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OH Magazine2013
www.oldhonitonians.com
Bomber Command Memorial AppealPage38
An OH at the O2From Rousdon runner to rebel rocker
A Moving StoryFrom Honiton to Rousdon
An OH at the O2From Rousdon runner to rebel rocker
A Moving StoryFrom Honiton to Rousdon
The UndercliffFond reflections from a former Headmaster
Work of a Master CraftsmanWhy Derek sits in Style
Life and Lava‘Off the wall’ Safaris
The UndercliffFond reflections from a former Headmaster
Work of a Master CraftsmanWhy Derek sits in Style
Life and Lava‘Off the wall’ Safaris
Welcome to your 2013 Magazine2012 seems to have flown by, highlighted by the spectacular Diamond Jubilee
Celebrations and Great Britain’s success in her achievements at and hosting, what was universally applauded as being a very successful Olympic and Paralympic Games.
My sincere thanks to all OHs for their support with this year’s magazine. Your response to my appeal in last year’s publication has been very rewarding and as a result due to the number of very interesting articles and generous advertising support it has yet again grown in size.
I draw your attention to the front cover. Michael Stride, a well known West Country artist who lives in the North Lodge on the Rousdon Estate, very kindly agreed to paint the picture for us. As you will see from the advertisement below, signed prints of the picture are on offer for sale. It is a delightful watercolour that captures a view of Allhallows which will bring back many happy memories.
Finally, just to say that this is my last magazine as editor, since I am passing over the baton to George Hayter, who as many of you are aware, is a freelance journalist - what better qualification for the job! George is no newcomer to the magazine since he has already been much involved, for which, I owe him my warmest thanks and wish him well for the future.
My best wishes to all for 2013.
Giles Blomfield, Editor [email protected]
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Michael Stride from his studio at North Lodge on the Rousdon Estate, has painted a watercolour to commemorate 75 years since Allhallows moved to Rousdon.
Signed prints (unframed) 430mm x 320mm are on offer for sale at £30.00 each including p&p.
Please send your order enclosing a cheque made payable to The OH Club to:Robin Grey OH Hon Treasurer3 Snow Hill, TisburyWiltshire SP3 6RY
Commemorative Watercolour Print
OH Committee
President: Roddy Long
Vice-Presidents: Tim Birmingham,
Giles Blomfield, Sebastian Warner
Hon Secretary: Alec Crawford
Hon Treasurer: Robin Grey
Members:
Myfanwy Adams
Diana Davis
John Harper
George Hayter
James Rowe
Michael Shaw
Richard White
Hon Life Vice-Presidents:
Derek Blooman
Brian Clark
Alec Crawford
Nigel French
Richard le Fleming
Andrew Moore
Rosemary Sidwell
Philip Tuck
General Sir Roger Wheeler GCB, CBE
London Social Secretary: John Clark
Contents PageEditor’s welcome 2
OH Committee 2
President’s letter 3
Secretary’s message 3
Donations to the OH Club 3
Programme of events 4
Allhallows Churchill Bursary 4
OH Newsdesk 5
2012 West Country Luncheon 6
2012 AGM, Reunion & Accounts 8
Remembrance Service 11
Unveiling Ceremony of Plaque 11
Editor’s Choice 12
If you’re Itchen for a good walk 13
The book to complete your library 13
OH Cricket 14
OH Rifle & Clay Shoot 14
OH Golf Society 15
Beside the seaside 16
OH in a top punk band 18
Life and lava in Africa 20
Our happy holidays farm 22
Are you an OPH? 23
Visit Allhallows Museum 23
Why the cliffs are special 24
Why Derek is sitting in style 26
For the love of Allhallows 28
Meet the local Flintstones 29
Underneath the Arches 30
Aunt Agatha 31
Ancient inn for fairly ancient OHs 36
St. Michael’s Church, Honiton 37
Tribute to Bomber Harris’s men 38
Obituaries 39
OH Ties and Cuff links 39
Secretary’s MessageNormally when the Magazine is sent out some 20-30 envelopes are returned to the Hon Secretary with annotations such as ‘no longer at this address’, ‘gone
away’ or ‘not known at this address’. Often we are able to update the address list as a result of sending e-mails. However in 2012 due to human error no return address was shown on the magazine envelopes and therefore it is quite likely that we may have missed some envelopes that should have been returned because of incorrect addresses.. No doubt we will have perhaps a larger number of returned envelopes this year.
The moral of this story is that I would plead with all OHs that they notify me of changes of both postal and e-mail addresses. Sending magazines to invalid addresses is an expensive business. We only have e-mail addresses for about half of the members of the Club and, in this modern age, correspondence and contact
President’s LetterA warm welcome to all OHs.
It is that time of year again when Giles reminds me that he requires my letter for the annual magazine.
Firstly, I am delighted that Seb Warner has accepted the role of Vice President thus joining Tim Birmingham and Giles Blomfield. Secondly, welcome to George Hayter, who has come onto the committee and is assisting on the editorial of the magazine which is such an important link with all OHs.
Many of you will study the accounts and know that the finances of the Club are slowly dwindling. The two major expenses are the AGM and the magazine, both of which are vital to the health of the Club. Giles is to be congratulated on defraying some of the cost with advertising revenue. My thanks go to all who have so generously given their support.
Currently the Club relies mainly on donations and a number of annual standing orders, some of which are for less than the bank charges to administer them! I therefore draw your attention to the ‘cry for help’ that
follows on this page, with the hope that you will be able to assist.
The sporting activities of the Club continue to grow with the introduction of a Tennis event on Saturday 11th May at Leweston School near Sherborne. This will be a family day out and our thanks to Myf Adams for organising this event. Application forms are available on the web site for submission to Myf. So she has some idea of numbers please contact Myf at [email protected] or telephone 01963 210717.
This letter gives me the opportunity to thank all those who give of their time so generously to organise events. John Harper does a great job with the golf, Jim Rowe and Richard Clist for the shooting and Seb Warner with Jonathan Wickes the cricket. It was a shame that the weather ruined the cricket at Sidmouth, but the sun was out for the clay shoot in October.
Our thanks also to Alec Crawford, who as Hon Secretary keeps us all in line and Nigel Speller, MBE, who is so supportive of the Club and in particular of officiating at the OH Memorial Service each year. Nigel also officiated at the unveiling of the War Memorial Plaque at Rousdon, attached to the former pavilion, and our thanks to Mr and
Mrs Broome, the present owners. Again this year Vernon Burchell played the organ at St Pauls, for which our thanks.
Many of us may not know that the school was founded in 1515. A potted history is on Wikipedia under Allhallows College. To mark the occasion, the intention is to organise a lunch in September 2015 at a Livery Company Hall in London. More news on this anon.
It has been pointed out that the lady OHs do not have a Club emblem to wear, so a stick pin bearing the school crest has been designed. It is anticipated that the cost would be approximately £10.00 each, depending on demand. Those who are interested, please contact Giles Blomfield on [email protected]
Finally, it is pleasing that so many events are taking place during the year. The attendance at the West Country Luncheon, the Memorial Service and the AGM this year confirms that the Club is in good health.
With best wishes to everyone for 2013.
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Donations to the OH Club Sadly the OH Club can no longer rely on financial support from those new members joining the Club on leaving School. We are, therefore, very much dependent upon your generosity to keep the Club going and to enable events to be organised on your behalf. If you have not already done so, we would ask that you consider making a contribution to the OH Club, either by a single donation, or by way of a regular standing order.
The necessary forms are available from our Treasurer: Robin Grey, 3 Snow Hill, Tisbury, Wiltshire SP3 6RY, or email: [email protected]. You may also wish to make a bequest to the Club in your Will, in which case you should contact Robin Grey. Your contributions, whatever size, will be very much appreciated and will help keep the OH Club and spirit of Allhallows alive. Thank you, Roddy Long
Roddy Long
with OHs by e-mail is the preferred optionIn 2011 we asked all of our OHs living overseas if they would in future agree to reading the magazine on the OH website rather than receiving hard copies in order that we could save £3.00 or more per copy postage. I am very grateful for the mass positive response with the result that only eight hard copies were sent overseas in 2012 and most of these were to older OHs who do not regularly deal with the internet.Again, I would ask all UK based OHs to consider whether they would prefer to receive the magazine electronically rather than in hard copy and, if so, to let me know by e-mail in order that we can reduce the largest expenditure item in the Club’s accounts.
At the AGM of the Club on 29th November 2012 new Rules of the Club were approved.and are now available on the website but if anybody would like a hard copy please let me know. The major changes to the rules concern the terms of office of Officers and Committee members which has been standardised at
three years for the initial term and then the possibility of re-election for either two or three further terms.
I have continued to benefit enormously from the knowledge of, and contacts with, OHs that Derek Blooman has. He certainly appreciates hearing from you so that he can include news in the Aunt Agatha column, on the website and in the magazine. Derek is still battling to master the mysteries of a computer and does not yet have an e-mail address but I will be very happy to pass on to him any news and information that you might like to send to me by e-mail. For letters, Derek’s address remains unchanged, The Coach House, Clappentail Lane, Lyme Regis DT7 3LZ.
Alec Crawford (OH)
The Old Smithy, Oakfordbridge, Bampton,Tiverton, Devon EX16 9JATel: 01398 351304 Mobile 07785 221252email: [email protected]
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Programme of Events 2013 Tennis Tournament
A family fun tennis day for all abilities (see Page 36) to be held on Saturday 11th May at 10am-4pm at Leweston School, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 6EN. If you are interested in playing, please contact Myf Adams. Telephone: 01963 210717 email: [email protected]
West Country Buffet Luncheon
At The Belmont Hotel, Sidmouth on Saturday 18th May at 12 noon for 1.00pm. Name of guest speaker to be advised on the OH website. Please apply for tickets (limited numbers) to Richard Bean, Nilgris, 10 Marlborough Close, Musbury, Axminster EX13 8AP with cheques made payable to The OH Club (price tba on website).
Telephone: 01297 553917. email: [email protected]
Golf Matches
Regular playing members will be e-mailed. See the Golf report on Page 15 for 2013 fixtures. If you would like to play, contact John Harper, Plenty House, Shipton Lane, Burton Bradstock, Bridport, Dorset DT6 4NO. Telephone: 01308 898335. email: [email protected]
Cricket Match
OH Cricket Match v Devon Dumplings to be held at Sidmouth Cricket Club. Details to be confirmed on OH website.If you are interested in playing, please contact either Seb Warner Tel: 07765 220532 email [email protected] or Jonathan Wickes.Tel: 07971 964648. email: [email protected].
Rifle and Clay Shooting
OH Day Pistol and Rifle shooting at The Charmouth Tunnel on Sunday 7th July. Meet at 11.00am for coffee on arrival followed by a BBQ during the afternoon with bar facilities. For full details contact James Rowe email: [email protected]. Mobile: 07831 727886.
Tory Shield Clay Shoot Competition
To be held between Allhallows, Millfield and Milton Abbey Old Boys on Sunday 6th October, meeting at 10.00am at Southern Counties Shooting Ground, Wardon Hill, Evershot, Dorchester, Dorset DT2 9PW. For full details contact James Rowe. email: [email protected]. Mobile: 07831 727886.
Itchen Walk
Walk along the pretty Itchen in Hampshire, including lunch in an elegant Winchester inn. Six-mile round trip, or do the three miles one way and return to your car by train. Meet by Shawford railway station 11.00am on Saturday 14th September. Details from Dominic Naish. email: [email protected]. Telephone: 01249 715943.
The Allhallows Remembrance Service
This will take place on Saturday 2nd November at 2.30pm at St Paul’s Church, Honiton. A carvery lunch will be held at The Hare and Hounds, Gittisham Common at 12 noon for 12.30pm. Tea will be served in the Church after the service. Please apply to Richard Bean, Nilgris, 10 Marlborough Close, Musbury, Axminster EX13 8AP. Telephone: 01297 553917. email: [email protected]
AGM Reunion and Party
The RAC Club, Pall Mall on Thursday 28th November at 6.00pm. Please inform the Hon Secretary Alec Crawford as soon as possible whether you will be attending. Telephone: 01398 351304. email: [email protected].
Allhallows Churchill BursaryThere were 7 applications for a Bursary in 2012 and the Trustees were impressed by the very high standard of each of the applications.
Since the rules were changed to extend the criteria of applicants to include grand children of OHs going on to any recognised university, the number of applications each year has increased but there certainly has not been a diminution in the number of top grade A levels that applicants are achieving. However, the Trustees look for more than just academic results when considering applications and this year’s applicants had a wide range of non academic interests and sporting skills.
The Trustees were pleased to award the Allhallows Churchill Bursary for 2012 to Ella Milburn who is reading Spanish and Japanese at Manchester University and, as part of her course, Ella will be spending a year in Japan learning the language and studying the culture. Ella is the grand daughter of Andrew Moore OH (Venning ’53-’58).
Applications for 2013 Bursaries will close on 14th September 2013 and the application procedure can be found on the OH Club website.
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OH NEWSDESK
Master’s link to rugby-playing otterThe namesake of a popular Allhallows personality is delighting the crowds at premiership rugby matches in Exeter.Since 2011, “Derek the Otter” has been the centre of half-time entertainment at the 11,000-capacity Sandy Park, home of the Exeter Chiefs.Derek the Otter is named after Derek Blooman, the former Allhallows second master who is closely related to Aunt Agatha.The name was conferred by the proprietors of the Otter Brewery, a Honiton firm run by two generations of OHs from the McCaig family.Otter Brewery began supplying beer to Sandy Park in 2009 – the year before the Chiefs were promoted to the top flight of English Rugby Union.Otter beer is available from two bars at the gleaming modern stadium, where an “Over the Bar” competition is proving otterly fascinating. This kicking contest has made a permanent half-time feature of Derek the Otter, a padded mascot thought to be inhabited by no less than one of the McCaig family.Spectators buying a pint of Otter from the club’s Wigwam Bar are given a ticket. Three tickets are drawn at half-time and the lucky winners are invited onto the pitch, where they have the chance to try to convert.With massed rugby fans watching, kicking the ball over the bar is harder than it looks. Anyone who does convert is awarded a case of beer.Derek does more than supervise the kicking. Since last season, energetic spectators have been given the chance to fell him as he sprints up the pitch, bringing a mighty cheer from the stands.
FourtH loCal History eXHibition CoMbpyne anD rousDonLocal history is our history and this was true for many of the happy visitors who browsed through the excellent exhibition presented by Mary and Graham Jones and their helpers in the Peek Hall, Rousdon, on the weekend of 12th – 13th May 2012. The exhibits included sections on Sir Henry Peek’s Rousdon Mansion and Allhallows, whose home it was from 1938 – 1998. Among the local visitors were Alec Crawford, the OH Secretary and Giles and Gru Blomfield.Malcolm Cater’s (Stanton 43 – 51) superb architectural drawings of the Mansion were on display along with exhibits on Combpyne Church with its saddleback tower and the old Saxon Chapel that Sir Henry demolished to make way for St Pancras. There were photos of the water tower, which stood near the long-jump pit and was blown up by the Army in 1973 as it was unsafe, and the Rousdon Observatory with Grover the Astronomer, Combpyne station used by the boys until it was closed in 1965 and information galore on the Peek family gathered by Mrs Nicky Campbell. There were photos of the Cliff Cottage, from where cream teas were served to visitors and reports on local families and servants of the School, compiled by Roger Critchard, son of Arthur Critchard the Head Gardener. There was a section on the multifarious activities of the School. For OHs who played rugger or cricket on the tufty grass of the Yeomanry Field there was a photo of the 1st Devon Yeomanry, encamped there in their tents in the summer of 1912.There is no doubt of the interest residents of the Rousdon Estate show in the School, and the affection that local people and especially former servants of the School have for Allhallows. Congratulations to the organisers of this exhibition.
‘Derek the Otter’ in action
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Roddy then mentioned some forthcoming OH events: Golf Week, based on Lyme Regis and at nearby clubs, master-minded by John Harper, Shooting at Richard Clist’s Charmouth Range on July 8th, arranged by Wyatt Earp, Jim Rowe, and a Clay Pigeon match in October between teams from Milton Abbey, Allhallows and Millfield. The OH cricket match this year would be on the handsome Sidmouth ground adjacent to the Belmont. Myf Adams, née Gregson (Ch 69-71) is planning tennis for 2013 in the Sherborne area with a picnic, Pimms and other attractions. Some of our young ladies had been selling raffle tickets this morning to defray the escalating costs of posting the magazine.
