Recollections
by
Robert
Darlaston
Memories
of Childhood in Birmingham in the 1940s and early 1950s
Life
at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, 1951-59, and
Anecdotes
from Barclays Bank Trust Company Limited 1959-97
Illustrated
with family photographs throughout
Cover illustrations:
The crests of the City of Birmingham (where I lived and worked from 1940
to 1972),
of King Edward’s School (attended 1951-59) and Barclays
Bank (my employer from 1959 to 1997 - and who still pay my pension!).
Part One:
Harebells on the Common
A Birmingham
Childhood Remembered
1943 – 1951
First edition,
February 2006
Second edition,
October 2023
My
childhood home: 165 Stechford Road, Hodgehill, Birmingham
Childhood is measured out
by sounds and smells
And sights, before the dark of reason grows
John
Betjeman
Summoned by Bells
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways
where I went
And cannot come
again.
A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad;
XL
Contents of Part One
Early Years My
first hazy memories – 1943
Wartime Birmingham Air raids; trams and buttered toast; shopping and the cinema
South Wales Holidays Farms, seaside and “The Resurrection”
Domestic Life in the 1940s Clothes, wash day, Christmas and
starting School
Worries about Health Tonsils and small boy stuff. Discovery of a chick
A Hard Winter Snow and fog, 1940s
style
School Days Amberley Prep School;
first glimpse of stocking tops
Children’s Hour Wireless, and Ladies to
tea: I meet the constabulary
A Balanced Diet Meals, rationing and days
out
The King Passes by Glimpses of the King and of
Russian leaders
Changing Times Impressed by the news and
also by Silvana Mangano
A New School Moving to King Edward’s,
The End of an Era A Festival, a Funeral and a
Coronation
These pages include some memories of my childhood,
dug out of the deepest recesses of my mind, concentrating where possible on
episodes which illustrate how life in the 1940s differed from that we know
today. I have tried to choose incidents
which might amuse, but including topics both serious and saucy: all part of the process of growing up in the
post-war era! I hope this account
entertains others and ring bells in their own memories. The 1940s were a grey world of coal smoke
and gas-lit streets, of Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, Spam* and
steam trains, mangles and woolly vests.
There were no mobile phones or DVDs, no televisions or refrigerators, no
foreign holidays or central heating, no computers and very few motor cars. But
it was the only world I knew as a child and I was well content with it.
(* Spam
was tinned meat and had nothing to do with computers!!)
Fifth
birthday, 23rd June 1945.
The
war in Europe is now over and I am sitting on the big red engine made by my
father.
With my parents in the
back garden in 1940 and 1942
|
A |
PRETTY BLUE LIGHT was
flickering, just within reach and looking so attractive, so tempting. I reached my fingers up to touch – and: O-U-C-H,
“Mumm–e-e-e-e!” The
light was the flame of a burner on the gas cooker which had attracted my
innocent curiosity. I would have been
only two years of age, but luckily the impact was fleeting and no lasting
damage was done. But the incident
remains in my memory as possibly my earliest recollection. It was probably early in 1943, a time when
others across the world were experiencing far greater suffering than my rather
trivial burn.
Then there was
the occasion which stayed in memory as being the first time I ever saw my
mother wearing trousers. It was the
cold night of 23rd April 1943.
I was not yet three years of age.
The air-raid siren had just gone and my parents and I were in the dining
room, the windows securely covered by the thick blackout curtains made by my
mother, who, in an effort to relieve wartime austerity, had trimmed the hems
with decorative tapes of green and gold.
For no particular reason, I was sitting on the cross-bar beneath the
dining table. We were about to go into
the cold night to settle down once again in the air raid shelter. It is a memory inextricably tied up with the
below-ground smell of damp earth and of the methylated spirit lamp that
illuminated our tiny shelter, built into the garden rockery. The event can be dated accurately, because
it was the first air raid for several months and thereafter raids ceased in the
Midlands. There are other associated
memories: waiting before an air raid,
the tension tangible in the anxious atmosphere:
being told not to suck my thumb after playing on the floor “because of
the danger of picking up germs” – or was it Germans? The words were puzzlingly similar to a
two-year-old.
We cling to our early memories as the starting point of our
life’s journey. The underlying theme from
those days was war: war against a
society so evil it is now hard to realise that it existed in Europe within my
own lifetime. But my parents protected
me securely from that unseen horror, providing an environment of security and
stability. Thus, even though I grew up
in a world of bombs and death, I can look back with nostalgia to a happy
childhood. With the exception of my
loyal but silent companion Edward Bear, almost everyone and everything I knew
and cherished in those earliest years has been swept away by the passage of
time. But they remain alive in memory,
vivid if intangible, enabling me to make a return journey to my past. There I can once more relive those infant
events and encounters, recreating for a moment the images of childhood.
I was an only child, born on 23rd June 1940 at 1.35
p.m. at
My mother had been born in 1904 and came from Welsh farming
stock, but her mother had died in childbirth.
Consequently, for several years as a baby and toddler she had been
passed around an array of aunts, until, eventually, her father remarried. It must have been an unsettling childhood
for her. She left home at eighteen
years of age and had taken up nursing, first at Newport in South Wales and,
from 1929, in Birmingham. There she met
my father who had been born and bred in the city, although prior to the 1790s
his family’s roots lay in the village of Harlaston,
near Lichfield (hence the family name, originally De Harlaston). My father was born in 1906 and had lost both
parents while still a child, his mother dying in 1915 and his father in
1919. A maiden aunt became responsible
for his upbringing and he was sent to boarding school at Hanley Castle in
Worcestershire, so his childhood too was far from secure and settled.
Castle
Bromwich Church, where I was Baptised.
The Church in snow, January 1963
The
Church is an attractive neo-Classical building dating from 1726-31 and is Grade
I listed.
Like most children, I have many random early
memories: a ride in the pram, a harsh
word here, a tumble there;
of the fun when my father surprised me by hiding in the pantry,
and of the panic when I wandered off to explore alone while my mother’s
attention was
distracted in the local butcher’s shop.
But unlike the air raid memories, those cannot be dated. Then there are those wonderful impressions
left in the childhood mind by patterns;
shadows on a carpet; enchanting
floral designs on curtains or wallpaper.
Wallpaper played a significant part in my life at an early
age. After lunch each day I was put in
my cot for a sleep, but there was a time when sleep would not come. I lay awake and was bored. Through the bars of my cot I could see a
small irregularity in the wallpaper. I
recall teasing at it with my fingernail.
Oh joy! I could peel a little
bit off. A bit more effort and off came
another inch. This was the most
satisfying thing I had ever done. I set
to work with gusto and can still remember the sensuous pleasure of peeling off
strips of paper. Eventually, my mother
arrived to check on her sleeping infant, only to find a joyous child surrounded
by shreds of paper. Suffice it to say
that I was never put down for another afternoon nap.
Paper of a different sort provided further entertainment when my
mother, unable in wartime to obtain the usual brand of toilet roll, bought
instead a box of interleaved lavatory paper (always hard and shiny in those
days). I was fascinated by the
apparently endless supply – pull out a sheet, and, hey presto! – there was
another. Anxious to get to the bottom
of this (sorry!), I kept on pulling sheets until the lavatory floor was
invisible beneath paper and the box was empty.
Once more, I was surprised to find that my mother did not share my
interest in research into paper production.
1943: Ready to go
shopping: my 3rd
birthday: on the big red engine
There were always Lupins in the garden on my birthday
It is to my parents’ credit that the nocturnal trips to
the air raid shelter caused me no major worries, other than frustration at my
father’s refusal to let me have a battery in my torch. I suppose he had an understandable
reluctance to let me wave it in cheery greeting to the Luftwaffe flying
overhead. The war was, despite my own
lack of concern, the inevitable background to life and everyone told me how
everything would be “different when the war ended.” News was so dominated by the war that I
believed that when peace came “news” would cease. I now look back, amazed at my good fortune
in being so well insulated from the horrors of those years. My only memories of the end of the war are
of a street party close by and of an unpleasantly hard toffee apple on VE night
at a small funfair erected for the occasion on nearby Hodgehill
Common. Toys were largely unobtainable
until a few years after the end of the war, and magazines would often carry
advertisements for items such as electric train sets, so desirable to a small
boy, but they were marked “For Export Only”.
Consequently, most of my toys were made by my father, including a
handsome wooden train and a soldiers’ fort.
I was lucky that because my father’s work was connected with aeroplane
production he was not liable for military service. He did, however, have to work six (and often
seven) days each week during the war, plus nights spent fire watching. Consequently, he was something of a rare
figure in my early years. Another
result of the war was the occasional visit from a Polish airman, befriended by
my parents and some of their friends. I
was puzzled by an adult whose knowledge of the English language was smaller
than my own.
Some
manifestations of war did cause me alarm.
There were sinister gaps in nearby rows of houses where willow herb grew
among the rubble left by bombing raids.
Sometimes an interior wall was left standing, exposed to the elements,
leaving the last residents’ taste in wallpaper for all to see. There was also the vast ruin of the sauce
factory to be seen from the tram going into Birmingham. One bomb landed less than 100 yards from
home, sucking open the French windows: I
was too young to recall the incident, but the damage to the window frames
remained evident until they were replaced twenty years later. There were baleful barrage balloons moored
nearby on Hodgehill Common and, from time to time
throughout the war, convoys of tanks would pass our house, driven under their
own power, the steel tracks making a deafening racket on the road surface and
sending me scuttling indoors in search of quiet. Worst of all were low flying aircraft, which
terrified me by day and haunted my dreams at night. In 1940, while only a few months old, I had
been in my pram in the garden when a plane came over, flying very low. My mother rushed outside and looked up in
time to see a plane with the German cross and (she said) a Nazi pilot peering
through the cockpit window. She grabbed
me in terror and fled to hide beneath the stairs. (The pilot, probably equally terrified, was
apparently soon brought down some miles away).
Of course I can have no recollection of that incident, but did my
mother’s terror somehow impress itself into my slowly developing mind? Even today, the sound of a jumbo jet
climbing overhead can provoke an involuntary and momentary shiver.
Wartime Picnic with the Godsall
family (left) – location unknown, alas
This photo is proof that there were happy, light-hearted moments
during the war.
But suits were still de rigeur, even
on picnics! Jill, sitting between her
mother and mine, later became a professional pianist and remains a friend in
the 21st century.
A 1930s postcard showing Coleshill Road crossing Hodgehill Common.
Less than a decade later, I would be here picking Harebells for
my mother.
