Cambridgeshire's Village Colleges- Celebrating Pioneers of Lifelong Learning

at the Heart of Rural Communities

Oral History Interview Transcription

Interview with Bob Ridout by Rachael Polsom and Frank Crosby

26th November 2019, Melbourn

It is Tuesday the 26th of November; this is Rachael Polsom talking to Bob Ridout who attended Melbourn Village College. Where were you born Bob?

I was born in Bishop’s Stortford

When was that?

In 1946

Where did you go to primary school?

A little village called Elmden near Duddenhoe End not far from Saffron Waldon, what seemed a large school at the time when I was small but now I look back at the building and it’s just a little house (laughs)

What brought you to the Melbourn area?

Well we moved quite a bit, I was still at primary school when we moved to Henham, and then my grandparents who lived in Duddenhoe End, had a poultry farm there and I was brought up mainly on that. And then we moved to Meldreth, took over a massive building called Hope Folly (laughs) which was built as a jam factory (laughs) and was used as a prisoner of war camp during the war and it had twenty six rooms of which the bathroom was ninety foot long - that is there was a massive room upstairs (laughs), in the corner was the bath and a screen round it (laughs) so we called it, laughingly called it ‘the bathroom from Meldreth!’ Obviously there I started secondary education at Saffron Waldon, technically a modern and then when we moved to Meldreth I started at Bassingbourn before I moved to Melbourn before Melbourn was built. I didn’t have the great impact of going from primary school to secondary school when I was at Melbourn because it had all been done before.

So you’ve been to two village colleges?

Yes, yes Bassingbourn and Melbourn.

How old where you when you went to Bassingbourn?

Well I was still twelve, I think I started, thirteen when I started at Melbourn.

So you had about a year at Bassingbourn?

Yes, perhaps a bit less than that yeah.

What was your first impression of Melbourn Village College?

Well it was brand new, teachers were new as well and a lot of them were quite young, and it was their first teaching assignment, although we had a few older staff, yes, it was, it was just nice to be

moving to a a new college and being the first intake, so it was all like a new broom you know, its fresh, we were keen.

What did you think of the facilities?

Well I thought they were very good, mainly on the practical side, I mean we had a woodwork shop and a gym and a metalwork shop even, and there domestic science room, with its flat.

Where you ever invited to the flat?

Yes, the girls in my class they had a week in the flat, the idea was to run it all completely as if they were running a house, so they did all the budgeting, the planning of the meals, and they invited different people in and I was invited in and had a good meal there, and actually, later on, I went not to the flat but to the domestic science room for learning to cook as well, which was a nice experience really, and has stood me in good stead today (laughs), I always remember my first omelette there (laughs), yes.

So they offered that to some boys?

Yes, yes and the girls also had a chance to do woodwork and metalwork so we just swapped over.

That’s quite forward thinking for those days.

Absolutely yes, as I say, it it made a difference to me, because you know even to this day I can remember how to make an omelette from that first training.

Can you clarify what years you were there?

I think it was ‘59 to ‘62.

How different was it to your primary schools?

Well obviously it was much bigger and at primary school you just have teachers teaching general subjects and here you’re doing specific subjects.

What were the teachers like?

[5 MINUTES]

They were absolutely excellent; they would just go the extra mile for anyone. Music master, decided one day to take us into the hall to do country dancing as it was called then or folk dancing as it’s often referred to. We just had to stand there beside the girls you know and whatever and make up a set. From that a few of us got keen enough to have a lunchtime club, and from a lunchtime club it developed into some of us, well I organised a minibus, to take us to the adult public dance in Cambridge at the Brunswick School. That was just one instance, he used to take us out for displays, he made up a Morris team, and we used to do dance displays at public events at the College or outside at other events, so that was just one master. My woodwork master was really committed in that he took us sailing at Upware, and we, I can’t remember exactly how we acquired the boats, I know we built a couple of enterprises, so he was giving up his time at weekends and in the evenings to help us build these dinghies that we were going to sail and I think we had about four at Upware, and we were doing races up and down the Cam. That was marvellous, and then when I got to the end of my, towards my last year, he learnt that I, probably because I was very good at woodwork, I’d