Roddy said that when he joined Allhallows in 1958 Jeremy Churcher (St 54-58) was legendary; he had a reputation for doing what he wanted, though he had won the Taylor and Oag Cups and his Colours for Open and Miniature Range Shooting and Mrs Hill’s Junior Art Prize; he had started his career in the Army and been involved in exciting adventures in many parts of the world.
Jeremy said Andy Moore had inveigled him into talking and he would oblige for a few minutes before the buns started flying. It had been a pleasure to be at Allhallows. His father had been in the RN and he lost two uncles in the war; his mother was related to Naryshkinas and Natalia Naryshkina was Peter the Great’s mother. Jeremy’s father later served in the Indian Police Security and the family
were directed towards Allhallows by the memorable Lt. Col. John Peart (1915-17) who had also worked in Indian Security. But our imperial days were over and our exit from India was hazardous.
Although Jeremy won a cricket bat in a shipboard raffle, he hated cricket and threw it into the Red Sea, but happily admired the fine cricketers Allhallows produced. He realised he was not destined for university, but spent many happy days at Allhallows which gave him a wide education. He was in Jack Jarchow’s Stanton and although Jack may have seemed severe he understood boys and was kindness itself. Henry Yool, an Olympic Shot, taught him his trade in Country Life and James Turner and that
wonderful man RSM Harry Aggar taught him how to shoot fullbore.
Jeremy said he enjoyed hockey and playing on the Eton Fives Court, but cut short a cross-country run to Axmouth with a cream tea. He decided to leave school himself with a respectable collection of O levels, but sadly no maths, and joined the Paras for basic training, then went to Sandhurst.
But he soon realised the Army was not for him and the options from the PSAB, ballet dancing and the Rhodesian Police, he didn’t appreciate. However he was offered tea-planting, but India wasn’t for the British and he joined David Sterling and used his military skills in Africa and Aden and once found himself briefly in Evian prison in Iran, arrested as a spy until he was politely released; he worked with the Mounties in Canada and the backroom boys of the oil industry in Texas.
Allhallows gave him freedom to think for himself and he made great friends. Bill Weston was with him in Katanga under Tshombe dealing with a 22,000 UN Force; he had walked from Capetown to Algiers and flown over Duvalier’s palace in Haiti. To discover more about his life-style we should read ‘Deadly Secrets’
Hearty applause greeted Jeremy’s talk. Andy Moore thanked him and said Bill Weston had found Jeremy living in the Dordogne and Tim Doubleday had recommended him as a speaker, he had been proved right.
D.J.B
West Country Luncheon2012Our President Roddy Long welcomed a full house to the Luncheon at the Belmont Hotel, Sidmouth on Saturday 19th May 2012,
and thanked Richard Bean, West Country Secretary, and Sharon Chatting for organising the lunch; he also wished Sharon a
happy birthday.
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West Country Luncheon
1. Tony Vosper and Derek Blooman. 2 Gru Blomfield, Celia and John Dennis and Peter Birch 3. John Harper,Tim Birmingham and Jim Rowe. 4. .Jeremy Churcher and Andy Moore. 5. Mawson Breary, Richard Bean and Sharon Chatting. 6. David Richardson and Geoff Wright. 7. Chris Busby, Jan Hayter, Andrew Hamilton and Ralph Harding 8. Stuart Scott.
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The Old Honitonians‘ ClubMinutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Old Honitonian’s Club held on Thursday 29th November 2012 at the RAC, London.
1. Present: The President, Vice Presidents, Hon Treasurer, Hon Secretary, Committee members and some 40 OHs.
2. Apologies: 15 OHs had submitted their apologies for absence from the meeting.
3. Opening Remarks: Roddy Long, President, welcomed all present and said that it had been a successful year on the sporting front despite the weather, of which only the cricket had been a casualty. Some excellent golf matches had been played for which John Harper and Richard White deserved thanks. A day’s clay pigeon shooting at Evershot and a day on the indoor ranges in the old Charmouth tunnel had revealed that there were still some good shots amongst OHs and Roddy thanked Jim Rowe and Richard Clist for arranging the two events. Unfortunately rain claimed the cricket match against the Devon Dumplings at Sidmouth. Roddy said that as usual the West Country lunch at the Belmont Hotel, Sidmouth was a full house with an excellent talk by Jeremy Churcher OH.
Roddy drew attention to a painting of Allhallows, exhibited at the meeting, by Michael Stride who lives at North Lodge, Rousdon. The picture is being used as the front cover of the 2013 Magazine and prints are for sale at £30.00 each.
Roddy also told members of the forthcoming sale of ‘Fred Turvey’s hut’ at Rousdon, with the hope of planning permission, together with the cricket pitch field, and also of Devon Wildlife’s intention to purchase the Undercliff land to the east of the mansion including Charton Goyle and Charton Bay beach with the intention of the area becoming a nature reserve.
Roddy welcomed Seb Warner having returned from a year in Hong Kong and who was standing for election as a Vice President. He also welcomed George Hayter who had been co-opted to the Committee and was standing for election. George was shadowing Giles Blomfield in the production of the 2013 Magazine and would take over as Editor for 2014 onwards.
4. Minutes of the Meeting held on 24th November 2011. Proposed by Giles Blomfield and seconded by Mike Shaw, the Minutes were approved and signed by the President.
5. Matters Arising: Covered under individual agenda headings.
6. Election of Officers and Committee Members: The following having been duly proposed and seconded were unanimously elected:
President: Roddy Long Proposer: Alec Crawford Seconder: James Rowe
Vice-President: Giles Blomfield Proposer: Andy Moore Seconder: Alec Crawford
Vice-President: Tim Birmingham Proposer: Roddy Long Seconder: Giles Blomfield Vice-President: Seb Warner Proposer: Roddy Long Seconder: Tim Birmingham
Hon Secretary: Alec Crawford Proposer: James Rowe Seconder: Andy Moore
Hon Treasurer: Robin Grey Proposer: Roddy Long Seconder: Alec Crawford
London Social Secretary: John Clark Proposer: Henry House Seconder: Giles Blomfield
Committee: George Hayter Proposer: Giles Blomfield Seconder: Alec Crawford
7. Treasurer’s Report: Robin Grey, in submitting the accounts for the year ended 31st May 2012, drew attention to the very generous single donations received in each of the last two years which had made up a substantial part of the Club’s income but could not be relied upon in future years.. The production of the magazine and the cost of the AGM were the two major items of expenditure and Robin pointed out that as the Club continued to operate on an annual deficit basis, the total funds were being gradually reduced. He therefore requested that all those who make donations to the Club by standing order/direct debit consider increasing their donation and those that do not do so at present were asked to consider setting up a Direct Debit in favour of the Club.
Proposed by Roger Wheeler and seconded by Brian Clark, the accounts for the year ended 31st May 2012 were unanimously approved.
8. New Rules: The Hon Secretary said that the Club’s Rules had last been revised in 1999 and it had been unanimously agreed by the Committee that a revised set of Rules should be put to the AGM for approval. The major changes proposed concern the terms of office of Officers and Committee members. It was proposed that these be three years for the first term with subsequent terms of three years, subject to a maximum of three for the President and Vice Presidents and two for Committee members.It was also proposed that the annual accounts of the Club should be ‘examined by a suitably competent person’ rather than having a full audit. It was also proposed that provision be made for the possible future introduction of a subscription for membership, rather than payments being made as donations, in order that
2012 AGM & Reunion
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there is a more clearly identifiable stream of income to the Club. However, it was stressed that the Committee had no immediate intention of introducing subscriptions.
Mr Andrew Hamilton proposed that the term of office of Officers and Committee members should be two years rather than three and that the question of making provision for a subscription should be deferred for at least a year... As there was no seconder for his proposal, Mr Hamilton withdrew it.
Proposed by Alec Crawford and seconded by Roger Wheeler, the new Rules were approved without dissent.
9. Allhallows Churchill Bursary: Alec Crawford reported that seven very good applications had been received for an award in 2012 with Ella Milburn, grand daughter of Andy Moore OH, being the successful candidate. Ella is reading Spanish and Japanese at Manchester University.
Alec pointed out that if an award is made in 2013 at the prevailing level, the Bursary fund would be exhausted. He recalled that the Bursary had originally been established in the early 1960s, the rules had been amended in 2005 to enable the children and grand children of OHs going on to any recognised university to qualify and since 2000 fifteen awards had been made.
10. West Country Report: Roddy said that a memorial plaque commemorating the opening of the cricket pavilion at Rousdon as a war memorial had been unveiled on 3rd November by Nigel Speller (OH) and this had been followed by lunch at the Hare & Hounds, Gittisham and the Allhallows Memorial Service in St Paul’s, Honiton. The future of St Michael’s, Honiton, within which is the Allhallows Memorial Chapel , is still uncertain and a search for a new home for the artifacts in the chapel continues.
Myf Adams is arranging an OH Tennis tournament at Leweston School near Sherborne on Saturday 11th May which Roddy hopes will be well supported.
The West Country Lunch in 2013 will be held on Saturday 18th May at the Belmont Hotel, Sidmouth and it is hoped that a cricket match with the Devon Dumplings at Sidmouth can be arranged during the summer.
11. Magazine and Website: Giles Blomfield reported that the 2013 Magazine, which he hoped would be distributed during January 2013, would be printed by Martin Boulden OH, who had submitted a very competitive cost quotation. Giles was very appreciative of those who had agreed to advertise in the magazine and thus considerably reducing the nett cost... Giles announced that George Hayter would be taking over as Editor of the magazine for the 2014 issue and George proposed a vote of thanks to Giles for all the good work that he had done and this was greeted with acclaim.
Roddy reported that a sub committee, lead by Tim Birmingham, would be looking at updating the OH website and reviewing the site management.
12. 500th Anniversary: Roddy reported that whilst the exact date of the foundation of Allhallows could not be accurately determined, there was no doubt that the school was in existence
in the early 16th Century. It was therefore proposed to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the formation of Allhallows with a function, probably a lunch, to be held in the second half of September 2015 in London. A sub committee is working on arrangements and members would be kept advised.
13. Next meeting: The 2013 Annual General Meeting will be held at the RAC Club, London on Thursday 28th November 2013 at 6.00pm.
D.A.C
1. Dave Reynolds, Martin Boulden, Christian Apsey, Chris Redmond, Henry Bowers-Tolley, Dave Shaw and Dave Britton
2. Roger Wheeler, Richard Le Fleming and Mike Green
3. Caroline Plumptre, Patrick Musters, Myf Adams and Tessa Evelegh
4. David Shaw and Felicity Wheeler
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Our video goes global – Now you can watch the AGM and see OHs enjoying the party afterwards by clicking on the internet. Find the fast-moving 150-second video on YouTube.
Search for “Old Honitonians”.
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Income & Expenditure Accountfor the year to 31st May 2012
2011 2012
£ INCOME £
Donations:
2,963 Single 300
5,289 Annual 4,842
306 Gain on sale of ties 112
6 Interest received 6
109 Commission received 94
0 West Country Lunch raffle 205
8,673 Total Income 5,559
EXPENDITURE
4,532 Newsletter, printing, postage 4,805
(300) Offset by advertisements (1110)
469 Events 270
1,823 West Country Lunch 0
1,715 AGM 1,989
310 Accounting 332
18 Subscriptions 18
35 Data Protection Registration 35
327 Website 327
166 Members’ Records 0
0 Rousden Memorial 200
0 Sundry 43
9,095 Total Expenditure 6,909
(422) Surplus (Deficit) (1,350)
8,673 5,559
Balance Sheet at 31st May 2012 2011 2012
£ £
19,916 General Fund, opening balance 19,494
(422) Surplus (Deficit) (1,350)
19,494 18,144
This amount is represented by:
3,566 Bank Account 2,007
14,924 Bank Deposit Account 14,929
948 Stock of ties 905
478 Funding – Allhallows Register 403
(281) Creditors (100)
(141) DJB fund 0
19,494 18,144
5. Alec Crawford,Richard Le Fleming and Nigel French
6. Seb Warner, Jamie Jemmeson and Carl Longman
7. Tim Birmingham, Nick Tadd and John Clark
8. Jeremy Harding, Nick Lerwell, Peter Read and Andrew Hamilton
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Unveiling of the War Memorial Plaque & Allhallows Day Remembrance ServiceWar Memorial Plaque On Saturday 3rd November some 20 OHs gathered outside the former Cricket Pavilion at Rousdon for the unveiling of the War Memorial Plaque that has been erected on the south side of the building.Brigadier Nigel Speller MBE OH conducted the short dedication service and unveiled the plaque. An anonymous donor paid for half of the cost of the plaque which was made and engraved by Dixon Memorials, Bridport.
When the estate was sold in 1998 the wooden memorial plaque that was fixed to the wall inside the Pavilion was lost but, fortunately, Derek Blooman managed to find a photograph of the plaque and the wording on that unveiled on Saturday is the same as that on the original.
The Pavilion is now the home of John and Ann Broome who have converted it into a very comfortable home and the Club is very grateful to them for allowing the plaque to be erected and for agreeing to the unveiling ceremony to take place although they were unable to be present.
Allhallows Remembrance ServiceThe annual Memorial Service was held in St Paul’s Church, Honiton on Saturday 3rd November in the presence of some 40 OHs and friends.
Brigadier Nigel Speller MBE OH conducted the service and Vernon Burchell produced wonderful sounds from the organ which he describes as being very good indeed. The Mayor of Honiton was present at the service and read a Lesson. After the service whilst some visited the Allhallows Museum which had been specially opened, others took tea and biscuits in the church.
Many asked about the future of St Michael’s Church, Honiton where the Allhallows Memorial Chapel is located. Unfortunately again this year the Church closed for the winter at the beginning of October, making it impossible for us to hold our Annual Service there. However there are moves afoot to try and secure the future of the Church which would enable the Annual Memorial Service to be held in the Memorial Chapel again
Many of the OHs and friends attending had lunched before the service at the Hare & Hounds, Gittisham Common which has recently been extended to provide a larger area for eating.
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Telephone or Email Ted Sanbach OH and order your wines
01865 301144 • [email protected]
THE OXFORD WINE COMPANY
OWC advert_Layout 1 21/12/2012 09:46 Page 1
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Go with the flowFollowing on from The Oxford Wine Company article published in last year’s OH Magazine, I decided, on behalf of OH Newsdesk, to pay Ted Sandbach OH, its proprietor, a visit at his head office.
The timing of the visit sadly did not coincide with one of the company’s tasting days, which are held in its large cellar and dedicated tasting room. Nevertheless, so as not to disappoint, Ted insisted on opening a delicious bottle of Sauvignon from Touraine in the Loire Valley. Together we enjoyed the wine whilst sitting outside on a rare warm summer’s day discussing Ted’s future plans for his Company. Quite clearly The Oxford Wine Company is going from strength to strength and keeping pace with our Olympians and Paralympians, picking up its fair share of medallions for quality and service.
In addition to which a 4th retail outlet was opened last summer.
Ted was at pains to enlighten me that the Company was entering a period of consolidation. However, in the next breath he informed me of his plans to build a dedicated ‘Champagne Room’ at his Tetbury shop. Having recently sold a 50cl bottle of 1900 Armagnac (£1850) to a well known ‘pop star’ he feels that there is the clientele in this wealthy area to warrant further investment.
Ted quite seriously is not one for standing still!
OHs are very welcome to visit any of the four Oxford Wine Company shops. Those who claim to be an OH will receive a decent discount!
Captions
Witney Road 1 Baytree Court 167 Botley Road 2 West Way
Standlake The Chipping Oxford Cirencester
OX29 7PR Tetbury OX2 0PB GL7 1JA
01865 301144 01666 500429 01865 249500 01285 659792
Winner
Top Merchant Best Customer
Service
2012Winner
Editor’s Choice The Oxford Wine C
ompany
Recharge your glass with
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OH NEWSDESK
13www.oldhonitonians.com
It is one of the most beautiful rivers in Britain, famous for its brisk clear waters and its world-beating trout fishing.
This year the OH Club is offering members a chance to walk a short section alongside the Hampshire Itchen in the company of others from Allhallows.
Partners, family and friends are also invited to enjoy this free event, which includes a break for lunch in a listed Georgian pub.
