I was at the school from about 1914 to 1921 and can assure you that at that time its educational reputation was exceedingly high. The Headmaster, J.H. Hichens, sat on the Headmasters' Conference and the school ranked high amongst the "minor Public Schools".
Hichens himself, who did no actual teaching, always wore a morning (frock) coat and on his sallies down Glossop Road, always wore a black silk hat and carried an umbrella: as he also had some eye affliction which necessitated dark glasses, he made a very impressive figure. He was much respected.
The Second Master was Lloyd Davies (L.D.), fearsome to pupils but a splendid teacher of French and German.
The Senior Maths Master was Nicholas (old Nick, of course) who had his own method of punishment. He would manipulate the delinquent's head into the right position and then administer a stinging slap across the cheek.
The Head of the Junior School was F.T. Saville (known to all as Toby) who was a native of Rye in Sussex. He used to take a bunch of boys (of which I was one) down to camp on the beach at Winchelsea each August. He usually managed to tempt 2 or 3 of the School 1st XI to join the party so that we were able to muster a scratch side to play matches against Winchelsea, Rye and Icklesham.
I went to King Edward's in 1917 when my family moved to Sheffield from London. I was then just 13. When three years later my father (who was the Minister of Carver Street Chapel) moved to Brighton, I became a boarder at Lynwood for my last two years at school.
J.H. Hichens was a great Headmaster. Taking over an obscure day school in 1904, he had succeeded by 1914 in bringing it into the front rank of English day-schools. It was easy then (and it is even easier today) to criticise his emphasis on examination results in general and on scholarships won at Oxford and Cambridge in particular. One must judge his work against the background of the social structure of the community that the school served and the educational ideas then current. Hichens was by upbringing and temperament a conservative; he was a wise and experienced administrator rather than a prophet. The fact that he was a really good schoolmaster kept him from ever regarding examination results as more than a means to an end.
I think that it was the artistic element in him that accounted for his obvious delight whenever the Scholarship Examiners at Oxford or Cambridge selected one of his rough diamonds for polishing; he was a gentleman of the old school and he must have found the blunt informality of many of those with whom he had to deal, rather difficult to appreciate.
In my last year at school my father asked one of his friends on the Governing Body to find out from Hichens how I was getting on. His reply - "Quite an able boy and a hard worker, but rather rough - yes, rather rough" came as a shock to one who, with the conceit of the 18-year old, had thought himself to be a valuable cultivating influence in the school! Very few of the boys who passed through the school could go to Oxford or Cambridge without the help of a scholarship.
Hichens' enthusiasm was infectious and we worked hard to realise our ambitions. But although the economic urge to work was strong, we were never crammed and we never became the victims of over-specialisation. In the years between the wars, there was a good deal of criticism at Oxford and Cambridge of the boys who came up as scholars from some of the great city day-schools. It was said that an alarming proportion of these scholars failed to justify their early promise because they had been over-taught at school. But I never heard any such criticism of Old Edwardians.
The teaching of the sixth form was first rate, for Hichens had gathered together a group of distinguished teachers in all branches of learning, who gave us a real and lasting enthusiasm for our work. Hichens himself took his full share of sixth form teaching. His lectures on Inorganic Chemistry were lucid and thorough. We did very little written work for him but in the evenings we would go in twos and threes to his house and would give him our verbal answers to questions of the type set in scholarship examinations. These answers he would amplify and criticise as we went along. It was an unusual method of teaching chemistry but as his eyesight was rapidly failing, he had to develop this technique to compensate for the fact that he could do very little reading.
Of the other masters who taught Science to the sixth form, I remember clearly and with gratitude Redstone, whose careful and conscientious teaching methods were humanised by flashes of real humour; and Thompson, whose quiet manner and immense patience were entirely characteristic of one who was a life-long member of the Society of Friends. All those who taught Science to the sixth form would be ready to acknowledge their debt to the sound teaching of H.V.S. Shorter in the Fifth.
In contrast to these quietly effective teachers, Lloyd Davies and Nicholas were rather terrifying figures until one got to know them. Being by nature a poor linguist, I incurred Lloyd Davies' wrath on more than one occasion; eventually he became resigned to my incompetence and I remember him handing back to me a French Prose containing at least half a dozen howlers (marked with his characteristic "cartwheels"!) with the comment "Three years of an advanced Science Course is enough to make a blithering idiot of anybody".
I also fell out of favour with Nicholas when I deserted Mathematics for Science. He thought that I had answered to pressure from Hichens, but he was, for once, quite wrong. Although a fine teacher of Mathematics, he did not realise that I had reached my mathematical ceiling with the Group III Higher Certificate papers, and that my interest in Mathematics up to that point was not that of a pure mathematician (like my friend E.H. Linfoot who sat next to me), but that of a scientist who wanted Mathematics as a laboursaving tool. As I spent my last two years at School at Lynwood it is natural that I should have clearer memories of F.T. Saville than of any other master, except Hichens himself. It is perhaps strange that Freddy Saville won and retained such warm affection from all those who were under him at Lynwood, for his uncertain moods were a sore trial to his prefects. His reactions were quite unpredictable, and yet one could never harbour a grudge against him for more than five minutes. His immense enthusiasm for games gave him a unique place in the school for, in my time, no other master took any active part in the games of the school. But my happiest memories of Freddie Saville are associated with Winchelsea rather than with Sheffield.
The camps that he ran there every August for so many years were one of the happiest features of our schooldays - so much so that some of us continued to go year after year after we had left school.
I have vivid memories of cricket at Rye and Northiam, of days in the sun at Camber Sands, or trips up the Rother to Newenden and Bodiam Castle and of many other delightful excursions in which Freddy Saville was, year after year, the leading spirit.
Apart from Lynwood and the Winchelsea camp, his third consuming interest was the junior School and it was a source of great pleasure and satisfaction to all his friends - as well as to himself - that his long career at KES ended with his Headmastership of the Junior School in its new premises at Clarkehouse.
It is intended that the height, weight and chest measurements of all boys in the school shall be taken three times annually at intervals of four months. The records of these measurements will be preserved, so that the physical development of any boy can always be seen.
Observations were taken throughout the school in October, February and June last, but these do not as yet afford sufficient data to lead to many general conclusions. It is, however, gratifying to notice in most cases a satisfactory increase in chest expansion, due, no doubt, in a large measure to regular visits to the gymnasium. Similar observations in other schools have shown that boys from 16 to 18 who have been subject to a good system of gymnastic and physical training have an advantage over those who have not been so subject to the extent of two of three inches in chest girth.
This fact may serve to stimulate some of the less energetic amongst us to more keenness about the gymnasium, out-door sports, and military drill.
Those who possess Graph Books will find it interesting to devote a few of the last pages, as some are already doing, to keeping their own records, so that they may test for themselves the effect of regular exercise upon physical development.
The Headmaster (J.H. Hichens) was to most of us a rather remote figure. I recall particularly his interview with the six candidates for Oxford scholarships. We were not permitted to apply to different colleges to avoid cutting each others' throats.
Of the six, five of us got Firsts and one a Soccer Blue as well. Three of us become Professors in our various universities.
The school staff contained some notable characters. The Head of Classics was Robert Johnson, a bachelor who lived at Lynwood. He used to play Rugby 'fives', right hand against left, in the school courts. Lloyd Davies (French and German) had been an army coach. He dictated a number of rules of which a single breach led to the 'swiping' of the rest of the exercise. Rumour had it that he kept a close watch on the Stock Market (perhaps because he would not have enough pensionable years as a schoolmaster). The ups and downs of his shares might explain the corresponding variations of his temper.
Mr. Marsh taught us English and I recall one final period on a Monday afternoon (never a very inspiring moment) when he held his class spellbound when he read Shelley's Adonais.
A rather different fate attended the attempt to teach the Classical Sixth some Mathematics and Science. Perhaps, as we were not expected to offer them for a public examination, the enterprise was stillborn. An elderly member of staff, who had perhaps not looked at the subject for years, tried to teach us Differential and Integral Calculus. His frequent phrase "Let's see the form in which the answer is given at the back of the book" (Hall and Knight) did not deceive his class who followed suit. I could never get the question and answer to meet in the middle. A real mathematician on the staff set and marked our papers with a top mark of 19%! Next year Redstone himself was detailed to teach us Electricity and Magnetism. We were introduced to the principle of the balance of forces with two magnets set in opposition to each other. I plonked a third magnet immediately above their meeting point with most gratifying results. Mr. Redstone was horrified "I am afraid that you have irreparably damaged this tangent galvanometer". Years later, when I gave away the prizes I was able to offer him my very belated apologies!
These were good days, I shall always be grateful for what KES did for me but at the age of 88 I have no wish to repeat them.
Mr. Nicholas's room was beside that of the French master, Mr. McGrath. If you deserved 4/6 swipes of the cane you had to go to the porter's office at the entrance where you collected a cane and a book and you would takewthem to Mr. Nicholas (after having been entered in the book). If you were in the French class you could hear a lad go shuffling by very slowly and go into Mr. Nicholas. He had a booming voice and you could hear, the lad take a chair outside into the corridor. Then McGrath would stop his class, go to the blackboard and stand ready. Then you would hear Nicholas' voice saying "don't flinch boy, take it like a man" and McGrath would score on the blackboard - this was the point; when he had finished and the boy took the chair back Nicholas would give him one penny for a do-nut. You had to go and buy a do-nut from the tuck shop and take it back to his classroom where you then bit it to see if there was any jam inside; if there was no jam inside you got another beating. About one in ten had no jam in.
A lad had got a pair of pants that he had made out of the inner tube of a motor bike. When you were going to be caned by the Master this was done in the classroom and you bent down to get a whack; the procedure went - the teacher would smooth your backside with his hand to see if you had stuffed anything down your trousers etc. This lad charged 4d. for you to borrow his rubber pants - but it worked - if you had got them stuffed down then the Master could not feel anything.
By the time of the war, this lad owned a successful engineering steelworks business - it must have been paid for on the profits of hiring out his rubber trousers! One master used to take a run at us down the centre of the classroom. One lad one day had had enough and had raised four pence to hire the rubber trousers. He stuffed these down his trousers. The master took a run at him, left-hand upper cut. He hit the lad's bottom and it rebounded - because of the rubber - and nearly broke his wrist. He had it in a sling for ages.
There are 92 names on the bronze plaque commemorating the school's dead of the Great War. For a school that had only been opened for eight years when the 1914-18 war broke out, the number of fatalities is truly incredible.
To read the obituaries of old boys, who volunteered to be the Junior Officers and NCOs of Kitchener's New Armies and who subsequently fell in the conflict, is a desperately poignant reminder of a generation of young men whose talents and lives were squandered so meaninglessly.
Whilst school life in 1914 and 1915 continued on the surface as in peacetime, many Old Edwardians enthusiastically rushed to join the forces, including a good number in the Sheffield City Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment. By November 1914,99 were recorded in the school magazine's Roll of Honour, a title that at that time indicated service for King and Country but which later would have a more fateful meaning.
Sixth formers, no longer awaited Oxbridge scholarships but a subaltern's life on the Western Front, whilst a fund was started in late 1914 to enable 13 refugees from occupied Belgium to come to KES, five as boarders at Lynwood. Visitors to the school reflected the jingoism of the time, with one Old Edwardian giving a lecture on the comparative merits of British and German guns, shells and armour-plating, whilst others in khaki exhorted boys to go and do 'something' for their country. This sentiment was echoed by H.A.L. Fisher at the 1915 Speech Day, who congratulated pupils on their patriotic spirit and the vigour with which they were taking part in the national struggle.