But there are pleasant memories
too; of lazy summer afternoons when I
picked Harebells for my mother on the nearby grassy common, and of shopping
trips to town. In “Summoned by Bells” John Betjeman recalled his childhood as “safe in
a world of trains and buttered toast”:
in my world trams and buttered
toast were the features which linger in the memory. We went shopping by tram and my mother
always concluded the afternoon with a call at “Pets’ Corner” in Lewis’s
department store, to see the monkeys and parrots, followed by coffee and hot
buttered toast at the Kardomah café. After I started school the trams in their
attractive dark blue and primrose colours became a vital part of my daily
life.
Left:
The tram stop where I waited for the tram home every afternoon after
school, (which was behind the hedge at the left). (photograph
by Ray Wilson)
Right:
the lower deck of a tram, showing reversible seats.
October 1950: The last tram on the No. 10 route, as seen by
the long-defunct Birmingham Gazette.
I had travelled this route daily on my
way to and from school and sorely missed the trams with their fascinating
character: a souvenir ticket (“Ha’penny child’s”) reminds one how inexpensive tram travel
was in the 1940s.
A special treat in the summer holidays would be the tram
ride to the Lickey Hills on the Worcestershire
border: a twelve-mile journey across the
city, taking over an hour. Tram seats
had reversible backs so that one normally sat facing the direction of travel,
but one could leave a seat unreversed enabling a party of four to face one
another as a group, just as on a train.
At the city centre terminus passengers left the tram at the front while
new passengers boarded at the rear.
This gave small boys the irresistible temptation of treading on the
driver’s pedal which mechanically sounded the gong – the tram’s warning
equivalent of a motor horn. For the
latter part of the journey from the city to the Lickey
Hills the trams forsook the streets for their own reservation, bowling merrily
along through the sunlit trees at speeds approaching 40 m.p.h. We would lean happily out of the window,
taking care to retreat as other trams passed close by in the opposite
direction. Once at the Lickey terminus everyone would want to rush off to the
hills, but I would try to linger and watch the conductor placing the trolley
pole on the overhead wire for the return journey; no easy task if the sun was in his eyes.
Shopping trips to the centre of
Holidays in
Wartime holidays had been confined to annual trips to my
grandparents who farmed in
Paddling in a
rock pool at Southerndown, 1949; and by the Morris 8 motor car after changing
for the beach in 1950 (note the old AA badge on the car’s radiator grill).
As a small child I was bored by the
journey to
The wild and dramatic scenery of the Beacons was, for me,
the high spot of the journey as it signalled our entry into South Wales. For several miles the road lies above the 1000’
foot contour and at Easter 1947, after the severe winter snowfalls, only a
single passage had been cut through drifts which towered above our car. On two occasions our journeys were impeded
by serious flooding. By contrast, one
hot day of summer in the early 1950s, we memorably detoured through the Forest
of Dean, passing the historic Speech House, to emerge deep in the wooded Wye
Valley near the imposing ruins of Tintern Abbey. The idyllic situation must have inspired the
Cistercian monks who worshipped there so long ago, just as it inspired
Wordsworth who, after visiting Tintern, wrote of “
the still, sad music of humanity”.
On
the way to South Wales: floods near
the
progress of a gypsies’ vardo on 3rd
October 1958
At Gilfach my grandparents did
not occupy the traditional farm house, which was deemed too primitive, but
lived in a double fronted Victorian villa (“Oak Cottage”) 200 yards away. This was scarcely any more luxurious. Electricity was confined to the downstairs
rooms, so I went up to bed by candlelight (logic decreed that as one only slept
upstairs, there was clearly no need for electric lights there!), and I settled
down to sleep with an embroidered text above my bed saying “Simply to Thy Cross
I cling”. There was no hot water and no cooker: my grandmother, a tiny, Chapel-going lady,
had to rely on the coal fire with a traditional oven alongside, producing
wonderful meals. In the bedrooms there
were chamber pots beneath the beds, and marble washstands with china jugs and
basins which would now be collectors’ pieces.
Of the primitive outside lavatory arrangements at Oak Cottage, the less
said the better. But some farmhouse facilities
were far more exotic, with a long walk to the privy in the orchard where one
might find a commodious building offering accommodation for two patrons seated
on a timber bench side-by-side, and (in one memorable location) even a
three-seater for that special social occasion!
Staying at Gilfach
introduced me to farming routines almost unchanged over the centuries. I would accompany my grandmother to collect
eggs warm from the chickens who roamed free on the bracken-covered
hillside. I would watch my grandfather
with other local farmers as they dipped or marked the sheep. I would play with his sheepdogs, who, when
they thought duty called, would abandon me and rush off to attend to the sheep
which they found more absorbing than a small boy. On a fine summer’s evening Grandad would put
me on Ginger, his old mountain pony, for a ride up to the paddock: I felt like a maharajah. Grandad was a kind and thoughtful man and
his sheep were almost as dearly loved as his family. In a decade of wars and atomic bomb
development I remember overhearing him say to a farming friend: “I worry about the future for these boys”
(i.e., my cousin and me). How amazed he
would have been at the comfortable and fortunate lives we have led, when
compared with the struggles his generation experienced.
But one Welsh journey in 1945 was alarming. We set off to a remote Welsh valley to find
the farm which was to be the home of Auntie Maud and Uncle Len, then
newly-married. Signposts were still
almost non-existent following the war.
Cloud and fog clung to the mountainside and the drenching rain drifted
across in soaking sheets. As the
Morris climbed slowly into the all-engulfing mist, with a sheer drop of 200
feet at the side of the road, we passed whitewashed signs on the bare rock
face: “Prepare to meet thy God”. Was this to be our final journey? But when we reached Gelli
Farm I found a place which was to me, as a city child, close to heaven in more
childlike ways: 3000 acres of
freedom.
Gelli farm in the 1950s: A cow approaches, ready for milking as young
riders look on.
In wet weather such farmyards would be a sea of mud and
wellington boots the only possible footwear.
At Gelli I could escape into a
carefree world of the imagination with mountains to climb and streams to dam –
Everest and the Nile lay before me: who
cared if my shoes and socks were soaked through, or if the forgotten chicken’s
egg, placed carefully in my trouser pocket, smashed when I went sprawling in
the tussocky grass?
But in those drab, chill post-war years, the unimaginative adults were
more concerned about the lack of electricity, the enormous fireplace with its
chimney open to the sky, and with the ivy growing indoors on the damp, peeling,
farmhouse walls.
Initially Gelli farm lacked any
modern mechanical aids and Uncle Len relied on horses, not just to ride when
gathering sheep, but also as everyday local transport. Once, about 1947, when we were staying
there, he received a message (by runner? – there was no telephone then) to say
there was a dead sheep by the roadside in Abergwynfi. So a horse (Leicester by name, a rather
spiteful animal) and cart were prepared and I set off with my uncle to retrieve
the dead sheep, the only extended horse-powered working journey of my
life! I was so impressed by the
experience I later wrote it up in a school essay, much to the chagrin of my
mother who seemed to feel it reflected badly on the family!
Throughout
the later 1940s and all through the 1950s my grandfather would stay at Gelli for a few days from time to time to help out at
shearing or other busy times. Horse and
dogs would be essential once he arrived there and began helping with gathering
the sheep. His generation never took to
motor transport, so when it was time to start he would mount Ginger, call his
dogs and they would all set off from Gilfach across
the bleak mountain tops for the twelve mile journey, following the old drovers’
tracks which had been the traditional routes for farmers for many
centuries. To my grandfather this was
more natural than following the motor road round the valleys which was half as
long again and, even then, busy with motor traffic. But farming methods were soon to change,
even in the Welsh mountains, so Grandad was perhaps the last man regularly to
use the old drovers’ roads of South Wales.
Grandad about
to set off from Gilfach on Ginger
Other favoured destinations when we stayed in South Wales
included Barry with its wonderfully tawdry funfair and its miles of docks, then
alive with shipping, and Mumbles with its electric railway around the bay from
Swansea. Nor must one forget those
day-long steamer trips when the Glen Usk, the Britannia,
and the splendid new Cardiff Queen
would take us to Somerset or Devon, landing us at far away Lynmouth
or Ilfracombe, and once continuing on into the stomach-churning Atlantic swell
to land at Lundy Island.
Visits to
In
those childhood days central heating was almost unknown and only one room in a
house would normally be heated, by a coal fire, although the kitchen might also
be warm from cooking. Thus, for much of
the year one expected to be cold as soon as one moved away from the fire and
going to bed on a winter’s night was an especial ordeal. So instead of wandering about the house (as
is now customary) in shirtsleeves, I would as a child wear thick woollen
underclothes (knitted by my mother – how did I tolerate wool next to the
skin?), a grey shirt of a substantial Viyella-type
material, a long-sleeved woollen pull-over (also knitted by my mother) and a
heavy school blazer. I quickly learned
the knack of taking off pull-over, shirt and vest in one go, ready to be put on
in similar manner next morning, saving time and exposure of one’s skin to the
bracing winter morning air when intricate ice patterns decorated the inside of the bedroom windows. There were usually two blazers on call: one was new and too large and was worn to
school, the other was old and too small and was worn about the house and for
play. School caps, scarves and
gabardine raincoats were added for out-door excursions in all but the warmest
weather (and sometimes even to the beach if there was a chill wind). By contrast, short trousers were de rigeur up
to 13 years of age. In consequence,
knees, habitually exposed to the elements and to frequent close encounters with
the ground, were frequently chapped and scarred. Older men would hardly ever be seen in
shorts unless on a camping holiday when their appearance suggested they might
be home on leave from the East African Rifles.
With a fire in only one room, winter
Mondays were especially miserable to a child, because Monday was washday and if
the weather was wet the washing would be hung to dry on a clothes-horse in
front of the fire. I recall Monday, 23rd
December 1946 as the longest and dreariest day of my life. Outside it was cold and damp. There was steaming washing arrayed in front
of the fire, the windows were running with condensation and my mother was busy,
pre-occupied with ironing and mince-pie manufacture. The rest of the house was chilly and unwelcoming. I was bored and bad-tempered. I wanted Christmas to come quickly, but time
seemed to be at a standstill.
Eventually, after what seemed more like two weeks than two days,
Christmas arrived and brought a rarity: a red clockwork engine, number
6161: no rails, for the war was but recently
over and toy production was limited.
Soon after breakfast tragedy struck, for the engine, on a fully wound
spring, shot across the floor like the proverbial bat from Hades, and wedged
itself underneath the sofa, crushing its tinplate cab in the process. There were tears, but my father was on hand
to administer repairs, and the engine returned to service in fair, if not
pristine, condition.
Presents at Christmas arrived
mysteriously, during the night, in a pillow case at the foot of my bed until I
was thirteen years of age, by which time the identity of Father Christmas had
long since been established. One
wartime Christmas, my main present had been a Golliwog, carefully made by my
dear mother, arranged with his head peeping out of the pillowcase. No political correctness in the 1940s! Notwithstanding the war and its associated
militaristic attitudes, I was never allowed a toy gun and once when someone
gave me a water pistol, it disappeared very rapidly. Violence and aggression were not to be part
of my upbringing.