The walk is being organised by Dominic Naish, who led a serenely successful OH walk along the Kennet and Avon Canal near Bath in 2010.
This time Dominic (Stanton 63-68) has teamed up with George Hayter, who lives a couple of miles from the Itchen. George (Venning 65-70) is a journalist with an expert knowledge of Winchester, the ancient capital of England.
The walk will follow a branch of the Itchen before entering Winchester through an ancient city gate for lunch in the heart of the cathedral city.
To avoid repetition, most of the return journey will be made alongside an easterly channel of the river, hugging the side of the valley. More energetic walkers can take
a scenic diversion here, climbing 200 feet to the site of an Iron Age hill fort, before re-joining other walkers half a mile further south. The main part of the route is entirely level.
To take part, park in the street near Shawford railway station (satnav SO21 2AA) and meet on the white-railed bridge over the Itchen, where there is a walkers signpost at the start of the path. If it’s raining, meet under the adjacent railway bridge.
As for all long walks, participants should come equipped with sensible shoes, a bottle of water, a raincoat – and a camera!
If the route is too long for you, there is an hourly train service from Winchester back to Shawford. If it’s too short, how about setting out early, parking on-street at Allbrook (SO50 4JQ) and starting to walk there – a very pretty three miles further downstream.
To register your interest in the walk, see contact details on Page 4.
If you’re Itchen for a good walk
Trails of the riverbank: George Hayter and Dominic Naish
The book to complete your libraryHere’s a book which will record your
place in history, or at least your place in the history of Allhallows.
And this maroon-clad hardback is also a reliable reminder of old friends and colleagues.
You will find details about yourself in Allhallows School Register and Record 1885-May 1992 – provided you were at the school during those 107 years.
Together with their full name, every OH is shown with their dates of birth, joining and leaving, and usually achievements academic and sporting are summarised.
For most years, many of the prizes won and positions of responsibility held are listed for each pupil, with the entries particularly detailed for those at the school in the 1950s and 60s.
The 474 pages of Register and Record also include lists, explanations and 11 photos.
For your copy, make out a cheque to “The OH Club” and send it with your address to the book’s editor, Richard Bean OH, at Nilgiris, 10 Marlborough Close, Musbury, Axminster, Devon EX13 8AP. Enquiries: 01297 553917. Prices: £15 if collected, £18.50 including UK post & packing, £21.81 including overseas post & packing.
OH NEWSDESK
OH NEWSDESK
Among fans of the book is David Richardson (Stanton 63-66) who bought his copy at an OH event eight years ago. “When I saw it, I bought it immediately.”
Since then, David has often become absorbed. He’s even found himself using his Register to examine statistics, such as which
houses produced most heads of school. “It’s just a very interesting bible of Allhallows,” he said.
Another devotee of the compact compendium is Chris Busby (Stanton 53-57) who told OH Newsdesk that he often spends an afternoon glancing through his copy. Chris likes to be reminded of past acquaintances, and to ponder what they might be doing now.
“Those five years at Allhallows were an important part of our early years,” he said. “Every old boy should have a Register. It’s a very good buy at £15.”
Recharge your glass with
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CRICKET FIXTURE 2012 With the great summer of sport expected for 2012, few events were more eagerly anticipated than the OH vs Devon Dumplings cricket match. In the latest instalment of this rivalry, early indications had been that the Devon Dumplings had assembled a very strong team, with the aim of replying to last year’s defeat by the OHs. In preparation for this game, the OHs had selected another variable, but still strong team of:
J Wickes, S Warner, T Morgan, W Murray, P Tuck, W Ferguson, S White, R Wickes, D Higginson, T Simpson, J Niblett
Alas, though, the weather intervened. With torrential rain in the West Country for much of the period leading up to the match, it was decided by the groundsman that the game should be called off. Fortunately most players were notified before setting off on their journey. However, a group of OHs took to Lyme Regis Golf Club to take advantage of what turned out to be a sunny afternoon: Messrs Wickes and Simpson triumphing.
With both the OHs and The Dumplings
eager to continue the rivalry, we are in talks for the 2013 event. Please watch out for details on the website.
Jonathan Wickes
The annual clay pigeon shoot at Wardon Hill, Evershot, took place on Sunday 7th October, on a lovely autumn sunny morning with OH shooters comprising of our President Roddy Long, who had travelled from Guildford that morning, Mark and James Sienesi from Exmouth and Bristol respectively, Canish Pope, Richard Clist and Jim Rowe more locally.
After a full English breakfast at 10am, shooting commenced and after 70 shots each James Sienesi was the winner with 51 hits, Richard Clist 46, Mark Sienesi 45, Canish Pope 31, Jim Rowe 30 and Roddy
Long 23, who exclaimed “this gun’s only got one trigger”!
The fact that Millfield and Milton Abbey Old Boys failed to put forward a team, Allhallows Old Honitonians “won” the Tory Shield again for the second year running.
The competition will be held again next year on 6th October 2013 at 10am. Any Old Honitonian who wants to enjoy a really great fun experience can email Jim Rowe for further details:
James Rowe
OH DAY – RIFLE AND CLAY SHOOTCharmouth Tunnel Rifle Shoot
Once again Richard Clist (Stanton 85-89) kindly hosted the OH Rifle Shoot at his Target Sports Centre, at the Tunnel, Charmouth, on Sunday 8th July. The venue being the only UK training centre used by this year’s Olympic Pistol Squad.
After the previous days ‘Noah’s flood’ came the sunshine. This was followed by the cream of the Allhallows shooting dynasty turning up at The Tunnel for a morning of 25 metre and 50 metre rifle shooting. Mike Ashworth (Shallow 64-68) proved beyond doubt that he had listened to what Henry Yool and James Turner had taught him all those years ago!
Those also present were Tom Hembrow (Baker 49-53), Howard Roberts (Venning 67-72), Alec Crawford (Stanton 55-60), Canish Pope (Stanton 83-88), Neil Dowsett (Baker 85-89) and Jim Rowe (Middlemist 66-71).
A fine buffet lunch and beers were provided by Mrs ‘Mummy’ Clist and the proceedings finished at 2pm. Next year, same time, same place – be there!
James Rowe
OH Cricket
The Tory Shield Clay Shoot Competition
Sidmouth CC Pavilion
15www.oldhonitonians.com
Golf Fixtures 2013For full details refer to OH website
Match vs Royal Hampshire Regiment
High Post Golf Club – Wednesday 24th April
Competition at Temple Golf Club
Thursday 23rd May
Competition at Lyme Regis Golf Club
Tuesday 25th June
OH Golf Day at Bridport Golf Club
Wednesday 26th June
Match vs Devon Dumplings at Exeter Golf and Country Club
Thursday 27th June
Match vs Old Tauntonians at Taunton and Pickeridge Golf Club
Friday 28th June
Guest Day at North Hants Golf Club
Tuesday 3rd September
Competition at Puttenham Golf Club
Thursday 10th October
Old Honitonians Golf Week 2012Our first outing this year started amid the Lyme Regis fog, close sister to the Rousdon mist, where 12 good men and true assembled expecting to play a match against OH Connections, a team assembled by former parent Howard Wicks. The course was unfortunately closed, which was just as well since Howard had failed to recruit any team members, and was himself unable to attend. The Lyme Regis seniors, milling about after their match was cancelled, offered to play us and waited with us to see if the fog would clear. Their patience was shorter than ours, and we soldiered on eating our bacon baps and consuming cups of coffee until finally we were allowed on the course. After four or five holes, the fog descended once more. Some of us completed nine confusing and amusing holes, whilst others managed only six, or was it five - hard to tell.
The evening was spent enjoying a meal next to the sea at Lyme, where most of us stayed, and afterwards at the Royal Lion Hotel where some of us were still enjoying the day in the early hours of Wednesday.
Bridport was clear, under a low flying cloud of fog, and so 18 OHs turned up to play. We enjoyed steadily improving conditions, and Hamish Macgregor showed that there is life in the old dog yet by winning the competition and also nearest the pin, although he graciously handed this to Mark Hunt following our ‘only one prize’ rule. Second was Richard White and third Roddy Long. Longest drive went to Richard White with a massive blow that ran through a bunker before landing exhausted on the far side.
At dinner we enjoyed bangers and mash washed down with beer and Chilean merlot. Afterwards most of us returned to our hotels in Lyme and met up in the Nags Head for further liquid refreshment and the pleasure of watching Cristiano Renaldo not needing to take the winning penalty kick for Portugal because his side was already out of Euro 2012.
OH Golf Society
1. Hamish MacGregor receiving the Peter Ward Trophy from previous year’s winner Kit Mcgrath. 2.Evening get together at Lyme. 3.Jon Husain. 4.Peter Larkman,John Harper and Brian Clark. 5 Practice makes Perfect - hopefully! 6.The 3 Pros (Stuart MacGregor,Brian Clark and Mike Ray-Hills). 7.The finest ‘Swinger’ in action!
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Exeter was a new venue for us, and we met the Devon Dumplings there for our annual match. It was a beautiful day, a rarity for June, and we enjoyed a close game with all matches finishing on the 18th. The result, four matches to one, did not do justice to the nearness of the two sides and everyone enjoyed their day. Thanks to Mark Hunt, a member at Exeter, for setting up this venue, which I am sure we will want to repeat next year. Many of us have very much enjoyed playing courses like Royal North Devon and Saunton, where we have played in the past, but they are a bit daunting for the average golfer, and maybe not ideal settings for matches, favouring lower handicappers and those with local knowledge.
On Friday we met with the ‘Old Tauntonians’, a team assembled by Richard Jowett, a former master at Taunton school. We started with nine, since one of our number (who shall remain nameless) was a week out in his planning! Richard’s wife Jill stepped into the breach and played with distinction helping us to a victory by three matches to two. It was a great day out and the weather was kind to us, only starting to rain as we packed up to go home.
The idea of basing ourselves in one place and travelling to the various courses was new this year. Whether our good results derived from the team atmosphere and time spent together after the matches, we will never know. Whatever the answer to that riddle, most seemed keen to repeat it next year.
There must be many more regular OH golfers out there who would enjoy the good company and excellent courses that we experienced. Hopefully we will see some of them next year.
John Harper
OH golfers will receive information on all the above events. If you would like to play, contact John Harper on 01308 898335.
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The lightning speed with which Allhallows transferred from Honiton to Rousdon is recalled in newly
available memoirs.
David Shallow, son of the then headmaster George Shallow, reveals that the idea of moving to Rousdon came from an unexpected quarter – his aunt.
Just months later, the school had uprooted and was back in full operation in the former private mansion overlooking the sea.
David recalls how the growing school had not even thought of leaving Honiton – until a fundraising appeal for new buildings was a spectacular flop.
At Speech Day in 1936, George Shallow had outlined plans to replace some of the existing cramped school buildings, spread throughout the town, with a new centralised complex away from the high street. Four boarding houses and a junior house were envisaged. Capacity: 200 pupils. Cost: £50,000.
The stage-one fundraising target was £15,000 but over the following year all that came in was £500. “Such a project at a time when the country was recovering from the depression of the early 1930s may seem in retrospect to have been over-optimistic,” David writes.
So other strategies were examined. “It was my Aunt Marjorie who drew my father’s attention to the fact that the Rousdon mansion was on the market. She suggested
How Allhallows rushed to Rousdon 75 years ago this year
We do want to be beside the seasidethis might make a suitable new home for Allhallows.”
John Stanton – son of the generous first chairman of governors, Arthur Stanton – remembers George Shallow saying he had looked at everything except Rousdon, but within 48 hours he had seen the estate and was campaigning for Allhallows to take it over. In 1937 the school magazine hinted at the plan (See panel: Magazine puzzle).
The 350-acre estate was a bargain. Sixty years earlier, it had cost £240,000 to build, but now the asking price was just £22,500.
In his seminal The history of Allhallows School, JRW Coxhead says the £22,500 was raised in four ways – by mortgage, by borrowing, by the sale of the Honiton
Magazine puzzle“In the next number of the magazine it is hoped to publish details of an alternative scheme upon which certain old boys, the trustees and the headmaster are at present working. The alternative scheme embodies all the ideas of the original proposal, is far less costly and, in its scope, far exceeds the original hopes of the trustees.”
School magazine, September 1937
North Lodge and entrance gates
Rousdon Mansion in 1938
school buildings and playing fields, and by subscription.
In her memoir, George Shallow’s daughter, Rosemary Sidwell, remembers her first visit. Then aged about five, she fed sugar
www.oldhonitonians.com 17
We do want to be beside the seasideDavid Shallow writes that the estate remained self-supporting, with a mini-power station, milk from the farm, and all its water piped up from the pumping station. “But, to meet the needs of so many extra people, it was necessary at an early stage, and at considerable cost, to bring in mains electricity and water.”
Converting the clock tower stables to science labs and classrooms was another major task.
Chemistry master James Turner later recalled gigantic golden carp in the blossoming lily pond towards the end of the terrace, and other bountiful features which gradually disappeared: “The walled garden boasted magnificent herbaceous borders and an abundance of vegetables. There were peaches in the greenhouses, and huge asparagus in the sanatorium garden. Glass chandeliers were seen in the hall.”
Rosemary Sidwell, in the junior school when aged eight, remembers not having a desk in the early years. “I was seated on two tuck boxes, with three stacked in front of me to form a desk.”
The school continued to expand after World War II broke out in 1939. Rosemary recalls: “It was assumed there was no likelihood of an invasion in Lyme Bay. Boys came from many of the air-raid targeted cities.”
Mixed emotionsChemistry master James Turner OH dedicated his life to Allhallows. The move came early in his 40 years on the staff. James later spoke about Honiton:
“The locals looked upon the school as being something which belonged to them, and they would turn out in force to watch the school play rugger, very often in preference to watching the town play. The town used to take a tremendous interest in all our activities and, of course, Honiton did not want the school to move. It is quite clear that the school would not have survived in Honiton, but we felt we were more in the swing of things there, and not stuck out on a limb and isolated, as we felt when we first moved here.”
Any familiar names?As well as headmaster George Shallow and second master George Napier, records show that the staff in 1938 included Horace Lee (French, English), Jack Jarchow (Classics), JF Austin (History, Geography), RB Morgan (Physics, Maths), James Turner (Chemistry), A May (English), CJ Briscoe (Chemistry), TA Jones (History), Norman Butler (Art), Miss EM Hartwright and Miss U Crothers (both Junior Form). There were 162 boys and the fees were £40 a term.
lumps to a pony in the field in front of the mansion. The Peeks had not lived there for years but Rosemary writes that many estate families remained. “I can still remember them clearly when I visit their graves in St Pancras Church.”
The school at Honiton closed early for Easter 1938, and a removals firm completed the physical transfer in 10 days. Allhallows re-opened in its palatial new setting in time for the start of the summer term.
The bathing beach – Humble Point
The Marble Dairy – Rousdon Mansion. With the marble tables removed, this became the ‘Tuck’ shop.
The school hall interior
1930’s fees – violin and shorthand extra!
OH NEWSDESK
Plumbing was the main headache, with new baths, basins and toilets all needed for basement changing rooms.
At the same time as the move, Allhallows changed its constitution, designating its trustees as governors, and enabling it to become officially a public school.
After settling in Rousdon, Allhallows was to enjoy some of the greatest years in its long history, with a long series of unprecedented facilities built one after another, and shooting brilliance bringing national pre-eminence.
Includes material written or compiled by Derek Blooman and the late Jeremy Kitcat.
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T in whistle, banjo and accordion may not be normal instruments for a punk band but the Pogues’ thrilling Celtic-
punk sound means that, well into middle age, they are still in demand from San Francisco to Sydney. Shane MacGowan – the controversial band’s dishevelled founder, singer and main song-writer – is one of rock’s biggest personalities, with a reputation for drink and drug abuse, catchy compositions and Irish republican lyrics.
Underpinning the band’s melodic charm is bass player Darryl Hunt, who went to Allhallows. In the kitchen of his 1850s cottage, just up the hill from London’s Camden Town, Darryl (Chudleigh 64-68) described how he got from a desk in Rousdon to a place in a much-loved rock band.
He arrived at Allhallows after boarding at Sopley Park Prep School, near the family home at Christchurch. “I started off in the Headmaster’s House, on the main road,” he said. “It was cut off from the main school. I didn’t like that. I was much happier when we moved to the main school.”
