Tag: Boys on staff

Posted on

The perfect rag

by Brian Bowler (1944-1951)

Submitted by his contemporary, Alan Trinder

It was traditional at the High School for the sixth form boys to indulge in ‘rags’. These were more or less harmless pranks, outside of the school rules but generally tolerated by the staff as an expression of youthful high spirits. The year I was in the upper sixth we had had a series of rags particularly in the run up to the end of the school year (1951) and what was for some of us the end of school life. The most daring had been the suspension of a chamber pot from one of the main beams in the school hall.

Continue reading “The perfect rag”
Posted on

COHS in the 1950s

by Mike Brogden (1952 – 1959)

A Polemical View

This post caused a real stir when Mike Chew published it on the old website, and you will find several responses from other boys linked to it in later posts.

The New Boy

There’s a photo of me, taken just before my first day at the school in September 1952, wearing the regulation little peaked cap, short trousers and brown blazer and carrying a leather satchel.

I travelled on a number 1 bus from its terminus at “The Lamp” at Hockmore Street, Cowley, a few minutes’ walk from my home in Bartholomew Road, Cowley. My mother had arranged for me to be looked after on the first day by an older pupil from the next street and he was very glad to abandon me in the George Street playground where there were five dozen other brown-clad new boys.

I found myself talking to one of them, Michael King, but this was a short-lived friendship as, after we were given a pep-talk by Fred Lay (mostly about how to write our names on our lunch tickets), we were sent to either 1B, in my case, or 1A in Michael King’s.

The first task when we arrived in our form room was the allocation of jobs. These depended on alphabetical order: Barnes and Brogden were given the task of keeping the register and organising lunch tickets. As a result of this twice-daily repetition, I can still recite the names of the boys in 1B. From then on, form masters rarely turned up as Barnes and I dealt with the register for several years. Other boys got other jobs but Wellstead, Wood and Wyatt at the end of the alphabet, probably got nothing to do. When I went to teacher-training college, several fellow students had to attend remedial registration classes but my years of experience enabled me to pass the test.

Class War

The streaming into A and B forms, whose basis was never revealed, was what I think of in retrospect as an exercise in social selection: working class boys like me were in the B form; middle class boys like Michael King were in the A form. Some other process must have been at work with the Day twins: Michael was allocated to the A form; David to the B.

By the time we had completed our “O” levels in 1957, if I remember correctly, only one B form pupil from the 1952 intake remained to join the sixth form. That was me. Twenty nine others had left, some at the school leaving age of 15, others after the “O” level watershed. The 11+ selection procedure was supposed to identify those who would benefit from grammar schooling and the COHS made a big thing about university entrance, but at least 50% of my year of 60 boys did not join the sixth form. Did Fred Lay ever worry about this high failure rate?

COHS had been fee-charging, with a few scholarship boys paid for by Oxford City Council until the 1944 Education Act opened it up to a much wider intake via the 11+ examination. I suspect that the school resented this change and didn’t like the presence of the sons of car workers.

We in the B form were taught mostly by masters whose specialisms were reserved for the A form: maths by the music master; English by the PE master; history by the RE master whose technique was to read a chapter per lesson from Penguin history books. Some years later, and almost too late, we were given a taste of something better with Snoop Atkinson for Latin; the brilliant Jock Sutton for English; RR Coleman for chemistry and Titch Wright for French.

On several occasions there were complaints from these specialists about the gaps in our knowledge. It was a shock to discover that we were expected to speak French after years of written exercises. Another specialist who had the task of bringing us up to “O” level standard was George Wright. His strategy (when he turned up for lessons) was to give us cyclostyled model answers to learn by heart, with the promise that four of these were likely to turn up in the history exam. His prophases turned out to be right, perhaps because he was also an “O” level examiner. I did relatively well in history but it was hardly inspirational. 

I presume that we were supposed to be motivated by Fred Lay’s appearance once a month when he read out the Merit Order. This resulted in our sitting in new positions with the top boy at the teacher’s right hand and the bottom boy at the left back. The threat for the left-back-boys was that at the end of the year, they could be required to repeat a year. Indeed, there were two of these miscreants in 1B who had not been allowed to join form 2B. They were very useful sources of information and mis-information to new boys about how things worked.