165 Stechford Road: the frontage in 1956 and the new pond in 1949
I had started school in May 1945, shortly before my fifth
birthday. My parents chose to send me
to Amberley Preparatory School, a small private school on Coleshill Road about
a quarter of a mile from home, although it was later to move a mile further
away to Ward End. I seemed to get on
well, but after a few months had some sort of minor breakdown (which I do not
remember, and which was never discussed, although I do recall hearing myself
described as “highly-strung”!) Thus,
for a couple of terms I only went to school in the mornings. I had been attending school for scarcely a
year when I was required to take part in an event which would not have been out
of place in a novel by Dickens. The
school was a small affair in a Victorian house, run by two unmarried ladies,
Miss Major and Miss Ainsworth. Sadly,
quite soon after my arrival, Miss Major was diagnosed as suffering from a
terminal illness. At her request, as a farewell gesture, the
entire school (about fifty children) had to process slowly through her bedroom
on the top floor. As children we
accepted this strange ritual as just another everyday event, but my mind now
gives it the quality of an event in a Dickens novel or, maybe, a sentimental
Victorian oil painting, vast and dark:
“Miss Major’s farewell to her young pupils.”
A curious quirk of my early childhood was that for several years
most of my playmates were girls: there
simply weren’t any boys of my age living locally – had something been put in
the water? Names of girls living within
a few hundred yards that still spring to mind include Jill, J’Ann,
Judith, Juliet, Jackie, (all those Js!), Norma,
Wendy, Iola, Lynne, Hazel and Beryl.
Oh, there was one boy, Timothy, but somehow we never hit it off.
Many random memories were acquired over those early
childhood years, often involving smells:
lilac blossom and wellington boots, privet hedges and coke boilers. But when I was five I experienced a
recurrent bad throat with associated nasal problems. So, in accordance with the contemporary
medical practice of removing all such evidently unnecessary items of anatomy, I
went into the Birmingham Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital to have my tonsils and
adenoids taken out. This was a major
upheaval for one who had so far led a very sheltered existence. It thus became the first event in my life to
imprint itself on my mind complete in almost every minor detail, from beginning
to end.
For a start, it was unprecedented in those days of petrol
rationing to go into the centre of
But I soon had my revenge. For the first (and, I believe, only) time in
my life, I got a girl into trouble. On
emerging from the anaesthetic I had a raging sore throat. I uttered those famous childhood words: “I want a drink of water.” The ward was under the control of a Sister
who appeared to be related to Wagner’s Valkyries. She told me firmly that I could not have a
drink. A few minutes later a pretty
young nurse passed by. (Even at five
years of age, I could appreciate a pretty girl). I repeated my request and she kindly
produced a drink. Ten minutes later the
Valkyrie flew past and noticed the empty cup (of a celluloid-type material –
ugh!). “WHO gave you that drink?”
she demanded. I remember my reply. Precisely.
Word by incriminating word: “the NICE
nurse gave it to me.” The sharp intake
of breath seemed in danger of making the walls implode. The Valkyrie mounted her invisible steed and
stormed off on a punishment mission.
For the first, but not the last time in my life, I knew I had said the
wrong thing.
In the years following the hospital visit, health matters gave
me several worried moments. I suffered
the usual childhood ailments in turn – Whooping Cough and Chicken Pox one year,
Measles and Mumps the next. But my most
serious health problem in childhood occurred at about seven years of age, when
I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, which was dubiously blamed on the
bland wartime diet in my earlier years.
It meant that for several years I was not allowed to eat any fruit
unless all the skin and pips had been removed.
A far more serious worry in the 1940s was tuberculosis, then widespread
and often fatal. Our neighbour’s
daughter and the brother of a school friend had both contracted the disease in
their late teens and had been in sanatoriums for many months. Happily, they both recovered, but the fear
of being carted away from my home in such circumstances did not bear thinking
about.
Then there was an absurd worry, typical of the fears teasing a
small boy’s mind in a sheltered and solitary childhood. This began when I noticed a rather personal
difference between me and the other boys who knelt to contribute to the hospital’s
communal chamber pot. Similarly, I
noticed that I differed from my cousin with whom I shared an occasional bath
when he came to stay. Despite being a
subject of immense fascination to growing lads, it was not the kind of thing
discussed in the best circles in the 1940s.
But I had overheard talk of children born with deformities and thus, for
several years, I worried anxiously about my apparent abnormality and whether it
had potential for future problems.
Eventually, communal school showers revealed that the difference
schoolboys knew as “Cavaliers and Roundheads” was, after all, not
uncommon. It was to be over fifty years
before I learned that in those pre-N.H.S. days the required surgery had been
performed not in hospital, but one afternoon on our kitchen table by Dr
Lillie. There was no anaesthetic for
the infant patient, but the genial Scots doctor had (as my mother tartly
observed) first fortified himself with rather more whisky than seemed advisable
for one about to wield a surgical knife.
Such operations were then encouraged for claimed hygienic reasons and
were doubtless a welcome supplementary source of income for a G.P. I might add here that in accordance with
the prim standards of modesty of the day, I was even longer to remain ignorant
of the far more interesting structural differences between males and
females. My parents had a small female
nude statue on the mantelpiece, but I attributed its lack of masculinity to
natural reticence and decency on the part of the manufacturer. Once, when I was about nine, a girl who was a
playmate persuaded me to strip off for her edification, but, alas, despite her
promises, reciprocal facilities proved not to be on offer, so in an era when
nudity was never seen in public my innocence was long to remain intact!
But in 1946 there was another event
of much greater amusement to a five-year-old than health or bodily
matters. The week before I went into
the Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital my mother and I had found a day old chick. It was squatting, fluffed up against the
cold March wind, on the pavement of an otherwise deserted suburban
A Hard Winter
No recollection of the 1940s is complete
without mention of the heavy snowfalls of 1947, arguably the hardest winter of
the twentieth century. Even in suburban
An
old-fashioned winter: Stechford Road,
seen from our front drive entrance
Dad
clears the drive with Mom’s encouragement and I get ready to build a snowman
Sadly, we have no photographs from the 1947 winter
when snow depths made those shown above quite trivial!
Fog was another winter evil in
cities in the 1940s and 1950s. All
factories, offices, shops and private houses burnt copious amounts of coal for
heating. In still winter weather the
pall of smoke hung in the air and drifted downwards, merging with any slight
mist, to cause an impenetrable fog with visibility cut to ten or fifteen
feet. It would penetrate indoors. Outside, it would paralyse traffic and even
make it difficult to find one’s way on foot.
Most traffic would cease and my father even had to walk ten miles home
from his office on one occasion. We
would be led from school in a crocodile on foot, although occasionally a tram
would crawl slowly through the streets.
A side effect of the fog was that the brick and stone of city buildings
became blackened, and it did not do to inspect one’s handkerchief after blowing
one’s nose!
During the hard winter of
1946-7 my school moved to larger premises, permitting a modest expansion in
numbers. The buildings were surrounded
by extensive grounds with shrubberies and winding paths, ideal for the
childhood games of hide-and-seek. Five
to eight year olds were taught in an imposing Victorian house but nine and ten
year olds were housed in a Nissen-type hut built in
the grounds for the Auxiliary Fire Service during the war. The two classes within the hut were
separated only by a pair of large hessian curtains, drawn back at play-time and
for lunch. A large coke boiler provided
the communal heat: a low railing
prevented us from coming into contact with its scalding sides and served as a
clothes horse for damp coats on wet days, thus ensuring that the hut was filled
with the objectionable smell of damp wool mingled with coke fumes. My school life in those days generally
lacked excitement; mile-stones included
the early, tentative, steps in writing and the daily recitation of
multiplication tables and imperial weights and measures (“22 yards make one
chain, ten chains make one furlong”, etc).
Writing at first involved using chalk on miniature slates, but later one
graduated to dip-in pens with which to practice “pot-hooks”. Reading found one exploring Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales, and such old world delights as
Talbot Baines Reed’s Adventures of a
Three Guinea Watch. Art merged with
nature study as we produced seasonal drawings of catkins, sticky buds,
bluebells or autumn leaves. To
discourage us from developing a whiny Brummie accent
we had elocution lessons from the aptly named Miss Homfray. I remember the first poem she taught
us: A
little snowdrop grew in my garden bed,/ All dressed in
white / She looked about / And shyly hung her head. Those who pronounced the last line as “Shoyly ‘ung ‘er
‘ead” failed to impress the demanding Miss Homfray (who didn’t like being referred to as Miss
‘Um-free).
I managed with little effort to keep
at or near top of the form in most subjects and usually received good end of
term reports, even if they often described me as “fidgety”. The most critical observation (at ten years
of age) was that “he should learn not to make sotto voce remarks”: whatever had I been overheard saying about
one of the teachers? Hymns were
engraved in our minds at the morning assemblies: on the Wednesday nearest our birthdays we
were allowed to choose the hymn. The
girls usually went for “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, “There is a green
hill far away” (why was it without a city wall? – very puzzling when one is
eight or nine), or “There’s a friend for little children above the bright blue
sky”; but the boys generally favoured
“Onward Christian Soldiers”. These did
seem more lively than the dreary “The day thou gavest
Lord has ended” which so often turned up at Christ Church, Burney Lane which my
mother and I attended at rather irregular intervals. Christ Church was a modern building, far
less attractive than the parish church at Castle Bromwich, but much nearer to
home. A Midlands celebrity preacher was
Canon Bryan Green, Rector of St Martins in the Bull Ring in Birmingham, who was
a highly regarded evangelist. Mother
and I went to hear him twice at Christ Church and felt slightly cheated that he
preached the same (lengthy) sermon on both occasions! A local pillar of the Church was a prim
elderly spinster with the appropriate name of Miss Perfect. At about six years of age I was taken to be
introduced to her (rather like being ceremonially presented at Court) and she
commemorated the occasion by giving me a New Testament.
My mostly tranquil school
life suffered one significant interruption when a girl in the class complained that
another girl, called Yvonne, had stolen her fountain pen. The Principal, Miss Inshaw,
made enquiries and the pen was duly found secreted in the top of one of
Yvonne’s black woollen stockings. The
poor silly girl was expelled, causing a frisson of excitement through the
class. I had not previously encountered
the world of theft and expulsion, nor, come to that, the world of
stocking-tops: sensations all, to an
eight-year-old.
Manners were an essential part of
one’s education in the highly structured society of those post-war years. One did not speak until spoken to. As boys, it was impressed on us that we must
treat ladies with respect at all times, a practice still faithfully kept by
some of my generation. A gentleman
should raise his hat on meeting a lady, should hold the door open for her,
allowing her to go first, and should always stand whenever a lady entered a
room. On crowded ‘buses one should
always offer one’s seat to a lady.