It was in this spirit that Old Boys volunteered but the war they were ensnared into was not one of elan and movement, like the last major European conflict of 1870-71, but one of murderous defences, almost impossible to breach. The first deaths came in 1915; ironically one of the first was Pte. Leonard Bennett of the Allied Infantry Force who, having emigrated to Australia, returned to the very tip of Europe to die in a bayonet charge on Gallipoli.
Also amongst the dead were four old boys who had each been Head of School in the four years from 1912-16. W.P. Taylor, G. Holmes, D.S. Thornton and B.O. Robinson were all killed as 2nd lieutenants in local infantry regiments leading assaults on German trenches. The latter, serving with the Hallamshires, had only left the school in July 1916 and was killed early in the morning of 9th October 1917 at Passchendaele.
One member of staff recalled, years later, how he had spent one hot summer afternoon covering with earth a number of Old Boys of the school who were lying on the gentle slopes near Sevre, Somme, on 1st July 1916.
There were many others; Masters and Old Edwardians, served in all branches of the forces, including the RFC/RAF, the Navy and the Canadian and Australian contingents. Many performed with heroism and were awarded gallantry medals. Their names are recorded on the Honours Boards outside the Library and include twenty-two Military Crosses, of which Capt. R. Oxspring, M.C. and two bars, of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry got an unbelievable three awards.
By 1917 the war impinged heavily on school life. Speech Day, which during 1915 and 1916 had included the singing of the National Anthems of the Allies, was abandoned for the duration. Assemblies often included the reading of the names of those killed, their photos staring out like icons from the pages of the school magazine, whilst convalescent soldiers from nearby hospitals watched the house football matches at Whiteley Woods.
At the end, a memorial service was held at the Cathedral on 9th April 1919. The addresses reflect the mixed emotions and attitudes of this most pointless of wars, although at the time it was seen as a great victory if not the final ever conflict. One person at the service recorded of the dead - "we heard their footsteps as we walked to the Cathedral and in the stillness of the hush of the Eleventh Hour they once again took their places with us. They too return."
War with Germany was over. I became a pupil at King Edward's and a completely new way of life began. Every day the Headmaster, Mr. Hichens, arrived wearing frock coat and top hat. Too detached from his pupils to be popular, he strove for the betterment of his school and he was proud when able to announce its recognition as a public school. His frequent edicts that "certain things were simply not done" did have effects, though mocked at the time.
The staff were mostly good although some were elderly and in poor health, but teaching and order were of a high standard. Some teachers did impose punishment of four detentions (one hour) for very slight provocation, whilst others maintained discipline by force of their own personality.
Corporal punishment was given by the Head only; known as 'twancs' it entailed bending over and receiving up to six strokes of a cane. Of course, some teachers did give the occasional clip and 'Nicky' would always give a culprit the option of four detentions or a face boxing which would send the recipient reeling. No-one ever chose the detentions - we prided ourselves on being tough.
With both Wednesday and Saturday half-day holidays there was time for sport and other interests. The Head tried to persuade parents of new pupils to sign their sons for compulsory games, a mistaken policy in my opinion as it caused resentment. Voluntary 'gym' was better but, being after school in the evenings and with many boys living a large distance away, and homework, little time remained for relaxation.
I remember excavation work at Beauchief Abbey by some, under the leadership of Mr. Elgar ... football and cricket were the most popular games ... each year a few came on motor-cycles in which many. more were interested. Of personal moment was being told one Saturday morning that I was to play football for the 2nd eleven against the Central School; my gear was at home. A frantic dash to catch a tram to Middlewood, resist Mother's urges to have a proper meal, rush back to Whiteley Wood, changing into gear on the tram-car. It was the first time we had played them and we won.
In the return game I played for the 1st eleven and again we won. They did, however, have the better facilities,- even hot water. I also remember one very wet night with the O.T.C. when the Colonel came to inspect the guard and as we tumbled out there was an outburst of profanity from a lad whose buttock had been punctured by a bayonet. Happy, wonderful days.
I crossed the threshold of the school in 1922 as a rather timid 10 year old, with a scholarship which paid the fees and a handsome £5 a year into the bargain.
I was given to understand at the time that, technically, the school was on the margin of being a public school, since the Headmaster attended the Headmasters' Conference; but if indeed the school had achieved such a status, it did not last. Dr. Hichens, the Headmaster at the time, was the author of a little book which was exceedingly helpful to those struggling with chemistry, but he was a distant and rather formidable figure, and it was important to avoid being summoned to his study, whether for good or for bad.
A later Headmaster, Ronald Gurner, managed to get into controversy with the local Education Committee - I recall some fuss about the Officers' Training Corps; but the Headmaster with whom I had most to do was R.B. Graham, a Quaker, who made no secret of his preferences by inviting to dinner those boys who were going to Oxford, and the few of us who were going to Cambridge to afternoon tea!
It was then the practice to push people ahead regardless. I for one took School Certificate just at age 14, and then Higher School Certificate at 15 and every year thereafter - I managed four. I suppose all this helped in compiling the impressive number of passes to be announced at Speech Day. In my last year or two, I was one of a small group of so-called "scholarship boys" and we were left to work pretty well by ourselves.
Several members of that group attained considerable distinction in later life, including a number of honours (an outcome which the school accepted with resolute silence).
But although at that stage we were much on our own, we nevertheless owed a great deal in our school careers to some admirable teachers.
Seventy years have passed since I left King Edward's in December 1925 and yet I can recall the years I spent there with remarkable clarity. I had started life at KES in the Junior School with a form master with the unique name, for a teacher, of Bircham.
I had come from a small private school, and moving into the atmosphere of a school of some 600 boys and a strict form of discipline, was initially an awesome experience. KES was a grammar school with a fine tradition and the headmaster of my time, J.H. Hichens, was a formidable yet kindly character, surrounded by a team of masters who, to a youngster, were distinctly aweinspiring.
Lloyd Davies (Room 45) - a Welshman was assistant head, a man who subsequently taught me French and German and whose bark was certainly a good deal worse than his bite; Nicholas, senior maths master, in whose classes I was never good enough to be placed, and Johnson the Latin master, a fearsome character, who would stand outside his room on the top corridor waiting to catch boys who ran along the corridor - something which was forbidden and which, if caught by Johnson, resulted in one receiving four detentions, a punishment which meant an hour's detention after school. Schooldays for me were not days to which I would have wanted to return.
I was not fond of sports and gymnastics I hated. The latter I finally managed to avoid permanently as a result of being knocked down by a car when crossing Clarkehouse Road with my bicycle. The accident was fortunately not a serious one but it resulted in my having to produce a doctor's note temporarily excusing me from gymnastics. I managed to use it for the rest of my school life and I made good use of the time gained in what was known as a free period, where one could study whatever one wished.
I regret never having succeeded in learning to swim. It seemed that some years previously a boy had been drowned in the swimming baths and during the whole of my school life, they remained closed. Today the baths at KES are modern and very much used and everyone learns to swim.
There were a number of Jewish and Catholic boys at school and none attended prayers. We would all stand outside the Assembly Hall quietly whilst prayers were taking place and subsequently enter for announcements. Jewish boys also did not attend Scripture lessons but were allowed a free period to work at whatever subject we wished. This was an occasion when we found ourselves mixing with some of the sixth form boys who ensured that discipline was maintained.
The Jewish boys were additionally faced with the problem of having to be absent from Saturday morning lessons as well as on the religious festivals - yet despite the complications which this engendered, our scholastic record was a very creditable one.
In my early days at KES there was apparent a degree of antiSemitism amongst some of the boys, in part due to the Germansounding names of a few of the Jewish boys, whilst the reading of the Merchant of Venice as a set book in my first year did not help. As I grew older I became much less aware of this problem. I made a number of good friends amongst the non-Jewish boys, whilst amongst the masters I cannot recall any with whom I was not on friendly terms.
Nevertheless, discipline was the keynote of the education at KES and that discipline as well as the general education I received there, has stood me in good stead all my life.
I clearly remember the Head, J.H. Hichens, who lived in a large house at the top of the road. He came to school in a frock-coat with silk facings and wore a silk top-hat. We were, of course, taught to raise our caps when he passed. It was an essential for every boy to wear a cap and a school tie. He always acknowledged us by sweeping his silk hat off with an almost Elizabethan flourish.
The Maths master had his own method of punishment, the usual 1-4 detentions. He, however, gave the boys an option of a slap on the face instead of being kept in for one hour - this I think without question would today mean the institution of a prosecution for assault. More serious offences could result in a beating by the Head. The O.T.C. was very active during that period, which was a comparatively short time after the end of World War 1. It was under the aegis of Leonard Beswick who, I believe, was the only boy to receive a rank above Sergeant in its history.
There were inkwells in each desk. One boy put calcium carbide in. The mess was special. Wooden pens with nibs and blotting paper were provided. When I first entered the school it had an Officer Training Corps with an armoury of service rifles and a large machine gun kept on the gymnasium balcony. A year or two later the Corps was abandoned and Scouts took its place.
There were two First War field guns as decoration near the Newbould Lane entrance. I do not know if they were German trophies. Cars were a rarity and the asphalted part of the ground was used in outof -hours to play ball games, mostly football with a standard ball that would not break windows.
I was a keen fives player which was a form of squash played with both hands and a hard ball. There were two of the common plain courts plus two glorious Eton 'fives' courts - an imitation of the buttresses around Eton college. Eton 'fives' was great fun - I have read of it being the best of all wall games.
There was an open-air swimming bath with no water-cleaning facility and no swimming costumes! Our swimming team included Mike Taylor, later Commonwealth and Student Games champion and myself, who represented the Universities Athletic Union; we both learned to swim like this from reading the same book, "Swimming the American Crawl".
The school was gas lit and rather dark and eerie, particularly when Mr. W.A.L. Mease or 'Wally' for short was reading ghost stories on winter afternoons.
As a new boy, and long after, morning assemblies in the school hall were rather frightening. First the prefects came in, followed by Mr. Nicholas - Pa Nick - the second master and a rather fearsome character. The slightest movement or whisper would catch his eye, followed by the words See me afterwards boy, - so off to Room 63 in fear and trembling.
The Head in my earliest days was Mr. Gurner who was followed by Mr. R.B. Graham who had made a name as a mountaineer - he was still Head when I left in the summer of 1935. I remember Form 3A with Mr. J.W. Whitfield who was rather handy with the gym slipper and having only one eye, tended to miss the target sometimes. One special service I remember was by the school memorial every 11th November.
I came to Sheffield early in 1925 and was installed at Lynwood, the preparatory and also the boarding annexe to the school. This was run by Toby and Mrs. Saville, being a very small head of the junior School and his much larger wife, the mainstay. At the end of six months I managed to pass the so-called entrance examination, despite numerous errors, and I progressed through the school from then until the end of 1929 where I ended up in the fifth form which was then broken up into various sets. This short report of my school career is of no interest without mention of the characters I encountered on my way. My first year in the junior School was under the tutelage of, as far as I can recollect, a Miss Turner. Apart from the school secretary I think she was the only female member of the staff. This was accompanied by my first school literature, "The White Company" and I find that each step upwards is memorised from the set book. The next form, and my last in the Junior School, was commanded by the late W.A.L. Mease who was certainly the noisiest teacher I ever encountered.
Constant complaints were made by Saville and Turner but with little effect, particularly in the early afternoon when Wally, as he was known, reflected a liquid lunch. 'Kidnapped' was the set book and as you will recall there is a scene in the block house where Captain Smollett reprimands the others for leaving their posts to form an audience to a parley with Long John Silver.
He bellows "quarters" and the boy selected to do this uttered the word in a weak and undecided way. Despite coaching from Wally he was unable to produce the effect required of him. There was only one answer; flinging the door of the classroom open Wally advanced to the head of the stairs and bawled "QUARTERS" in a voice that brought everybody out of the other rooms. He then returned to his desk and remarked quietly "That is what I meant". Looking back I feel he was worthy of a higher position, being no mean classical scholar. He was also a very fine singer.