Another supposedly motivational activity was the weekly “Cap Parade” in the playground during which we rehearsed a few manoeuvres such as “Stand at Ease” and “Right Dress” whilst Fred Lay strutted up and down, perhaps reliving his days in the cavalry but missing the horses.

It didn’t help my dislike of the school that I hated games. Wednesday afternoons were to be dreaded. Fortunately, the system for avoiding football that I found useful at Rose Hill Junior School, also worked well at COHS. “Do that again and you’ll miss football,” was the promise at Rose Hill. More speaking out of turn resulted in the reward of staying in the classroom whilst the others got muddy. It was now harder to achieve as it required more disobedience and several after school detentions (good for getting on with homework) before a Wednesday afternoon detention was imposed. Swimming in Tumbling Bay from 1st May when it was freezing cold, was not so unpleasant, in my view, as rugby or cross country on the school playing fields, though if you didn’t turn up, no-one seemed to notice.

The lessons I most enjoyed in the first year did not carry on in subsequent years. We went to South Oxford School on Friday mornings to learn woodwork. Someone told us (probably one of the two boys who were repeating the first year) that we did woodwork so that if we were found unsuited to the grammar school and demoted to the secondary modern, we would not be behind the other boys in this subject. I also liked doing art with Basil Field, although he was a poor disciplinarian. He was good for my sports-avoiding strategy, however, as he could easily be provoked into giving out Wednesday afternoon detentions. He ran a lunch-time bookbinding club which I enjoyed and learned from. Indeed, it was bookbinding as well as skills with the register that helped me to get through teacher-training college a few years later.

The years went slowly by, brightened by three excursions: the Ashmolean Museum, rugby at Twickenham and King Lear (our “O” level text) at Stratford. My lack of interest in the school didn’t prevent me from scraping together enough “O” levels to join the sixth form. Fred Lay, somewhat patronisingly, told my mother that I might do better to get a job on the production line at the car factories but my wish to become a primary school teacher impressed him enough to allow me to stay on and gain three poor “A” levels. In those days, you only needed to gain about 30% to be awarded a pass. I even became a sub-prefect, in charge of pouring un-consumed school milk down the drain, not a skill I ever used in later life.. 

I don’t look back on my time at COHS with many fond memories but, for all its weaknesses, the system and the school enabled me to enter a profession and to spend nearly forty years in a most rewarding career in schools as a teacher and headteacher and as a local education authority adviser. And the bookbinding and register calling experience always served me well.

Editor Mike Chew’s footnote: As a child with a working class background, I never ever felt that there was social selection involved in the composition of the A and B forms. What was it like in your time? Write to me.

Posted on

COHS in the early 1940s

by Ernest (Em) Ames (1941-46)

Reminiscences of Wartime COHS Schooldays and Beyond by Ernest (Em) Ames (1941-46)

Firstly I was not an outstanding student academically but the “Oxford Education” has stood me in good stead through the years opening doors that would have been otherwise closed to me. Not only was academic prowess a main theme but the gentlemanly deportment and attitude insisted on during all activities was an integral part of the COHS education.

Some of the recollections that spring to mind are not all good of course and I like many others had to cope with what is now called a “culture shock” when transferring from Donnington Primary as I did, to the world of an English Public School with all its traditions. We did of course survive but I have a suspicion that we may have altered a few of those traditions to a less rigid regime.

They say that first impressions are the ones to be taken note of and my first notable impression was at my interview with the be-spatted Mr Badham & Mr Searson. The first thing Mr Searson did was to look me up and down, then straight in the eye. His comment was “Brown Eyes – Deceit” – ooops!- My Mother being a feisty Yorkshire woman with brown eyes actually held her tongue which was surprising to me but the rest of the interview progressed well though under a slightly cooler atmosphere than I would have expected.

I think at that time I and a group of other students were the first intake from Primary schools under scholarships etc though I cannot recall the actual system change at that time. At the end of the interview Mr Searson contemplated for a while then said “I think we will put him in Salter House”. Why that recollection stands out I will never know, but it is one of those things that always stays with one’s memory.