He was still dismayed by the rural location of the school itself. “I found Allhallows to be rather cut off. Suddenly being in the middle of nowhere was a little bit like going to Dartmoor.”
After Darryl had been at Allhallows for a term, he first felt the attraction of the pop music business. With his mother, he went
to see the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, which showed the fab four touring. “I came out at the end and said: ‘I’d like to do that’.”
His elder brother, Ian, played in bands in Christchurch. “There were guitars around the house. I just picked them up because I liked music so much. I was never taught anything. He played and I watched. I looked at his chord shapes for each song and worked it out for myself. I was about 15.”
He got more guitar practice at school. “I didn’t actually perform in any groups at Allhallows. We used only to have a little fun get-together in the Grott, a rehearsal cellar entered through a hatch by the chapel. There was a very fine guitarist there. Mike Walsh? Was that his name? He was very influential. He used to do concerts in the hall. I think the reason I didn’t perform was that a lot of the time I was listening more. And my main thing at that time was art – painting and drawing in the art department. I enjoyed that a lot.”
Deep down, his musical ambition may have been rekindled when he visited Allhallows six months after leaving. “I went back to meet some friends. We all went off to the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis. We saw the original Fleetwood Mac, with Peter Green. He was a magnificent guitarist, absolutely blinding. It was around the time of Black Magic Woman. I went with Paul Clapp and one or two others.”
By now Darryl was on a two-year art
foundation course at Newton Abbott, where he made the switch from lead guitar to bass guitar. “One of the guys who I was at college with was a very good blues guitarist, and I started playing bass to back him up.”
But still he felt his future lay in art, and he did a three-year BA in Fine Art at Nottingham. After that he was making a film with art school friends. The script required a band for one scene, to be filmed on the Isle of Man ferry. So Darryl and his chums took instruments and performed on the ferry. The scene was such a success that the group were asked to play at the art college dance.
“So we got this group together called the Brothel Creepers. We started playing more and more. Then we changed our name to Plummet Airlines. Then we got signed by Stiff Records, so we had a record to make. We were playing in pubs and theatres.
“By this time I’d left the art world. I had been going to do a film and photography course, and maybe go into printing, but the record deal happened and I went another way. The points on the track had been changed. I was a professional musician.”
Two singles and a double album were released but, despite exposure on Radio 1,
OH in a top punk bandThe Pogues are one of the most exciting rock bands playing today, as the audience found at London’s giant O
2 Arena just before Christmas. Two Top Five
albums are among a string of record successes for the group, and their 1987 single, Fairytale of New York, has been voted best Christmas single of all time.
Main picture: Darryl (right) playing bass on stage Inset: Running in a 1968 cross-country match
19www.oldhonitonians.com
sales failed to take off. Plummet Airlines fell apart.
Darryl left Nottingham for London, where he did odd jobs. As a courier, his work included delivering to 10 Downing Street. “I had to knock on the door and a guy would open it and I would say: ‘I’ve got a letter from Norman St John Stevas for Margaret Thatcher.’ He’d say: ‘Can you wait here? Somebody will be down to collect it from you.’ I always wanted somebody with a camera to take a shot of me coming out.”
Then he was hired to look after up-and-coming bands on the road. “A friend of mine was tour managing groups like the Mo-dettes, Spit Energy and punk groups like that, so I started helping him out because I knew a bit about the music business.”
By now he was living in the King’s Cross area, where he first came across the group that was later to become the Pogues. He was introduced to Shane MacGowan in the local pub. His first impression of the band’s singer and founder? “He was a very tall and dignified man, a sort of punk version of Prince Charles. He had a physical presence that I recognised as powerful. He’s a determined and clever guy.”
Darryl got on well with Shane and the rest of the group. He helped them at gigs and operated their mixer desk. Over the next few years, he served as everything from van driver to lighting engineer.
At that time the Pogues had a female bass player, Cait O’Riordan, and Darryl began to stand in for Cait on bass when she was absent. In 1986 Cait married the band’s then producer, Elvis Costello, and quit the band permanently. The boy from Allhallows was an obvious candidate to replace her but the Pogues biography Here Comes Everybody makes clear that his succession was by no means automatic. At least two band members vetoed his joining on the grounds that he was “just not cool”.
But their reservations vanished when they
Pogues and public schoolOH Newsdesk mentioned to an Irish Pogue fan that the magazine was going to interview a band member who went to Allhallows.
“Public school? The Pogues? Can’t be!” was the reply.
OH Newsdesk told Darryl about that reaction and asked if he had felt uneasy about the Irish republican anger that permeates much of the band’s material.
“I was fine about it because I was anti-establishment myself,” he said. “Having been at Allhallows, I felt well groomed in anti-establishment feeling.”
He added that two other members of the band had also been to public school.
Pogues for beginnersLike to know what the shamrock shamblers sound like? Darryl’s pragmatic advice: “Get the cheapest best-of album.”
Want to go further? Darryl recommends the albums Rum, Sodomy and the Lash or Fall from Grace.
Remember to turn up the bass!
At home with treasured photo and favourite LP from schooldays
Nearly all my own work: Darryl with CD by Bish
OH NEWSDESK
recognised that their likeable tour manager was an experienced musician who fitted in well on stage. So Darryl became a Pogue.
By now the band was an international attraction, playing big venues and staying in plush hotels. The days of motoring home in the back of a van on motorways through the night were gone.
But all was not well with the leader. Shane was drinking more than ever and sometimes failing to show up for performances.
Although he was the singer, main songwriter and founder, the band felt they had to sack him, and Darryl was chosen to tell him. Because his relationship with Shane was relatively good, Darryl agreed to carry out the task.
“What took you so long?” was Shane’s reaction to his dismissal, which came while touring Japan in 1991. “You’ve all been very patient with me,”
To replace Shane on vocals, band members recruited the former Clash front man, Joe Strummer, but the Pogues nevertheless disintegrated in1996.
The group ceased to exist for five years, during which Darryl’s daughter was born. “It was fortunate that it fell in our five-year gap, to bring a young child up and then go back to work. It was tough for other guys in the band. They were away touring while their kids were growing up.”
Darryl used the interlude to form his own band, Bish, in which he still sings, plays guitar and composes. Bish have two albums out.
Since their 2001 reformation, the Pogues have not returned to the studio, but they have played around the world.
“We do three or four tours a year and they’re pretty lucrative, so we don’t have to do much more than that,” Darryl said. “It’s not a bad job.”
A recent gig, at the Olympia in Paris, was recorded and filmed for a live album and DVD, which were released in the run-up to Christmas.
As a boy, Darryl said, it had been strange to find himself living in a stately home, which was how he saw the Rousdon mansion.
“But, because we were in a community away from our families, we were able to experiment and get into new ideas. Maybe I needed to be away from my family.”
He said there were good teachers at Allhallows. He described his housemaster, Derek Blooman, as “a great man” who, along with art master Norman Butler, had been open to new ideas. “They made you aware of what was going on outside the walls of the school.”
Darryl remembers being in a group of boys – along with contemporaries Peter Read, Patrick Groves and Brodie Hall – who were taken to pop concerts by Mr Robinson, including a performance in Exeter by The Who. And he fondly recalled classics master Mr James starting a lesson by putting his feet up and playing a record of Irish rebel songs.
“These were forward-looking people. They made me feel that I wasn’t anything special but that I had the opportunity to do things, because I was fortunate to be where I was.”
“Public school? The Pogues? Can’t be!” was the reply.
20
Life and lava in AfricaIf you remember Sundays down on the cliffs as a memorable encounter with nature, take the next few minutes to compare notes with Steve Turner OH, who takes brave tourists to African volcanoes. If you thought six of the best from the headmaster was a violent experience, read on for Steve’s account of a traditional Ethiopian whipping ceremony. Steve (Baker 1979-83) emailed us his story from the banks of the Nile.
After Allhallows, I graduated in Civil Engineering from the University of Wales in Swansea. All I knew then
was that I did not want to pursue a career in engineering!
I set off on a gap year round Africa, using my family home in Kenya as a base. I passed through most countries in Southern and East Africa, before setting off overland for London. After a shower and months of
R & R in the UK, I married my girlfriend, and we shipped ourselves and belongings back to Kenya, where I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to inherit my family’s safari operation, called Origins.
The mainstay of any safari business is watching big game in popular East African national parks such as the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Maasai Mara, not to mention the white sandy beaches of Zanzibar and Seychelles. Luckily my personal interests coincide with those of some of our regular guests. They come back to East Africa again and again to explore less popular areas.
These more “off the wall” trips started in the late 1980s, initially for film crews in search of primates such as bonobo, chimpanzee and more obscure species like the Congo peacock and water chevrotain. By October 2011, security in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo had
improved enough to allow us a couple of climbing expeditions up Mount Nyiragongo, as an add-on to our gorilla trips. This vast volcano has the world’s largest permanent lava lake, more than a mile in diameter, with lava coming up from deeper in the earth than in any other volcano.
Nyiragongo became famous in 1996 when lava overflowed from the lake, levelling the city of Goma and displacing a million refugees who were already fleeing the Rwanda genocide. We camped for the night on the crater rim. In the dark, we peered down into the 800-metre shaft, watching the lava lake glow as it came up from deep in the planet.
Just five days after that trip, we were home and reminiscing about the amazing experience when I received news from my contacts in Goma. A new and even more spectacular volcano was beginning to erupt near the Mount Nyamulagira complex. With that dramatic news, it only took a week to round up a group of fanatical Africa travellers wanting to visit the new
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volcano. It was indeed spectacular – not a lava lake, but a volcano in birth, with a fountain throwing lava 300 metres in the air, and a vapour cloud rising 5,000 metres. Camping within a kilometre, we felt the ground shudder under our feet. When the wind shifted, shards of razor-sharp pumice rained down, shredding our nylon tents.
I returned several times with small groups of guests but, within five months, volcanic activity at Nyamulagira had dwindled, and the region fell back into civil war. The moral of the story is that one needs to head for these obscure destinations without delay.
In the later 1990s, Ethiopia was starting to emerge from dark years of socialism and civil war. We were one of the first tour operators to start exploring the Omo River Valley, first by boat, occasionally helicopter, and gradually more mainstream in 4x4 vehicles, as infrastructure started to improve.
In a world of disappearing cultures, the Omo River is nothing less than the last great tribal land left in the world. In the nearby Hamar Mountains, we searched for the “bull-jumping ceremony.” This is the right of passage for every young Hamar Koke man to pass into adulthood. The process involves the initiate running naked, high on adrenalin and booze, across the backs of his favourite cattle. It also involves the whipping of a dozen or more close female friends and relatives with eight-foot switches that leave a criss-cross of blood lines dripping bright red down their backs. Many a western visitor finds it shocking. The women are absolutely beautiful, with long braided hair that reminds me of my schoolboy heartthrob, Bo Derek. The women are all proud of the welts, which mark their lower backs as the wounds heal into shiny keloids of scar tissue. The scars, that mark them for life, are a symbol of a woman’s strength and of her love and devotion to the male initiate. Distressing to us, it’s beautiful and meaningful to them. They see it as an absolutely necessary symbol of devotion to a potentially supportive man in a society where women inherit nothing after the death of a husband or father.
The Kara and Kwegu tribes live right on the riverbanks, practising an ancient form of
receding-flood agriculture. With them we see absolutely amazing and beautiful body art of white and yellow clay covering semi-naked bodies. Tremendous care and pride is taken as they adorn themselves in preparation for the incredibly provocative dancing that unfolds in the villages in the evenings.
Across the river are the Mursi and Suri, where women practice perhaps the most profound body adornment in the world. Over a period of months, they gradually insert a seven-inch diameter clay or wooden plate into their lower lip.
The world’s lowest point on land is the Danakil Depression, at the start of the Great Rift Valley, on the Ethiopia/Eritrea border. It’s over 100 metres below sea level. It’s pretty darn hot down there too, with temperatures over 50C. Yellow, blue and green sulphur pools bubble up and form miniature stalagmites – absolutely beautiful and looking like a scene from Star Wars.
In the nearby highlands of Ethiopia is an ancient Coptic Christian society with hundreds of beautiful rock-hewn churches, intricately carved and adorned. Many are over 1,000 years old and still being used by pilgrims, as they have been for centuries.
Where is the next big frontier for this sort of travel? I may be writing these words from it right now, sitting by the Nile. Alas I’m not in a luxury hotel sipping cocktails. I’m not with my loved one, but with my son, who is now on his own gap year. We’re quaffing warm beer, in a mosquito-ridden shanty town that is the newest capital city on the African continent. This is Juba, capital of Southern Sudan. This new nation is still recovering from decades of civil war, and we’re on a recce for a trip later in the year for one of our regular guests. He wants to go in search of two spectacles – the famous Dinka tribesmen with their huge herds of long-horned Zebu cattle, who live in the largest swamp on earth and, secondly, to be one of the first modern-day tourists to explore the Boma Plateau region in the east of the country. The Boma Plateau is home to the world’s largest and largely undiscovered wildlife migration of antelope called white-eared kob. There are absolutely no roads, no infrastructure, and little else other than the beasties that eat the kob, and us, in a helicopter in the middle of nowhere, hoping the rotors keep turning.
Gotta go. Tomorrow is a long day. To see more photos, please visit www.originsafaris.info/slide
Steve Turner (Baker 79-83)
1. Members of the Kara tribe on the banks of the Omo River, Ethiopia. 2.Steve and his wife Jayne with their two children Rebecca (20) and son Richard (19) with Kilimanjaro in the background. 3. Nyiragongo volcano seen at night from over 30 miles away towering menacingly over the town of Goma, D.R Congo. 4. The jumping bulls represent the final initiation rights of men of several south Omo tribes. 5. The scars from multiple whipping at the bull jumping ceremonies leave huge keloids on the backs of Hamar women. 6. Dassenech men dressed in capes of spotted cat skins for the Dimi Ceremony. 7. Sulphur pools in the Dallol volcano. At 100 meters below sea level is the lowest point of dry land on the planet.
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Our happy holidays farm
A tiny farm with chickens and one cow – few boys sent to Allhallows can have expected to end up in such
a place.
But that’s what happened to Bill Henderson, who arrived at the school in 1939.
Bill soon found himself living on the agricultural smallholding throughout the school holidays, as a result of being a boarder at Allhallows up to and during World War II.
He wasn’t alone. The hilltop farm also became home to at least nine other Allhallows boys.
All were sent there as a result of the school introducing a special facility for parents who were overseas as the storm clouds of war gathered. The school undertook to find ‘holidays homes’ for children marooned in this way.
Bill had expected to spend his public school career at Dulwich College in London but he had only been there one term when, with his brother Ian, he was moved to Allhallows.
“My father was suddenly posted to Singapore, to be in charge of the Naval Dockyard there,” Bill explained. “My parents decided that Ian and I should go to a boarding school away from London. The Munich crisis of late 1938 had convinced my father that war – and bombing of London – was imminent.”
With both their parents abroad, the boys had nowhere to go in the holidays, Bill said. “My relatives were far too sensible to undertake the responsibility of looking after two brats.”
The holidays home found for Bill and Ian (known as ‘Bobo’) was a modest homestead called Treburtha, and was located in Wood
Water Lane at Heavitree, on the Allhallows side of Exeter. Living there were kind Mr and Mrs Collinson, whose children included Michael, who had been to Allhallows in the early 1930s.
As well as the Allhallows boys there was also one girl, who was a sister of two of the boys. She slept in the house but the boys had to sleep in a shed.
Along with the cow, Daisy, everyone on the farm got on like a house on fire, Bill said. “We were a happy bunch. Mr Collinson had to be very strict to control all those boys. We all feared and respected him.”
He said Mrs Collinson and her daughter, Barbara, were excellent cooks. “We never went hungry.”
In the summer, the children were all taken to the beach once a week. “We also had occasional cinema trips.”
In 1943 Bill turned 18 and went off to war but his younger brother was to spend more holidays at Treburtha.
Bill eventually became a partner in a big City firm of accountants, and later finance director of Jaeger and then the British Printing Corporation.
He said Mr and Mrs Collinson both lived to a great age. Daughter Barbara married and left Treburtha. The house devolved to son Michael, who never married and lived in Treburtha for a further 60 years.