At my year of entry the Head was Hichens who, with his deputy, held these positions until they retired in June 1926/27. Their successors were Gurner and Nicholas, the latter still being in office when I left and Gurner being replaced by Graham in 1928. Gurner . had a rooted objection to the detention system which operated in the school. He thought it was a waste of time and energy and brought about an immediate abolition, substituting immediate caning in its place. This could be carried out by any master provided the school porter, Flood, was in attendance.
This was fair enough but I always felt that it was sadistic to expect the culprit to make the long journey to Flood's sanctum to inform him that his presence was required. To add insult to the forthcoming injury, Flood had a habit of trying out the cane on the statues in the Entrance Hall. Graham, who seemed rather a retiring character was received with some degree of hero worship as being a member of the 1925 Everest expedition. The fame of Nicholas as second master was legendary. I am sure he will have had honourable mention from other pupils who were at school in his era. Nevertheless, it will not hurt to recall a few of his characteristics. He took his place on the dais at assembly each morning, rising as a signal to the school when the Head entered. His time was spent dealing with letters received from parents to explain their son's absence and it was advisable to have these notes on his table before he arrived.
To deliver one to him in person was an ordeal to be avoided as this resulted in an enquiry into your state of health and the reasons for your absence delivered in a loud voice for the benefit of the rest of the school. He was a great believer in the benefit of eating roast beef and you would find yourself being asked what you had eaten for Sunday lunch. An admission that you had partaken of lamb, pork etc. would often result in a minor retribution.
'Titch' Lee, who was aptly named, being small indeed but extremely vigorous, insisted in the class doing five minutes P.E. on a cold morning which left most of the class breathless. In a Christmas issue of the school magazine an attempt was made to give the trade mark sayings of the masters. In the event of a disaster in the lab. Lee would dispel criticism of his operation by "Rot, lab. Assistant's fault". "Yew boy heah" was attributed to Nicholas who had a boy at the school. Consequently, as in 'Midshipman Easy' we had young Nick and old Nick.
During the first years at school the O.T.C. was abolished and replaced by the Boy Scouts. Another master, short in stature, named Storey sprinted up the stairs in full scout masters regalia only to receive a firm clip on the ear from one of the prefects coupled with a reminder that running on the stairs was prohibited!
Two men have had an enduring effect on my life - both teachers at KES - Dr. C.J. McGrath and Mr. Green. I was at the school from 1929-35 when I went to live in Scotland where the third influence stamped her mark on my life - my English literature teacher.
'CJ' or 'Sir Cumference' not only taught history - he made me love and respect it, creating a strain of enthusiasm I still have. He was a Channel Islander by birth and was reputed to have been in the secret service in World War 1. But he also had another side - a caring for others. He ran a boys club in the inner city of Sheffield, promoting dramatic presentations and sporting fixtures where only abject poverty and deprivation were apparent. He used to take a few of us with him - it was from him that I learned what service to others is.
He lived in Rustlings Road with his sister; his home was a home from home for many an Old Edwardian; I corresponded with him for many years and last saw him, with my wife, shortly before he died.
Mr. Green was my French teacher - but more important to me he ran an Explorers Club on a Wednesday afternoon, thus enabling those of us who hated sport to escape into Derbyshire to walks of adventure and curiosity creating an appetite I have never lost. He also took a party to Wimereux in the summer of 1933, ostensibly to speak French; my pal Peter Tyzack and I learned how to ask for eclairs in French (!) and how to ask for a return ticket on a tram to Boulogne. We did not know it at the time but he was a sick man and died a few months later in his home in the crescent between the school and St. Mark's church. A kindly man.
The impression that is almost the strongest of my school years is of competitiveness at every turn. Endless tests, fortnightly lists. Holidays, quite the most loved item in the Curriculum of the whole year, always given in the name of one of the academic wonders produced by the school. This is about the strongest recollection I have of the school I left some 66 years ago.
Yet the strongest impression of all of the school is, I think, of nonachievers, those not able to compete, especially, to use a phrase I first heard in an English lesson at the school while reading Shelley's Adonais, the "inheritors of unfulfilled renown". My own brother, A.M. Hall, at the school from 1918-23, was to be of this company because although he became a Hastings Classical Scholar of Queens College, Oxford, in 1923, he died tragically from a sting, in the long vacation 1925. Perhaps it was that tragedy, happening in my life at the age of 15, that made me remember with painful clarity and understanding the greater tragedy in life of those who were not allowed even to compete.
The name Ardern remains through the years as one in the first tragedy. In Mr. Saville's House, Lynwood, which was devoted to Boarders, a boy eating too much ice cream sitting in pain on the sill outside one of the dormitory windows, fell and was killed. Another boy, only in pyjamas, rushed out seeking help through the streets. From shock or pneumonia his death too came with such suddenness that I recall both being mentioned on the same day as I sat, a second-former, in the gallery when J.H. Hichens, the Headmaster, reported it at the Opening Assembly of the school.
In 1926, shortly after my own brilliant brother's death, the Mellor Boys, sons of Councillor Mellor, rider and pillion passenger, both died in the same motor cycle accident. So even the child comes to understand, in a way in which he will never forget, how, even if school seems never to have been designed for his particular interests and needs, his troubles are put into perspective by awareness of those denied the power to achieve at all.
A great niece who happens to attend the school today (which is surprising because we left the city more than 50 years ago) tells me the names of both her uncles A.M. and J.M. Hall appear on the school Honours List to this day my brother's Open Scholarship and my much slighter Exhibition. That was news to me. I know no Holiday at any rate was given in my day for me to enjoy. That, I should have recalled! I feel sure what happened is that kind masters, in sympathy for my parents at what was a notable grief for many at the time, saw that this consolation, by a little stretching of the imagination, should be made. Still, even the black sheep of some schools sometimes come to some good, even if late. The college at Oxford for which I was honoured at King Edward's did make me one of its Honorary Fellows in the course of time.
Based on a conversation between Ruth Warrender, aged 11 - student in Y7 in 1995 and her grandfather.
When I first started school I was 8 years old. To get into the school you had to pass quite a difficult entrance exam, also your parents had to pay a fee for your education and buy all your books. There were only six boys who, if they passed the Scholarship exam, could have free education. This was supposed to help people who could not afford the education but some were so poor that even if the education was free they could not send their children.
At the school there were approximately 720 children divided into Junior School with 4 houses (Angles, Normans, Saxons and Britons) and Senior school with 7 houses (Haddon, Clumber, Chatsworth, Sherwood, Welbeck, Wentworth and Lynwood). Some boys were boarders (about 6 or 7 when I was there); they were in Lynwood house. Lynwood house is actually a place on Clarkehouse Road. The Junior School was on Newbould Lane, two houses next to a church.
We boys often were naughty. When I was younger I played no tricks on anybody but I can tell you one I saw. In the science laboratory, we had stools with holes in the middle, one boy was sitting down and leaning over to look at an experiment. Another boy put a piece of ice under the bottom of the stool, under the boy and he then pushed it under the boy with a long ruler. This was obviously a terrible shock. Every new boy also got ducked under water in a sink.
I never got the cane but I did get impositions, which were writing lines. For very serious offences some boys were punished by the cane. At 14 or 15 you took the school certificate which was Oxford and Cambridge Board (KES was the only Sheffield school to do Oxford and Cambridge).
To me, education is in business to provide documented evidence of what you have achieved - it's called certification - an in-word today with such emphasis on training; certainly no less important is the moulding and formation of right attitudes.
Apart from very modest achievements in School and Higher Certificates I realise now the very deep influence of masters such as Watling, Clay, Carter and Co. in creating respect for the discipline of authority. Running along the upper floor corridor within earshot of Mr. Watling was a most hazardous risk few would undertake!
I am afraid there was little realisation of the extent to which some of our teachers had been marked by World War 1.
Happily my first teachers in the Junior School were ladies with sterness of a different nature. I shall never forget the homely atmosphere of the old Victorian house in Newbould Lane, nor the very neat earphone type hairstyle worn by Miss Turner.
Dr. Hichens was Headmaster when I started and I can picture him now in school assembly with his deputy head, Lloyd Davies, sitting on his right - both of them soon due to retire. In my early days I suffered with a stammer and my parents, I know, were grateful for the understanding and reassurance he gave them about my settling in at the school.
Swimming for pleasure and fitness hag been a lifelong benefit. The original and very basic open-air bath had been closed and was certainly a forbidden and locked-up area. Rumour had it that a boy had drowned there. When the bath was re-opened (still in its basic state) house points were awarded to any learners who could swim a breadth. This was one of the very few occasions when I was able to contribute house points to Chatsworth! I did manage 26th place in one senior cross-country run and remember Mr. Nicholas saying "Well done, boy".
Integrity in all our affairs is essential and with all the ups and downs I look back with deep gratitude for my time at King Edward's. I pray that with the unprecedented challenge and opportunities of the next 90 years, King Edward's will be given continuing resources, spiritual and material, to do justice to its past illustrious record.
'Bogey' Marsh was our English master in School Certificate Year (about 1927). I'll always remember the fire and enthusiasm he put into his readings of Chaucer and Shakespeare (especially Lady Macbeth's soliloquy). He was a thick-set fellow about the same size as Ronnie Corbett and had piercing eyes, prominent white teeth and black curly hair.
One morning, just after prayers as Dr. J.H. Hichens, MA, the Headmaster (who was very short-sighted) was going through his papers preparatory to making announcements when suddenly 'Bogey' appeared ascending the steps leading to the dais table. When the Headmaster saw him advancing towards his table he greeted him with the words "Sit down, boy, sit down" to the great amusement of the assembled masters and boys. Dr. Hichens was a kindly old man who walked to school down Glossop Road every morning from the School House wearing a black morning coat, knee breeches and gaiters.
Long Tom was the nickname we gave to a very tall Chemistry master named Thompson who for some reason had his suits cut for him with 5 or 6 buttons down the jacket fronts, the top one being tight up under his chin. This size of jacket was obviously necessary to accommodate a large number of pockets into which he put his penknives, spatulas and the like, for use in dealing with chemicals. The overall effect when he sat down at a bench high up on a rostrum was to make him look taller than ever. It was not unusual to pass by his cupboard in the Advanced Chemistry Lab and see purple fumes issuing from it because he was distilling iodine, or he would be holding a burning cloth soaked in ether which he was about to throw out of the window! He had lost the end of one of his fingers making explosives, I was told.
One time Long Tom was lecturing us in Organic Chemistry and his description of the properties of Methyl Isocyanide was "a gas with a most horrible smell, absolutely appalling" then, looking down over the top of his half-moon spectacles he espied the boy in the front row, way way below him. "You won't make it Constantine, will you?" he begged.
The Physics Master, H. Redstone (Trotsky) had a wonderful repertoire of 'stock phrases' which readily recurred in his lectures. E.J. Clarke and myself would draw up two lists under headings United and Wednesday and each would be given an equal number of expressions. These were credited with a goal as they occurred and at the end of the lesson we would declare that, for example, Wednesday had won say 7-5. His most common sayings were "as it were", "to all intents and purposes" and "the flask would be broken to smithereens".
Finally, probably the greatest character and the terror of forms 5 and below was Mr. Nicholas, or Old Nick as he was called. Incidentally he had a son at the school. The father had a great sense of humour which became more and more evident as one graduated to the higher forms. He was known to be a gambling man and if he saw a scrap of paper on the floor of his classroom he would say "pick up that betting slip, boy". In his more pleasant moods he would digress from Maths to ask of his class that if anyone could produce a nursery rhyme which he had not had from them before, he would give them two pence.
One day, someone did and Old Nick congratulated him but, feeling in his pocket found he had no change. Whereupon he just looked across the room at his son and said "Hey, Nicholas, lend me two pence".