I used to cycle in from the Littlemore Rd in Cowley via Westbury Crescent, occasionally meeting up with David Savage at the top or with Ronnie Barker (who was one year ahead of me, I believe) at the bottom of Church Hill Rd. Funny thing that – Ronnie was always a “Dag” (sorry about the Australian description but it fits him perfectly) and was told on frequent occasions that he would never make anything of himself if he carried on like that. That of course was proved wrong in no uncertain manner as he did finish up being one of COHS’s notable students.

The stricter discipline and established routines took a while to get used to but most of the new intake soon settled down. Saturday morning school with sports in the afternoon and lots of homework were quite unsettling as was the insistence of wearing the school uniform correctly whether in school or outside. And Yes, I did get hauled into the Head’s office to be given a lecture on correct behaviour while walking around Oxford with my cap on back to front and tie askew.

The wearing of Army Cadet & RAF Cadet uniforms on Saturday mornings was condoned as a necessity during wartime as we had to attend our cadet training immediately after school at that time. Other things like the out of bounds tower were always a challenge but managed by many without getting caught.

Practice evacuations to the air-raid shelters were always a nuisance event though we did enjoy the break from study while there. I can still recall the smell of that place. 

As an aside at this point I will include some personal data:

My bedroom in the house on Littlemore Rd was on the Morris’s airfield flight path of the fighters coming in sometimes on a wing and payer from their action in the blitz and leaving after being repaired. So I had a constant air-show with fighters being tested at my disposal as well as the Tiger Moths that Morris’s built.

During the Blitz years I can remember the morning convoys of “queen mary’s” (low loaders) going past on the Littlemore Rd with German aircraft heading for the dump behind Morris’s and the Pressed Steel. I did have my own souvenirs of course from that dump till it was fenced off and made out of bounds because of the ammunition stored there.
At night the off-beat drone of German bombers following the Thames to the Midlands managed to keep me awake for hours. When London’s blitz was at its height I could see an orange halo in the night sky from my window and wondered how my cousin who lived in Hammersmith was fairing.

I often wondered why Hitler never bombed Oxford but found out after the war the there were detailed maps of all of Oxford and the surrounds but he wanted to maintain it as traditional seat of learning for his new proposed regime. There was also the same set of maps etc for Cambridge. There were not many air raid warnings but we did have to use the air raid shelter a few times that my father and I built in the back garden. After the war it was used to store the vegetables that my father grew. I can also remember the long army convoy of Canadians being brought in to help us, through which I had to thread my way to get to school.

Traditions – Dunking of heads down the bog as was the custom of kissing the chalk cross on the old wall – did not happen in my case and many of the new intake. They were traditions we could do without and in our minds unacceptable and something to be strongly resisted to the consternation of the perpetrators who came off second best in most cases.

Physics was always one of my favourite subjects and Mr Bodey (Pongo) was to my mind the one of the finest teachers I have ever met. He treated all students with equal respect and called us “Gentlemen” from the start and insisted on polite behaviour first and academic prowess second. 

He did of course come in for some ragging and once his little Austin 7 car had a plaque placed on it where he would not see when getting into it. It read —- “In which we SWERVE” which of course was a play on a wartime quote. He was cross, of course, but took it in good part. That little car came in for a few more japes, the least said the better about those. He insisted that you could not split the atom but on leave from the army I visited and we had a chuckle about that as it of course had been done. I must admit that I used to query him frequently about many of the Physics theorems but he was always patient and took the time to explain further till I grasped the processes involved.

My writing I think was ruined with the time I spent in the Chemistry lecture hall and Lab trying to keep up with the notes being written on the blackboard by Harry Jacques and I did get a taste of that little wand. It was always amusing to see him rip his gown apart to get a rag to clean the blackboard. Accidents will happen of course I was responsible for mixing Sulphuric acid and water the wrong way round and I finished up taking Latin instead for the rest of that year!. It was almost as spectacular as Harry’s Big Bang experiment.

Mr Swires (my form master for a while) got a reputation for having one of the biggest tie collections in the world. 

Mr Nelson’s French class was a hoot to me. His insistence on correct pronunciation resulted in some hilarious events when we could not emulate his probably very competent diction in that language – “pills” for instance. Later I did find a use for that subject when serving in the Middle East though at the time I thought it a waste of time. 

