In early September 1951 my parents and I set out from our home in Chingford to drive to my new boarding school in West Sussex. Although I was 13 I was very anxious. I was going to a strange place where I had no family or friends and would have to live among 400 other boys none of whom I knew. There was nothing I was looking forward to but I did know that it was a public school with a good reputation.
In our aged Hillman car we wound up the long entrance drive and scrunched to a halt on the gravel outside the huge chapel (Grade I Listed) and in front of the forbidding knapped flint walls of the college buildings (Grade II Listed). We got out of the car and stood in a small huddle, I in my new uniform of grey flannel trousers and a grey, pepper and salt tweed jacket, while my parents looked rather strained in their Sunday best.
After my parents had said goodbye and our little black car faded away into the Sussex greenery, the forlorn cluster of new boys was rounded up and shepherded to the place where our travelling trunks were waiting. These trunks were capacious wood and canvas monsters now sold second hand as ‘Vintage Travelling Trunks’. They had been sent on by rail via a system known as ‘Passenger’s Luggage in Advance’ and with ‘PLA’ and the destination chalked at various places on the outside. By some mysterious railway alchemy they always appeared in the right place at the right time.
The trunks had to be transported to the dormitories which meant manoeuvring them end on up several flights of stone spiral staircase. To do this required a boy at each end, top and bottom, and I quickly found myself cooperating with another of the new arrivals.
We were divided twice, once into ‘house’ groups, then into dormitories. I was automatically in a new boys dormitory where I was allocated a bed, a stool (for folded blankets) and a chest of drawers in brown wood with a shallow top drawer and two larger lower drawers. The beds were arranged in two rows of ten each side with a central door and Gothic-style stone-framed windows at either end. This arrangement remained in different dormitories during all my years at the school. Our bedclothes were neatly folded on the stool at the end of the bed and we all started making our beds without being told to do so. A senior boy, a prefect, had been appointed to oversee our first day welfare (we were all stiff upper lip and no one broke down weeping) and he said that after tea there would be a briefing back in the dormitory.
Tea was in the anteroom to the dining hall, vast timbered structures with threatening brown beams and with room to seat all the pupils and staff. Tea was provided every afternoon at four o’clock and consisted of mountains of currant buns on a central table with tubs of margarine so that three layered bun-burgers could be constructed and washed down with tea from strategically placed urns. We ate and drank standing up and this regular currant bun tea became one of the highlights of my day and was a good opportunity to mingle with boys from other parts of the school. I still enjoy these buns though I am not supposed to eat them – too much white flour carbohydrate.
After tea break we reported back to the dormitory for a briefing from a prefect. First we were told that as new boys we would have three weeks of immunity from punishment if we broke the rules: after that we would have to face the consequences of any infringement. There were several general rules: times of breakfast, lunch, dinner with strict injunctions never to be late. We would be roused from sleep by the very loud school bell at 7.45am and have to get fully dressed and into the dining hall by 8am. There was a strict rule banning any running in the cloisters so if you were a bit late for a meal you learnt to walk very fast. Cloisters, for those not familiar with monastic architecture, are the covered walkways adjacent to the buildings round a central square, the quadrangle. often of well-trimmed grass. The school had a lower and upper cloistered quadrangle and no one was allowed to walk on the grass.
Two hefty prefects always stationed themselves on either side of the massive dining room doors and as the first stroke of the mealtime start sounded on the school clock these doors would be forced shut leaving late stragglers no chance to get in on time and having to face subsequent punishment.
We weren’t allowed to put our hands in our pockets and, for the first year had to do up all three buttons on the front of our jackets which had to be kept on apart from sports requirements and bed. Our sensible black shoes had to be kept clean and the most challenging requirement so far as I was concerned was to fix a white collar round the neck of my shirt with a metal stud front and back. I quickly mastered this operation so as not to risk being late for breakfast.
After tea we reassembled in the dormitory and were provided with details of how to find our way around, what was in bounds and out of bounds, how we obtained information on the various classes we were to attend and the sports we were to undertake every afternoon except Sunday. We were told we had to attend chapel every evening and twice on Sundays and innumerable other details pertaining to boarding school life. By the time we had finished it was time to go to the evensong service in the chapel.
We joined the throng of boys heading towards the chapel where I had a numbered seat in a row towards the front of the congregation. The chapel was a huge neo-Gothic sandstone structure with pillars reaching up to a vaulted ceiling. Pupils sat in two blocks at the rear and masters in special box pews on either side. These masters sometimes wore their university degree regalia. At the far end of the chapel stood the altar dressed in embroidered green cloth, the colour of liturgical Ordinary Time with large candles that had been lit beforehand. Behind the altar were gigantic coloured biblical pictures reaching almost to the top of the arches. They created a powerful spiritual impression of sanctuary but I could not make out if they were paintings or some other manifestation. Later I discovered they were tapestries created especially for the chapel.