Conversely, real ladies did not go into pubs without a male escort, nor did
they smoke cigarettes in public.
Elocution lessons ensured that we spoke correctly and avoided
colloquialisms, especially “O.K.”.
Swearing in company was almost a capital offence. One might just hear one’s parents say “damn”
or “blast” under serious provocation, but the words were not permitted in a
child’s vocabulary. “Bloody” was used
by men only in the most extreme situations and would certainly never have been
allowed on the wireless. Stronger
language still, nowadays common-place, was largely confined to the working man
in his own environment and would never be heard in public. Just once, a boy called Gilbert used such a
word to me. I asked my mother what it
meant, but she didn’t tell me. I was,
however, forbidden henceforth to go to Gilbert’s house, which was a pity as he
had a very good train set.
Although I had a small circle of
friends at Amberley, much of my leisure time was spent alone, contentedly
reading or playing with my Hornby Dublo electric
train set, or happily riding my blue Hercules bicycle around the quiet
suburban pavements. I am told I learnt
to read when I was three by finding Music
While you Work in the Radio Times!
After Rupert Annuals and Enid Blyton, I graduated to Arthur Ransome books, ‘Bunkle’
adventures and the ‘
My form at Amberley was quite small, about fifteen to twenty
pupils, of whom most were girls. One
young friend was J’Ann Page, who moved to Somerset
about 1960, but with whom I re-established contact in 1985 through a neighbour
of my parents who had remained in touch.
J’Ann was a lively girl and we often enjoyed a
threepenny ice cream as we walked home from the tram on the journey back from
school. But the world is not yet ready
for the curious tale of how her socks came once to be lodged high in one of
Stechford Road’s sycamore trees. In
the years 1949 – 1951 two boys in particular were my firm friends: Derek Silk and David Yates. On leaving Amberley we inevitably drifted
apart, but happily got together again on several occasions in the 21st
century, thanks to connections made through the internet. At school, we tried to pass ourselves off as
a “gang”, modelled partly on Richmal Crompton’s Just
William stories and partly on Jennings, with a dash of Dick
Barton – Special Agent, courtesy of the BBC Light Programme’s serial at
6.45 each evening. We wore our
fashionable “snake” belts, but of our daring exploits little remains in
memory. My most serious misdemeanour
arose when I was “dared” to knock on someone’s door near the school and run
away: I was caught and Miss Inshaw duly administered a stroke with a ruler on the palm
of my hand, almost certainly the only time in my life that I suffered such
physical punishment. Truth to tell, the
public humiliation was the worst aspect of the incident.
(Schooldays continues below, after Dan Dare)
The view from 165 Stechford Road
The view looking into Hodgehill Road in the early 1950s, soon after the
introduction of the 55 ‘bus service in October 1950, but before replacement of
the 1930s-style lamp posts by tall modern lighting. When my parents bought the house in 1932 it
faced open fields with a view to
The view of the back garden shows
the lawn around which I rode my Hercules bicycle,
with the rockery beyond (into which the air
raid shelter had been built for the duration
of the war) and behind which
there was a small vegetable garden.
Some childhood souvenirs:
Clockwise from
the top:
An excerpt from Radio Times: wireless
programmes for 24th February 1951,
including Jennings at School;
the cover of Enid Blyton’s weekly Sunny
Stories for November 1948;
one of Arthur Ransome’s
decorations from the pages of Swallows and Amazons;
a page from Bunkle
Butts In, by M. Pardoe (1943), with illustration by Julie Nield [The ‘Noises in the Night’ were
intruders in the secret passage!]
Extracts
from an early edition of Eagle, showing Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future.
Art work, by Frank Hampson, was always of a
high standard; the stories often
contained a discreet didactic element and schoolboys enjoyed the humorous side
as evidenced by the bluff Lancastrian approach of Digby, Dan Dare’s batman.
School days (continued)
Our ‘gang’ got into the local sand quarry one weekend when it
was closed, climbing through a fence near a sign saying “Trespassers will be
prosecuted”. But I was not cut out for a
life of crime and for weeks thereafter I was convinced that every knock at the
door would reveal the house surrounded by Scotland Yard men come to arrest me
for trespassing. In any case, with my
bouncing mop of unruly curls, big brown eyes and (in summer) white ankle socks
I never cut a very macho image. Another
boy in the class was Alan Smith but he was destined not to be part of the
‘gang’. Sadly, he suffered from Multiple
Sclerosis so he wore surgical boots and walked with difficulty. He was unable to join in most of our
games. His life was to be short and sad,
but to the rest of us his condition was a fact of life and we selfishly
continued with our games while he looked on.
Only later did one begin to wonder what his thoughts must have been.
Because of the small number of boys,
sport scarcely featured in the school curriculum and, although a few boys liked
to kick a ball about, football was not the obsessive interest it became in
later decades. As an only child I grew
up happily uninterested in games and other competitive activities. Dad did once take me to see Aston Villa play
when I was about seven, but I was hit painfully in the face by the muddy ball
when it strayed into the crowd. The
return home of a mud-splashed and blood-stained child incurred maternal
displeasure, so the trip was not repeated.
There were swimming lessons once each week, involving the tram ride to
Woodcock Street baths. By the time one
had changed – always two boys to a cubicle – there was time for only about
twenty minutes in the water. But
afterwards came the best bit, a cup of hot chocolate and a tiny slice of swiss roll in the café.
School P.T. exercises took place out of doors in fine weather only,
evoking the memory of the row of girls in front bending to touch their toes,
thus providing a momentary glimpse of their navy blue knickers as they leant
forward. A little more exciting was the
occasion during a game of ‘tig’ when I lunged to
touch Angela Moran and inadvertently (honest, guv!) succeeded in pulling off
her wrap-round skirt, thus revealing a tantalising hint of feminine delights –
though in those innocent times that was a country which would remain terra incognita, completely off limits
for twenty more long years.
At ten years of age I suffered
the first pangs of interest in the opposite sex. For a while I took to eating my sandwiches
with one of the girls and we would wander around the school grounds at break
and lunchtime having earnest discussions.
I endured some taunting from my two chums in the ‘gang’ who clearly did
not understand affairs of the heart.
Then, at the end of term, she broke the news that she would be leaving
and so the school “gang” member-ship went back up to three.
Meanwhile, childish fun went on as
before. Birthday parties continued until I was
eleven. Organised by my mother, there
were games, always including “pass the parcel”, then there was tea (actually Corona
“pop” and birthday cake), and then some wild running about in the garden until
it was time to finish. Parties were
always mixed, but activities usually seemed to divide into boys v girls. The girls always wore party frocks and had
ribbons in their hair, looking as pretty as a picture. They would surely have grown up into
wonderfully attractive young ladies, but by then our ways would have sadly
parted.
Birthday
party 1951: back left: Derek Silk,
RHD, David Yates,(“the gang”)
back
right: Norma Page, Stella Richardson, Myrtle Pridmore
front:
Keith Hickinbottom, J’Ann
Page
“ Children’s Hour ”
Out of school, music was my most lasting
discovery of those early post-war years, destined to develop into my life’s
main leisure interest. Ours was not a
musical household and I am told that my favourite piece of music during the war
was called “Pistol Packing Momma”, long since erased from my memory. But, like most contemporary middle-class
children, I was an avid listener to “Children’s Hour” on the BBC Home Service
(no television in those days!). Many of
the items were introduced by tuneful extracts from classical music, some of
which etched themselves permanently into the mind. Said
the Cat to the Dog opened with an extract from Walton’s Façade and “Music at Random”, a series
of talks by Helen Henschel, began with the main theme
from the last movement of Brahms’s First Symphony. One serial used Sibelius’s En Saga.
Another drew briefly on the music of Shostakovich, and, with the help of
Radio Times, sent me on my first
voyage of discovery to the newly-developed Third Programme. (I remember, however, being seriously
bewildered by the music encountered there – not for the last time!) At Christmas 1948 I first heard John
Masefield’s Box of Delights with
music from Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s delightful Carol Symphony. Box of Delights was to be repeated in
1955, before being transferred to television in 1984, each time with the same
music. But the piece which I enjoyed
most was one used to introduce a children’s adventure serial broadcast in 1947
called Bunkle Butts In. I was hooked by the first “thriller” I had
encountered (I still have the book!).
The music, Elgar’s Chanson de Matin, entered into possession of my brain and started
me on a lifetime’s enjoyment of classical music. Thanks to the organisers of “Children’s Hour”,
music became an absorbing ingredient of my life when I was just seven years
old. I fear that today’s youngsters
lack such an introduction to the magic of classical music.
There was, of course, other, more light-hearted, entertainment
to be had from the wireless (as it was then called). A favourite was Much Binding in the Marsh with Kenneth Horne, Richard Murdoch, Sam
Costa and Maurice Denham. Lying in bed
on Sunday evenings, I would hear the voice of Frankie Howerd
in Variety Bandbox drifting upstairs,
accompanied by my parents’ laughter.
The most discussed show was probably ITMA
with Tommy Handley who died so suddenly aged 57 in 1949. During and immediately after the war ITMA had been a major factor in uniting
the nation: at a time when there was no
television, and wireless programmes were confined to the BBC Light Programme
and Home Service, choice was restricted and the majority of the population
would be enjoying the activities of Handley and his crew. Billy Cotton’s Band Show on the Light
Programme accompanied our lunch every Sunday, ensuring that I was soon
word-perfect with “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts …”
Television broadcasts had
started in London in 1936 but were suspended for the war, restarting in June
1946. The service reached Birmingham in
1949 and was extended throughout the rest of the country in the 1950s. We acquired our first set in February 1951 at
a cost of 60 guineas (equivalent to £1623 in 2023). Early receivers came in vast wooden cabinets
but had tiny 9” or (for the affluent!) 12” screens. For many years programmes were broadcast
live and went out for limited hours only:
initially there were children’s programmes from 5 pm to 6 pm, and then
nothing was transmitted until evening programmes began at 8 pm, continuing
until about 10.15 pm. My first glimpse
of television was of an old Hopalong Cassidy western
film being shown in the window of a radio retailer: it may have been a flickery
black and white picture, but to me it was then the last word in sophisticated
entertainment. Other early delights
were “Mr Pastry” (remembered installing a TV aerial on the roof and falling
into a waterbut) and the 1951 studio-bound production
of E. Nesbit’s Railway Children – no
actual trains were shown, but steam might occasionally be blown across the
screen!
Evening programmes were
introduced by announcers dressed formally in evening wear: viewers were greeted by Sylvia Peters or Mary
Malcolm in elegant dresses and McDonald Hobley or
Leslie Mitchell immaculate in dinner jackets.