Latin – Now there is a useless language that we had to learn but again found that it is the basis for all modern structured languages and once learned the others are easier to master. I think it was Mr Atkinson that taught Latin and had left wing tendencies, though my memory is hazy on that point, and why I remember that I do not know. Amo, amas, amat etc!.

Incidentally is there a really correct translation for the school motto – NEMO REPENTE SAPIT? There are various versions none of which I think are the correct exact translations. NEMO (No-one), SAPIT (The Wise, Wise, get wise) REPENTE (Repents, Go slow – slowly – etc). There were a few, such as “Don’t rush us” – “No-one repents wisely” – “No-one gets wise slowly” are some of the versions that come to mind. The other Latin motto was “Labor Vincit Omnia” which I can still decipher as “Labour Conquers all” or (“everything” maybe). After 60 odd years it is hard to recall some of the Latin or other subjects for that matter.

Geography with Mr Searson in his Geography Hut near the tuck shop with its dry dusty buns, scones, call them what you will, was also a highlight and a subject that I enjoyed. If I remember rightly he used to organise the swimming sessions at lunch time. We would all pile into a double-decker bus and go to Cowley baths which was indoor and heated. I still have all my long distance certificates signed by him. 

Posted on

COHS in the early 1960s

by John Geach (1960s)

Memories of the Early Sixties by John Geach:

I was not happy at school and in general an unsatisfactory pupil. Living in St John Street I was the nearest resident to the school that I was aware of – and always late. As a Catholic I did not attend Assembly and in my sixth year “Pongo” sought (typically) to reform my unpunctuality by making me “Late Prefect” – I was indeed still “late”.

I remember many members of staff with affection: “Snoop” Atkinson who was Classics and read ”The Hunting of the Snark” to great effect if he had to take someone else’s class (so I heard it five or more times). “Wally” Walker taught me Greek and History; he was an accepting believer in the “Whig view of History” but a sound teacher nonetheless; I won my only prize in ‘O’ level history and disgusted the staff by requesting the writings of Baron Corvo – the nucleus of a collection which I still have, though I now regard Corvo with much less esteem.

Atkinson and Walker went out on a Friday lunchtime with “Eddie” Swire who taught me French, in Wally’s desirable Rover 75 – a car of the type with wings and running boards. Very jolly they were on return; but “Eddie” would ‘come down’ in the afternoon and exercise his skill in setting sadistically long-lined impositions. I was idle in his classes being already well-based in French; but I had a power of recalling what he had just said, and he used me as a teaching-aid:- “What did I just say, Geach?” You just said, sir: “Dans une rage le lion bondit de sa cage, et traversait la plage…” I can’t alas recall the rest of the sentence now.

For me – who went up to King’.s College Cambridge to read Art History – the school buildings by Sir Thomas Jackson were a great delight, and I feel sorry for the vast majority who are not educated in fine old buildings. From the splendidly detailed windows I observed the erection of Nuffield College, including the spire.

My interest in architectural history was not encouraged by the school, the worst offender being an “art” teacher whose name I think was Cummings but who was called “Hitler”. With great sarcasm he asked me if I knew of any building in the Ionic order; when I instantly said “The Ashmolean”, he said with great scorn: “No, no, not a local building” and when in a voice thick with fury I said “The temple of Nike Apteros” he made me look it up – he didn’t know – in the school copy of Bannister Fletcher. One of the things resented by him – and “Bonzo” Vaughan, the RI teacher who disliked me from “odium Fidei” – was that I possessed my own copy of this book and brought it to school. They tried to organise its confiscation by “Fred” who was moved by my unaffected tears to relent.

In the Bristol Building, now gone but in fact a pioneering work of modern architecture, were “Dug” and “Jock” and “Flea”. Dug, a Modern Linguist, took then preposterous “cap parades” – a fatuous apeing of Public Schools’ CCF parades. “Fred” ceased to attend, or to enforce them, when he reproached my form for failure to stand in straight ranks: “You look like a dog’s hind leg”, a voice from the second rank, just loud enough “And you look like a dog’s cock”. I challenge you to put that on your website! But many will recall it.