“But the house was neglected,” Bill said. “The drive became impassable with overgrown brambles, and the main gate was barred and locked. Michael became an eccentric recluse who died only a few years ago.”
After Michael’s death, Treburtha was set on fire by squatters or vandals and has now been demolished. The last of its considerable land is likely to be developed soon. Bill called it “a sad end to a happy house”.
Bill (Stanton 39-43) contacted the club after reading our appeal for stories in the last issue. If you have a story to tell, write to The Editor, OH News, 8 Nichol Road, Eastleigh, Hants SO53 5AS.
Others on the farm may have included:
Eastman Fisher (St 36-41) Later killed in the war. Peter Fisher (St 36-43). Peggy Fisher Sister of the above. Their parents were American and living in the US. Anderson (M 37-42). Geoffrey Twelftree (M 38-40) Parents in Kenya. Nick Robb (St 37-43) Parents in China. Hopkins Brothers (St 38-43) Parents in China. Arthur Sherrard-Smith (M 33-40) Killed in the war in 1942.
Allhallows at war
Bill Henderson at Heavitree over 70 years ago
Treburtha during the war
Bill today
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Those of you ‘in the know’ will recognise the acronym for Old Perrott Hillians, that exclusive band of OHs who attended Perrott Hill Prep School before
going on to Allhallows.
I have been a Governor at Perrott for more than ten years, initially with Mike Davies OH and now with the current Head, Rob Morse, but the association between Perrott and Allhallows goes back a long way and I visited many times under Mike’s predecessors James Barnes and Derek Hoare.
Perrott has probably changed a great deal since you were there as a pupil and those of you who are still in touch will be aware that there are now over 220 boys and girls at the school which boasts superb facilities (for example a theatre, a sports hall and a new astroturf pitch). In other words, the school is thriving and Rob continues to build on the progress made by Mike Davies.
Part of my contribution to Perrott involves looking at the school’s marketing, sitting on the Foundation Committee and most recently being part of an informal group the aim of which is to try to re-establish links with as many OPHs as possible. The school would love to hear from you to find out what you have been up to since you left. Many former pupils keep in touch with their senior schools but fewer with their prep; Perrott would like to reverse that trend if possible.
Please contact the school directly via the website, www.perrotthill.com or if you prefer, email me on [email protected]
We look forward to hearing from you.
Keith Moore
Are you an OPH as well as an OH?
VISIT ALLHALLOWS MUSEUMAllhallows Museum, High Street, Honiton, Devon EX14 1PGTelephone: 01404 44966. Email: [email protected]: Margaret Lewis
Wanted: Allhallows MemorabiliaThe Allhallows Museum would much appreciate it if OHs would be kind enough to donate any school memorabilia to the museum, eg: ties, caps, boaters, scarves, blazers, photographs, books, magazines, cups etc. Please send to: Margaret Lewis, c/o Allhallows Museum.
Opening Times:
Monday 25th March - Saturday 28th September 2013
Monday - Friday: 9.30am – 4.30pm
Saturday: 9.30am – 1.00pm
Closed on Sunday
Monday 30th September - Thursday 31st October 2013
Monday - Friday: 9.30am - 3.30pm
Saturday: 9.30am - 12.30pm
Closed on Sunday
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T here can hardly be an OH who spent time
at Rousdon for whom there are not memories of the Undercliff.
Names such as the Lookout, the Quarry, the
Summerhouse, Humble Point, the Plateau and for an earlier generation Goat Island and Gapper’s Cottage, will bring to mind Sunday afternoons spent away from the rigours of the classroom and the games field. The Undercliff will have influenced virtually everyone’s memories of their time at Allhallows and in many respects the Undercliff helped define the ethos of the school itself. No other school had a comparable asset offering so many possibilities for work and recreation on its doorstep, even if some of the activities which took place were a little dubious, and would not survive today’s safety first culture. The staff understood the importance of the Undercliff to generations of pupils and providing the ‘eleventh commandment’ was not broken, turned a blind eye to much of what went on.
Many pupils found in the Undercliff an outlet for their more intellectual interests, including in some cases their academic studies. Some gained inspiration for art, or even drama and poetry. Many will have learned of the great variety of fauna and
flora to be found there, under the guidance of enthusiastic masters. A number also found that in studying A level and GCSE Geology they had a ready made fieldwork laboratory only a few minutes walk from the classroom. Learning to read, appreciate and understand a landscape is a skill many acquired, and if the comments I have often heard are true, have never lost.
Most however will perhaps have given little thought to the scientific importance of the area of cliffs just below their school. Just why was the Axmouth to Lyme Regis Undercliffs, to give the area its proper name, accorded the designation National Nature Reserve (NNR) with Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) status? Why indeed is it now accorded even higher scientific protection as part of Britain’s only natural World Heritage Site, the Jurassic Coast?
Firstly, the area is home to a unique and extraordinarily varied fauna and flora. This has come about for two reasons. The area faces South and receives abundant moisture from winds blowing in off the sea. (The Rousdon Mist, which all who lived at Rousdon will remember as one of the less desirable characteristics of this corner of East Devon, is another manifestation of the local geography.) The climate allows an extended growing season and little if any frost. As a result plants can grow vigorously and species which would not normally be hardy at this latitude, can thrive.
Additionally the variety of rock types found in the area produces sharp relief, soils varying from alkaline to acidic and some areas which are free draining while others are boggy. This combination produces a wealth of microhabitats, largely undisturbed by man, for many different plants to colonise. With this variation of habitat comes a huge range of animal, bird and insect species, just waiting to be discovered.
Mention of rocks brings to mind the second, and perhaps primary, reason for the Undercliff being accorded such exalted status. The name Jurassic Coast is well chosen, conjuring up the age of dinosaurs, but the name is nowhere more apt than in the area of the Undercliffs below Allhallows, for here the Jurassic rocks are beautifully exposed for study. They do not however contain dinosaurs. The Jurassic rocks in this area were laid down in a sub tropical sea and contain the remains of marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, first discovered by a teenage girl called
Why the cliffs are specialFond reflections of former HeadmasterKEITH MOORE
Charton Bay looking West towards the Plateau, which is a very large mass of Chalk which slid seawards in prehistoric times from the cliff top to form a sea cliff and create Charton Bay.
Charton Bay looking East towards Humble Point. The point itself is the upthrust toe of a complex landslip which was particularly active in the period between the 1920s and 1960s and which progressively destroyed the track to the beach.
25www.oldhonitonians.com
Mary Anning in the early 1800s. The magnificent specimens she discovered can be seen in museums around the world and new discoveries continue to be made today. The reptiles are accompanied by a huge range of other fossils, including the iconic ammonites. So abundant are the latter that they have been used to correlate Jurassic rocks world wide, and define the boundary between the Jurassic period and its predecessor, the Triassic, right here in the Undercliffs.
The geology has also lead to a more infamous reputation for the Undercliff area. The combination of impermeable but soft and slippery Jurassic clays and the permeable Greensand and Chalk which overly the clays has lead to the cliff area being very unstable. Indeed the term undercliff itself refers to the great blocks of rock such as the Plateau (chalk in this case) which have slid down to sea level and given the cliffs their characteristic stepped profile. Some OHs will be senior enough to remember the road to Humble Point, progressively destroyed by landslips during the fifties and sixties; Humble Point itself is not solid rock but a chaotic jumble of boulders at the toe of a large slip. Mostly the slips are of no consequence in an uninhabited area, but the engineer’s cottage at the pumping station was a
casualty, as was the cottage involved in the Great Landslip of Christmas Night 1839, later replaced by Gapper’s Cottage (itself destroyed by fire, possibly as a result of OH activity!).
How then, to summarise the relationship between the Undercliff and Allhallows? Every OH will have their own view and perhaps this piece will jog a few memories and result in some recollections being reported in the OH Magazine. For me,
the Undercliff was a fantastic natural laboratory, where I learned teamwork skills in coastguard rescues, where my children spent their formative years. At the end, the pressures of a hectic time were eased by a few moments spent looking across Charton Bay. The Undercliff had a way of putting things into perspective. Perhaps this was its greatest gift.
SCHEMATIC DRAWING OF AN UNDERCLIFFS LANDSLIP (NOT TO SCALE)Water percolating through the Chalk and Greensand lubricated the surface of the Jurassic beds and weakens the foxmound, allowing large masses of Chalk and Chert to slide seawards, creating the undercliff area.
Rousdon Estate: the next generationLOVINGLY REFURBISHED • STYLISHLY COMFORTABLEUSE OF PRIVATE BEACH • MAGNIFICENT COASTAL VIEWSENJOY LUXURY AND SPACE
There are two wings of the Mansion House available to rent for weekends or holidays; Peek House, which can accommodate 14 people and Billiard House, which can accommodate fi ve.
Call Judith Ellard on 01297 444734 • [email protected]
Peek House Limited, Rousdon Estate, Lyme Regis DT7 3XR www.peekhouse.co.uk • www.billiardhouse.co.uk
Peek H
ouse
Billiar
d House
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J ames Verner OH graduated from St Andrews, before
becoming an itinerant steeplechase fence builder on race courses in Ireland.
Then, a decade after leaving Allhallows, he returned to the West Country to build a reputation as one of the world’s most exciting furniture designers.
Produced in a studio within his 19th century arts and crafts house eight miles from Rousdon, his work has included chairs from £1,800 to £6,000 and a boardroom table for £30,000. His name is now synonymous with excellence in contemporary furniture, and he has featured in top people’s publications from Vogue to the FT.
James (Stanton 1980-85) has worked with top international architects and interior designers to produce commissioned pieces for public and private spaces from West One to the West Indies.
But he says he’s happiest creating bespoke pieces for local clients. “I have to be able to communicate my passion for the material and the design,” he says. “It’s more pleasant to do that in the environment from which they arose rather than in a boardroom in London, or via the internet.”
The local dimension is evidenced in his most recent creation: Coppice Table.
Part sculpture, part table, it’s carved from timber pieces, carefully glued together to appear as one. Made for a client’s home in Beer, Coppice Table was conceived on a walk through woods with the clients
and their dogs and is rooted in the forms suggested by gnarled beech trees there.
He believes his attention to detail has, until now, rarely been seen outside a handful of galleries specialising in design
art. His studio – at his home in Charmouth Forest, surrounded by the woodland he manages and loves – is open to clients by appointment.
“I try to create works that are
durable yet subtle, practical yet
beautiful,” he says. “Their value is
not merely financial. It also rests in
their integrity.”
His furniture is certainly labour intensive. Traditional techniques are combined with cutting-edge technology in an environment that is part artist’s studio, part factory, part laboratory. The scale ranges from dovetails being marked out with surgical scalpels on the one hand, to components shaped
Why Derek is sitting in style
Coppice Table (2012); laminated oak, burr oak, low Iron glass. Dimensions: H 765mm x W 600mm.
Sound Low Table (2010); Stack laminated and carved oak, laser engraved and mirror glass, oiled finish. Dimensions: L 1500mm x W 900 mm x H 450mm.
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by a computer-controlled router being assembled on massive baulks of timber for transfer by forklift truck.
Collaboration is often key to his creative process, James stresses. The design and manufacture of Sound, a large low table in stack-laminated oak and painted laser-engraved glass represents a collaboration of no less than seven individuals and organisations, ranging from a computer graphics specialist in the Midlands to the digital design research cluster at University College, Falmouth.
James had to use the internet on this project. It allowed the unique pattern that was to be laser-etched onto the specially painted glass to be developed as images were sent back and forth between James and the graphics specialist while they talked on the phone. They minutely tweaked the design until it was ready to be emailed to Falmouth for programming into their special laser-etching device.
James says integrity is fundamental. He strives for works that are pared down to an exquisite tension between form and function, and held in balance by his skill as a designer and craftsman. His are iconic pieces that speak to the user not only about the materials and processes of their construction, but also the essence of the object’s function – its purpose.
He was delighted to get a phone call from Derek Blooman in January 2012. Derek
asked if he might come and look at chairs. He was particularly looking for a low arm chair that would suit his Lyme Regis home. James had just the thing, having recently completed a new design that was pared down to the essentials. James’ Club Chair uses sophisticated jointing to enable the seat and back cushions to be supported by a tiny amount of timber. James was keen for the former Allhallows Second Master to see the chair, which was at that time still without its finishing upholstery.
Derek says that he had seen some of James’s work in local exhibitions and admired its direct style. Unable to find a chair that he liked and didn’t resemble a barrage-balloon, he decided to approach James.
An upholstery design was selected and James delivered the chair to Derek’s home six weeks later, providing a good opportunity to catch up on OH news over coffee and biscuits, and prompting James to recall that his second client, back in 1996, had been an OH.
James says his work continues to “explore the eternal themes that lie at the heart of the relationship between a functional object, the nature of its creation and the effect it has upon its user”.
This became very clear when we last visited James and began to discuss the relationship his work has to the woodland around him. Crotch is the first in a series
that is attempting to create animated
pieces from the naturally occurring forms
he finds in the woodland, it has a sculptural
quality that is characteristic of James’ work.
Architects designing bar and restaurant
interiors have been quick to pick up on
this new approach, showcasing his work
in particularly select venues; and James is
hoping to exhibit the series in London in
October 2013.
He keeps his feet firmly on the ground
however and whether he is creating a
design for a London architect or a special
piece for a West Dorset client, James is
characteristically circumspect about his
metier:
“I’m in the business of creating
beautiful objects that have an
intrinsic value, a value that is more
than just financial. The pieces speak
to you. People have a feeling for
them, for their warmth, their place
in their lives”.
Website: www.jamesverner.co.uk
All photography: Maisie Hill
Why Derek is sitting in style
Derek sitting in his Club Chair whilst chatting with James. Crotch (2012); Scorched beech, automobile paint and cowhide. Dimensions: H 530mm x W 220mm.
OH NEWSDESK
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Graham joined the staff of Allhallows as Head of Maths in 1966 and stayed until his retirement in 1992.
Initially they had wondered about moving on after a few years, but, as it worked out, they happily stayed for 26!
Graham’s own schooldays were spent at Haberdashers, a celebrated public school founded almost as long ago as Allhallows. He excelled, becoming School Captain and Captain of Cricket. After National Service and St Catharine’s College at Cambridge, he worked for ICI on the commercial side of the Paints Division.
“But after about six years I decided I would like to go back to what I’d wanted to do when I was a boy – I wanted to teach.”
He taught at a couple of schools in Buckinghamshire before being attracted to Allhallows because, under headmaster Gethyn Hewan, it had already embraced the progressive School Mathematics Project.
Graham remembers the day he and his family first arrived at Rousdon. He had already been to the school for his job interview, when the weather had been good. There had been great excitement when he and Mary told their young children that they were moving to a lovely place by the sea. But as the family car approached Allhallows and swung into the drive, the mood among the kids on the back seat took a dive. You can guess the
next bit – the Joneses found themselves enveloped in a thick Rousdon mist.
The mist eventually lifted and, with four children, the Joneses were thrilled to be accommodated in Home Farm – a large detached house near the art school. “We’d come from a three-bed semi in Beaconsfield!”
As well as head of Maths, Graham went on to become housemaster of Baker, director of studies and a Captain in the CCF, as well as running cricket. Mary’s support and help was of particular value in their running of the school’s participation in Ten Tors, the annual weekend Dartmoor Challenge for young people organised by the Army.
“What was good about teaching at Allhallows?” Graham mused. “At a small school, every teacher certainly has to get involved in a wide variety of activities.”
His children had a happy time growing up on the estate although, understandably, they preferred the holidays, when they had the grounds and the cliffs almost to themselves.
His younger daughter liked riding. “When Hilary rode her pony at dusk, the animal
was always fascinated by little red lights in the bushes, but none of the children ever told me where the smokers were.”
On discipline, Graham declared himself “progressive, but not too fast”. Once asked by the Head to beat a boy for smoking, he doubted the effectiveness of the task. “I knew it would be water off a duck’s back.” But when another pupil stole from the house kitty at the end of term, he felt an instant caning much preferable to having the offence hanging over the boy until the next term.
These days, as well as trying to keep up with their children and grandchildren, Graham and Mary are involved in community life in Combpyne and Rousdon. She’s on the parish council and he is a church warden, and both are on the hall committee. As part of the community Speedwatch team, Graham sometimes mans a radar gun on the A3052 outside the school gates. “That’ll be a warning to OHs, won’t it?”