As programmes were broadcast live (even the Thursday repeat of the
Sunday night play was a second live performance) it meant that disasters great
and small reached the home screen. Not
infrequently the screen would go momentarily blank before an elegantly written
notice appeared:
“Normal Service
will be Resumed
as soon as Possible”
The first person I ever
saw drunk was Dr Glyn Daniel on the television programme Animal Vegetable and Mineral – he and his guests had evidently been
celebrating before-hand, rather too well.
My first hint that sex appeal might be of some significance came about
1952 in a live programme with the elderly artist Sir Gerald Kelly talking about
(I think) Fragonard's "Girl on a Swing": he suddenly turned to the camera with a
wicked twinkle to add a daringly unscripted remark: "Look at that lovely little
bottom". My mother laughed, then
remembered I was there and said "Well!!" in a certain tone of voice.
A sample of television programmes
from 1951
An
extract from Radio Times showing all the television programmes for Tuesday,
February 20th 1951
It will be noticed that no
programme were broadcast between 4.5 and 5.0 pm, or from 6.0 to 8.0 pm.
Following the News (sound only) television
closed down at about 10.15 pm.
The death of
radio’s Tommy Handley was an uncomfortable reminder of human mortality. During the 1940s two neighbours died,
comparatively young, raising in a child’s mind the question of our ultimate
destination. The mother of Juliet
Powell, a little girl with whom I had sometimes played, died in her 30s from
breast cancer, and “Uncle” Bill, our next-door neighbour died from pneumonia in
his mid-fifties. These events raised
uncomfortable questions, but children look ahead, not back, and the events were
soon all but forgotten. The equally
great mystery of birth surfaced from time to time: I remember asking my mother where I had come
from, but I cannot now recall her reply which was doubtless a masterpiece of dissembling! But I was temporarily satisfied, without the
destruction of childish innocence which now seems to be the rule.
Much of my knowledge of
life’s caprices came from unintentional eavesdropping on my mother’s
conversations with her friends. She led a life ordered by routine: Mondays were for washing (morning) and
ironing (afternoon), Tuesday and Friday mornings were for local shopping,
Wednesday and Thursday mornings were for cleaning – downstairs and upstairs,
respectively. Except on Monday, after
an early light lunch she would change into a smart day dress. The afternoon was then available for seeing
friends, equally elegantly attired in smart frocks, or for an occasional trip
to the centre of Birmingham. There she
would shop for clothes (although that was limited because of the need for
clothing coupons), or perhaps take me to a matinee at the cinema. When her friends came for tea I would often
sit quietly reading in a chair in the bay window while the ladies sat talking
by the fire. Perhaps I was invisible,
because I would hear remarks about life, husbands and acquaintances which were
surely not intended for me! There was
probably nothing slanderous, but I do remember being amused by mimicry of a
local lady with an affected way of speaking who was quoted as saying “My de-ah,
it took me two aahs to arrange the flaahs.” [Two hours to arrange the flowers.] I felt uncomfortable (and still do) on
hearing a woman complain about her husband’s alleged domestic
inadequacies. I have never heard a man
complain about his wife, suggesting that ‘cattiness’ is indeed a female
attribute! In the 1940s the two sexes
lived quite separate lives: it seemed
men went off to kill or be killed fighting wars or, if living at home, set off,
trilby-hatted to work from 7.30 am to 6 pm each day. On Saturday afternoons they went flat-capped
to football, and spent any remaining spare time caked in mud from digging the
garden or covered in oil after overhauling the car (which probably entailed
lifting out the engine). Women shopped
occasionally, cleaned from time to time, did a little knitting or embroidery,
dead-headed the roses and spent the rest of their time reading to their
children or drinking tea with friends:
it seemed to me an enviable existence compared with their husbands – but
things for me turned out differently and I have no cause for complaint!
In the 1940s and 50s ladies still
had a very different approach to life from men and they cherished attitudes
which their 21st century successors would repudiate. Like most of her sex, my mother, her sisters
and her friends all strongly disapproved of football and all other games apart
from tennis, which was enthusiastically supported. Cricket also enjoyed a limited following
amongst a few of the fair sex. Wives
reluctantly tolerated their men attending football matches on a Saturday
afternoon, but the male obsession with the game was regarded by them as a clear
indication of men’s inferiority to women.
Likewise, it was accepted that men drove cars, buses and lorries: but no self-respecting lady would allow
herself to be seen indulging in such activity.
Their avoidance of motoring was quite sensible in the 1940s as vehicles
were far from reliable and breakdowns and mishaps were commonplace with
“D.I.Y.” repairs often being the only practical solution, albeit tricky and
dirty. A few women did learn to drive,
but they were a tiny minority and regarded with acute distrust by men and even
by most other women!
Life continued with occasional unexpected
twists and turns. In the late 1940s I
experienced an encounter with the constabulary which was to make a lasting
change in my life – although happily without any charges being brought! During the course of a visit to the family
in South Wales, my father had the misfortune to run down a lady who foolishly
stepped off the pavement in Tonyrefail without first
looking to see if the road was clear.
Happily, the car was only travelling at about 20 m.p.h. and no serious
injury was caused. Nevertheless, it was
necessary for my father to call at the village police station to make a
statement. While he and my mother were
thus engaged I endured a very long and boring wait. The sergeant’s wife took pity on me and
brought me a mug of strong tea. This was
alarming, as I disliked tea intensely and never drank it. But clearly one did not argue with the
police. So I braced myself and took a
sip. Heavens! – I liked the stuff! From that day forward I have never refused
the chance of a cup of tea – thanks to the Glamorganshire Constabulary.
More memories of holidays in South Wales:
With Dad on board the Cardiff
Queen at
Ilfracombe 1949
and with Mom at Tenby
after a boat trip to
Paddling with cousin
David at Llansteffan, Carmarthen, 15th
August 1952.
School blazers and ties
are in evidence, - but not trousers!
When it came to food there was no opportunity
to indulge in the whims and caprices of taste.
Rationing and shortages continued well into the 1950s and many popular
items were simply unobtainable. One had
what one was given or went without.
Imports of bananas were discontinued throughout the war and oranges were
available only in very limited quantities.
I recall my first post-war banana as a serious disappointment: I think I was expecting a bigger, sweeter,
more luscious orange. Domestic freezers
and refrigerators were almost unknown, so frozen foods were simply not
available until limited quantities of ice cream began to appear once the war
was over: at first in vanilla flavour
only; wafers three-pence, cornets
four-pence, tubs sixpence!
Dinner menus were limited in range. Beef, mutton and pork were the staples; lamb was seasonal and chicken a luxury for
Christmas only. Cod, tripe, hearts and
brains appeared occasionally. Meat was
accompanied by fresh vegetables according to season – my diet of green
vegetables was limited mainly to fresh peas out of the garden in July, runner
beans in August and cabbage for the rest of the year, varied only by occasional
carrots or cauliflower. Tinned peas
were available, but were not especially palatable. In an era of shortages, leftovers were
recycled so that yesterday’s meat reappeared as rissoles, vegetables as
“bubble-and-squeak”, and an unwanted tea might re-appear as bread-and-butter
pudding. Cheese was rationed to two
ounces (of non-descript Cheddar) per person per week. Eggs were scarce, but dried egg was
available for cooking and could even be made into a sort of omelette, though my
mother looked down her nose at such contrived dishes. She baked her own cakes; otherwise we would
probably have gone without. The season
for locally grown fruits was extended by careful storage of cooking apples,
giving the spare bedroom a characteristic smell, and my mother would be busy
bottling plums and damsons in Kilner jars at the end of each summer. Imported tinned fruit was unknown and I did
not taste any until a rare tin of pineapple chunks, hoarded from before the
war, was produced at a family party, held at my father’s old home in Erdington,
for Uncle Cyril who was on leave from the Army. Foreign dishes such as pizza, lasagne, or
paella were quite unheard of; indeed, in
an era when foreign holidays were almost unknown our family would not have
recognised the words! By comparison
with present-day menus it seems a poverty-stricken up-bringing. But the choice was planned in response to
government dietary advice and ensured a generally healthy population. There was no chance of over-indulgence, so
my friends were a skinny and active lot, obese children being unknown!
Sweets were taken off the ration on 24th April 1949
(remembered as being my play-mate J’Ann’s birthday),
but before I could get to the corner shop for a quarter of Barker and Dobson’s
Barley Sugar or of Wilkinson’s Liquorice Allsorts, panic buying by the public
had cleared the shelves nation-wide.
This resulted in the government re-imposing rationing for three more years,
frustrating the dreams of many children who were thus strictly limited to one
or two sweets a day. But in
compensation there was Christian Kunzle’s restaurant
in Union Street with its delicious Swiss-style cream cakes rich with cream
inside a chocolate ‘boat’: one greedily
eyed a plateful but could seldom manage more than one! How strange that such indulgent fare has
long since vanished from the shops!
Food rationing continued with full
severity for several years after the war.
The system demanded that one was registered for food with a specific
shop. Making purchases elsewhere was
not permitted. We patronised Ehret’s, a small grocer (with a surprisingly Germanic name
for those days). There, my mother’s
order was taken over a long counter with a chair placed alongside for the
customer to rest her legs. Many items,
such as butter and sugar were parcelled up on the premises and biscuits
(plain; no cream varieties) were sold
loose from large biscuit tins, pre-packed goods being almost unknown. My mother’s purchases would be delivered
later by bicycle. I always wanted her
to call in at the Co-op, despite not being registered there, as the Co-op had a
marvellous aerial ropeway by which the cash was sent by the shop assistant to
the lady cashier who returned any change by the same means – a fascinating
contrivance for a small boy to watch in action! (The Midland Educational book shop in
A postcard view of
Corporation Street, Birmingham, at the crossing with Bull Street, about 1949.
The buildings behind
and beyond the tram (which is heading for the Fox & Goose terminus at
Ward End, see below)
were replaced by Rackhams’ department store in 1960.
In the late 1940s our rations were slightly
supplemented – unofficially - with the help of Aunty Rene, a cousin of my mother’s who, like her, had left South Wales and settled in
Warwickshire. She and her husband ran
the village shop at Broadwell, near Southam and about twice a year we visited her, returning
laden with contraband packets of Weetabix, bags of sugar, slices of fresh ham
and pats of butter. Broadwell
was then a tiny isolated village lying in a hollow, populated mainly by
agricultural labourers who lived near the poverty line. Most houses were down-at-heel and there was
an overwhelming and unpleasant smell which offended the nostrils as soon as we
got out of the car. Explained by my
mother as “stagnant water”, I later discovered the smell was that of the village’s
cesspits. On our visits I often played
with Margaret, Aunty Rene’s granddaughter and my second cousin once
removed. She was a tall, lively girl,
only a little younger than me. But in
her twenties she suddenly suffered a brain haemorrhage and died, leaving two
tiny children. Aunty Rene herself died
in 1960 and thereafter we had no reason to return to Broadwell. But in 1990 I was driving nearby and decided
to make the detour to see how the village had changed. In thirty years the down-at-heel cottages
had been transformed into “desirable executive commuter homes”, each with a BMW
or Mercedes outside. The old shop was
no more, but was now the largest and most impressive of all the houses. I might add that the air was sweet and of
the smell there was no evidence.
