was backing into the middle of the door on his side - it was an entry with double doors opening at the centre - and was 44

going to miss the knob by a foot at least. We had agreed he would open the door. We shuffled a bit, backed a bit more, bowed again; I thought I’d better try to open my side. I found the knob behind me at the first attempt, released the door and we were out, to be met by Col. Beck. We retired to the library for more exchanges of words and it was there that one of the more enduring memories of the visit took place. Col. Beck told me that I was a very lucky young man, for the King had been quite unwell for a while, and his doctor had forbidden him from doing anything more than was utterly necessary, so he had cancelled many engagements on the excuse that he had a slight cold. ‘What would you wish to do about this schoolboy,’ Col. Beck had asked him. ‘Oh, let him come, I can’t let him down.’ I was not a great statesman or ruler, or world famous, but he had taken the trouble and done his duty by seeing me. I was most impressed. I was told that the press would be very inquisitive about the King’s health. In fact he was not at all well but I was asked to say only the ‘he seemed well’ and this I did. It was not long before the nation knew he was really ill. He went to Bognor Regis in the early winter to try to recuperate but in vain, and he died the following January. I was among the thousands who queued to file through St Stephen’s Hall at Westminster at the Lying in State. The return journey from Sandringham by car was uneventful. The local reporter called at my home in the afternoon, and I caught the 7.10 back to London in the evening. Mum was worried about my taking the medal to London, but I’d promised my exclusive photographer that I’d have it with me on the Monday lunchtime for a photo with him. Mum told me that everyone would know I’d got the medal as I journeyed that evening as they had seen pictures in the press and ‘you never know.’ So she sewed the medal securely into my waistcoat pocket! Insert photo: Eric showing his medal to friends → Photographs and newspaper items followed. I put all the cuttings and other memorabilia on a big sheet of paper which I have kept… and tell the story of ‘the day I met the King’ just now and again even into my old age. It seems to go down well, including the little bit about ‘the Royal Road of Duty.’

Plus Ça Change… In my first years as a History teacher in the late 70s I had mostly very pleasant two way conversations at Parents Evenings. I remember to this day a more difficult one with a father of a 14 year old who I wanted to consider encouraging his son Paul ___X___ (best not to risk litigation), to opt for O-level instead of choosing geography or business studies! The father's body language seemed disinterested until he leaned forward (we had no panic buttons) and asked "What's the point of doing your subject...Paul wants to be a plumber." In a way it was of course a fair question and I avoided my instinct to make any remark about studying the history of tap-dancing or lead mining. Some members will be more interested in their and other peoples history than they were at school. If you are I can recommend one, some or even all the talks outlined in this article. If you are interested then email Trues Yard on [email protected] to find out how to access the talks on line. Speakers like teachers and their topics come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I would certainly recommend Paul Richards 8th April, sure to be lively, entertaining but may diverge or over-run! Chris Boxall on 29th April was absolutely brilliant last time I heard him on Walpole, word perfect without any notes and very balanced about our first ever Prime Minister whose nickname I often adopt! The 27th May is Dr. Julian Litten (very knowledgeable across many topics including funerals and death in Victorian times!) who will bring his distinctive style to Sir Guy Dawber & Architecture. (I am checking out whether Sir Guy has KES connections). I cannot promise 100% satisfaction but if you have the time and inclination give at least one a try. The other talks may be better or worse depending on how they perform on the day, the quality of the recording and our own personal interests. As so often in history, time will tell...... Thanks, Bob of Lynn!

Another King’s Speech

Many of you will have seen "The King's Speech" a film centred around King George V1 and his speech impediment. I thought it might be of interest to readers to know about another "King's Speech" - that of King Edward V11, the Queen's Great Grandfather, who officially opened the new school buildings in 1906. For many years the original copy of the speech was housed in the King's Lynn Education Office before it was passed to the School. This is what King Edward said:

"I thank you on behalf of the queen and myself for your loyal and dutiful address. It is a great pleasure to us to open your new school buildings. You are aware of the deep interest which I have always taken in the public institutions of the county of Norfolk, and in all schools, established for the purpose of imparting, higher education. It is not easy to over-estimate the far-reaching benefits of the tuition obtained in such an institution as this. The young men of King's Lynn and West Norfolk whom you send out into the world will, throughout their lives, bear traces of the influences which have guided them during their stay in the school. they are at the most impressionable period of life, and the teachings of your masters will remain in their minds even when later experiences are forgotten. You, as governors of the school will, I feel sure, excercise the most solicitous care in the direction of the studies of your pupils that they may be able to face the stress of life with an intellectual equipment, such as will enable them to hold their own in the world and bear their part in its work and duties with efficiency and to the benefit of others. Nor will, I feel confident, the higher teaching of morality, truth and self-respect be neglected. the traditions of your school, dating back for so many generations, will help foster those ideals - ideals of honour and patriotism which render this country respected in all parts of the world. Wherever they go your pupils will remember not only what they owe to you, but what they owe to England. These buildings are a proof of the gratitude of one of your pupils for the advantages he received here, and of his mindfulness of the importance of providing for his fellow subjects an education of the highest class. I know of no nobler use of wealth that its expenditure for the benefit of those who are to follow us, and no greater pleasure than what I trust will fall to the lot of Mr. Lancaster in witnessing some of the results of his splendid example of public spirit and munificence. I pray that the blessing of god may attend the future of your school.

Michael Fillenham (1957-63)

Old Lennensian committee man Dave Phillips is a full-time journalist who for many years has edited Land Rover magazines. This story appeared in the February issue of Land Rover Monthly… Blowing away the cobwebs: Dave Phillips reckons it’s time to get out more. After all, he does come from the world’s epicentre of driving excellence (aka King’s Lynn)

THE first sharp frost of winter neatly outlined the cobwebs festooned on my Ninety. I have no problems with spiders colonising my 1984 Land Rover – after all, every old Land Rover I’ve ever known has had its eight-legged residents – but it did imply that I don’t get out much. And it’s right: I should be out driving, not least because I have a proud motoring heritage to uphold. You see, I come from King’s Lynn. At this point you’re probably wondering what a small market town in Norfolk has got to do with the automotive world, so I’d better explain… King’s Lynn these days has a population of just over 40,000, but when I was growing up there in the 1960s and 70s it was just 25,000. Yet somehow my home town has turned out two F1 Grand Prix drivers, which is pretty amazing. It was brought home to me the other Sunday when George Russell, deputising for covid-infected Lewis Hamilton, was desperately unlucky not to win the Bahrain Grand Prix. Only a puncture prevented him from taking his first podium driving for Mercedes. And George Russell comes from King’s Lynn. So too does Martin Brundle, one of Britain’s best racing drivers in the 1980s and 90s and a Beneton team mate of the great Michael Schumacher before the latter moved to Ferrari. These days he’s a respected motorsport commentator, of course. My connections with him include going to King Edward VII grammar school together, although I’d hesitate to claim we were schoolmates, as he was three years younger than me (and it wasn’t the done thing to associate with lesser oiks). I was closer to Martin’s aunt, Enid Williamson, who lived just up the road from my parents and ran a driving school. She taught me to drive, so she’s got a lot to answer for!

My home town was also the birthplace of another schoolmate, Peter Riches, who many will know as the highly-respected Chief Scrutineer at Silverstone’s British Grand Prix, as well a Technical Director of the British Touring Car Championship. I’m still in close touch with Peter, as we’re both on the committee of our former school’s ex-pupils’ association. He’s a busy man, but he still finds time to put something back into the school that gave us such a good start in life. Unfortunately, and despite being taught to drive by Martin Brundle’s auntie, the King’s Lynn magic never quite rubbed off on me. I’d rate my driving skills as distinctly average – especially when it comes to reversing a trailer with my Land Rover. But back in the 1970s that never stopped me and my close friends from attempting to ride or drive as fast as we could; after all, we were teenagers and considered ourselves immortal. We were also nutters. I’m sure my mate Martyn Kemp remains the only person ever to have ridden a motorbike up the steps, through the door and into the bar of the Cock Inn at Magdalen and order a pint. The landlord was a tad surprised, but he poured him a pint anyway. After all, it was a bikers’ pub in those days. Martyn has retired from a career in the freight industry, but remains a true petrolhead and still races touring cars. These days he is teetotal, which at least stops him from finding unusual ways of entering pubs. And like all these other Lynn motorsport legends, he certainly knows the best way of blowing off the cobwebs.