How it all comes back! As the son of two celebrated dons, my life outside the school was progressively absorbing and I left as soon as I had secured my Cambridge place.

I think it is a shame that the school is no more, it’s part of that modern “Kill the City” approach we see so much of. But I rejoice that the sententious school mottos were expunged from the buildings and the dignified Oxford University was substituted. “Fortis est Veritas” is a lot finer, and truer, than “Nemo Repente Sapit”; and as a schoolboy I didn’t know that the full line of the other motto is “sed nunc labor vincit omnia improbus” – quite other* than the meaning accepted in that emetic school song!

* Ed. trans: “But now, work conquers all, wicked man”

Posted on

The Early 1940s

by Ivan Mazonowicz (1940-46)

Ivan Mazonowicz (Mason since 1957) 1940-46 writes:

There were some fine teachers, eg Harry Jacques (Chemistry), ‘Pongo’ Bodey (Physics, who was my role model when I became a teacher, and ‘Tich’ Wright, among others. Some were not so fine. I vividly recall one pupil crying, on his hands and knees, being brutally kicked along a corridor by two of them.

I had two main interests – Chemistry and the ATC, and I took no part in any sports. I left with Higher School Certrificate in Chemistry, Physics and Zoology and a gliding certificate, courtesy of the ATC. On the same gliding course was Don Bennett who was caught one day by a freak gust of wind and landed his glider upside down. It frightened all of us present, but he emerged unharmed.

In form 5b my close friend was Desmond McCarthy. We talked much of our ambitions. His was to become a teacher, mine to fly with the RAF. I became a teacher, he became a navigator in the RAF – a short career. He was killed in 1958 when his Canberra crashed into a German mountainside.

On leaving in 1946 I worked as a lab assistant at the Pressed Steel Company, then at AERE Harwell until National Service struck. I spent two years as a private in the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry – mostly in Somalia. Disliking this greatly, as soon as I was released I joined the RAFVR to ensure no further army service.

In 1953 I was commissioned into the Training Branch and served 19 years with the ATC until, having qualified in the meantime as a sailing instructor, became Lt RNR with the sea cadets. In 1974 a stroke ended my nautical career and later led to early retirement from teaching.

In 1950-52 I qualified a a teacher at Culham College, then taught in Oxford, Montreal and Dorset, taking early retirement in 1981 and devoting my time to travel and writing with modest success.

In 1954 I did the wisest thing of my life and married Joyce Tennant (ex-Central School. Our daughter Penny has two daughters, one a doctor and the other a vet. Our first son Robert died at 40 of childhood cancer, Our second son (PhD in Chemistry) teaches in Christchurch.

 In 2000 I had a second stroke which left me needing a wheelchair. This we manage to take to Spain twice a year. Otherwise Joyce and I lead quiet valetudinarian lives in Dorset.

Posted on

COHS in the early 1950s

by Colin Tustin (1951-56)

Colin Tustin (1951-56) reminisces:

– Tumbling Bay. In summer the whole form walked down the canal towpath at Hythe Bridge Street and then under the railway bridge to the area where we were taken across the river by a rather disgruntled boatman in his punt.
On getting across, the first thing to check was the water temperature which was written on a small blackboard in the changing huts. The highest temperature I can recall was 57 degrees Fahrenheit, which was pretty cold, but we had to get in anyway.
The non-swimmers were taught how to swim in the shallow end while the swimmers used the deep end to practise diving for a metal plate which was thrown in to be recovered from the bottom of the pool.
Although Tumbling Bay was used during the school term, the swimming sports took place at Longbridges off the Isis towpath at Donnington.

– Who remembers Mr Lee (Flea) and his “Lambaster”, a curved piece of metal about a foot long which was used to rap your knuckles. He was also an expert shot at throwing his wooden blackboard cleaner at anyone who was not paying attention in his class.

– Changing into vest and shorts to be weighed and measured by Tiny Rowlands in the Geography Hut, the results going on the school report.

– Each form being lined up in the playground for cap parade, and anyone without his cap would be put in detention.

– Going to see ‘Julius Caesar’ in the Ritz cinema and having to write an essay on it afterwards. Also seeing the Queen’s Coronation film in glorious technicolor.