Mr. Baylis was the first full-time Music Master but the funds granted to him for equipment were very meagre. He had to go round to pawnbroker shops to pick up second-hand wind instruments. This was typical of the interest in the 'after-school' activities of the boys.
At the age of nine I was admitted to the Junior School, a house in Newbould Lane and was taught by Miss Copley, a competent middle-aged spinster. I then moved to 'Toby' Saville's form; Mr. Saville ran the school's boarding house, Lynwood in Clarkehouse Road. My father died when I was 11 and nobody could have been kinder than Toby who counselled me and invited me to Lynwood for several meals.
Ronald Gurner was Headmaster of the Senior School and, as he attended the Headmasters' Conference, we were classed as a Public School. He wrote a novel about the school, "The Riven Pall".
Mr. Nicholas, Deputy Head and our Maths master, had a room on the top floor, a voice which froze us at 200 yards and a cane of painful memories! Across the corridor 'Jerry' Chambers taught us English, printed on the black board and was everlastingly extolling the virtues of the good manners of Bradford against the bad manners of Sheffield! "When I walk along the station platform in Sheffield I find every corner seat taken and nobody has the courtesy to invite me to have theirs". There was never any litter on the streets of Bradford! He would halt his discourse and exclaim "Was you speaking Smith?" and continue teaching us English!
In this period the Sheffield Labour Council decided that we should not have an Officer Training Corps and disbanded it substituting a Scout Troop. After years of distinguished speakers at Speech Day we had the Lord Mayor who started his oration with "Ow appy I am to be ere" - causing titters throughout the hall and resulting in us losing the traditional day's holiday!
The first meeting, held on 6th July 1927 with 22 boys, will live in the minds of those present for many years to come. The ceremony was held outside in front of the main staircase. Picture, if you can, a semi circle formed by the members of the new troop in their picturesque uniform of navy blue with neckerchief in the school colours of blue and white. Immediately behind in their uniforms were a line of pupils who were also scouts of other troops in the city and behind these the rest of the school.
The first camp was held at Whiteley Wood Hall, then at Sawdon, Scarborough. They left Sheffield by the LNER train and the most remarkable events appeared to be the Plum Duff made by Siddall and the hens who outwitted Chatburn and finally ate his food. But a good time was had by all.
During the Christmas meeting it was decided, amongst other things, that the boys need not salute Scout officers whilst in school, except when in the gym which is where meetings were held.
Many more camps were held - Plymouth, Wakefield (visited by Sir Robert Baden-Powell), Derwent, Kandersteg. Most of these camps appeared to be rather wet and the highlight at one camp seemed to be the "trifle that was served for tea". In 1928 it was even reported in The Times that the 167th King Edward VII School Scout Troop had left for two weeks camping next to Lake Lugano in Switzerland.
The troop became so successful that in 1929 they divided into two troops (A and B). At Easter 1930, 41 boys, 22 from KES, went to Algeria and although they had missed 3 nights sleep on the journey, still managed to sing and march in step through the streets, which impressed and amazed the Algerians. This visit was widely reported in the press and they actually left in cattle trucks for Biskra, where camels were rounded up to give the 41 boys a starlight camel ride. A fascinating sight this must have been. Mr. Alan Orme, writer of Scout News in the Sheffield Mail was 'sworn in' whilst in Algeria and became the first scout of the 167th to be sworn in out of England.
The early part of the 1930s saw the beginning of the erection of the Scout Hut in the grounds.
Scouting continued as enthusiastically as it had started for many years, eventually creating yet another troop (C troop) and still going away to camp many times each year - getting through miles and miles of string for their knots and eating mountains of plum duff followed by brisk games such as pirates.
They eventually started a Wolf Club pack in the 1950s. The troop helped with Bob-a-Job weeks, gave Christmas parties for 'poor' children, helped collect money for the Refugee Campaign and many other 'good and worthy causes'. They helped celebrate the Baden-Powell centenary in 1957.
Over the years the KES Scout Troop has provided a lot of boys with an enormous amount of fun and companionship and given them memories that have stood the test of time. But all this would not have been possible without the dedication and time willingly given by the Leaders of the KES School staff.
The last entry in the logs " we arrived back at School to the tune of "just look at you. You're filthy. It's a good bath for you my lad!" Women never learn "
Earliest reminiscences are of the Junior School, then a house in Newbould Lane which the writer entered in 1931; these reminiscences firstly evoke the old open air swimming bath and its impact upon a very small non-swimmer. The dreaded day would arrive without the hoped-for parental note reporting a severe cold, and
down we would troop to that ancient stone structure and the dark green depths of the bath itself, a Roman replica without the heating. Naked and shivering, boys and masters alike, we would plunge or, most of us, creep gingerly down the steps, into the opaque and chill waters of the shallow end, so-called, but neck-deep to the vertically challenged 'titch'.
Non-swimmers, clutching the slippery bath edge were exhorted to "duck" before their rudimentary swimming instruction, whilst the unexpected disturbance drove the pond-skaters to the remoter corners of the bath. Sounds of chattering teeth and the patter of sticky feet around the bath sides remain as vivid memories over sixty years later. Those sybarites who know only the modern bath missed a memorable aspect of the spartan life of earlier days. Come the warmer weather and leaving the algae to flourish, thoughts shift to the Lynwood garden party. Idyllic surroundings, ladies serving lemonade from large bowls, small performances from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and gentle competitions in the lazy sunshine.
The School Shout, involving the whole School at the end of the Autumn Term, provided an equally improbable occasion, in this case for the relaxation of discipline and the unbridled enjoyment of rumbustious stage variety turns; the one unacceptable misdemeanour on these occasions was co-ordinated stamping in the gallery, which called down wrathful intervention from the redoubtable Second Master of the time, H. Nicholas (Old Nick) who otherwise restrained his customary stentorian summonses to "63". Disorder ruling for a night, perhaps a safety valve for lively spirits? The time came for the great leap into the Senior School and with it the long awaited opportunity to join the School Scouts, one
of the outstanding perquisites of the time, with its thriving troops and ambitious camping, hiking and canoeing activities. These, with the friendship and profound influence of such sterling and cultured characters as George Smith and Gordon Cumming, set the pattern for future outdoor life for many pupils of the School. Poignant thoughts, though, of Phil Browne, Alec Oates, the Fulford brothers and many others who did not survive the war to enjoy it. The central themes of the Senior School - its outstanding scholastic achievements, its overall ethos and corporate spirit and its immense influence throughout later life - must form another story.
However, most wildly improbable of all would have been any idea that the writer might one day see two grand-daughters able to acquire their own memorable experiences of King Edward VII School.
Football, cricket and running took place, of course, at the senior school and at Whiteley Wood where we were barred one winter when the neighbouring farm had an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. In the summer there was some nude bathing in the old baths which had been affected by fire. The water was a putrid green in hot weather and I recall being one of a group of pupils instructed to carry it in canvas buckets to water the main cricket pitch. The prominent position of the school meant that a good view was obtained of the barrage balloons in the west of the city.
One day in a strong wind several lost their stabilising fins resulting in one balloon gyrating on the end of its cable which swept the roof tops till it broke. I remember taking my school certificate oral examination in the Library and being questioned by the examiner about a barrage balloon to be seen outside the window.
I entered the junior School in 1933 which was then situated in two semi-detached houses across Newbould Lane from the school. 'Toby' Saville was ably supported by Misses Jones, Turner and Copley, Mr. McKay and Charles 'Daddy' Wright who was later to become the Squire of Eyam, living in the fine Hall.
Terms always started on a mid-week afternoon and pupils were required to bring with them two things. Firstly a form signed by the parent to declare that the pupil was free from infectious diseases; this was collected by masters before we were allowed past the doors of the school. A cheque for six guineas was required to be placed in a wicker basket in the school vestibule.
I had a close view of the organisation of the annual Athletic Sports since my father was responsible for the organisation of this important event in the school's calendar. The heats were held at Whiteley Woods and the one mile race plus the long and high jump completed the final on the school close. A printed programme was produced for the final, listing boys' names and running numbers for each event, divided into different age groups. There were also house events such as relay races and tug-of-war.
On the final Sports Day, a Saturday afternoon, a marquee was erected near the pavilion with tables to hold the cups and prizes in the early days. The band of the Yorkshire Dragoons played during the afternoon. A well-known Sheffield dignitary, usually female, presented the trophies. The local paper regularly featured a cartoon of the personalities, boys, staff, and visitors. 'Fatty' McGrath, who was the starter, was always included.
The school had a swimming bath for many years. The original one was open, unheated and the water had a greenish tinge. It was surrounded by a ten foot high masonry wall and in the absence of changing rooms we changed on the bath side. Visits to the baths were to be avoided at all costs and I only recall one or two visits in the Junior School! Toby Saville was reputed to take a morning dip there on summer mornings.
The new baths were a wonderful luxury and under the guidance of Mr. Watson swimming became a regular lesson in the timetable. The baths have since been modified most notably by the removal of diving facilities and making the pool shallower.
I recall many staff and their foibles:
'Billy' Effron who taught Geography and Spanish. He had worked in South America on the railways and could very easily be led to tell his experiences.
'Gassy' Gaskin who taught Geography and lacked the ability to keep the rowdier elements in the class in order. He was the senior Scoutmaster for the KES troop.
'Long John' Thompson, a Chemistry teacher of the old school, who until the day he retired, maybe in 1935/6, wore a dark blue suit which buttoned up nearly to the neck and a high stiff starched collar.
'Tommy' Atkins who taught me much of my Maths and left during the early part of the war, as a conscientious objector.
Mr. Whitfield who taught French and helped knock the vocabulary into pupils with a 'morceau de bois' applied to the posterior. He left pre-war to go to Oxford University.
'Old Nick' Nicholas was one of the major characters as Second Master. Notable for requiring pupils to pick up the smallest piece of litter on the school premises and stopping the slightest suggestion of a run along the corridor.
Mr. Hickox, the Head of Chemistry, who later married Miss Jones of the Junior School, left for Ellesmere School.
Gordon 'Cheese' Cumming, an old boy of the school who returned to teach History. He married during the year. He was my form master and invited the form to his new home for tea and to meet his wife. We all felt this was a wonderful gesture.
'Clarence' Helliwell came to teach Art and possibly Woodwork. He transformed the school by brightening the dining room with very large oil paintings.
'Trotsky' Redstone and Physics were inseparable. Many pupils owe him a great debt for his teaching of physics and he was never known to raise his voice or smile! The physics apparatus was closely guarded.
War had a major affect on KES. Parents had been consulted as to whether they wished their son to be evacuated in the event of war and a small number had indicated their desire to take advantage of evacuation. On the Friday preceding the outbreak of war these pupils were to gather at a junior School on Abbeydale Road. In the event very few turned up. Under the leadership of S. V. Carter they walked to Heeley Station where they boarded a train to Loughborough. After a few weeks the boys and staff returned home to Sheffield.
The school could not re-open in September 1939 until shelters had been constructed and Home Service was organised. Boys were grouped by age and home district and met in the homes of pupils, sitting round the dining room table. Peripatetic teachers toured these groups setting work and advising on difficulties, spending about 15 minutes in an hour with any group.
Meanwhile a labyrinth of trenches was dug on the school close and concreted to form a maze of underground passages with wooden slatted benches along the walls. Once back at school we had air raid drills which required evacuation of the school into the shelters; sometimes the wearing of gas masks was required.The carrying of gas masks was compulsory at all times and the Headmaster set a good example with a very prominent white strap to the box diagonally across his chest.
In December 1940 the city was the target for German bombers on two nights. The Upper School escaped damage although St. Mark's was burned out and a land mine fell on Clarkehouse Road by the Botanical Gardens. This caused many windows to be broken in the Junior School which by this time was housed in Clarke House. Senior boys who managed to reach KES on the following morning volunteered to brush up the glass on the floor of the junior School.