PS: Since writing this piece I realise that I had forgotten to mention another Lynn motoring legend - one Roger Taylor, drummer with Queen. As far as I know, he’s the only rock star to have written a song admitting his fondness for his car. “I’m In Love With My Car” appears on the Night At The Opera album, as well as the B-side of Bohemian Rhapsody. He was born in Lynn, in 1949, but his parents moved to Cornwall when he was seven years old. What a shame: if he’d stayed here and passed his 11-plus he’d have gone to KES and would have been in the Upper Sixth when I joined, in 1967. As a prefect, he might have even given me a punishment parade. He’d certainly have given Neville Fickling a few.

Overstrand, 29 September ‘20

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for all the back copies of the Newsletters.

Reading them I was struck by the many tributes to Headmaster Sleigh. For almost my entire time at the K.E.S, 1952 - 59, I thought he was a sour, humorless, and at times a thoroughly nasty man who I avoided if I could. I was unaware at that time, and all would have derided the suggestion writing me off as idle, that I probably had mild (and still have) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Settling to studies was difficult, I was a nuisance to my conscientious friends, and I left with a poor single A Level. But my passion for animals and zoos was fairly obvious if only through the little zoos I put together for the school Fetes.

Out of the blue, one day shortly before the end of my last term, Mr Sleigh called me in. He had approached John Seago, brother of Edward the famous artist, on my behalf. John Seago was a small Broadland farmer from Ludham who spent most of the year in Kenya where he collected ‘ big game ‘ for zoos. Yes, he would meet me.

The meeting was memorable. John’s mother served tea on the patio outside a heavily thatched ancient farmhouse. Somewhere a phone rang. John excused himself to answer. Some time later he returned to say, in a matter of fact way, “ that was Tony from Mombasa, all the rhinos elephants and giraffe had been loaded onto a ship but they are short of enough food for the voyage to the US. I told them to sail and pick up more food in Port Elizabeth”. I was awe-struck. This was the stuff of my wildest dreams. But any thoughts of getting a job with him were soon dispelled because I had taken with me to the meeting an attractive High School girl, Barbara Pickett, and John, like his brother Edward, was gay. And I am not.

However, years later, when I went to East Africa to seek animals for the expanding National Zoo of Malaysia, I met up with John and his team. They very kindly involved me in the relocation effort of displaced Roan Antelope into the Shimba Hills inland of Mombasa, and a time of even greater fun, capturing a remnant population of Black rhinos from an area scheduled for human settlement.

Without the thoughtful action of Mr. Sleigh my life would have been a lot duller. Sadly, I don’t think I ever got to thank him - till now, through your pages.

Ken Sims 1952-59 Windsor

I have since discovered that Mr. Sleigh was a very gifted photographer as these bird studies show. He was quite a remarkable man.

Hello again Andrew Trying to clear up all the odds and sods on my desk and thought this might be of interest to you for the future edition of The O L. You will recall the article by Tony Anderson of his recollection of the staff during his time at school. Well, I wrote to him after this giving my recollections of some teachers he had missed. I quote as follows Have read your excellent review of the school in your day. Can remember most of the teachers and some you didn't list. There was Rev Butler who taught English for a while. Rev Edgar Youdell who taught Latin for a while. He had good aim with the blackboard duster,. He produced a nativity play which he cajoled several of us to perform in at The Congregational Church in New Conduit Street. I remember I had to sing "Myrrh is mine, etc". When he left he joined the BBC Religious Dept. There was also a very young lady teacher. I believe she was called Margaret Graham, or I may be wrong, who taught us French and would blush easily. Reason - she had fixed us up with French Pen pals and wherever we received a letter from them we would tease her by saying” received a french letter today Miss" Miss Bolton, who took the combined science classes liked the older 6th formers. One Sunday some of us caught her and a prefect on "The Chase" in a compromising position. We ran like hell! She was also very keen on the USA Airmen at Sculthorpe. There was also Walter Dexter who took Art. He made us use Izal toilet paper to work on as there was no art paper available. I recall Pop Freestone making an appeal for ATC Cadets as the 42F squadron was about to fold due to lack of recruits., there were only 6 left. Brian (Buster) Adams and I agreed to join and saved his "bacon". Of course we then got Thurs afternoons off as the School Army Cadets had their training then. We all had Tues afternoons off but went in Sat mornings. . Most of us stayed for lunch every day including Sat. I've found up an email from Prof Whiley who gives some more information. He also remembers John Leatham and Sam Gudgin. There was a Mrs Truman, and "Fifi" Howard-Gordon. Then there was Tom Bromhead (Stand in the hall boy), Miss Sheldon, Ronnie Fisk for Art, Basher Beaumont took French There was H S Kenyon who taught scripture and WEJW Williams for Latin. How's that for memory training? Think I've covered everything but there's always something that gets forgotten. Oh, of course, there was Miss Lane in the Tuck Shop. She had her favourites, (I was one), under the counter buns and sweets, etc. 52

By all means get in touch with Tony or Prof to check my memory. All the best Hookey (Derek Hooke 1942-47 York)

Derek, as photographed, was Mayor of Maryport (Cumbria) in 1988/8.