– Freddy Lay giving the school an extra halfday holiday in January 1954 because Headington United were playing Stockport in an FA Cup match on a Thursday afternoon.

– Reference Jim Fleetwood’s comment in Newsletter 6 – Nosmo was the commonly used name for the school caretaker, certainly while I was at the school.

Posted on

COHS in the 1930s

from An Oxford Childhood by Tony Phelps (1933-41)

Note from Mike Chew at the time: Tony’s story runs into 54 pages. If anyone would like to read them all, please contact me. We shall “serialise” the most relevant passages. Herewith Part 1. (Ed. The other parts do not appear to have been published however)

In the 1930s the school still occupied its original site at the corner of George Street and New Inn Hall Street, though two or three temporary class-rooms had been added across the playground at the back of the school.

Continue reading “COHS in the 1930s”
Posted on

The Remove

by John Nettell (1941)

In 1941, as far as I remember, fee-payers all started in 2A and scholarship boys in Remove. Why it was called Remove I do not know. I only remember being told “it is traditional” which was no answer.

Both classes numbered about 30 boys so there must have been about as many of one as the other. There was no 1A or 1B because School Cert was done to a four year programme and you had to finish up (if successful) in year 5 in the Sixth Form.

After Remove, one was put into the next year’s A or B form depending on your results, no social selection. The bright ones went to the next year’s A and the others went to B. And we didn’t have cap parades, or monthly merit order to determine one’s seat in class.

I think I’m glad I left before Fred Lay really got into his stride!

I think there was also in 1941 a Form 5C, known as Shell.

Posted on

It could have been written by me

by George Pulley (1944-49)


“I have to respond to the article in the July Newsletter No 8 by Mike Brogden

This could have been written by me of my experiences and feelings when at school in the forties (1944-9). I went, as I failed the 11 plus, as a paying scholar!, and my parents paid for me, for only two terms, I think when the government of the day decided to scrap that and they no longer paid. I felt as this group we were looked down upon and got the worst teachers, although I do not know if there were many good ones then. Most of our classes we had “Solar’, who “taught” us everything, or was it nothing? His speciality I believe was Latin, after one year it was dropped from our syllabus.

One of the teachers was younger and a right charlatan. How he missed being in the forces I do not know, probably on medical grounds, having nothing between his ears. A few anecdotes about this “teacher”. That being a horse racing addict from one year old (my grandfather being a jockey, I was 6 feet and 16 stone – believe that if you will), I often ran a book for big races i.e. Derby?, Grand National, with another boy Pat Forrest. Pat had the list of odds and was taking bets, probably a penny or sixpence max, when he came into class and caught him. “What is this?” he asked Pat. “Nothing Sir” as was the standard reply. He removed the document from Pat and said “This is odds for The Derby, let’s see what the price is …….?”, and promptly gave Pat a sixpence to wager on the horse, which incidentally lost. 

Another time he threw a hard blackboard duster at me, I ducked and it hit and broke a picture behind me; he thereafter stopped this practice. As it was wartime, things were hard to get, and he would often bribe boys to get things he wanted in return for letting them off detention etc. My speciality was Brylcream, which he liked, and I had a tame hairdresser who would supply me. I got a lot of detention and lines so he could bribe me. A lovely man! (A prize for guessing his name)

Although now I revere Ian “Spud” Taylor, I learnt little of physics, except those which related to Rugby football, a game I hated and still do. Luckily I wore glasses from age one and still do, so managed to avoid being a Hooker!

I never aspired to School Cert, as it was then, and at just under 16 Lay told my father perhaps he should find a job for me.. This was done, and although I hated Maths, most of my early working life was with figures. I spent 18 years at Pressed Steel in Accounts and Research, where figures were the order of the day. For all its faults I made my way successfully and for over thirty years, from age 38, ran my own Private Detective business, becoming President of my trade Association. I have since written a book of my memoirs, now out of print.

I was never interested in old boys club etc, until I heard that some old boys were getting together to form a new one. I went to the inaugural meeting at The Greyhound and the rest is history.

So, did things ever change at School after the forties and fifties? I wonder.”

error: Content is protected !!