School was suspended for the final week of term and it was converted to a hostel for people whose homes had been destroyed or who had been evacuated due to danger from unexploded bombs. Camp beds and blankets appeared from emergency stores and senior boys and staff moved desks aside to install beds. One job I recall doing was spraying the rooms with a disinfectant each day.
The Headmaster in an immaculate suit stood out among the evacuees who had only the clothes they were wearing on the night of the raid. Some staff were allocated duties either on the day shift with the Headmaster in charge or night shift with S.V. Carter in charge.
The most important person of all was Mrs. Hellstrip, the school cook, who with her kitchen helpers fed the temporary residents at KES. I think they had all returned home or moved to other accommodation by the beginning of the January term.
I recall Speech Days in the school hall when the boys were crowded onto wooden benches which spilled out into the corridor. The very large sash windows between the hall and corridor were lifted to allow those banished to the corridor to hear the speeches, choir and orchestra, if only faintly. Parents and boys all had to sit on hard wooden seats without cushions.
The table on the platform was laden with books for presentation to prize winners. 'Marcus' Watling organised the dispensing of the books so that they reached the correct recipients. My visits to the school, Glossop Road building, of course, have convinced me of the unchanging face of the building. The library is now where I learned woodwork and the inside toilets have replaced the old white-washed outside ones; these are the most noticeable changes!
I attended KES from September 1934 to July 1943. Throughout this period the tuition fees were £36 per annum. There was no inflation in those days.
There were 700 boys in the school, usually several forms in each year, with about 30 boys in each form. Based on examination results, the brightest boys were placed in the top form each year and the slowest boys in the bottom form, with the intermediate performers graded in the forms between. This procedure produced a vibrant, eager, competitive spirit.
The top form was not necessarily called A, nor was the bottom always D, as a result of the application of the theories of educational psychologists at that time. If a boy went through the school always in D forms, he would develop an inferiority complex. Conversely a boy who was always in A forms would become an objectionable person, over self-confident and egotistical.
To raise two topical subjects - there was some bullying and the curriculum was far too much. We were overwhelmed by English, French, German, Latin (some boys also took classical Greek), History, Geography, Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Divinity, Art, Music, Woodwork, Gymnastics, Swimming, Athletics, Cricket and Football.
The teaching was excellent. Each of the masters was an enthusiast for his subject and loaded us fully with masses of homework. Some masters wore graduate gowns and carried canes, which they used on us when necessary. The headmaster also wore a mortarboard but kept his cane in his study, where he used it on us for serious misdemeanours.
In the evenings, as though we had not enough to do already, the societies beckoned, in theory voluntary, in reality driven by social pressures. These included the Scouts, Choir, Orchestra, Scientific Society, Philatelic Society and others.
During the Second World War we volunteered for 'fire-watching' duty, on guard all night to extinguish any enemy incendiary bomb which might fall on the school. None ever did.
King Edward VII School was considered to be the elite grammar school for boys. Its prestige was unquestioned. The equivalent school for girls was the High School situated on the other side of Newbould Lane. The Headmaster was rarely seen not wearing academic dress, cap (mortar board) and gown; it was, of course, customary for the teaching staff to wear a gown for most of the time.
I was awarded a scholarship by Sheffield Education Committee following the Secondary School Entrance Examination, so my school fees were paid by them. However, my parents were asked to pay for school dinners and part of the cost of books. They also had the expense of school uniform, navy-blue blazer with badge (the distinctive white lion) on breast pocket, cap and football and cricket kit. A tie was obligatory. The Transitus (Lower VI) and VI forms had the privilege of wearing a special tie with an extra silver stripe.
Sports Days were held on the grassed playing area in front of the school. Speech Day, the annual presentation of book prizes and sports trophies, took place in the Assembly Hall, an evening occasion when as a new pupil I remember wondering at the distinctive coloured gowns and hoods worn by the masters and representing the universities and colleges at which they graduated.
I remember - homework was 2 to 3 hours per evening; Saturday morning school with lessons 9 a.m. to 12 noon or 12.15 p.m.; my first form room, 2D, first floor, the door opposite the top of the steps. I could keep books locked away in my desk and I had my own key. There was an inkwell, we wrote with a pen nib and ink and we had blotting paper; there were no women teachers in the senior school.
In those pre war days you were thought to be a bit of a snob if you went to a posh school like King Ted's. I also remember the open-air baths, like those of old Rome in stonework with a flagged surround and icy cold water. Told to jump in or be ducked under the surface was not too helpful to non-swimmers. There was no rail around the sides of the bath to hang on to.
The Gymnasium - at the end of term a special treat was to be allowed to play 'Pirates' a sort of cops and robbers game. All the equipment could be used, wall bars, ladders, ropes, mats, vault horse and boxes, beams etc. If being chased, you must not allow your foot to touch the floor otherwise you were out.
The bottom corridor was very dark and lined with metal cage-like lockers where we kept our coats, PE kit and towel and hid if late for Assembly, hoping not to be discovered. The porter, who lived in the lodge by the Glossop Road gate, would be in his distinctive uniform and on patrol. Being reported for not attending Assembly might have had serious consequences.
The Refectory - board tables, long low forms to sit on and a top table for the masters, reminiscent of 'Glorious Food' scenes in 'Oliver'. We had set places and at the head of each table, a prefect in charge who served the food.
The younger boys did the 'fagging', the fetching and carrying to and from the kitchen. After clearing away the first pile of plates, it was not unknown for you to discover on your return from the kitchen, that your spoon had mustard on its underside or your spotted dick had received a helping of salt. Drinking water was available. Coke had not arrived.
The library - bookcases, shelves all highly polished, as was the floor. The books were mainly non-fiction and for reference only. There was a very large oval table. This is where the Oxford and Cambridge Language Oral Examinations were held.
The Science Labs - I recall a rabbit being imprisoned in a fume cupboard. Biology had not long been introduced into the curriculum for science side pupils; modern studies did Spanish or German (French and Latin were compulsory for the first three years) and classical scholars swotted away at Greek unseen translations, but the rabbit knew none of this. It was dead when we saw it. Who had left the lab. door unlocked at lunch-time? Rumour had it that a master had gassed the poor thing. Even worse, a boy might have poisoned it. It didn't much matter. The rabbit was destined for dissection that afternoon in the interests of education.
Wednesday afternoons - football at Whiteley Woods playing fields, or cricket (white shirt and flannels). If cancelled because of bad weather we were free to go home. The Masters v. Senior Boys matches were notable events. After showering and changing we would make our way through the woods to Hangingwater Road and call at a corner shop for doughnuts and Vimto, then on to the tram stop. Fare to the city was 1/2d.
The cross-country run from Whiteley Woods pavilion, via Wire Mill Dam, Forge Dam, up Porter Clough, along to Round House and back down Ringinglow Road and Whiteley Wood Road took about 40 minutes. The Junior School ran a shorter route up Jacob's Ladder, an exceedingly steep climb over the fields from the valley to Ringinglow Road - about 25 minutes.
It was no joke getting a 'stitch' as you tried to keep up the pace, or having the PE master bawling out instructions to use the correct part of the foot and shouting "Run on your balls, boy". On our return to the pavilion we were exhausted. House points had been earned. Good, "Well Done that man".
The School Office - a 'sacred' place, rarely visited unless you were sent on an errand to collect stationery or cyclostyled sheets, to sign a receipt for new textbooks or purchase geometrical instruments, 4 figure mathematical tables or sent for the cane. You had to be on your very best behaviour and your manners had to be exemplary.
The Office was spotless, the counter style desk top highly polished. There was a small wicket gate beyond which there was No Entry into what was undoubtedly a very efficient domain, exclusively female except for the Registrar. Close your eyes and you could smell the polish, leather bound volumes, new paper, typewriter ribbons, Gestetner skins and inks, carbon paper and the like. On the opposite side of the vestibule the Headmaster's Study where you got a look in only if your parents had requested an interview or you were summoned to be given a severe reprimand. Morning Assembly in the Main Hall - you had to be in your place by 8.55 prompt. Enter J.S. Nicholas to take his seat on the platform. Any boy who now entered the hall was late and would be spotted at once. The Deputy Head's voice rang out "You boy, see me afterwards in 63". At 9.00 exactly J.S. Nicholas espying the Head leaving his study, would stand, this being the signal for everyone also to stand. You could hear a pin drop as R.B. Graham walked through the hall and up the three or four steps on to the platform.
There would be a hymn (if you were without hymn book the best plan was to move the lips meaningfully to ward off any suspicion of non participation) followed by bible reading (usually Head Boy's privilege) and a prayer.
After any announcements the Head made a dignified exit. We dispersed quietly, form by form, to registration and first lessons.
I still smile when I recall from R.B. Graham's days the visit of the 'World Traveller.' This took place on a weekday morning when, on conclusion of the normal assembly proceedings, all pupils remained in the Assembly Hall. The year may have been 1936 or 37.
The Headmaster introduced this tanned stalwart clad in his khakis - shirt, shorts and pith helmet. I'm sure that he kept most of us enthralled with his story of working his way around the World, complete with anecdotes of interesting and exciting events that had befallen him.
I recall that I was quite enthralled by his yarns, squirming at the stories of snakes in South America and hooting with laughter at his story of a meal in China. Knowing little or no Chinese he asked if the meat was chicken by crowing like a cock. The response he received was a shaking head, and a very loud 'meouw'.
He spoke for perhaps an hour. Quite apart from his talk we were all quite pleased to have no lessons until after Break.
It was something like six months later I heard that the chap was a complete con-man, an impostor - but it was only whispered about, presumably because those 'on high' didn't want to look foolish.
I joined the school in September 1937 having gained a place as a result of passing the then 11+. The Headmaster at that time was R.B. Graham, a classicist who left in 1938 to take up a similar position at Bradford Grammar School. He was succeeded by Dr. A.W. Barton, previously an Assistant Master at Repton. Barton was a physicist whose two claims to fame were that he had worked with Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and that he was an international football referee.
Barton's arrival, his attitude and actions, some of which verged on the bizarre, led to a somewhat disturbed period in the school's history. He very quickly managed to antagonise the whole of the Senior Common Room and this antagonism spread throughout the whole school. Two incidents may illustrate how the school felt: The letters NBG began to appear under Barton's signature on all notices posted on the school notice boards, and one Saturday morning (yes, we went to school on Saturday mornings!) we arrived at school to find hoisted to the flagstaff for all the world to see, a large white sheet with a stark message in big red letters "KES REVOLT AGAINST TYRANNY".
I believe that these two incidents did have some moderating effect on Barton but the relationship between him and the Common Room remained cool to say the least and he was never regarded with any affection by the school as a whole. That the school continued to function successfully on all fronts was a tribute to a very dedicated band of masters. Barton eventually left, I believe sometime in the early fifties to go to the City of London School, much to the chagrin of two of the KES staff who had gone there to get away from him!
In December 1940 Sheffield suffered two very severe bombing raids which left the city centre devastated but all the steelworks untouched. I walked to school the morning after the first raid - a very salutary experience for a 14 year old to see shattered bodies and buildings, trams and buses blown apart and rubble everywhere. The school became a rest centre and the Christmas holiday was extended by a week.
One very sad incident occurred in 1941. Gordon Strange, a member of the KES Scout Troop was on duty at a War Weapons Week Exhibition at the City Hall in Barkers Pool. He happened to be standing in front of a large calibre anti-tank rifle as it was being demonstrated. Unfortunately a live round had been left in the breech and Gordon was killed instantly.
I left KES in 1944, after seven happy and rewarding years, to go on to Oxford to read chemistry. I left with many affectionate memories of the staff who taught me.