The Fox & Goose
shopping area, about 1949, from the pages of the Birmingham Weekly Post.
In the left foreground is the Washwood Heath Road with trams on their reserved
track. Alum Rock Road merges in the
right foreground. The Beaufort Cinema
is just above and right of the traffic island.
The Outer Circle route crosses from left to right and Coleshill Road
continues into the distance toward Hodgehill Common,
just visible where Coleshill Road bends left into the trees. Centre-left are playing fields, now occupied
by a super-market. The sand quarry is
visible right of centre: it was later
filled in and became Stechford Hall Park.
Rural Castle Bromwich stretches across the top of the photograph: Shard End was still just a planner’s dream.
Petrol was still rationed well into
the 1950s, so outings by car were strictly limited. On a couple of occasions, when my mother
evidently wanted an afternoon to herself, she would pack me off on the Outer
Circle ‘bus for the two hour circumnavigation of
Chamberlain Place,
Birmingham: A Midland Red ‘bus passes
the smoke-blackened Council House as it approaches the Town Hall.
Most stone buildings were then blackened by the smoke in
winter fogs. As atmospheric pollution
diminished in the 1950s the buildings were cleaned, revealing that the stone
had a natural light colour - much to the surprise of my generation!
In the late 1940s and 1950s the British
Industries Fair (“BIF”) was held for two weeks each summer at Castle Bromwich,
only a mile from home. I was taken
there on several occasions, even though the displays of heavy engineering which
were the essential feature of the show were hardly riveting stuff, either for
me or for my mother. But there was
usually an exhibit featuring a small gauge industrial railway, intended for use
in quarries or on building sites and the promoters were generally more than
happy to demonstrate its cargo carrying capacity with a load of small boys
instead of the more usual tonnage of granite.
In 1947 the BIF was officially opened by H.M. King George VI, and after
the ceremony he was taken by motorcade to join the Royal Train at Stechford
station, so passing our house. This was
an occasion when we watched from our front garden as the King drove past – I
was surprised to find that there were other, lesser, mortals whose front gardens
were not thus honoured by His Majesty.
I will add here, although it belongs to a slightly later stage of my
life, that in 1956 the Russian leaders, Khrushchev and Bulganin likewise were
driven past our house when returning to catch their train to
1950: 10th birthday
For the most part, news in the
1940s passed me by, but from conversations overheard between adults, from
wireless news bulletins and occasional newspaper headlines, I gained some vague
impression of the drift of events. In
1945 I knew from the VE celebrations that the end of the war with
In 1945 I had remained in
ignorance of the general election which brought Clement Atlee’s Labour party to
power but I soon noticed some of the cosmetic aspects of Labour’s policies and
became familiar with such names as Stafford Cripps, Herbert Morrison, Ernest
Bevin and Aneurin Bevan. My father admired “Ernie” Bevin, but Bevan
was especially unpopular with both my parents who referred to him as “Urinal
Bevan” although the joke was lost on me.
Labour’s nationalisation of collieries and railways first manifested
itself to me by the closure of the tiny private colliery known as “The Squint”
in Gilfach Goch, near my
grandparents’ home. Then the familiar
chocolate-coloured paint on Great Western Railway carriages gave way for a
while to red, and I vividly recall the first occasion when I saw a steam engine
lettered “BRITISH RAILWAYS” instead of the familiar “GWR” – much to the disgust
of my father.
For a decade after the war,
paper shortages resulted in newspapers comprising no more than six pages and
there was thus room only for one or two photographs. But the press could always be relied on for
front page pictures of a disaster, so air and rail crashes seemed to loom
large. The horrific air crash in March 1950 near Cowbridge
in Glamorgan, when 80 rugby football supporters returning from a match in
It now comes as a surprise
(even to those of us who were there at the time) to be reminded how innocent
and ignorant children in the 1940s and 1950s were about matters relating to
sex. Parents and schools shyly dodged
the issue. Newspapers, magazines and
the broadcast media never mentioned the topic.
Nudity was quite unknown, save for discreetly-posed black and white
pictures in a few “pin-up” magazines which were not widely available and
certainly unknown to me. Boys and girls
could thus grow up in a state of blissful ignorance of the change adolescence
would bring: nothing was said. My own innocence was signally disturbed at
ten years of age by a 19-year-old Italian film actress, Silvana
Mangano who appeared in an Italian film, Bitter Rice, released in Great Britain
in 1950. The publicity photographs for
the film included one reproduced in our Daily
Mail showing Miss Mangano standing in water,
wearing tiny shorts and a figure-hugging black sweater. Never before had I seen anything quite like
it: the picture fascinated me and
brought an exciting sensation, strange and delightful yet a little
alarming; new to a growing boy. Thus began five years of change, as I
discovered delight in watching a pretty girl pass by. Boyish curiosity and flamboyance amongst my
contemporaries offered patchy enlightenment (as well as worrying fables of
blindness or worse) but I was approaching fifteen years of age before the story
took shape. Only then did I properly
understand that such bodily developments were to do with reproducing the
species and so had more significance than just to provide passing amusement for
teenage boys. The years passed, and
other sex symbols such as Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot came to tantalise
the mind and body of this adolescent boy, but I shall never forget Silvana Mangano oozing temptation
in a rice field. What a contrast
between our own ignorance in the 1940s and 50s and the obsessive attitudes of
the 21st century.
Silvana Mangano
in Bitter Rice, 1949.
She appeared in several more films, of
which the best known
was Death
in Venice in 1971. She died in
1987.
This was
the photograph which caught my eye in the Daily
Mail in 1950.
In 1951 I passed the “eleven-plus” examination for King Edward’s School, Aston, but was also entered for the separate examination for the ‘parent’ King Edward’s School in Edgbaston. This was a tougher proposition but I passed and so the lengthy cross-city journey would be part of my life from September. I would notice a change: Amberley was a tiny, informal affair, run by a handful of local ladies, of whom Mrs Bunker and J’Ann’s mother, Mrs Page, were my usual teachers, aided by Mrs Woodwiss who taught History and Geography on Thursdays and Fridays only. For a couple of terms, there was a small sensation when they were joined by a man, Mr Luby. At Amberley I was a big fish in a very small pool, but at King Edward’s I would find myself a very small fish indeed. The culture shock would be significant. Instead of the company of a small number of girls and an even smaller number of boys, there would be 700 pupils, many already grown men over six feet tall. Life at King Edward’s would bring testing new subjects including Algebra and Latin to puzzle my mind, and games such as rugger (about which I knew nothing). But this new existence would one day cease to be strange and would itself become second nature.
The early ‘fifties were marked by
three events of national significance:
the Festival of Britain in the summer of 1951, the death of H.M. King
George VI in February 1952, and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June
1953. These printed themselves on my
memory in different ways. I remember
the Festival firstly for the journey up to
The death of the King was, to a
child, quite unexpected, the news reaching my form at lunchtime as we waited to
go into the school dining hall. After
the colour and fun of the previous year’s Festival, the state funeral itself
had an overwhelming and numbing sombreness, awe-inspiring even to an
eleven-year-old. Monochromes dominated
everything, not just on the tiny black and white television, but in the whole
of that cold, grey, austere February world.
Gaiety returned the next year in time for the Coronation, even
if the weather itself famously failed to co-operate on the day. But with hindsight, I now realise that just
as my world was changing, so the further world beyond was taking on new and
different aspect. In watching the
splendid spectacle of Coronation Day I witnessed the finale of the British
Empire and of the Pax Britannica; the world of my parents and of my
grandparents; the world of my own childhood; a world which I had foolishly thought was
permanent.
* * * * *
In Retrospect
The early 1940s was a surprisingly good time in which to
be born. I was too young to be much concerned
either by the war or by the privations which continued for some years
afterwards. I saw and experienced a
world which still depended on horse power and the steam engine, and when
country life was little changed from that which had obtained centuries
earlier. My own childhood is now more
than seventy years in the past, amongst events far enough away to be deemed
historic. But I well remember listening
to relations born in the 1860s. They
had in turn been brought up by a generation whose attitudes were formed in the
1820s and 30s, when misbehaving children were told ‘Boney’
(Napoleon Bonaparte) would get them and when any journey, for those not lucky
enough to be part of the aristocracy, meant a long walk or an uncomfortable
ride on the local carrier’s cart. Just
a couple of generations back and one is lost in an era whose people could not
possibly conceive of the life we now lead.
By contrast, I was born in time to enjoy the increasing material
prosperity of the 1950s and early 1960s, while still having the old-fashioned
freedom to explore my surroundings free from the fears of crime and violence
which affect today’s children. I was in
time to benefit also from the general availability of a wider and more
attractive diet, and also of improved medicine, especially antibiotics and
better anaesthetics.
The full employment of the post-war era meant it was easy
to get a well-paid and interesting job with security and also with prospects
which were duly realised. Those who
were born in later decades were not to find employment so easy, and, for many
of the rising generation, the outlook for early retirement and a generous
pension is much less promising than for my generation.
It is easy and commonplace for my
generation to think back to our childhood days and to lament the loss of
innocence. We are now immersed in a
depressing climate of violence, of aggression and confrontation, of tasteless
and offensive talk. This is evident in
everyday life, in the press, in books, and especially on television where we
find many plays and so-called comedies quite unwatchable. Tenderness and sympathy are in short supply,
as is true wit. There are manifold
petty restrictions and the absurdity of “political correctness” and “woke”
attitudes which limit cherished freedoms.
Moreover, standards of public behaviour and dress have slipped as
‘scruffiness’ has taken over. How one
laments especially the loss of pretty dresses for young women, replaced by
dreary jeans and T-shirts (or by barely decent brief shorts and tiny
tops)! But against that one must set
today’s improved living standards, especially dentistry and health care, and
such material benefits as cars and computers, refrigerators and televisions, central
heating and air conditioning; plus the
travel and holiday opportunities we now accept as commonplace.
I may have enjoyed myself in the
1940s and 1950s, but I would not go back:
there is so much in life to enjoy today!