Graham revealed some of the lighter side of conversation in the staff room. “There could be some moments of frustration in teaching and we’d let off steam by sounding off about them to colleagues.” But there were always pupils’ achievements to celebrate, he said, including two who went on to read Maths at Oxford, as well as less academic ones whose determination ended in triumph.
For the love of AllhallowsOH News talks to former maths master Graham Jones, who calculated that the right answer for him always added up to staying at Rousdon. With his delightful wife, Mary, he now lives just a mile outside the school gates, where this interview took place in the couple’s 18th century cottage.
Graham and Mary Jones: living just down the road from the school gates
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Meet the local Flintstones
All OHs know about the area’s geology and palaeontology, but there’s more underfoot at Rousdon
than sediments and fossils.
That’s according to Bob Davis, who claims to have unearthed evidence of human activity during the Stone Age on or near the school site.
Bob, husband of leading OH Diana Davis, says he has found an ancient hand axe in a ploughed field on the Rousdon clifftop.
The cutting tool is the sort of implement that was last used in the Palaeolithic age, which ended 10,000 years ago. Bob stumbled upon the sharpened flint on the coast side of the field, which is south of the lodge formerly occupied by Shallow. Some OHs may remember the field for the access it provided to Pinnacle Point and the Pinnnacle Path route down to the landslip.
The discovery was made while Bob was walking with friends in September 2011.
“Archaeological experience? I don’t have much,” admitted Bob, who has nevertheless found 30 stone arrowheads.
“I just happen to be good at spotting fossils and stone implements that are lying in my path. I suppose it’s a knack.”
His wife, born Diana Fitzgerald, was at the school from 1969 to 1971 – making her one of the initial female intake. She now serves on the OH committee.
“I met Diana when she was 19,” said Bob, who has become a familiar face at OH events. Because Allhallows has closed and the club is therefore shrinking, he personally wonders whether members should consider merging with ex-pupils of a
school which is still in existence.
A former marketing expert, in recent years he has written three musical plays and hopes to break into the West End. He has staged all three, one of them starring Myf Adams OH as Joan of Arc’s mother. He is not discouraged by the amateur status of his productions to date. “Jesus Christ Superstar was originally done as a school play,” he points out.
As well as the hand axe, Bob found flint offcuts in the field, suggesting that many hand axes were fashioned on that spot. He thinks Stone Age children were probably taught how to make tools there, a few hundred yards from where Allhallows pupils were later taught to write chemical equations and conjugate French verbs.
Bob Davis demonstrates how the hand axe would have been held
“I just happen to be good at spotting fossils and stone implements that are lying in my path. I suppose it’s a knack.”
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Underneath the ArchesDriving back 30 years – BY MARTIN BOULDEN
We stood in front of the school and waited to see who would come next. First to arrive had been Nick
Tadd, followed by Charles Osborne, Henry Bowers-Tolley and me. We had greeted each other with handshakes and hugs.
Now we positioned ourselves to see up the drive and watch the other cars arrive. Thirty years before, we had waited here for our parents to collect us at the end of term. Now we were waiting for Allhallows leavers of around 1983 to join us for a reunion.
The plan had taken shape in June 2012, when Dave Britton and I met up in Bournemouth. We hadn’t seen each other since the 40th birthday bash of Nathaniel Ikeazor in London. After talking about many subjects over dinner, Dave and I decided it would be a great idea to round up as many of our year as we could. Both of us had kept in contact with Allhallows contemporaries and so, after several drinks, we convinced ourselves it would be easy...
Next day I decided to track down as many people from our year as possible. The web
and Facebook make that task easier these days and very soon we had a list of 28 to work on.
We felt the venue had to be the gates of the forecourt at Rousdon, and the time 12.15 on September 29th.
Over the weeks leading up to the rendezvous there were many phone calls and emails. We waited for the day with excitement and, in a few cases, apprehension. With 30 years gone, a principal question was who had most hair left.
As we peered up the drive expectantly that Saturday, OHs were coming as far as 250 miles. Next to arrive were Simon Lynes with Marcus Baldwin and Peter Lawrence. Eventually we had 14 OHs. One great surprise was Robert Tincknell, whom I had only managed to track down 72 hours before.
We all spent the next couple of hours walking around the grounds, remembering the good and bad times of our school years and catching up on the present. The
weather was perfect, and we finished the
tour with photographs.
After all the travelling and adrenalin, it
was soon time to make our way for lunch
at the Mark Hix restaurant overlooking
the Cobb in Lyme Regis. It is a fantastic
setting. The staff – including Lynn, the chef,
and Polly, our waitress for the afternoon –
served great seafood and drinks. They even
personalised menus as a souvenir for us to
take away!
Suddenly a final surprise – James Verner,
the 15th member to join us!
Leaving Hix around 6pm, some of us said
goodbye while others attempted to re-live
their youth. At midnight even they said
their farewells and fell asleep. A decade
earlier it would have been 2am but the
buzz of the occasion proved too much even
for Charles Osborne!
It was an amazing day, and of course we
remembered our two friends who are
no longer with us – Andrew Weston and
Eduardo Gonzalez.
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Tony Jacob (St 39-44): Arrived in England by ship from New Zealand in August 1939 with his parents and older sister. He was expected to be trained for the family business, Jacobs Biscuits, but after they joined with Peek Frean’s and Huntly and Palmers and having been a director for 8 years, he returned to New Zealand in 1972. He keeps in touch with Derrick Webber (St 36-44) who lives in Ottery St Mary and also Richard Syrett (St 40-44) living in Newton Abbott.
David Chanter (M 40-45) thanked us for the 2012 OH Magazine and said it was the best since 1945. He was interested to read the delightful message from John Sherrard-Smith (M/B 37-44) in Australia, whose brother Arthur (M 33-41) was killed in Bomber Command over Germany. David, who was a Chartered Accountant, says he is lucky to be very fit and only gave up tennis a few months ago.
Derek Shelton (C 42-45) married Evita in Mexico City in 1953; they had a storybook marriage, which took them all over the world and lasted for 58 years and each year was better than the last. Sadly it all ended suddenly in November 2011, when Evita had a heart attack in Huntingdon Beach, California and went home to live with God in heaven. Besides her husband, she left three children with their spouses and eight grandchildren – thanks be to the Trinity.
Alasdair Carnegie (Sh 48-52), who wrote ‘Down Memory Lane at the Shallow End’ in the 2011 OH Magazine, reported that he hadn’t received one this year, probably because he has moved recently. He says that for his part, 2011 was not a good year. Alasdair lost a leg while on an army exercise in 1963 and after 48 years of hard work his hip gave up the ghost in a spectacular way. He had three/four months in a wheelchair, walking frame, etc, but now after a total hip replacement, he is beginning to get back to some normality. Alasdair is not sure if he will be on the golf course for a while, which is a pity as he has been playing some very enjoyable Amputee Golf – he made up the numbers in the British and European Open Amputee Championship in 2007, and didn’t quite come last! He played in the Bader Pipe in 2006 and regularly with and sometimes for BLESMA. He says that the standard of golf among the top players is fantastic.
Rehabilitation without a “good” leg takes
some time. However, he was privileged to be asked to join the BLESMA (British Limbless Ex-Service Men’s Association) contingent at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday and made it with some determination. It’s good to have a bit of a challenge and he enjoyed the “march past” on his buggy.
Chris Bazalgette (St 52-53) mainstay of OH Cricket Week for many years, says he has sadly played his last game of cricket, aged 72, thanks to the depredations of arthritis. Chris used to work for ‘The Cricketer’ and in May 2011 his update of ‘Think Cricket’, which has sold over 5000 copies and his autobiography ‘Who Knows Who’, which previews some 44 profiles of famous people he has known and one on General Sir Roger Wheeler written by Nigel French, were published. Chris promises to give £5 to the Club, out of the cost price of £15 (£3 p and p), if any buyers approach the OH Club. Chris still keeps in touch with Stuart MacGregor and the Appleyards et al. and sends his best wishes to all. Please tell Fiona (Ch 84-86) to send us some news.
Julian Pearce (C 53-57) an old chum of Giles Blomfield (C 53-57) met him in Majorca, recently where he had gone after working in London in printing and graphic design. Julian soon prospered in the 1970s boom and later remarried. By chance in 1992 he was asked by a German to find a site for a holiday home and has since designed and built over 28 substantial holiday homes for an International clientele all over the island. Julian’s son Stuart (C 77-78) who spent one short year with us is happily married and flourishing as a photographer.
Nigel French (C 55-60) retired and moved nearly three years ago with his wife Steph from Berkshire to Somerset where his latest children aged 9 & 8 are at Millfield prep. A quirk of coincidence meant that in Berkshire his sons were in the same school as Alec Crawford’s grandchildren Hugo and Toby and now having moved 150 miles west his younger son Barney shares a classroom with Roger Wheeler’s grandson, Wilf! He wonders what odds
William Hill would have given, on that wet and misty evening in September 1955 when Roger, Alec and Nigel all joined Allhallows in the Dower House that Nigel’s children would be educated with their respective grandchildren. Melanie (C1987-89), Nigel’s younger daughter is living with her two young boys, 4 & 2, in County West Meath, Eire. She and her husband are both sculptors with Melanie’s commissions dotted around the towns of Ireland.
Chris Vallins (St 55-60) is a Canon of Guildford Cathedral and greatly enjoys his duties and has been appointed Chair of one of the National Research Ethics Committees. (Part of the Health Research Authority.) This entails reviewing new drugs, medicinal products and medical devices in order to protect the health and welfare of research participants, who may be patients or volunteers. The aim is to enable good quality medical research in this country with the best possible outcome for society, whilst ensuring the minimum of risk and damage to participants, who must be given full details of any trial and give informed consent to participate. He also tells us that his step-daughter has recently opened a pet shop in Sidmouth.
Roger Webster (C 56-59) sent a welcome update. He still keeps active by helping at the Bodmin Steam Railway as Duty Manager and playing the organ in the local church. His son Alex, who excelled at rugger and art and was at Allhallows when it closed, has left the Eden Project after 10 years and is looking for another suitable job. Typically Roger sent a super railway card featuring the Combpyne Express, which carried the boys to Axminster and over the Cannington Viaduct, until it was closed in 1965.
Nick Warner (B 58-62) kindly sent us Seb’s (B 93-98) new address after his return to the UK from Hong Kong and says it is 18 years since he left the Army and is enjoying his retirement with Rosemary at Studland on the borders of Poole harbour, where he has been hauling up lobster pots and nets for the last 16 years, though he has now given up his commercial licence.
Aunt Agatha 2011-2012We feed news onto the OH Website as soon as we receive it. We would love to hear from those who haven’t corresponded with us – the more amusing the better. Our thanks as always to Nigel Giles.
OTTER BREWERYDelighted to support Aunt Agatha
Aunt Agatha sponsorship ad small.indd 1 01/12/2011 15:14
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Nick will encourage Seb and Ed (V 85-90) to send some news.
Anthony Vosper (C 58-63) and his wife, Felicite, moved to Sherborne just over four years ago and are very well settled into town life - a new departure after over 25 years in the depths of West Berkshire. Anthony is much involved in local life and has in the last three years been the Chairman of the Fundraising Committee for St John Ambulance (Dorset) and is currently on the County Committee of ABF the Soldiers Charity. He is currently trying his hand with a little broadcasting for Radio Sherborne. Son, James is about to relinquish command of 11 Signal Regiment in Blandford and has very recently been promoted, Colonel. Daughter, Susanna is a speech therapist working in Manchester.
Robert Talbot (M 59-62) and his wife still roam between Italy and the South of France and enjoy the Mediterranean life-style, though not in winter. However, they have decided to sell up and base themselves in Lymington, where they have a small townhouse overlooking the river and the Isle of Wight, until they head to either the Bahamas or Florida. Their Art and Antiques business has survived the storm for which they are most grateful, but taxes are too high and there is too much bureaucracy and socialism in France. In Italy there is a different atmosphere; they work hard and enjoy themselves and find ways around the bureaucracy. Robert has been in contact with Dara Minbashian (M 59-65) who is a high-powered banker in Sydney, but we weren’t able to tell him the whereabouts of James Le Mesurier (C 57-60), Douglas Bowen (c 59-63) and Robert Hollins (M 58-60), though we gave him Derek Ridge’s (M 60-65) address in Dorset. Robert says that his brother Harold continues to live between the UK and Ireland and would welcome hearing from any of his contemporaries.
David McCaig’s (Sh 59-63) family business the Otter Brewery at Luppitt near Honiton has been voted Brewery of the Year for 2013 by ‘The Good Pub Guide’ The Holt, part of the McCaig empire in Honiton, is recommended to OHs.
Derek Blooman (H 59-98) browsing in the 1954 School Magazine found that Jack Jarchow, who will be remembered with great affection, by so many OHs, noticed that ‘Bernard’ who regularly solved the incredibly difficult ‘Time and Tide’ Crosswords, at which Jack excelled, had given the answer in another competition for a most useless piece of mechanism as a ‘St. Bernard egg de-topper.’
Jack in a spirit of leg-pull ordered a dozen
for the Masters’ Common Room. To his surprise he received a type-written reply as follows: ‘The Directors and Managers of St. Bernard Patent – Boiled Egg De-Toppers. Inc, thank the Manager of the Allhallows School Shop, Rousdon, Lyme Regis, Dorset, for his esteemed order of the 3rd inst, but regret to inform him that owing to a lightning strike of Pick-Fixers the manufacturers of St. Bernard Patent Boiled Egg De-Toppers must be held in abeyance until such time as government see fit to step in and settle the strike. Meanwhile it is suggested the occupants of MCR switch to scrambled.
Alan Thomas (H 63-74) phoned in April to say that unlike us they were having some unusually warm weather in Ottawa and that he will be guest organist at the Ontario Welsh Festival at Niagara Falls in April and then plans to see some plays at Stratford, Ontario, with his great friends Tim and Frances Edwards (C 66-71), when they come up from Nova Scotia. Alan who was Director of Music at Ashbury College, Ottawa, after Allhallows, is taking a sabbatical this year from the International Festival of Wales in the USA, but still finds time himself accompanying singers and is always happy to hear from OH friends and Stantonites.
Richard Nicoll (V 64-68): Lives in Williamsburg, Virginia where he is the Director of the Coach and Livestock Department of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, one of the largest living History Museums in the world. See their Website www.colonialwilliamsburg.com
Richard Hurlock (M 65-69) reports that his daughter Dr. Kathy Adam, née Hurlock (Ch 95-98) now has a little daughter Ada – an excuse for champagne! Patrick Groves (C 64-69) is still recruiting overseas students for Pembroke’s educational system, while Dr Jeremy Harding (C 64-69) and Nick Lerwill (V63-68) are in the pink!
Tim Edwards (C 66-71) wrote from Nova Scotia to say that he and his wife Francis spent a lovely week in Cuba and their youngest son Oliver cruised around Hudson’s Bay last summer on a research ship. His brother Tristan is studying naval architecture at Newfoundland Uni and Stephen works in Toronto as an estate manager, while Gareth is an Associate with the US-based architects SOM.
Justin Tunstall (St 69-73) of the Townmill Cheesemonger, Lyme Regis, has been named Dorset’s Best Independent Food Shop. Justin has already won awards from The Times, The Independent and The Guardian.
Martin Penfold (C 66-70) is living in Canada and immersed in a time consuming farming / ranching existence; he says that he is never able to celebrate any of the events with his fellow OHs. Martin says he regrets, for sure, as he looks back on all the get-togethers etc., that are organised. Many thanks he says for keeping him in touch with his early years.
Ted Sandbach (St 67-71) was in the sunshine with the Free Foresters in a hard-hitting match with the Devon Dumplings at Seaton on July 10th, and other matches during the week on the Seaton ground. Derek was able to have a chat with Ted about Colin’s (St 69-74) recent literary exploits, and the super case of wine he purchased from [email protected], much appreciated by his friends.
Dr Andrew Llewelyn (Sh 68-73) who succeeded ‘Ferdie’ Dr A Fernandez as School MO, continues to lead an adventurous life; he once sailed the Atlantic from Lyme Regis with his wife Caroline in aid of Cancer Charity and hopes next year to sail down the coast of Chile and home around the Horn, though Caroline wisely may not do the whole trip. In October 2012 Andrew with 30 cyclists, plus support crew, will ride 800 miles from Axminster to Turin in Italy. Their aim is to raise awareness of Depression in memory of Philippa Corbin, who sadly took her own life at the age of 27, Depression is a major cause of death among young people. Visit: www.slowridetoturin.co.uk Andrew still runs his practice in Harley Street and his four grown-up children work in the Lords, a High Commission, Education and the City.