I started at KES in September 1939 which was when the war started. No-one was prepared for such an eventuality, including the school, so air-raid shelters had to be quickly designed and built - Junior School ones by reinforcing the cellars and Senior School by digging a rabbit warren under the School Close. In the meantime, parents were invited to lend a room of the family home for 'home service' and on the first day of term about a dozen boys congregated at 43 Carr Road.
Our house was quite a pleasant detached one in what was becoming a somewhat run-down area and it had a fairly big garden which included a tennis lawn. I think everyone enjoyed being there except the masters, one or two of whom would call in each day for an hour or so; unfortunately Walkley was rather out on a limb as far as they were concerned and, of course, they had to travel either by bicycle or buses and trams. Only three of us were in the Junior School, the other two being Peter Green (who remains a very good friend) and Eric Green - no relation, but both from Hillsborough - both a year ahead of me.
The only junior School master who visited, and only once a week I believe, was Mr. Ward and he did his best to teach us the odd thing or two but for the rest it was "Ah Johansson, and what are you doing today?" "I'm drawing from this book of birds, Sir" "Oh, very good, carry on". The next day "And what are you doing today Johansson?" "I'm drawing birds, Sir" "Well you'd better have a change; here's a book of butterflies!"
After three weeks we moved to Jim and John Cooper's house in Bates Street, off Weston Road which was nearer to town and the school and therefore much more convenient for the staff, but I think it was a disappointment for all of us lads, especially as I seem to remember that my mother made hot buttered toast for us in break time! The new venue was a rather larger house and it had a ballroom which we used as our schoolroom. It was very much bigger both in area and height than our dining room and by this time, early October, it was getting colder so we missed the cosiness of our previous billet. There was a garden but I don't remember going out to play in it - probably too cold. The teaching continued in the same vein!
Five or six weeks later the shelters were ready and we returned to the schools. I was in J (Junior) 2A but had done so little for the first part of the term that I did badly at the end of term and was moved down to J2C for the next two terms. However, I recovered, won the form prize, and rejoined the A stream for the rest of my schooldays.
The two years 1939-40 formed a curious part of the history of KES. Not only were there three Headmasters but the declaration of war in September 1939 raised problems. No more than 12 pupils were allowed to be in one building for educational purposes unless there was an adequate air-raid shelter. Until KES managed to create such a shelter under the playing field between the school and Clarkehouse Road, classes of 12 were scattered all round Sheffield in the houses of co-operative and long-suffering parents.
Conditions were, of course, far from ideal and there were far more classes than there were teachers so the prefects lent a hand in looking after the classes. In principle, a teacher would call on every class during every lesson but this was not always possible so the prefects would end up running the class, setting work and so on. The prefects' own work suffered during this time but I suspect that they gained more than they lost.
There is plenty of evidence to indicate that behaviour was often far from perfect. A good friend of mine who is currently a journalist in Manchester became Deputy Head Boy. On one occasion he was walking past a classroom in total uproar. There was an enormous amount of noise and boys were throwing things at one another across the room. On seeing this he went into the classroom, told them to be quiet, re-established order very quickly only to realise when quiet reigned that the French master taking the class was sitting in the middle of the room explaining a problem to one of the boys.
On one occasion four boys, aged about 15, decided that an 11-year old needed to be taken down a peg and retribution returned for a number of pranks. At this point they opened the window on the top floor and hung him out of it, holding on to his feet. He was terrified of course. Physical retribution to them came very quickly - administered by the games master!
The school Shout was a sort of burlesque show, an annual opportunity for the boys to tease the Staff, to make harmless fun of the favourite sayings and gestures which characterised them as viewed from the classroom floor. This entertainment was put on a week or two after the annual staff play, which was always the main butt of school humour.
At the time which I am now remembering, the staff play was "Ambrose Applejohn's Adventure". Eric Laughton, who later held the Chair of Latin at Sheffield University, wrote a skit called "Wilfred Wopplejohn's Adventure" in which all the minor mistakes and mishaps of the staff production were magnified in a comic way. For example, there was a scene in the original play when the hapless butler had to switch on all the lights in the stage room. It was obvious that the wiring was all wrong, and the lights came on in the wrong places.
The scene as presented in the school version ended with the butler going all round the stage pressing one switch after another until the one remaining light came on. He had been given a wig to wear which made him look exactly like the Headmaster. So his problem with the lights, and the other indignities which he was made to suffer, went down very well with the audience.
On another occasion, Eric wrote for the Shout a play in schoolboy French, entitled "Le Voyage de Monsieur Perichon". The only line of this which I can remember was: "J'ai l' omnibus circulaire", "I've missed the bus". That will give an idea of the sort of jokes introduced.
It goes without saying that the staff loved this annual event. They could be seen in the front row, giggling and nudging each other as they identified their colleagues in the caricatures on the stage. The other tradition was the Latin speech with which the Captain of the School had to welcome the distinguished person who came to present the prizes on Speech Day. When it fell to me to make the speech the prize-giver was Sir William Bragg of X-ray fame. 'X-ray' presented a difficulty; 'Radius X-nominatus' had to do for that. One of the sentences - the whole speech is burnt into my memory - ran as follows:
"Felicem sane nos huius urbis cives accepimus illum, nescio quem, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas", or "Happy do we, the citizens of this place, regard anyone who can find out the causes of things". The last three words are the motto of Sheffield University. It was thought rather neat to work them into the speech. But what Mr. Watling, the Latin Master who helped to turn my original effort into Latin, had not foreseen, was the effect of the last word on disorderly elements in the junior School, sitting up in the Gallery, not understanding a word, and delighted to recognise some familiar sounds. For them "causas" came out as "cow's arse". The noisy joy of the juniors infected the rest of the school and there was a long pause in the proceedings.
I had to apologise to Sir William afterwards, assuring him that this schoolboyish-seeming joke had not been deliberate. I don't think he was entirely convinced, but he was obviously very amused.
One of the recollections which must be documented is Home Service. When the War started in September 1939 the school closed so that the Close could be dug up to build Air Raid Shelters to accommodate 600 boys.
During those six months, pupils were divided up geographically (not by age) to avoid having to travel during air raids. Volunteer parents, including mine, gave up whole rooms in their houses for touring bands of teachers to come round and teach, in a multi-disciplinary manner, mixed ages of boys. The tasks were organised and handled well - many of us learned subjects we would never have broached; teachers really got to know us and not many parents had their houses wrecked by the groups of 8 to 10 boys!
Often we were left alone, and parents, passers-by, relatives and neighbours would enforce discipline and add their own idiosyncratic views on education. This went on all over the suburbs of Sheffield. The school seemed very dull when we returned, although the Blitz nights of Thursday and Sunday in December 1940 made us appreciate what bombing was.
Dr. Barton arrived as the new Headmaster at the beginning of the war, a new broom determined to sweep vigorously away any dust that might have accumulated in the interregnum preceding him. His more rigorous discipline caused resentment and rebellion. There was a general feeling of unrest and there were protests in the form of scribbled 'NBC's on his private noticeboard.
One morning, I arrived at school to find everyone at the front of the building craning heads to see the school porter struggling to pull down a crude white banner flying from the flagpole atop the main pediment. It must have been hoisted by disgruntled sixthformers who did 'fire-watching' duties on the school premises at night. Eventually, I managed to read its message: "KES revolts against tyranny".
When we were sitting in the assembly hall waiting first for the deputy head to arrive, followed by the staff and prefects, and then the Head, a whispered message was passed round the hall: 'We don't sing the hymn'. Eventually Dr. Barton swept in down the centre aisle, wearing his mortar board with his gown billowing out behind him, mounted the platform, deposited his mortar board on the desk in front of him and announced the number of the hymn.
I was a junior at the time and went in terror of both Dr. Barton, a tall, cold and forbidding figure, and the big boys of the Upper School, who were liable to seize stray small boys and shut them up in one of the wire-mesh lockers that lined the dark corridors.
I was in the classic dilemma of the ordinary citizen in times of revolution. If you side with the authorities, the revolutionaries will get you; if you don't then the authorities will get you instead What was I to do to save my skin? I decided on a compromise: I would mouth the words soundlessly.
The piano sounded the introductory bars; there was some desultory singing from those who either hadn't got the message or who decided to sing not too loudly and see what everybody else did. That quickly died away and Dr. Barton was left singing a solo.
He continued right through the hymn and indeed right through the remainder of the assembly routine with the lesson, the prayers and the notices. Then, at the point where he normally donned his mortar board and left the platform followed by the hierarchy, he announced instead "We will now sing the hymn again". And in the end, we did. The immediate challenge to his authority had collapsed; some ringleaders were later dealt with; the rebellion was over.
Teachers are nothing if not performers and like show-biz personalities they have their catchphrases.
The most quoted teacher at KES in my day was probably Mr. Nicholas, the deputy Head and Senior Maths Master. He was known as 'Old Nick' and his "See me in room 63" struck terror into the stoutest heart. He was a creature of routines and one of them was going through the maths homework on the blackboard.
Each step was accompanied by a ritual "Who follows ... who doesn't?" When as an innocent newcomer to his class I put my hand up at the second question, he said in a kindly voice, "Oh, come and show me what you don't understand". What I pointed to on the blackboard must have been of staggering simplicity: Nick looked at it for a moment in incomprehension, then bawled "Well, why not, you blithering idiot?" Needless to say, I learned the ritual, if not the maths, very quickly.
A fringe benefit of the war was that, because of clothes rationing, we were allowed to wear sports jackets instead of blazers. Nick had an eagle eye for spotting a new one. The wearer would be invited in front of the class, where Nick would pinch the sleeve and comment approvingly. "Nice bit of stuff". Then, if the jacket was the least bit colourful, he would add, after a pause ".... bit duck-shooting though!"
The war took away many of the young teachers and to replace them came WOMEN and refugees. One of the former was Mrs. Buchatsch who taught German and constantly exhorted us to put some Bovril into our German vocabulary. Some of the latter suffered the cruel fate, after being driven from Germany, of being harried by us pupils for being foreign. Dr. Behrens was one of them. That he had been a headmaster in his own country counted for nothing with us. Regrettably, we delighted in provoking him into rages which his English could not cope with: "Vat do you zere? It's enough now. Ze next vone I cane" My sincere apologies to him posthumously.
One of the teachers who was old enough not to be called up was Mr. Redstone, known to pupils as 'Trotsky'. There was a standard impersonation of him in a very nasal voice which was not a bit like him but which everyone could easily do. Trotsky was an excellent teacher of physics and his response to any pupil who gave the result of a problem as, say "five" became his catchphrase: "You must state your units. You wouldn't go into a chemist's shop and ask for five, would you?"
After the war, staff who had been called up gradually returned, often preceded by a reputation that had somehow lingered as a folk memory. 'Spike' Fletcher, who came back from the navy, was alleged to stride into a room, kicking aside any schoolbags that got in his way and throw open the windows declaring "This room smells of boy!"
The reality was much milder and I remember Spike for his introducing us to records of "Die Schone Mullerin" in the lunch hour and for invitations to his home in Crosspool to have tea and talk
German with German prisoners of war he had invited from the POW camp at Lodgemoor. In class, we often tried to distract him from the business of the lesson to talking about something else, like his war experiences. Despite his wary "Is that another red herring?" we nearly always succeeded.
As a boy of nine, I first became a pupil of King Edward VII Junior School in 1936. By that Autumn, the Junior School had moved from its earlier premises in Newbould Lane to a large, extended and converted house in its own grounds at the bottom of Clarke Drive, a cul de sac off Clarkehouse Road. A back entrance at the end of Clarke Dell, a parallel cul de sac, led to the playground behind the school. As well as classrooms, the school contained rooms specially equipped for the teaching of nature studies, art and handicrafts. There was a large hall, which had a platform at one end and which doubled as a gym and music room. A shower room for use after gym completed the facilities.