Colours of the OLA Hello Andrew – thank you for this e-mail.

The colours of the Association were selected by a sub-Committee which was set up on 10 March 1911 under the Chairmanship of the then Head, Revd. W. Boyce. I have never come across any explanation for the choice of purple, black and silver and I do not suppose the minutes of either the main Committee or this sub-Committee have survived.

I wonder if Michael Walker makes any reference to this in either of his books about the school? I must have a look.

Mike Douglass mentioned to me once that

there are archives and artefacts in a walk-in cupboard at the school but I have never been in this room. It might be worthwhile opening up this cupboard and looking at its contents just in case, miraculously, the Minutes of the OLA, including this sub-Committee, are in there.

I did wonder if the colours related to the school’s link with Emmanuel College, Cambridge but these are blue and magenta so that does not seem to be relevant. Then I thought about the colours of the Borough but again that does not seem to fit as the heraldic explanation has the colour of the town’s coat of arms as azure.

Maybe the purple was chosen to signify the royal connection and the black and silver simply because the combination were aesthetically tasteful.

The Association was formed after a dinner held in the School Hall on 22 December 1909 when Sir William Lancaster was present and he became the first President. The venison served at the meal was sent by HM King Edward VII.

If I had known about this at the time of the Centenary Reunion I would have suggested that we made William Lancaster, who came as our guest of honour, President in memory of his great grandfather to whom we all owe such a debt of gratitude. (I might also have suggested to a certain other personage that a similar gesture would have been greatly appreciated at our Centenary Dinners in commemoration - but that might not have found favour and could have jeopardised my prospects for future preferment!!!!!!!)

Best wishes, Andrew

David Cobbold 1945-53 Windsor

Hello Andrew,

Alan Fox, (1925-2018)

My father, Alan Fox, was at the Grammar School from 1936 to 1941. He was meticulous in keeping diaries and mementoes throughout his life, and when he died in 2018 I had the memoirs, photo albums, diaries, letters, postcards and other keepsakes from his life. This article has items of interest from his time at the school. Quoting from his memoirs: “Whilst at the Grammar School, we had sports on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I had to play football, which I did not enjoy, nor was I very good – particularly at heading. However I liked hockey, cricket and tennis. In fact one innings I actually made five runs, caught one person out, and clean bowled three other batsmen!” 54

“Our school hours were 6 days a week. Morning sessions 9am to 12.55, afternoons 2.15pm to 3.40. I used to cycle home at lunch times, so we cycled the journey four times every day in all kinds of weather.”

“When the war started we had to share our school with the London school of Hackney Downs, we had the school for the mornings, while they studied in the afternoons. We had many air raids on Lynn, and if the air raid warning sounded during school hours, we had to assemble in pre-arranged safe points. Our class had to sit on the wooden steps in the physics lab. Initially I used to play chess with one of my mates, but as time went on the masters decided we could still be taught.”

School prospectus, 1938 Scholarship letter

School reports (all of them!) School certificate

In 1946, after war service, he joined the OLA, deciding to opt for Life Membership, costing £3-3s-0d. Many, many years later, when retired, he again became involved in events organised by the OLA and was asked to pay his membership fee. In reply he produced the receipt for his life membership!

Kevin Fox (KES 1968-1975)