Peter Clegg (C 69-74) and his wife Jennifer called on Justin Tunstall (St 69-73) at his Townsmill Cheesemonger on their way through Lyme Regis last summer and were amazed to see a model crown sculpted from a 27lb block of Cheddar by Camilla, daughter of Martin Johnstone (M 68-73). Peter occasionally bumps into James Negaard (St 70-75) a highly competitive amateur tennis-player and Andrew Green (V 70-74) frequently drops in, when he visits his parents in Bournemouth. Peter is taking his young son aged 12 to an ‘Intelligence Squared’ debate at the RIBA, when the topic is ‘The bombing of German cities in WW2 was unjustifiable’. Doubtless ‘Bomber’ Harris will get a mention.
Nigel Clist (C 67-71) is a senior NFU Group Secretary based in Yeovil, who care for farmers’ interests and insurance over a wide area. Nigel and his Canadian wife Sarah live on a 6 acre property between Chard and Axminster and keep sheep, a horse or two, two Burmeese cats and a
33www.oldhonitonians.com
black Labrador. Their daughter Philippa, who also works for the NFU plans to marry in 2013. Nigel is an obsessive trout and salmon fisherman and Chairman of Axe Valley Fishers, of which Gethyn Hewan was a member and Patrick McCaig (C 79-84) of Otter Ales is now. Nigel was in the run organised by Richard Anderson (M 67-71) and Peter Sloan (B 66-71) at their’71 Leavers’ Reunion in 2011 on the Rousdon Estate and enjoyed meeting many of his contemporaries. In March 2012 Nigel arranged a small ‘get-together’ in Stockbridge attended by Paul (C 67-72) and ‘Fuzzy’, née Husband (C 71-73) Hellier, Peter Rooke (St 68-72), Tessa Eveleigh (C 71-73), Brian (C 68-72) and Rosemary Meeke and Sue, née Strickland (Ch 70-72) and David Jackson. He occasionally meets farmers Harry Fry (Sh 68-71) and Philip Pocock (B 73-75).
Stuart Sprake (V 68-73) who runs a very successful English School in Spain tells us that his son Pablo had a bit of fun when he sang in a local concert given by up and coming bands at a city concert hall. Stuart says, not to be taken too seriously; it is just good fun for them. But participating in the concert did distract them a bit too much with Uni first year finals around the corner...fingers crossed.
Colin Sandbach (St 69-74) recently retired from the Army, but still works for the MOD and lives with his wife Nicky at Shaftesbury two hundred yards away from those delightful OHs Mike Stoate (B 75-78) who runs a milling business and Jeremy Brown (V 84-89) who is an events manager. Colin will be remembered by his contemporaries like his brother Ted (St 67-71) as an outstanding cricketer, but believe it or not enjoyed studying at Allhallows that rocky eminence Bismarck, which he found useful when he was in BAOR. Colin took an Open University degree in History and has written a book on the Greek Myths ‘Fates Furies and Fables, An Hellenic Haphazardly’; he recalls clandestine visits to ‘The Nag’s Head’ and never being caught and sends his best wishes to Graham Jones and Alan Thomas.
Susan Jackson, née Strickland (Ch 70-72) who came with her husband to the ’71 Reunion on the Rousdon Estate sent a super card with news that building work on their house in Oxford, where Sue is a Lawyer, has been completed. Sue who read Law at Bristol extols the virtues of reading a subject like History as her sons Will and George did at Nottingham and St Andrews before converting to Law and Accountancy respectively. Her daughter Elizabeth is reading International Relations at Loughborough and has enjoyed a spell in Sweden. Sue has happy memories of the
lovely atmosphere at Allhallows.
Andrew Green (V 70-74) says an excellent dinner was arranged recently at Simpson’s in the Strand by John Wong from his Hong Kong office....Those attending included James Negaard (with stories of tennis tournaments and the state of the Gold Market) Dave Danskin (lawyers fees have been increased) Matt Phillips (now named Granddad of the year) Gavin Howard (army stories par excellence) Mark Williams (with exotic hats from Bird in the Hand Hotel) Rob Scowen (with tales from Turkmenistan) Charlie Harding (tales of running a Solicitor’s office) Andrew Green (retired from Collins Publishers sat taking notes). We were dining on roast beef and yorkshire pudding, John presented Mark with a hand tailored jacket flown in from Hong Kong for Marks local golf club! The head Maitre D tipped James off that there was a television in the Upstairs bar showing England and Sweden Football live!!! James soon led a posse of fans upstairs before the pudding was served!! (England won that evening!) Steve de Wild rang in to say apologies he couldn’t join us due to a 3.00am conference call to Kota Kinabalu office! Simpsons was an excellent venue as even the tables of 10 were laid out in the Allhallows Dining Room arrangement! Congratulations to John Wong for organising such an excellent OH dinner!!
Piers Markham (C 70-74) welcomed his old Housemaster, when Derek dropped into Whistle Wines adjacent to Exeter Central Station. Piers runs a super wine shop for anyone who wants anything from vin ordinaire to high quality vino; he says he has occasionally met Richard Horsfall (C 66-70) the actor Steve Copp (Sh 72-76) and had eats with Justin Tunstall (St 69-73) cheesemonger par excellence in Lyme Regis.
Chris Pickett (C 70-74). Purple Glory personified has played a major role in the world of hockey since he left Allhallows. He was in Havant HC 1st XI for 15 years, won his county colours and became Manager of the 1st XI when they won three Premier National Titles in four years. In 1997 he became Manager of the England Under 21 men’s hockey team and in 1999 became the GB Ladies Hockey Team Manager for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and remained Manager for nine years and retired after the Beijing Olympics. On the way back from a tour to Australia Chris was royally entertained by John Wong (C 70-75) in Hong Kong. Chris runs the family jewellery business Picketts and Pursers, Petersfield, and sent some splendid photos of himself on the Great Wall, his eldest daughter Sarah who helps in the business, Jonathan, like Chris is a keen Golfer, and his wife
Vanessa and the two younger children Henry and Ella still at school.
Nick Lindo (H 70-76) former Head of English and Housemaster of Stanton, wrote from Christchurch NZ, with family news and to say that after the 7.1 earthquake of September 4th 2010, the 6.3 on February 22nd 2011 was far worse. The heart of Christchurch City was torn out to leave death, disastrous damage, including the mortally wounded Cathedral, epicentre of their community. Their house turned out to be far more seriously damaged than they first realised and the stark options of repair or rebuild face them. But Nick was cheered by the news that NZ beat Australia by 7 runs. Nick still writes a political column ‘Eye on Politics’ in a country where coalition government is the norm. Nick and Jean hope to visit the UK 2012.
Mark Hunt (C 72-75) reports that he invited Patrick McCaig (C 79-84) as Guest Speaker to the Exeter Golf Club and Country Club to talk about the family business of Otter Breweries and he was a smash hit as expected, a showman par excellence. Mark chats regularly to his great friend Chris Kitchen (C 68-73) former Captain of Cricket and helps John Harper (B 58-63) weather permitting with OH Golf.
Andrew Hughes (St 72-77) who farms near Andover was given the BBC Farmer of the Year Award by Countryfile for wild life conservation. Andrew has a wildflower meadow and a herd of endangered cattle among other attractions and regularly takes parties of schoolchildren, students and adults around his farm on educational tours. Visit www.trinley.co.uk Andrew, who has a house in Lyme Regis up Clappentail Lane beyond Derek, was at the West Country Lunch as usual.
Jamie Martin (Sh 73–78) writes from Sierra Leone: I am out here commanding the International Military Advisory and Training Team, which has been in existence since 2001 working to improving the capabilities of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces. Our role now is primarily mentoring, advising and supporting them. I have been here for about 18 months, with another year to go. Sierra Leone is an amazing place - desperately poor, struggling with very limited resources to improve infrastructure and government facilities, but with delightful people and amazing beaches. The job is by turns challenging, frustrating, bizarre and fun! Needles to say if any OHs happen to find themselves in Sierra Leone I would be delighted to see them.
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Mark Yallop (St 73-78) read Chemistry at Oxford, but then worked for many years for Deutsche Bank becoming the most senior Brit in the business. A spell followed at ICAP. Temporary illness knocked him off course, but in May he took part in a 100Km charity cycle-ride across Dartmoor. Mark chairs the Endowment Campaign of his old Oxford College, but has kept his Devon links with a house on the Dart between Totnes and Dartmouth. His wife Rosemary is studying for a D Phil in architectural history at Oxford and their daughter is about to read English there, while their son James is at Eton.
Lindsay Ganju (née Thompson) (Sh 75-77): Is married with three children and lives on the outskirts of Melbourne. Lindsay left the UK in 1986 for a year’s travel and work but did not get further than Australia where she met her husband and, apart from three years in the USA, has been there ever since. Lindsay works part time as a chemotherapy nurse and also as Practice Administrator for her husband’s medical practice. Lindsay keeps in touch with Kyra Neubauer (Sh 75-77), Debbie Bliss (M 75-77) and Jane Greening (M 75-77).
Philip Ainsworth (C 75-79), Steve Double (St 74-79), Robert Shaw (St 74-79) and Haydon Williams (M 75-79) got together in November 2011 for a trip down memory lane. They stayed in a splendid house owned by Robert in Lyme, where work is in progress, and went on a tour of the Rousdon estate, which proved very nostalgic. It was Philip’s first return for over 25 years and brought back many happy memories. He says it was of some concern that whilst they all looked their ages, after an excellent dinner and plenty of beer in a local pub they all crashed out at Robert’s listening to Hawkwind until 3.0am. Later they realised they had wives and families and had better revert to more sensible behaviour until they meet again.
James Chiswell (C 77-81) back from Afghanistan wrote at Christmas 2011 to say that he and his wife Linda are now the proud parents of a young son Alexander.
Mohammed Atri (C 77-81) phoned Derek his former housemaster in March from Alpharetta, Georgia, USA, to chat about the good old days. Mohammed, who was a top art student at Allhallows, now runs a picture framing business and like us in the UK hopes the economy will revive soon. Mohammed and his wife hope to visit England again, air-fares permitting. He sends his best wishes to Donald Mathewson, his Headmaster.
Richard and Caroline Tracey (H 77-89) are still running their popular French courses at Le Grand Osier, St Helen, Dinan, Brittany, when they are not sailing around the Eastern Mediterranean on their boat ‘Miranda’. Caroline’s ‘Essential French Grammar for the Sixth Form and beyond’ has recently been published, which they hope will be a success. Christopher got his International Baccalaureate last summer and is studying Aerospace Engineering in Hertfordshire and keeps in touch with his Allhallows godfather John Stubbs. Henry is in the Lower Sixth studying six subjects in Ashby-de-la-Zouche; he too regularly sees his Allhallows godfather, Dr. David Whittle, Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School.
Andrew Robson (St 78-83) trained as a chartered surveyor and was a commercial and residential property developer until the market changed. Recently he has retrained as a Green Energy Surveyor doing commercial Energy Performance Certificates and TM44 Air Conditioning Surveys. He has been married for 16 years to Jane and has a son aged 11. He lives in Dorset and completed the Etape Du Tour (mountain stage of the Tour De France) 5 times, the Marmotte 1 time (Europe’s hardest sportive) and completed and finished half Ironmen triathlons and most recently became a full Ironman – 3.8 km swim, 180 km cycle followed by a full marathon run. Andrew is in business with (Will Ferguson (Sh 78 – 83) and often sees Simon Gibbons (St 79-83) and also regularly speaks to David Peddley (M 78-83) (living in Australia) and Patrice Belle (St 78 – 83) (living in France). Andrew is very proud to have been the only pupil mentioned in Derek Blooman’s 2011 departure article – for totally ignoring his advice to stay in and not lose his wicket against Kings Bruton – he hit his first ball into the church yard for 6 runs only to be out 2 balls later. Andrew says to say that Derek was livid is an understatement, however they both laugh about it now.
Chris Owen (Sh 80-85) along with his two brothers Will and Hugh studied at Allhallows. Chris is now married to Claire, living in Birmingham with a teenage son. He studied engineering at University, and then worked in industry and consulting and now is lecturing at Aston University. Sophie Cooper née Branston (Ch 80-91) is now married to James Cooper living in Bath and has just given birth to a gorgeous baby daughter Matilda.
Jason Barber (B 81-85) a dairy farmer near Broadwindsor in Dorset was the subject of a fascinating article in the November Marshwood Vale Magazine, which says that he and his team have started to produce
a high quality Black Cow Vodka, made from milk which is sold at Justin Tunstall’s The Townsmill Cheesemonger, The River Cottage Canteen in Axminster and a few other select outlets. Jason was inspired by the people of Tuva in southern Siberia who make vodka from Yak’s milk and he admits he tried to ferment orange juice at Allhallows.
Chris Redmond (C 81-85) was in the RA for over a decade and gained a BSc at the RMCS, Shrivenham. More important he married Carolyn and they now have three children. Freddie 11, Oliver 9 and Charlotte 8. Chris joined ICC and worked for about 5 years on IT projects and solutions; he was then offered a job by Dell in the IT Infrastructure Services Business Unit and they financed his MBA at the Henley Business School. Chris lives in the desirable neighbourhood of Fleet in Hampshire and is in regular touch with Christian Apsey (B 80-85) and is Godfather to his son Charles. It was great to meet you again Chris at the AGM & Reunion.
Tim Jones (M 84-89) sent a breezy weather report in the New Year from Afghanistan, where with other NATO Coalition Troops he has been busy training the Afghan Army. Before 10.00am it is shrivellingly cold, but mid-morning and afternoons are gloriously warm. Heavy snow during the religious festival meant that the locals didn’t clear the snow, which resulted in the most lethal ice-rink in the world that thaws and freezes harder than diamonds. However, the Americans are on hand to help the unwary. Tim has been to top Afghan meetings, furnished with elaborate Chandeliers like palm trees and a few light-bulbs, where EU style interpreters speak into their ear-pieces. After a light and early breakfast Tim goes to the gym (yes you read this right); he skypes home, shaves and as he remembers Iraq keeps his mouth shut as there are traces of poo in the heavily chlorinated water. He retires to his bunk about 11.30pm, which is the standard day, punctuated by recces in Kabul. The weather is warmer and they are now threatened with floods, but have another office change with the Danes and Germans. Best of luck Tim. You are not the only OH there.
Libby Kind (Ch 85-88) former Head of School is now working at Perrott Hill Preparatory School, Crewkerne, Somerset, and loving it. Charles Thompson (M 68-72) has been teaching French there for many a year and Keith Moore (H 70-98) former Headmaster of Allhallows is a governor of this fine Preparatory School in a beautiful house and grounds.
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Edward Warner (V85-90) is now married to Elizabeth and lives on the Chatsworth Estate in Derbyshire with his son Lawrence (7) and daughter Elspeth (3). He works for a French construction company in the UK, based in Banbury. Ed still regularly heads down to Dorset for the shooting and to see friends including Will Ferguson (Sh 78-83) and family and went for a walk around the old school last Christmas with brother Sebastian (V 93-98) which he said was great fun. He has also developed a keen interest in longbow archery with making and shooting medieval style “warbows”!
Nick Dodge (L 86-90) and his brother Chris (C 78-82) were in the world powerboat series race and came third – an amazing achievement.
Alastair Crawford (Sh/V 88-93) one of Philip Graves-Morris’s star artists, who has regularly exhibited his work since he left Allhallows, is showing recent work during the Frome Festival from 6th to 13th July 2012, in an exhibition called ‘Conflict’ at The Parlour contemporary art, 15 Paul Styreet, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DT, which is open from 11.00 - 16.00 on Friday, but closed on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. His new work explores how we perceive the sensual and traumatic impulses of conflict and uses wire, hessian, bottle tops and photo-journalistic drawings.
Julian Beard (B 88-93) is busy working in the family insurance business, which has expanded greatly in the last 2 years in Southampton. He is married to the lovely Lucy and they have a charming daughter Imogen. Contemporaries will remember Julian as an outstanding actor; he regrets that he hasn’t time for any drama, but is still a keen rugger-player and swimming the Solent this summer. Look out chaps he has also taken up boxing.