Admission to the junior School was by entrance examination and presumably by parental ability to pay the fees of 8 guineas (£8.40) per term. There were eight forms at that time, each of about 18-20 boys and each with its own form master or mistress: J3 (8-9 years), J2 A, B, C (9-10 years) and JI A, B, C, D (10-11 years) and from the J1s it was usual to move into one of the forms in the first year of the main school (curiously named 2A, B and C. What happened to Form 1?). French as a first foreign language was started in the J1s, as was homework - two subjects supposedly of twenty minutes each per evening, but which often took longer. The school aimed at academic excellence, and did not confine teaching to the 3 R's. To foster competition in schoolwork, every two to three weeks the marks achieved by each member of the form were totalled and a class list in descending order of achievement was produced. School was attended on six mornings per week and on three afternoons: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The day started for a junior boy in the gallery of the hall of the main school, where at 8.55 a.m. the whole school assembled initially under the eye of the Second Master. The Headmaster in cap and gown then arrived from his study and held a short non-denominational religious service followed by announcements. At about 9.15 a.m. the juniors lined up outside along the path to the Newbould Lane gate and then walked in crocodile down the hill to Clarkehouse Road and along to the junior School. There were four lessons every morning, split evenly by a ten minute break (for milk, 1/2d. per 1/3 pint) and school finished at 12.15 p.m. for lunch, either at home if one lived close enough or at school with sandwiches brought from home that morning. Meals were not provided. Afternoon school, of two lessons, was held from 2 p.m. to 3.30 p.m.
In about 1937, the present school swimming baths were opened close to Clarkehouse Road and, as in the main school, each form in the Junior School had a compulsory swimming lesson each week. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we played soccer or cricket, as appropriate, on the school playing fields which were situated at Whiteley Woods, Fulwood. At first one could take a tram from Crookes Junction (1 /2d. fare), but the trams were replaced in about 1937 by buses to Fulwood (route 60), running up Glossop Road as they do at present. Alighting at Woofindin Road one would walk down the footpath to the Woods, over the stream and up the other side to the playing fields and the school pavilion to get changed. Each game was supervised by a master and there were enough boys in the school for each 'house' usually to field two XIs. Before 1936 there were four 'houses' - Angles (dark blue football shirts), Saxons (light blue), Britons (green) and Normans (red), but the intake that year were all put into a new house: Osborne (brown and white quarters) named after the previous owner of the building, a member of a well-known Sheffield family. Games were compulsory, unless a boy was excused on medical grounds. If bad weather prevented outdoor games, it was usual to have a half-holiday.
Extracts from 'Child of the War' by George MacBeth first published in 1987 by Jonathan Cape. Printed by kind permission of his widow, Penny MacBeth. Selected by his friend and contemporary, John Bingham.
King Edward VII School had once been Wesley College. It was an establishment of some antiquity and indeed of some pretension. At the date I began attending classes there it boasted a junior as well as a senior branch, and both were fee-paying.
The School, and particularly its reactionary and rather splendid Victorian headmaster, Dr. Barton - known because of his initials as 'Arse - Wiper' - was very proud of its direct-grant status, and this was bitterly, albeit unsuccessfully, defended against the attempt by the local council to absorb the school into the public structure of Sheffield education.
I remember meetings, proclamations, lists of names ...
In 1940, the school was still quite safely private. There were boarders, who were put up in 'Toby' Saville's house at the bottom of our road, and a larger number of day boys like myself ...
The daily walks to school along streets littered with the detritus of aerial combat, the nightly overhearing of news bulletins grim with the propaganda of retreat, the frequent stopping of lessons to practice. the rapid donning of our respiratory apparatus - these became the ceremonies of a shared world.
The gas-mask practices were particularly involving. Properly fitted, it would still tend to steam over and cloud the eye-piece with a veiling mist, like a window in a hot room after rain. Sounds would clog into a soupy thickness and the strange, gas-mask smell compounded of stale air, hot rubber and congealed fear would rise like a coiling miasma to block the nose.
Still, these grim rituals, like the later filing down into prepared shelters, were a welcome break from the ordinary business of lessons and, as such, were cherished and looked forward to.
Sometimes I think that I heard the shell, sometimes I even think that my mother says I mentioned hearing it. It may be so, I don't know any more. What I do remember is hearing something I'd never heard before - the sound of my mother crying, somewhere in the distance. Then, a little later, someone came in and said that I had to be a brave boy from now on and look after my mother, because my father was dead.
I didn't cry. I thought it was important not to cry. Boys didn't cry. My father had died, and he was a hero, but that wasn't something to cry about.
What had happened, seemingly, is that an anti-aircraft shell had failed to explode in the sky. It had gone up and then come down in Clarkehouse Road, where my father was walking. It had either fallen very near, or actually struck him. I don't know exactly where it was, but I believe it to have been within the half-circle made by the wall leading to the classical gates of the Botanical Gardens.
It strikes me as a noble place to have been killed.
Dr. Barton was at once a severe and an inspiring man. He was the only master in the school invariably seen wearing a gown, and frequently a mortar board as well, so that he presented himself in the threatening regalia of office at all times, like a military policeman or general.
Indeed, he was very fond of military metaphor, and would exhort us from the platform at school assembly as members of "a school of this calibre", as if the institution were a cannon of especially ferocious bore, aiming a series of destructive projectiles, ourselves, into a world of Nazi muddle and decay. Dr. Barton's physiognomy was a great asset in his oratory. He had an eagle's hook of a nose, like a beak of a Viking ship, and his mouth below it was curved round and down into a supercilious, Roman smile.
I once sold John Bingham the Law of Multiple Proportions for six pence in a mathematics exam. Unfortunately, we were caught, and made to write out a hundred times, the notorious Cribber's Hymn:
Yield not to temptation
For yielding is sin,
Each victory helps us
Another to win.
Echoes of the Western Desert and the Italian Campaign resound from those last two lines. I like to think that I learned a lesson against risking too quick a buck from this experience.
Towards the end of my teens there was an acceleration of intellectual interests:
THE DRAMATIC SOCIETY was under the control of the senior Latin master, E.F. Watling, a tall gaunt man, like a diving-board set up on end. At this time, the late 1940s, he was achieving some fame as the Penguin translator of Sophocles. Old Watling - we always called masters old, whatever their age - was an effective and an enterprising director who kept an eye on what was new. In a production of Maxwell Anderson's Winterset, I had laid under a table through the big scene in the role of the hobo, a tongue-tied derelict whose main line, several times repeated is "I got a piece of bread".
A set of cartoons remains in my filing cabinet, sent to me by their artist, the school physics master, whom we always knew as 'Trotsky', because of his neat, small beard. He drew these cartoons in careful crayon in 1950 and sent them to me nearly thirty years later, wanting his drawing and the memory of the production to survive his approaching death.
FILM MAKING WITH THE CINEMA CLUB - the central character in the film was a dead dog.
The dog was bought, in the sultriest of August weather, from a Sheffield vet and, wrapped in a travelling bag, borne on the luggage rack of a crowded train down to Ross-on-Wye. Every night the corpse would be buried, and every morning, with increasing misgivings, exhumed. The plot of the film involved a Scout, who suffered a nervous breakdown after seeing a favourite dog run over by a train,
THE SHEFFIELD ANTI-COMMUNIST LEAGUE - the enemy was no longer the Germany army; it was now the grinding tracks of the Soviet tanks which had advanced from Stalingrad, disgorging, in the stale aftermath of victory, a sinister fifth column of industrial subverters, dangerous at lathe and anvil. So we supposed. After all, Karl Marx had said the revolution would start in England. The school might say what it will, but we were still in the forefront of insight...
The streets beckoned, though, and it was more fun to ride on the back of a motor bike to a draughty hall where someone had to be heckled than to lounge around a littered table in the school library and put one's civil questions with the word "sir" at the end.
THE KES ICE CREAM ARMY - a slightly older boy, Norman Adsetts, had a father who was then the largest ice-cream manufacturer - after Walls and Lyons - in the north of England and he had the shrewd notion of inviting his son to employ boys from King Edward's to sell wafers at football and cricket matches at Bramall Lane.
The star of the force was Bertie Round, moon-faced and a crack swimmer. Bertie was a noted rake as well as a famed swimmer. Perhaps the skilful manipulation of the limbs is essential for both vocations.
I had already tasted the sweets of power as a school prefect, with access to the private room at the right of the Assembly Hall, where the table-tennis table would sometimes be stripped of its net so that a drumhead court martial could be held, and some poor lad who had committed an offence summarily sentenced and treated to a beating. The beatings record, as it was known, was broken in my second term (as head prefect). One factor contributing to this opportunity was the arrival, only one term earlier, of a new and evidently more cautious headmaster, Nathaniel Clapton. He proved much too willing to accept a glib senior boy's interpretation of normal practice, and I made full use of this benefit.
I know that adult salaciousness is liable to assume that the beating of small boys is always a matter for perverse delight to the schoolmaster, and of corrupting stimulus to the boy. I seriously doubt this.
The men who beat me as a boy I remember as expressing no passion other than anger and I certainly recall no sensation other than an unadulterated stinging. It would certainly arouse pride in one's own power to withstand pain without crying out and this, perhaps is an evil thing.
(This poem first appeared in the School Magazine of 1949)
The horn in the night has risen.
Up from the mist of sleep, Fear flames.
Here come the blind butchers,
Staggering in the darkness.
Sing while the chopper falls!
Sing! Sing! and drown the din!
Sing while the chopper falls!
Sing! Sing! and drown the din!
All over. There go the butchers,
Dipping their bloody hands
in the East.
Dawn draws the bandage,
And the wounds of the City scream.
When I entered King Edward's for the first time fifty-three years ago, in September 1942, there were thirty-one of us in Form 2D, the class for boys who had entered by the 'Scholarship' from Sheffield schools. We made up a quarter of the first year's intake while the rest, coming from the junior School and from the external entrance examination, were mostly fee-paying.
Fifty-three years earlier, in 1889, about the time that the Sheffield Royal Grammar merged with the Collegiate, and fifteen years before they joined with Wesley College in the present building, there were just three students from the 'elementary' schools of Sheffield.
This progress towards the school of today, with its wide access to the community, accelerated in 1946, after the 1944 Education Act, when the whole of the first year entry was made up of 'scholarship' boys and fundamental change was introduced - no more Saturday morning school, eight periods per day instead of seven, and we even stopped using the 'Public School Hymn Book' at morning assembly.
Taking this historical perspective I suddenly realise that I am likely to be seen by the pupil of today as a relic of the past, associated with events which, however real they may be to me are about as relevant and intelligible as I would have viewed the end of the nineteenth century in 1942. Even so, what were the features of the school which I recall from my eight years at King Ted's, to 1950 when I left to do my National Service in the Royal Air Force?
On the first day, I became a member of a House, and Clumber became, and remained, a separate loyalty which is still embedded today. My first recollection, staring in Assembly at the row of eight trophy cabinets above the platform, was that Clumber had none at all. Eight years later it was full of cups, and I had won one of them for Putting the Shot - now there's glory for you! The first sign of scholastic achievement came in my third year when, somewhat to my surprise and that of Mr. Nicholas, or 'Nick' the senior mathematics teacher of the school and a very strict disciplinarian, I won the Mathematics Prize for the year. Nick's teaching methods, though effective, were occasionally eccentric, and he had marked us on the basis of a rolling verbal quiz in which an ability to memorise the precise definitions of Euclidean Geometry had given me an unassailable lead. Since this quiz did on one occasion shift to the repetition, from memory, of nursery rhymes (at which I proved equally competent) it was quite appropriate that my prize for that year was the Oxford Book of Light Verse, a most useful primer for my future career.
