From: David Gilbert
Subject: RGS recollections
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:28:46 +0100
To: 
Hello, John,
Good to hear from you so quickly. I have looked in my (unindexed) bunch of
old photos and have found just three that may be relevant. The 1947 school
photo is difficult with the limited scanning capacity that I have but I have
constructed a mosaic where the overlaps just about cover the whole spread.
The Edward Cricket team is interesting, insofar as John Fawkes played for
Notts and the Army (I met him later during National Service n Kenya) and
Mick Hall played for Notts of whose 2ndXI his father was captain. I always
thought however that Ted Waterfield was just as good a cricketer as both
of them but he probably pursued a more lucrative profession. Hall's father
kept a pub in Bridge Street with an annexe set out for table tennis, with
the result that all three of them, while still at school, represented the
Notts team at table tennis.
As far as my personal experiences are concerned, I went to RGS from the
mining village of Bircotes (Harworth colliery near Bawtry) where my father
was village chemist and, at that time, also
postmaster. We went on a school bus, with girls from the High School which
picked up others at Scrooby, Ranskill and Torworth, arriving in Cannon
Square with about 15 minutes to get to school. A deadly sin at school was
loitering in town, so lateness at Assembly tended to be rewarded with a
stroke of the cane from PR - unless the offender could devise an excuse
which the Headmaster had not heard of before, an incentive which taxed our
ingenuity somewhat.
Interestingly, this was a golden period for Bircotes, because 4 of us went
to Oxbridge, something unknown at RGS for many years. First there was Dawson
Price, a miner's son, a year before me, who got an exhibition to Peterhouse,
Cambridge and won a blue at Soccer (though I think it may have been a
half-blue in those days); Michael Simons, who won an exhibition to Exeter
College, Oxford, got a first and passed the Civil Service exam, whose
whereabout today are not known to me; myself, who got a State Scholarship
to Sidney Sussex, Cambridge and Ernest Lee, who also went to Cambridge
having been in the same class as Michael and me at Bircotes but went to RGS
later as he only passed the "scholarship" the second time round.
When we got to RGS, we were sharing it with Great Yarmouth Grammar School,
who had been evacuated to the area. They used the school early and late in
the day and we had a pleasant short five periods in the middle. However,
when the blitz of Sheffield started, the area was deemed too dangerous for
them and they were moved on!
Most of the masters you knew were in the services, so we had a number of
lady teachers . I started French and Latin with Nora Nicklen,
who was straight from college and was socially much closer to the boys in
the third year sixth form. Mrs. Harvey taught English but left to give birth
some months after her husband's home leave. Mrs. Jones was a very nice lady,
wife of the "Chemmy"
Jones, whom you knew, who we found on his return to be a stricter
disciplinarian. We had a strange ex-Army man called "Colonel" Wallace,
(gone before my photo) who
taught junior maths and biology. I think that even then he was somewhat
behind modern learning, as he taught us of the existence of a wondrous
invisible material the possession of which distinguished animate and
inanimate bodies! I was in the same class as "Spug" Spencer's son but did
not get on with the father at physics, although along with Maths and
Chemistry it
was among my best subjects, which was the fateful cause of my taking
languages instead of science. (I always think that my natural bent was
scientific, like my son
Christopher's) which is why I gravitated to the most scientific of Arts
subjects, Law. "Tubby" Lewis taught Scipture, quite brilliantly, since he
had done an analysis of decades of School Certificate exam papers and spent
the Certificate year in dictating to us the answers to all fifty recurring
questions, so that the number of distinctions gained was incredibly high.
Percy Hammond, long beyond retiring age taught Art, more remembered for the
heavy rings on his fingers with which he would clip the ungifted, like me,
around the ear, and the small books of poems of his which he always
tried to sell to us. I was never taught by PR as I gave up maths after
School Certificate, but he was renowned for doing problems by the class
blackboard, knowing the logs without having to look them up. I am surprised
however that you mention him in connection with the Little Theatre as I was
unaware of any extra-mural activity apart from some lay preaching and being
Chairman of the Retford Magistrates. I wonder whether he is being confused
with The Revd. McFarren, Deputy Head, famous for his "Troddles" stories
rather than the geography he taught, and/or Howard Barclay?(?Bartlett). I
had a lot to do with "Chis" and remember him galloping down the wing in a
Staff soccer XI shortly after he returned from the war. Also, we had
"Poofit" Jones and "Harry" Pollitt, named for his apparent political leanings
but he was rahter odd and a religious zealot - stating at one stage
that only Tubby Lewis among his colleagues could be truly called a
Christian. The man next to Chis in the photo is Lyons, once of the many very
short-lived Latin teachers before the advent of McNeill-Watson, who carried
me through the subject up to Higher, Scholarship level. I didn't know Hedley
Brookes very well but, oddly enough, he was a neighbour of my wife in
Retford; she went to the High School but being 4 years younger than me, I of
course was not aware of her existence at the time. I was never taught by
"Tash" Illingworth, but knew his son and got to know him quite well for some
years through the Old Boys Association; when I started he was in charge of
the on-site prep-school "Tash's Infantry".
I think I have probably written quite enough to bore you already, but if it
prompts any further questions, just send me an e-mail.
Very best wishes,
David
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