actually made a dining chair with all the joints, when I was fourteen, and I look at it today and I even with my experience of precision engineering woodwork, and can’t believe that I did those joints by hand in that workshop, obviously there was quite a lot of support from Brian Hunter the woodwork master, but when he learnt that I was probably planning to do engineers pattern making, he decided to go to the trouble of setting up a mould for me and show me how to make a pattern, and somehow he gathered enough, we were all trying to gather enough aluminium, to melt it all down and pour it, and we did that, so we made the pattern, he made a mould, then we poured this aluminium in, just to give me the experience. Now there’s not many teachers that would do that sort of thing, yes they were incredible. There were two other teachers, the history and geography teacher that lived together in a a little cottage across the road, and they set up a hiking group, and we used to go for hikes, at the weekends. The thing I remember particularly, is, relaxing afterwards in their lounge listening to classical music, and so there were probably ten of us or something like that, all sat round, all listening to classical music, and it was just wonderful you know we could discuss it afterwards and it was fantastic, we had a great experience with those teachers, I’ve never, oh I don’t know I’m… perhaps teachers today do put themselves out in a lot of ways but I just thought they went the extra mile.

What about the warden, do you have any memory?

Well I remember him as a figurehead, I became head boy and so I was closer to him in that respect than others but, he was a good man, but I you know obviously, he had the influence over the teachers to teach what they were teaching but more than that I don’t know much about him really.

And in your spare time did you continue with dancing at all?

I did, we got involved with a younger group of girls from Long Road Sixth Form College, and there was a university group doing square dancing, American square dancing, so we used to go to that, and then it ended taking us to the American airbases, to Alconbury, where they had big events with different callers calling in the afternoon and then a big well known caller with a band in the evening, so that was a great experience. And then I’d been involved with the dance club in Cambridge and when the main leader retired, I took over and reformed it to what we call the Friday folk dance club, and then I went on to become the chairman of the English Folk Dancers song society district for Cambridge, and we organised dances, barn dances around most of the Village Colleges, I then started calling myself when I was about twenty, twenty one I think I started, and I’ve been calling ever since, nearly fifty years of calling.

Did you take any other adult education classes?

I remember we went on a school journey to Paris when I was probably fourteen, and I remember going to the French evening class to try and boost my (laughs) French, which wasn’t very good (laughs).

Was it your first time abroad?

Yes that was yeah, yes quite an experience really.

How many other students went?

I think we were about twenty.

Where you aware of how ground breaking the Village Colleges were at the time?

Well I knew that the ethos was meant to be that there was community school of education and they certainly tried to put on quite a few evening classes, and get people involved. The fact that we were going out and doing sailing, dancing and all these other things just shows how much the staff were getting into the community shall we say.

Is there anything else you would like to tell us about your time at Melbourn Village College?

Well, again, Brian Hunter the woodwork master, we built a canoe, in fact we built two canoes, he set up for us to paddle to Littleport, so we did one days paddling to Ely, and we stayed overnight at the Witchford Youth Hostel, which was quite a walk from Ely (laughs) ‘specially in the dark, cos it was later in the year I seem to remember and it was dark while we were going, after a day’s hard paddling, it was quite an experience, and we walked back the next day and paddled on to Littleport, and back, and then the third day we paddled back home, yes with Brian Hunter and his wife came with us and.

[10 MINUTES]

Can you remember any other amenities that the Village College had?

It had the garden

Was that to plant veg?

Plant vegetables et cetera and they were learning to dig and to sow, reap so to speak.

Looking back then, how important do you think the Village College programme was?

The programme, it taught us obviously a lot of things that we useful for us in later life. I mean the woodwork, because it was a subject I enjoyed, I was involved more than perhaps some of the other lads, the girls were doing, running their flat and doing needlework, so we were being trained to run a home as well as for a job, which, when I look back now, I think was a very good thing. At the time I probably didn’t appreciate it much you know because I was a young lad and didn’t really understand what was going on, but yeah it was very good.

[END]