The atmosphere was heightened by quiet organ music that seemed to fill the space with no obvious source. I think it was the first organ music I had ever heard. Once we were all in our places, the celebrant appeared in green robes and carrying a golden crucifix as he processed along the nave to the transept. He was accompanied by some 20 choir boys in white surplices. While this was happening the organ struck up loudly and we all sang a hymn. The next half hour involved much sitting, standing, kneeling and more hymn singing while the evensong offices were spoken or sung all of which was a mystery to me. I seemed to have arrived in another world too baffling to be enjoyable and I thought less about heavenly things than how Mum, Dad and Jenny our dog would be at home settling down to their supper without me.
When the service had finished we all had to file out row by row the youngest leaving last. During this process the organist would show off his skills and I heard many classics including much Johann Sebastian Bach which left me with a lifelong enjoyment of early and other organ music once I had heard enough to understand it.
After supper we were re-sorted into our house groups and gathered in the house common room. Normally this would have been for a period of homework known as ‘evening school’ but, as this was the first day of a new term, the time was spent listening to new announcements. One tradition was the newspaper sale. We had no radio or television and each house was allowed one copy of a national newspaper. An auction was conducted to determine who would be the boy to get the paper at breakfast time, after which it would be left in the house common room. I was surprised at how much boys were prepared to bid to be first reader, but it was the only news we could easily get. I remember following closely the course of the Korean War aware that in a few years’ time I might have to go and fight there (National Service was still operating). We were all allocated a locker the size of a large shoe box in a corridor adjacent to the house room in which we were to keep our school books and personal effects and were shown the library available to all boys quite close at hand. Another room was devoted to our individual tuck boxes where we could keep food sent from home and elsewhere – cake, tins of sardines and, once we got street wise, bottles of cheap British sherry, There was also a shelf where the daily cratefuls of one third of a pint bottles of milk, one for each of us, would be displayed. This daily milk allowance was later famously stopped by Margaret Thatcher. We still had ration books for sweets and with these and cash we could get a modest allocation of boiled sweets each month in the school tuck shop some way down the drive. As we were not allowed in the dormitories after we had made our beds, the school had a large toilet block called The Groves which often seemed a long way from wherever we were when the need arose. However, I was constipated during my first week. On the health front each house had a resident female matron with a little surgery of her own and for more serious illnesses and injuries there was a school sanatorium about half a mile up the hill.
Later in the evening we had an evening meal with the rest of the school in the cathedral-like dining room. We stood for the Latin grace spoken by one of the masters: Benedic nobis, Domine, et omnibus tuis donis, quae ex larga liberalitate tua sumpturi sumus, per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Deus est caritas. Qui manet in caritate manet in Deo et Deus in illo. Sit Deus in nobis, et nos maneamus in illo. Amen. After which we sat down on long benches in front of wooden tables while some of the older boys waited on us. They carried many plates at once and it became a matter of honour when it was your turn to be a waiter to balance as many plates as possible on outstretched arms. The food was straightforward but good, especially as we were very hungry. I particularly remember the chocolate pudding smothered in a generous mantle of chocolate custard.
Evenings were divided into four parts: chapel, homework, meal, homework. As first year boys bed would be at 9pm with lights out at 9.15. Homework was called evening school and, with our books and writing equipment, we sat in silent rows in the house room supervised by prefects. There was no clicking of keys on calculators or computers and my nearest encounter with IT was a slide rule. There was 15 minutes free time before going to the dormitory and bed which left a space to draw breath and thank God that the day had gone well. Once in the dormitory we had to wash, clean our teeth, get into our pyjamas and get into bed quickly before lights went out. The boy in the nearest bed to mine was a wiry classics scholar who had been in boarding school since he was six. His parents were diplomats and he had been born in Egypt where he contracted a disease that meant he had to have his right eye removed. It was replaced with a glass one and I had a front row seat when he removed this glass eye and popped it into a glass of water on the chest of drawers from where it stared at me. This one eyed boy became a great friend during my first year as he knew what being far from home meant.
So ended the first day. It was late dusk but through a nearby mullioned window I could see the terminal branch of an ash tree shaped like a trident. After I had lain down I gazed at this trident and did so every evening and morning until the end of term. I suppose it became a symbol of the world outside and freedom. And then I fell asleep.
An afterword. My first holiday from boarding school was when we were still living in Chingford. I made my own way home and on arrival was surprised that I was not greeted in Homeric fashion by my beloved dog Jenny. My parents told me she had been run over.