Boarding House Memories I started as a dayboy at KES in 1961 but boarded from 1962 until I left in 1968, so thought you might be interested in a few recollections of my time as a boarder. I am standing on the far left in the School House photo at the end of the spring 2020 newsletter. I can name most of the characters in the photo and clearly remember Brian Reynolds and those he mentions in his article. I also recall a lad called Hodson who was in Brian’s year; I think he shared the junior dayroom niche (nitch) with Merv Turner or Ron Hilton when I became a boarder in my second year. So many of the experiences Brian describes resonate with me. I remember the junior dormitory which in 1962 accommodated fifteen or so first and second years and two house monitors (Harrison and Gunton). It didn’t take us long to get used to the discordant chimes of the school clock which rang out every quarter of an hour throughout the night. I remember being slippered over a canvas chair in the prefect’s 56

bathroom after owning up to talking after lights out – a slippering that bruised my backside and caused my parents to call on the senior housemaster J. M. Beament (Jumbo), luckily without my knowledge, as any hint of ‘sneaking’ would have been catastrophic. I also remember, as a new boy, being sent by a third year to Alex’s (shop in Gaywood) for a can of striped paint and two sky hooks – they had none in stock. My best friends as a junior were Graham Marsh and Richard Gundry, though in later years I became good friends with Chris Stark and Simon Halfacree. Sadly, I have lost contact with them all. I played hockey for the school and did well in the 1968 cross country for which Jumbo gave me my only badge of honour – my house colours, one of the few positive memories I have of Mr Beament. I liked and got on well with the other housemasters David Smith and John Smallwood. In the 6th form I shared a room in 141 Gaywood Road but unlike Brian, never achieved ‘officer’ status in the house, so lights-out was at 9.45 pm every night. Until relatively recently, I had a recurring dream in which I’ve returned to the boarding house after sneaking out for a pint of mild at the Stable Bar and the Maid’s Head and am desperately trying to climb the east staircase in time for a top-floor roll-call but just can’t get to the top. Happily, the dream became less frequent after an excellent KES open day in the late 90s at which I met John Smallwood and David Smith and had a great afternoon with Mike Boagey and Herbie Lock. We were taken on a tour of the school, the school-house building and headmaster’s quarters by John Sleigh and then had a pint in the Maid’s Head. After A levels I did Applied Biology at polytechnic in North East London followed by an M.Sc. at Aston in Birmingham and a Ph.D.at UEA in Norwich. I then spent five years in various Anglian Water laboratories before joining a CEC research institute in north Italy to carry out a five-year study of the ecology of a small sub-alpine lake. I returned to the UK in 1984 and worked as a freelance aquatic ecologist until 2012 when I joined a large environmental consultancy as an associate director with responsibility for the national aquatic ecology team. I retired last year.

So now that I am retired, I am really looking forward to the next open day which I hope won’t be compromised too much by the hideous bundle of viral RNA that’s circulating in the world at the moment. Best wishes Phil Kerrison 1961 – 1962 (York); 1962 – 1968 (School)

And finally…......

“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” Herbert Spencer

During my far off teaching days, I always wanted my pupils to be able to ‘win the argument’ by presenting a better case than those they disagreed with. Disagreement is a healthy sign of a flourishing democracy but, increasingly, real discussion is made very difficult by those who claim to champion a truth which brooks no opposition. People are pilloried for holding unacceptable views or “no platformed” because they argue against the orthydoxy of the time. I have been saddened by the nonsense going on at Batley Grammar School ,where a member of staff has used material which some Muslims deem inappropriate. The teacher’s motive was to challenge prejudice by showing an example of it. He has broken no law and, without question, he was doing his job. How pleasing it is that his pupils have demanded his reinstatement and have organised a petition which has been signed by 8,000 people so far. Our young people are marvellous. I often think that adults could learn a lot from them. I have been editing the newsletter since I first retired in 2012. It is a joy to me, despite making the odd howler such as announcing the death of an Old Lennensian who turned out to be very much alive! My readers are very tolerant. Perhaps when I have completed ten years, it will be time for someone else to step up to the keyboard and take the newsletter in a different direction. I am proud of the fact that the newsletter has always been a stout defender of free speech. Long may this continue. I have great fun too as Chairman. I hope to make a special ‘Chairman’s Award’ to the ‘OL of the Year’ at the AGM. I have a candidate in mind but will happily listen to nominations. I hope to see more women join the OLA and to see younger people involved in the work of the 58

committee. I have a wonderful committee to work with. They make my job very easy. I hope that, by the time I step down, we will have a much more representative membership. I have always wanted all former pupils of KES to feel that they belong in the OLs. I look forward to seeing many of you in September and, of course, to a restoration of the personal freedoms which we have been denied for so long. I am full of optimism for the future of the Old Lennensians. More importantly, I am full of optimism about our school, which is going from strength to strength. What more could we want? Andrew

[email protected] If you would like to contribute to the next edition, or comment on any of the issues raised in this one, please contact me. Deadline for contributions to the next edition is September 10th, 2021