Looking back over fifty years I suppose that my lasting recollection of the school, gratitude to patient and understanding teachers, is for the scope it provided, in an era of quite rigid specialisation, for me to indulge in a personal taste for variety and change which defied the system. In my early years at the school, I had been earmarked for a classical education, and so my School Certificate subjects had a strong element of Latin, Greek, Greek History etc with only one General Science paper. I chose then to shift directly to the Science stream, studying Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, with a brief excursion into Biology. Finally I switched again, to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. Whatever it may have been that led me along this circuitous route, which must have taxed the patience of both my teachers and my parents, the end result has been a 'Jack of all Trades' mentality which has never left me.
Finally, a confession. In preparation for the Prefects' Dance in the Assembly Hall in my last year, I was charged with going to buy the Boracic Acid crystals which would make the floor suitable for dancing. Not quite understanding my brief, I bought Boracic acid powder which proved to be a most effective anti-skid treatment, making the Prefects' Dance that "year a weird and challenging experience. Not many people knew that - until now.
When I arrived at King Edward's in September 1949, for what turned out to be seven happy years, it was with some foreboding.
Like many of my contemporaries I came from a working class background. A snooty old boy had told my mother, rather sniffily "In my day you had to have money to get into King Edward's". "Well now you need brains", she replied. A touch of working class pride and aggression had arrived.
Our early introduction to etiquette occurred on the second day. A few of us were playing football outside the school when the formidable Dr. Barton arrived. Tall, hook-nosed, a former football referee, he was the very stereotype of a grammar or public school Head, the two being indistinguishable at the time. This, you will appreciate, was pre-trendy time, before the "Call me Dave" school of Headship that evolved in some schools in the 1960s.
"You boys must raise your caps when you first see me" he began "and say 'Good morning, Dr. Barton'. If you see me later in the day, then just touch the peak of your cap with one finger. Now let me see you do it". We dutifully rehearsed our a.m. and p.m. Headmaster-greeting techniques. A few weeks later my mother and I were travelling on a bus up to a school concert. Dr. Barton got on. "Good evening Mrs. Wragg", he said, raising his trilby. So it was all about politeness and respect for each other, not just power and hierarchy. I was impressed, though not half as much as my working class mum.
Since I never wore a hat, the hat-raising curriculum turned out to have limited value for me, but much else did.
My lifelong interest in music roots directly in the engaging enthusiasm of Norman Barnes, an extraordinary music teacher. In adult life I was later to direct projects and write books on teaching skills. Not for me the stereotype about good teachers all having immaculate class control. Norman Barnes inspired generations through cheerful anarchy. Small wonder there were double doors on the music room.
My strongest memories are of friends, sport, plays, concerts, and some mainly good teachers.
Not every lesson was inspiring and the awful feeling that, after what seemed like a lifetime, only the first ten minutes had elapsed of a 40-minute lesson, taught me graphically what the notion of 'subjective time' really meant.
School plays were hilarious. I was the second witch in Macbeth - well, we all have to start somewhere. In the final scene, when the severed head of the central character is cast contemptuously on to the ground, we never got the real thing (a papier mache lump on a wire frame, lovingly crafted in the Art Room) until the first night. It bounced across the apron stage and clonked down the aisle. Riotous laughter drowned Macduff's heroic "behold, where stands Th' usurper's cursed head". Er, about ten rows back, methinks. Such events prepared me brilliantly never to be fazed whatever happens when lecturing or broadcasting.
The day started quite normally. However it was soon clear that something was 'up'. Mr. Baker entered and left - we stood up as we always did if and when a member of staff entered the room - especially the Headmaster! Someone else also entered and left after a whispered conversation with Mrs. Mitchell.
Then came the summons - all boys were to assemble in the Gym at once. The Junior School (all boys!!) filed into the Gym where someone had assembled a radio (of all things). The radio was switched on: reception was not good - there was a lot of crackling. Was it static? No - it was the sound of gunfire!! There was also a running commentary - Wynford Vaughan Thomas - which apparently was coming from France. We were then told by Mr. Baker that the Allies had landed in France earlier that morning. We continued to listen for a while - say half an hour - and then returned to our lessons. We took the news in our stride. After all, we had all endured the blitz and had followed the news of the North African campaign and the landings in Italy.
Junior School, then up to the big school in September 1944 with sports days on Wednesdays and Saturdays being the highlight of my week. Football in the Autumn term, cross-country the next term and cricket to follow, with swimming, water polo, running and badminton, together with Scouting in C Troop of the 167th KES Group. After negotiating successfully, to my father's great surprise, the School Certificate exams in the summer of 1949, my mind - up to that point occupied by important matters of sporting and scouting activity - turned to girls and the problems associated with dealing with such mysterious beings.
I was aware of the SCHOOL DANCE to be held in the hall at school and the need to equip myself with a female partner for this occasion.. but what on earth did you talk to them about.. and how do you dance with them.. and how on earth do you progress in the touching and kissing activities some of my more advanced school friends described with relish as we changed after the double swimming lesson? Who to turn to for tips was a problem. Not my mother or father, of course, as they would not know much about this important matter, being so old. My sisters are both younger than myself so any discussions with them would undermine my edge of superiority over them and to let on that I was a novice in these matters to my peer group was, again, unthinkable.
So I decided to take some dancing lessons and, once we returned from the Scout camp in Switzerland, take out a girl whom I had known since childhood, a blond-haired beauty called Helen. A month after our first walk (when I spent most of my time trying to think of anything which I could say to her), I tried to kiss her at the back door of her house. The door slammed in my face - the dance was only three weeks away and I was partnerless!
Helen had a close friend called Barbara, a good looker with lovely dark hair. To my surprise she volunteered herself for duty as my partner at the School Dance and I took no chances of fouling my own nest again.. so I did not take her out beforehand, or try to kiss her.. one's self confidence at 16 years of age is a little fragile. The day arrived and in the evening, following my bi-weekly shave, and well talcumed under my armpits, I called for Barbara and we set off. The evening passed in a daze and, much to my secret relief, Barbara was taken home by Keith (a decent fast bowler who had just been made a prefect).
A year is a long time when you are sixteen, going on seventeen, and I was playing left-wing for the school second eleven at football, patrol leader in the Scouts, and United were having a good season.. so girls could wait until I had learned some fancy steps at dancing class, had mastered the rudiments of tennis, and had time to spare from the important things in life. After all October 1950 was a long way away!
I arrived in Sheffield from the South shortly after the blitz of 1941. After a term at Ecclesfield Grammar, I was entered for KES but failed the entrance test for being unable to give the meaning of 'Fare Stage' (a term unknown in Maidstone!) However, after a term cramming at Westbourne Prep. School I finally became a fully-fledged Edwardian in 1942; here I stayed until in 1949 my presence was required by the Royal Navy to perform my National Service.
A school full of 'characters', both boys and staff peopled my life for these six years which still remain vivid in my imagination as I am about to qualify for the old-age pension! Here are some of them...
The formidable Headmaster, Dr. Barton, who took us for Divinity and General Science and regaled us with tales of his days researching the atom at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.
Mr. Nicholas, 'Old Nick' the assistant Head who put the fear of God in all of us as he tried to teach us additional maths in the lower sixth (called 'Transitus' in those far-off days), in which I scored 2% in the 'mock' School Cert. (I was a linguist!) - he wasn't very happy with me.
Harry Scutt, the senior French master who caned anyone who didn't score a 7 out of 10 in the weekly vocabulary test; the threat of 'the twank', as this barbaric practice was called, made good French scholars of all of us!
'Marcus' Watling (Latin) a normally placid man who only lost his temper once when we collected matchboxes full of ladybirds in the playing fields and released them all over his desk before class - I think Johny Sussams got the 'twank' for that episode!
Mr. Gascoigne (Gassy), who taught Scripture also lost his temper once when he caught a boy reading 'Health and Efficiency' under the desk instead of studying the Gospel according to St. Mark - in his anger he tore the offending magazine into small pieces and sent the culprit to Dr. Barton for appropriate punishment.
'Spike' Fletcher, who 'taught', if I remember correctly, Geography, but spent most of the time talking about his wartime experiences in occupied Denmark (his wife was Danish) and telling us how to pronounce the resistance password "Rod grede med flode" (red cabbage with cream) which apparently only a Dane could say properly.
Miss Panneth, a large German amazon of a woman who taught something or other (I remember not what) - how she came to be teaching in wartime England puzzled us somewhat - we were all sure she was a spy! She wielded the cane like a prize-fighter, especially when some joker in the class left a condom (called a 'freddy' in those days) on her desk one day!
'Trotsky' the Physics master whom Brian 'Polly' Palfryman, my best friend, would ring up in the evening and in a heavy Jewish accent mutter down the phone - "I've got a body, did you want a body?" (don't ask me why!).
E.V. Bramall, a great favourite, who taught French and Spanish and was one of the first Englishmen to visit Spain just after the war in 1946 (I followed in his footsteps in 1950).
Mr. Claymore who taught us English Literature; Mr. Carter who took over as deputy head from 'Old Nick' when he retired to Robin Hood's Bay and many others whose names I forget.
KES was politically highly controversial in 1941 when I joined. The school was then fee-paying with twenty five per cent scholarship boys selected by the 11-plus exam and with a smaller number of boarders. The school was represented at the Public School Headmasters' Annual Conference.
KES was the only fee-paying school in Sheffield which educated boys to what is now A-levels. It was a centre of academic excellence run on broad, liberal lines with emphasis on competitive sports and a wide range of extra-curricular activities. A sensible discipline co-existed with individualism and, indeed, non-conformity.
For all these reasons, KES was ideologically offensive to the Labour council which had dominated Sheffield since the twenties. That is why KES was a political target. Probably because of subsidy, the Council could influence school policy. Already in the thirties, as Hitler's aggression grew, the pacifist council had abolished the Officer Training Corps (OTC). The strong-minded and able headmaster, Dr. A.W. Barton, managed, however, to maintain a high degree of independence. KES drew on the whole Sheffield area both for fee-paying and scholarship boys.
The 11-plus exam system allowed a great deal of parental choice and schools were listed in order of preference. Parental criteria varied: academic excellence, family connections, nearness to home, amenities, religion, school philosophy. The choice was made from a number of good Sheffield grammar and other schools. As for KES fee payers, even allowing for the massive inflation since then, the modest fees of around £15 a term in the early forties allowed the school to draw from a wide socio-economic range. Ironically, the weapon which destroyed the school's independence was forged not by the Labour Party but by the Tory dominated wartime government. This weapon was the 1944 Education Act, whose author was R.A. Butler.
A determined resistance campaign of meetings, letters, petitions, led by Dr. Barton and strongly supported by the parents, was crushed by the steamroller of consensus politics. KES then became another very good grammar school with entry one hundred per cent based on the 11-plus exam. But much of the school's uniqueness was lost.
Dr. Barton managed the change and then he left, succeeded by a Council nominee, the amiable Mr. Nat Clapton. Around the time Dr. Barton left; KES was claimed to be the British school with the third or fourth largest number of students at Oxford and Cambridge.
Many fond memories include:
Our porter (always in uniform) called Gillman who lived in the house adjoining the school. Among his various duties was to ring the bell between lessons.
Our groundsman called 'Wag' short for Waghorn. He attended to all matters including putting studs in football boots and serving fruit squashes. These were orange, blackcurrant and lime and cost 1d. for a small measure, 2d. for a medium measure and if you were very rich 3d. for a large measure. These measures were then poured into a class tumbler and filled with cold tap water. Delicious.
'Johnnie' Watson our swimming instructor always answered his telephone (when it rang) "King Edward swimming bath" This was until the City Council took over and he was told to answer "Swimming bath at King Edward's".
One interesting episode concerned our Headmaster, Dr. Barton. He was awe inspiring and very much respect