Sue Bourhill (H 88-98) met Derek and Margaret Clark recently at the Ship, Axmouth, who learnt that she has left her post as a House Parent at The Royal Hospital School, Ipswich, where she had the daughter of an OH in her house. Sue now resides in her cottage in Colyton and is catching up with OH colleagues and friends.
Patrick Newton (M 89-93) has been TEFL teaching in Japan for some years now and has been instructing staff at a Japanese airport. Patrick married a Japanese girl and having escaped the Tsunami, which did so much damage to the nuclear plant, he and his wife and son have recently visited family and friends in the UK. His mother tells me it is wonderful to communicate with him via Skype.
Simon Lane (M 90-93) is a hard-working barrister based in Exeter.
Hamish Eyre (M 91-96) is a commercial helicopter pilot and has a fine collection of performance cars; he recently returned from a road trip to Rumania.
Francis Mortimer (M 91-96) works for Nationwide in Swindon and he and Anthea have a two years old daughter Phoebe.
Piers Broadhead’s (V 91-96) horse-feed business Copra goes from strength to strength and his daughter Eliza is two years old. Charles Murray is her godfather.
Chris Lane (V 91-96) star hockey player and Army Officer has been busy training for another tour in Afghanistan, his daughter Eva is five months old.
Charles Murray (V 91-96) has again sent news of his contemporaries. As a property developer he is finishing a project in Sidmouth, but is also an avid cyclist, who followed the Tour of France and took part in three alpine stages, racking up 5000 miles in 2012.
Christopher Mager (St 92-93) lives at Ratzeburg, about 30 miles north east of Hamburg. He studied law at the University of Kiel, becoming a Doctor of Law, and is now a Judge at the district court. His brother, Martin (V 93-96), lives in Munich where he is a solicitor with Linklaters LLP.
Jamie Greig (M 92-95) is still climbing trees as a Tree Surgeon and his daughter Isabella is almost two years old.
Robin Askew (L 92-97) has been married to Laura for four years, a Business Manager for a Newbury medical firm. But their life-style has changed considerably since the birth of their son William, now 18 months, who prefers outdoors, water, animals – anything rather than sleep. Robin has taught at a large comprehensive, then moved to become Head of Year in Reading and is now Head of Geography at the Mary Hare School for the Deaf for children with severe or profound hearing loss, who are taught through the auditory approach rather than sign language. It is state funded and residential for UK pupils and like Allhallows has excellent extra-curricular activities and opportunities for field work, one of Robin’s passions; they have recently trekked and explored glaciers and volcanoes in Iceland. Robin is in contact with Gareth Davies (L 92-97) Asian Director for World Challenge in Melbourne, who hopes to return to the UK.
Lucy Graves-Morris (L 93-96) gave us the sad news that her mother Melanie had died after a serious illness bravely born. A thanksgiving Service for Melanie in St Andrew’s Colyton, was taken by Brigadier Nigel Speller OH and attended by many OHs and other friends. Our deepest sympathy goes to Lucy, Alexander and Henrietta.
Seb Warner (V 93-98) is home from Hong Kong with his wife Emma and their baby daughter Winnie. He is still working for Knight Frank and continues to deal with their Asian markets. After Allhallows Seb had a wonderful year at Wanganui NZ, where his great grandfather Frank Gilligan, brother of the English cricket captain, had been Headmaster. Seb played for the Hawkes Bay U21s, which was quite a shock. He read Geology at Royal Holloway and was picked for the London Irish U21s. After Savills he moved to a challenging job with Knight Frank in central London residential portfolios. Seb looks forward to the next OH gathering.
Robert Dickinson (L 94-98) qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young in 2007, after taking a First in History at Oxford, but then moved to Citigroup in Canary Wharf as an Equity Research Analyst covering the Pharmaceutical Sector and now specialises in firms like Nestlé and Unilever in the Consumer Sector. More important in August 2011 Robert married Afua, whom he had met at Somerville, Oxford. Their wedding was at the Brompton Oratory, near where they live, and where Robert’s grandparents were married about 65 years ago. Congratulations to you both from us all. Robert still keeps in touch with, Mathew Carter, Jamie Simpson, Toby Davis and Alexis Burrows. Robert drove through the Rousdon estate when he was last down in Dorset and says the Mansion remains a splendid sight, though the absence of the glorious cricket pitch is a shame.
Will Murray (L 94-98) has captained Sidmouth CC for six years and in 2012 they won the Premier League and Devon Cup.
James Sienesi (V94-98) became a Chartered Electrical Engineer this year and has moved jobs to take up a role in an engineering consultancy firm in Bristol. A keen Dumplings cricketer, James has stepped down from the 1st XI captaincy but continues to play for a club in the Bristol area. More important James married this summer in Surrey. Congratulations from us all.
36
Ancient inn for (fairly) ancient OHsAN OH who owns a pub – what better person could there be to organise a reunion?
John Armstrong (Baker 62-67) is just that, an affable landlord who holds OH reunions in his pub.
The first was in 2009, followed by another in 2011, with a gourmet menu served both times.
The pub, the White Horse at Ampfield in Hampshire, dates from 1625 and has stone floor, oak beams, two bars and a split-level restaurant. A warm winter welcome radiates from no less than three log fires.
It has proved a happy place for reunions of OHs who left around the late 1960s.
But not entirely happy for the landlord himself. John relished the chance to entertain his school chums and dazzle them with gastronomic wonders but he was less enthusiastic about the admin and emails involved in inviting, chasing up and taking orders from his oft-forgetful OH guests.
Last year came a solution. The November 2012 gathering was organised by another OH, administrator par excellence John Pagliero (Stanton 62-67).
That allowed John to get on with designing the special £25-a-head three-course menu for OHs and their guests, who this year numbered 28. Main-course choices ranged from Textures of Cauliflower to Rack of English Lamb.
John is happy to continue hosting the event regularly, as long as others do the admin.
“I think it would be quite good to change who organises it each year,” he said.
Among Rousdon reminiscences aired at this year’s feast was one of a boy said to have hidden from an inexperienced master by kneeling on a table behind the blackboard. Whenever the puzzled teacher wrote something on the board and turned back to the class, the boy would reach around and rub out what he had written.
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The first authentic record of St Michael’s in 1406 speaks of it being a small Chapel.
The tower and nave were built in about 1480 and despite the church suffering from a fire in 1911, the tower survived.
The Church is 25 metres long and 15 metres wide, unusually making the plan a perfect rectangle accounting for the fine acoustic qualities.
St Michael’s was the parish Church of Honiton but after the building and consecration of St Paul’s Church in the High Street in 1838, St Paul’s took on a more central role in the parish.
Whilst during the summer months St Michael’s is still used for weddings and funerals and a regular Thursday service of Holy Communion, there have been plans in existence since the mid 1990s to provide the necessary facilities to enable the church to be used for a wide range of activities including concerts and exhibitions and to provide for the needs of the local community in the vicinitiy of the church.
In 2011 a decision was taken to close St Michael’s during the winter months in order to economise on heating and maintenance costs.
When Allhallows closed in 1998 and the estate was sold to developers, there was
an urgent need to find a new home for the many valuable artifacts from the school chapel. The OH Club Chapel Action Group was charged with undertaking the search for a new home and the Rector of Honiton, Prep James Trevelyan, warmly welcomed the proposal to establish the Allhallows War Memorial Chapel within St Michael’s, Honiton. The architect responsible for the plans for the Chapel was Christopher Lambert OH and to him fell the task of incorporating into the Chapel the memorial, artifacts from the school chapel at Rousdon.
The magnificent English oak reredos positioned on the back wall behind the altar was originally erected in the original school chapel in Honiton, now the Museum, in 1921 as a war memorial to those OHs who gave their lives in the First World War. This reredos is considered to be one of the finest examples of ecclesiastical carving of its time.
The altar front, commemorating members of the Lillies family, is of beaten bronze and richly gilded. Said to be the only metal altar front in an English church except for the silver one at Sandringham, and originally installed in the School Chapel in Honiton, it was presented by Arthur Chudleigh and members of the Lillies family.
The Memorial panels with the names of 140 OHs who lost their lives in the First
St Michael’s Church, HonitonIncorporating the Allhallows War Memorial Chapel
WEDDINGMr P.S. Larkman and Mrs J.M. Hollows
The marriage took place on Saturday December 1st, 2012 at St. Mary’s Church, Beaminster, between Peter Larkman, of South Perrott, Dorset and Jacquelyn Hollows, of Beaminster, Dorset.
and Second World Wars, originally installed on either side of the reredos in the Chapel at Rousdon, have been placed in the form of two low doors at the entrance to the Memorial Chapel. The two panels
honouring those who died in the First World War were installed in the chapel in Honiton in 1921 whilst the two panels honouring the fallen in the Second World War, which were designed and made to match
as nearly as possible the World War 1 panels by Mr Herbert Read of Exeter, were originally installed in the chapel at Rousdon in December 1947. There is also a memorial plaque to Lt Cdr Richard Banfield RN who lost his life in H.M.S. Ardent on 21st May 1982 during the Falklands War.
In 2010 a new organ was given to St Michael’s by the OH Club as a result of a very generous donation from Ian Macgregor Scott OH in memory of his father, John Macgregor Scott OH.
Because of the winter closure of St Michael’s the Annual Memorial Service has had to be held for the last two years in St Paul’s, the parish church of Honiton located in the main street. However it is hoped that plans being discussed to enable to year round opening of St Michael’s come to fruition so that the Annual Memorial Service, held on the first Saturday in November, may again be held at the Allhallows Memorial Chapel in St Michael’s.
Alec Crawford (Stanton 55-60)
38
An impressive Bomber Command Memorial has been unveiled by the Queen in a
moving ceremony shown live on television.
The landmark structure, just across Green Park from Buckingham Palace, commemorates the sacrifice of the 55,000 Allied airmen who died on air raids over Nazi territory in World War II.
As was observed in the last issue of The OH Magazine, the £6m Memorial would have delighted Arthur Harris OH, who led Bomber Command in the war.
The man who was to take his place in history as “Bomber Harris” was at Allhallows from 1906 to 1909, when the school was at Honiton.
The classical-style Memorial, unveiled in June 2012, frames a poignant statue of a seven-strong bomber crew, of the sort that perished by the thousand to protect our freedom.
During the ceremony, the Queen, together with 6,000 veterans, widows and children of the fallen, looked up to see a Lancaster bomber rumble overhead and drop thousands of commemorative poppies.
The RAF Benevolent Fund is proud and privileged to be custodians of the new Bomber Command Memorial in Central London. It is their aim to preserve the Memorial for future generations, so that the noble sacrifice of the 55,573 young Bomber Command crew who lost their lives, will always be remembered.
Tribute to Bomber Harris’s men
OHs who would like to do their bit to help preserve the memorial may do so either
by making a donation on line www.rafbombercommand.com/memorialfund or by sending a
cheque made payable to Bomber Command Association to Doug Radcliffe MBE, The Secretary,
Bomber Command Association, The RAF Museum, Graham Park Way, Hendon, London NW9 5RR.
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Get away to the SunshineComfortable 3 bedroom flat in South West Spain. Miles of
sandy beaches. Roof terrace views of North Africa and Cape
Trafalgar. Ideal for bird-watching, walking and wind/kite surfing.
For further information contact Caroline Plumptre (Wilson)
Stanton ‘71 on 01747 871125
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ObituariesMichael Gear (Middlemist 1931 – 36) Michael Gear died on his 94th birthday. After war service mainly in India he went up to Balliol, Oxford, his entrance having been arranged by fellow guests with strong Balliol connections staying at the Vice Regal Lodge in Simla, India. Eschewing academic appointments after Oxford, Gear joined a company associated with paper making, went on to be Managing Director of a UK subsidiary of the International Paper Company of New York and then found his metier when he joined a new paper back book publishing company, Four Square Books. He went on to J.M. Dent for whom he secured the second largest order of books ever made by W H Smith. Later he became deputy editor of ‘The Bookseller. Gear relished the old ways of publishing, long lunches with authors or buyers when the publishing trade seemed to be run from the Garrick Club. Gear was also a successful author both on his own and with others. (Extracts taken from the obituary in The Times 1st November 2012).
Lillian May Jones (Baker and Stanton House Matron 1974 – 79) May Jones died on Easter Day 2012 in her 93rd year. After five years as a dedicated house matron, May, although more than 60, worked part time in the school shop for some time. Brought up in North London, her husband died when his Lancaster bomber was shot down in February 1945. May was a tower of strength and commonsense, greatly appreciated by boys, House masters and tutors. With a passion for travelling, May went to South Africa in her late 70s and to Egypt when she was 86. The Club’s sympathy and condolences go to May’s daughter, Carol, and her husband.
John Douglas Miller (Former Governor of Allhallows) John died on 15th August 2012 aged 88. After school in the Midlands, John became articled to a firm of chartered accountants but his training was cut short when he joined the Royal Navy in 1941. Married to Kathleen, whom he had first met at Plymouth College, in 1945. After the war John returned to accountancy, becoming the youngest partner of his firm at 33. In 1977 John was ordained and spent many years at Ashton, Cheshire becoming a member of the Diocesan Synod and Board of Finance. It was not long after retiring to Devon that John was invited to become a Governor of Allhallows, a post he held until the school closed in 1998. His wise council
and watchful eye on financial matters was greatly appreciated. To Kathleen the Club offers its condolences.
Martyn Richardson (Middlemist 1948 – 52) Martyn Richardson died on 12th May 2012 at his home in Atlanta, Geogia, USA. A useful shot at school, Martyn spent 35 years with The Coca Cola Company, retiring in 1994 as Senior Vice President International. Described as a pirate at heart, Martin was a collector, an adventurer extraordinaire and a world class traveller. The condolences of the Club are extended to Martin’s wife, Sally and their two children.
Charles William Frederick Weston (Baker 1954 – 58) . Bill, who was a School Prefect and Captain of Rugby whilst at Allhallows, will be best remembered for his work as a ‘stunt man’ in film and television, an activity he fell into by chance when on holiday in Ireland. A minor role in riding sequences for ‘The Fighting Prince of Donegal’ whilst looking for a ‘proper job’, lead to a lifetime of stunt work. Bill spent some time in India as a child where his father was a senior Army officer and mother ran a military hospital during WWII.
Bill always demonstrated a gentlemanly manner spiced with adventure. Having met him in Paris during the student riots in the ‘60s, it was not long before Jeremy Churcher (Stanton 1954 – 1958) and Bill found themselves signing up as mercenaries for President Tsombe in Katanga, Congo. The action got a little hot when Bill was sitting on the tail gate of a truck loaded with mortar bombs and a sniper fired a bullet between his legs hitting the mortars which happily failed to explode.It was not long after this Bill became a follower of Buddhism and held his strong belief in the faith throughout life.
During his long career as a stunt man Bill worked on 8 of the James Bond film series. Probably the best known piece he completed was the fight scene in ‘Living Daylights’ between him, alias the butler, and the villain which was described by Alexander Walker as the best part of the film. He performed the flight sequences in 2001 and took, not only stunts work, but occasional full acting roles. Other well-known film work included ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Titanic’, ‘Star Wars’ and countless others. Television work included Poirot, Bergerac and the Goodies along with TV commercials. In the 1970s he made a commercial for Solvite wallpaper paste and was pasted to a board
attached to a light aircraft flying over Miami. Some 25 years later he was asked to remake the commercial but this time flying over Table Mountain – a challenge he took up with the usual relish!
During that busy period he managed to find time to meet and eventually marry Judy to whom the OH Club extends its sympathy.
Having worked on the early Harry Potter films, Bill could still be found on the set of the last despite the fact that his illness had curtailed his activities. He was brave enough to attend the 2011 OH meeting at the RAC – one last meeting with his many friends. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him.
Howard Whiteside (Baker 1960 – 65) The Club has learnt of the death of William Howard Whiteside aged 66 in Wichita, Kansas, USA where he practised paediatric medicine. Determined to be a doctor from an early age, Howard, who went on to Trinity College, Dublin after Allhallows, had established a well known and respected practise in Wichita. A keen jogger, it was not unusual for Howard to go out late in the evening after a busy day in his practise. The Club’s sympathy is extended to Howard’s wife, Dana, and his 12 children.
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