Robert
Darlaston, February
2006
Updated, November 2008
Edited and updated,
October 2023
Fifth form
school photograph, Summer 1955
Part Two
King Edward’s
School
Birmingham
1951 – 1959
Looking up the Main Drive from Big School towards the
University with its splendid clock tower:
July 1959
= = i = =
|
M |
y
stay at King Edward’s spanned the years from the Festival of Britain in 1951 to
the wonderful summer of 1959, one of the sunniest of the century. It was a good decade in which to grow up. My first few years had been set in a world
of bombs and rationing, where toys and sweets were almost as scarce as penguins
in the Sahara. Austerity had continued
after the war ended and, through the rest of the 1940s, life retained a dreary
greyness aptly portrayed by the monochrome newsreels of the period. But to a child it seemed, superficially at
least, that the arrival of the ‘fifties had brought a fresh wind to blow away
the horrors of the previous decade.
Rationing was rapidly dismantled.
Luxury goods began to appear in shops.
Newspapers enthusiastically proclaimed a new Elizabethan age. With Sir Winston Churchill as Prime
Minister, Everest newly climbed and the new Comet
jet airliner briefly dominating the skies, such claims for a while appeared
true. To a schoolboy it seemed one was
participating in real progress. In that
decade of full employment the motor car, television and the foreign holiday
became (for better or worse) part of everyday life. It was against that background that I spent
my time at K.E.S..
I started at King Edward’s School on 13th September
1951. I knew I was fortunate to secure
a place at a school which had provided education to the great and the good in
Birmingham for four hundred years and which was unquestionably one of the
finest academic establishments in the kingdom. Famous alumni of the twentieth century in
whose steps I was following included J.R.R. Tolkein,
Field Marshal Viscount Slim, and the Rt Hon Enoch
Powell. Other pupils who became
household names for a time included a brace of bishops, the journalist Godfrey
Winn (a favourite in women’s magazines in the ‘fifties), comedy actors Raymond
Huntley and Richard Wattis, atomic spy Alan Nunn May and maverick drama critic
Kenneth Tynan (who was alleged to be the first person to use the ‘f***’ word on
the B.B.C.). Further back, the school
had produced the artists David Cox and Edward Burne
Jones, as well as E.W. Benson (who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883) and
an assortment of professors and clergy.
The school was a rich foundation which lacked for nothing and
had, only recently, moved from the bustle of the city centre to sumptuous new
premises in sylvan Edgbaston. The
facilities ranged from laboratories equipped to the latest standards to a small
cinema with tiered rows of blue plush tip-up seats. There were parquet-floored corridors, which,
to an eleven-year-old, seemed to stretch to infinity, and an assembly hall,
known traditionally as Big School, with a fine organ and one of the largest oak
hammer-beam roofs in England. The stage
in Big School was dominated by Sapientia (Latin for wisdom), an impressive carved and
canopied oak throne for the Chief Master, designed by Augustus Welby Pugin. The beams for the roof had been delivered
before the war and remained for the duration lost amongst long grass and
builders’ junk. A government inspector
had arrived to sequestrate them for the war effort, but the site caretaker had
denied any knowledge of them, and so they had survived to provide the school
with a magnificent setting for morning prayers and formal occasions.
The contrast from my tiny previous school
could not have been greater. To a small
eleven-year-old somewhat lacking in self-confidence the sheer size was
bewildering and I duly got lost on my first day when searching for room
72. New boys were known as “Sherrings” (a contraction of “Fresh Herrings”), which could
occasionally be a term of mild abuse when used by boys who had risen to the
dignified height of the second year. On
arrival at K.E.S., I was placed with 22 other boys in Shell ‘C’. We were seated in alphabetical order and I
teamed up with my neighbour, whose surname was Cork. Like me, Cork was somewhat overawed by our
new surroundings, so it was good to have an ally in those early days. His family was to move away after a few
years and he vanished from my modest circle:
later I heard that he made something of a name for himself in Jazz
circles. Our form master in Shell ‘C’
was Mr L.K.J. Cooke, a kindly man with a velvet toned voice and a leisurely
speech delivery. In consequence, unkind
schoolboys had nicknamed him “Slimy”, but he was an expert at easing new boys
into school life. His roll-call of our
names in alphabetical order stays in mind many decades later: “Beard, Berry, Birch, Brown, Clark, Cork,
Darlaston,” and so on, ending with “Strange, Viggers,
and Wilson”, recalling the sinister television drama set in a boys’
school: Unman, Wittering and Zigo, where the
title was similarly derived.
Left:
Official School Photo 1953 – detail
(Back row (l-r) Sessions,
Edwards, Mitchell; Front row (l-r) Birch, Darlaston,
Robertson
Right: Darlaston in
school uniform of blazer, tie, grey shirt and school cap, 1953
The use of surnames accorded with long-standing tradition
at boys’ schools. Today such usage is widely thought of as
unfriendly and first-name terms have become general, even with people one has
never met. But it was long the
customary form of address amongst males at school, in the Services and in the
professions. Christian names were
confined to family, a few close friends and, of course, girls. For a boy starting at secondary school,
being addressed by his surname was a badge of pride, showing he was growing up: besides, one was following time-honoured
custom, as set out in novels about school life from Tom Brown’s Schooldays to Jennings at School. To use a Christian name was seen as
over-familiar and disrespectful. At
school, boys kept their Christian names secret and, if discovered, unusual or
old fashioned names such as Harold or Cyril were a cause for mild teasing. We knew girls at the adjacent school by
their Christian names, but they would mostly refer to us by our surnames. When I went to a school friend's house for
tea his mother and sister would call me Darlaston: it was normal usage.
A few boys abbreviated my name to ‘Darly’ for a while, but happily that never caught on! I was slightly bothered that a few of the
masters stressed the middle syllable of my name, thus: Darl-ASS-ton: I hope such emphasis was not meant to be
significant. Happily, their colleagues
and my form-mates addressed me conventionally as DARL-us-t’n. If two or more boys shared the same surname
they just were known by their initials:
in my year the Smiths were D.B., G.M., and R.J., always known thus. Boys, incidentally, were never referred to
collectively as such in official pronouncements, but always as
“gentlemen”; as in “Gentlemen will not
show any hair beneath the peak of their caps” or “Gentlemen will not display
pens in the outside pockets of school blazers.”
Caps and navy blue blazers were the main element of uniform
throughout the School. There seemed to
be an unwritten rule that until boys entered the Upper Middle in their third
year short trousers were worn, shirts were grey, and raincoats were navy
blue. Thereafter, one graduated to the
dignity of long trousers, white shirts and fawn raincoats. Similarly, the satchels of the first two
years suddenly became quite passé and were replaced by smart leather brief cases
in which to carry one’s ‘prep’. For
some boys, brief cases gave way in turn to C.C.F. packs or duffel bags which
were popular towards the end of the ‘fifties.
In my first year at K.E.S. sixth formers were permitted to wear sports
jackets with flannel trousers and to leave off the school cap. This gave them, in the eyes of boys in the
‘Shells’, a somewhat awesome appearance whereby they were difficult to
distinguish from young masters. That
sanction was withdrawn in 1952 when caps and blazers became required wear
throughout the school – a rather unpopular change in the sixth form as it
diminished their apparent majesty.
School continued until 3.45 p.m.
only on Mondays and Wednesdays. On
other days lessons finished at lunch time, but that did not mean one could go
home. There were compulsory games for the first three years and these could be
on Tuesday or Thursday afternoon.
Friday afternoons were reserved for cadet force and scout group
activities, with non-participants being labelled “Remnants” and consigned to
the Art Room where Mr J.Bruce Hurn
presided. There was also morning school
on Saturdays. The school was a single
sex establishment, but there was an adjacent girls’ school (K.E.H.S.). The authorities required that there should be
no mixing between the boys and the girls, and the starting and finishing times
were staggered by 15 minutes to discourage the evils of fraternisation on the
trams and ‘buses. Unsurprisingly, this
policy was not entirely successful.
During my own early journeys across the city to school a fifth-former,
Stevens, who later went into the medical profession, kept a friendly eye on me,
supported by a couple of Upper Middle boys, and there were also two girls from
K.E.H.S., Ann and Margaret, who initially tried to mother me. On Friday morning journeys in that first
year, Darlaston’s Eagle comic was
enthusiastically borrowed by the rest of the party, especially the girls, so
that everyone could keep up to date with the adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of
the Future.
At my junior school I had always
been a relatively big fish in a very small pond and was usually top or second
in the class. At K.E.S., by contrast, I
was to be in the company of some very bright pupils and consequently seldom rose
above the bottom third. At least I
usually enjoyed subjects such as English, History and Geography. But Mathematics was a real struggle. When I was about thirteen, the Maths master,
Mr Skinner, was explaining to the form some recondite algebraic formula which
was taxing my limited faculties. My
face clearly betrayed my total and utter bewilderment. Suddenly he broke off in mid-sentence and
said: “Darlaston; when you look at me
like that, you make me feel an absolute cad!”
I confess to remembering that incident better than any of the algebra he
struggled to impart.
Left: Classical corridor, looking towards Big
School
Right: Upper Corridor: L.P. Walker passes the Library
One of the most significant changes I found on
starting at K.E.S. was compulsory participation in games. I was allocated to Mr Leeds’s house, later
known as Jeune house, to commemorate a 19th
century master. I fear my sporting
contribution to the house was to be negligible, although Mr Leeds was
surprisingly kind to me. Classes at my
previous school had comprised about fifteen children, of whom the majority were
girls, so organised games such as football and cricket had been non-existent. Moreover, there were no boys of my own age
living very close to home.
Consequently, as a somewhat timid only child I grew up to be rather
self-sufficient and quite ignorant about team games. K.E.S. attempted to teach me the rudiments
of Rugby football, but wrongly assumed I had some existing knowledge. This became all too evident in one of my
early attempts at Rugby. I tried to
keep as far away from the ball as was possible, but on one occasion it landed
right by me, so I did as I had seen others do and picked it up. The master acting as referee (Mr J.F. Benett) promptly went puce in the face, blew his whistle so
long and loud that trains stopped all over Birmingham and he bellowed at
me: “Darlaston: you are off side”. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that I did
not have the slightest idea what he meant, - I never did get the hang of
it. My self-sufficient approach to
leisure together with my lack of confidence in my own ability contributed to an
absence of any competitive spirit when it came to games. Rugby, like the weekly gym lessons, was followed
by showers. I soon overcame the affront
to the modesty I had cultivated as an only child and cheerfully mingled with
the crowd of boys who emerged from the steam looking like a shoal of slippery
pink prawns. The showers were
gloriously hot, but when the master in charge decided we had had enough time he
quickly switched the thermostat to ‘cold’ ensuring our hasty emergence with
squeals of anguish. Although I happily
accepted the showers, I did draw the line at sharing the (off-) white tiled
bath at the Eastern Road pavilion with its thick muddy water, heavily occupied
by thirty adolescent sportsmen variously celebrating or lamenting their
performance on the rugger pitch.
At the time I started at K.E.S. the
Headmaster was Mr T.E.B. Howarth. I
only had one encounter with him. He was
showing some guests around as the bell went for the end of school at 3.45
p.m. My form made a rush for the door
and the leaders became momentarily wedged there until pressure from behind
caused them to burst in a heap onto the corridor floor at the feet of Howarth
and his guests. He looked down at the
eel-like writhing pile of pupils and with exaggerated bonhomie said “Little
horrors!” Had there been no guests
present I feel that his comments would have been decidedly sharper and
detentions might have been mentioned.
Detentions, it should be added, could be awarded by Prefects and by
Masters. The former involved standing
to attention from 4 p.m. to about 4.45 and were usually punishment for such
misdemeanours as running in the corridor or (my own speciality) talking in Big
School before prayers. Masters’
Detentions were infinitely more serious and kept one in school for the whole of
Saturday afternoon. Happily, my
Saturdays remained free from such interruption throughout my school career,
although it was a close run thing once or twice.
Left: The South Front during break: the Chapel is in the distance
Right:
the view down
Park Vale drive from the East Door. The
Howarth left the school in April
1952, moving on successively to Winchester, St. Pauls, and Magdalene College,
Cambridge, besides making a career as a writer. His successor, Canon R.G. Lunt, was an Old
Etonian, who was to remain in office for 22 years until his retirement. Lunt was not generally popular, either with
staff or pupils – he would not have seen popularity as any part of his
function. Some viewed him as an
unrepentant snob; he was autocratic in
an era of rising democracy; and he
embraced earnestly the classics and arts, while showing less obvious interest
in the developing world of science. But
he significantly raised the profile of the school in the city, helped, one must
add, by the presence of H.M. the Queen who paid a brief visit one wet day in
1955 belatedly to commemorate the school’s 400th anniversary.
In the 1950s Lunt taught Classics to Sixth Formers, Divinity to
some forms in the middle school and English once a week to boys in their first
year. This showed a commendable concern
to see that nobody could regard him as a faceless administrator. I encountered him in the course of English
lessons as an eleven year old – “one of the toddlers” to use his own somewhat
damning phrase. I prided myself that I
did not have a whiny Birmingham accent, but my enunciation was clearly not up
to the standards of Lunt’s Etonian and Oxonian delivery. In reading from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” I referred to ‘Mustard-seed’, pronounced
as spelt. I was directed to spend the
weekend saying over and over again “I MOSST
remember to say MOSSTard-seed”. He himself affected an eccentric speech
accent with such phrases as “Yer will find yerself gowin’ up the drive fer the last time” (said to boys in disgrace). In his clerical garb, he certainly
presented a commanding figure in Big School as he addressed us from the oak
throne of Sapientia. After prayers, Lunt often had announcements
to make: an almost imperceptible motion
of his hands would indicate that the school was to be seated. Sometimes there would be a list of names of
boys whom “I wish ter see in my study” – a worrying
fate I happily avoided. Occasional
outbreaks of petty vandalism or graffiti would be condemned as “foulin’ yer own nest”. Amongst other routine topics, Lunt would
touch on a wide range of subjects in his customary superior manner, as when he
made a passing topical reference to the newly launched Russian Sputnik,
dismissed as a “hunk of Soviet ironmongery”.
A fine example of the Lunt
approach to school life was his ceremonial creation of prefects. After morning assembly, he would summon boys
so honoured up to his presence in Sapientia. He would
take the appointee’s right hand in his and then intone the prefect’s name in
full: “Gerald Aloysius Fothergill”, or
suchlike, – and seventy impertinent Upper Middles would think “Gosh! Who’d have guessed Fothergill was called Gerald Aloysius of all things” – while
Lunt continued: “I, twenty-fifth Chief
Master of King Edward’s School, hereby give unto you the position and
traditional powers of a prefect, entrusting to you a share of the
leadership and governance of the boys brought up in this place: see that yer wield
this power with justice, loyalty and discretion.” Those
three nouns resounded with truly frightening emphasis around Big School and
each was accompanied by a vigorous shake of the appointee’s hand. The newly created prefect was then expected
to reply: “I will so do, God being my
helper”, usually doing so in a slightly husky and embarrassed voice. Those words soon became engraved in all our
minds. And to this day, throughout the
land, when an Old Edwardian is asked by his wife to pass the salt or put the
cat out, he will reply “I will so do, God being my helper.”
Left: Sapientia from the side entrance to Big School
Right: Big
School from the stage showing the organ and hammer-beam roof
One of Lunt’s more endearing eccentricities was his attachment to
a Rolls Royce motor car, dating from the 1920s and which had previously
belonged to his father, the Bishop of Salisbury. He doubtless felt that it was the only make
of car appropriate to one of his standing.
He always drove it to school, perhaps a half mile by road, despite
having a private path about 200 yards long from his house to the school. Vintage cars are not always reliable. On one occasion the Rolls broke down while
delivering a guest speaker from the station to the school, no doubt a cause of
considerable embarrassment. Sadly, the
Rolls was soon to reach the end of its career, as during a severe frost its
cylinder block fractured and it had to be ‘put down’. Thereafter, Lunt was reduced to motoring in
more proletarian vehicles.
His unashamedly elitist attitude
enriched the school in a variety of minor ways, as “old traditions” were
re-discovered – or invented, as some cynics would have it. He invoked a title from past years to insist
that instead of being called Headmaster, he should be known as “Chief Master” –
after all, St Pauls had a High Master.
In summer boys were encouraged, but not compelled, to wear boaters. I duly complied and found it fun overhearing
the comments – not always entirely complimentary – passed by other passengers
on the ‘bus as it made its way through the less well-heeled districts of
Birmingham. One elderly gentleman came
up to me in Corporation Street to congratulate me on my turn out and insisted
on shaking my hand. That was an
occasion when I was also wearing a rose in my button-hole: by no means an unusual practice in the 1950s
amongst professional men and, curiously, railway guards in rural areas.
My second year was spent in Remove C
where the Form Master was Mr J.D. Copland.
He cultivated an eccentricity of behaviour which was often quite extreme
and resulted in him earning the nickname “Coco”, after the popular clown of the
day. He muttered to himself as he
walked down the corridor, and was quite liable to stop abruptly, cry out loud: “Ha!”, wrap his gown tightly round himself
like an Egyptian mummy, turn round and walk back whence he came. A deaf aid added to the impression of
eccentricity, as, when bored by a boy’s long-drawn out and inaccurate
explanation of a point, he would fiddle with the volume control, causing high
pitched screeching sounds. On snowy
winter days he would wear Wellington Boots in which he would squelch audibly
and happily along the corridors. The
unconventional behaviour masked a sharp mind and a sympathetic interest in the
boys in his form which only became apparent after the passage of time. His main punishment weapon was gentle
humiliation. If one dared to talk to a
neighbour in a lesson, Copland would interrupt his own sentence: “How dare you talk while I am speaking? Stand on the desk, boy.” As one self-consciously climbed up on the
desk, watched by all the form, he would wait until one was almost in position
and then say: “What are you doing up there boy? You look stupid – get down at once.” This always provoked laughter amongst the
rest of the class. An alternative
punishment sometimes hurled at one was “Write out the first 500 lines of
Tennyson’s The Revenge.” Later, he would
suddenly turn to the offender and say: “Make it the first 200 lines”, and later
still “make it the first 50 lines.” One
might end up only doing the first ten lines.
If he thought one was getting too familiar with The Revenge, Coleridge’s Ancient
Mariner might be substituted.
When marking essays from junior boys
Copland was quite kind, and I usually scored 15 to 18 out of 20. But he also taught ‘A’ level History, where
the demands were far more rigorous, with a requirement to discuss and analyse a
topic, rather than to give mere description.
My first such attempt was not up to scratch. As he handed out each boy’s essay, he would
comment briefly. When he reached me he
lingered on my name and the mark he had awarded, as if to emphasise the
enormity of my failure, before adding some very back-handed encouragement: “D-a-r-l-a-s-t-o-n: – two-oo-oo-oo, out of twenty:
but don’t despair, boy, you will find it easy to improve. A fifty per cent improvement will take you
to three out of twenty, and a one hundred percent improvement will take you to
four." This was something of a blow
to my limited self-confidence, but I struggled up to eight or nine with
subsequent essays which was, from him, quite a healthy mark!
Room
149: Mr J.D. Copland’s room and my form
room in Remove C and History Division.
In both
years I sat by the radiator at the left:
very comforting in winter. Beyond
lies sylvan Edgbaston.
= = ii =
=
1952 was the year of the school’s 400th
anniversary. It was commemorated by the opening
of the chapel, with adjacent outdoor swimming pool, as a memorial to former
pupils who had been killed in the two world wars. The chapel was a fine reconstruction, using
the original stone, of the splendid gothic upper corridor from the former school
building in New Street. It had been
designed by Charles Barry (architect of the Houses of Parliament) but had been
demolished in 1936, making way for shops, offices and the cultural delights of
the Odeon cinema. The memorial Chapel
was to be used for early morning Holy Communion on Tuesdays and for Evensong
after school on Fridays. Services were
normally conducted by the Chaplain, the Rev. F.J. Williams, who taught Classics
and was generally known to his pupils as “Stuffer”. There was something especially atmospheric
about attending Evensong at dusk in the late autumn months, as mist gathered
over the nearby playing fields. The
voluntary early Communion service was followed by a splendid cooked breakfast
in the Dining Hall. Often there was a
guest celebrant, which is how I once came to spend breakfast chatting with the
Bishop of Birmingham.
The Chapel, seen across the Parade
Ground, with the pool beyond, and the interior
The Swimming Pool, which was adjacent to the Chapel, had
attractive sandstone cloisters for changing, but was unheated in its early
years and thus had relatively little use.
I wanted to learn to swim, but, because of my general lack of
self-confidence and the short time available each year for lessons, even when I
reached the Sixth Form I had still not succeeded. We were only allowed in if the water
temperature reached 63°F, when swimming would take the place of gym
periods. Even in June, a cold night
might knock the temperature down below 63°. Conversely, one sometimes found that
swimming had unexpectedly replaced a gym lesson after a couple of mild days in
May. Lack of swimming trunks was no bar
to participation on such occasions, or, indeed, at other times such as a sunny
lunch-hour when an impromptu dip could be rather pleasant. Many boys equate excessive modesty with
vanity and so one participated happily on such occasions, unconcerned whether
outsiders should look over the wall.
A Summer’s lunch hour at the Swimming
Pool, July 1959.
The boy on the spring board is one of
several present who did not let lack of suitable attire prevent him from
enjoying a cooling dip.
The Swimming Pool is an aspect of the school which features
amusingly in Jonathan Coe’s Rotter’ Club,
a fine novel based on life in 1970s Birmingham and especially at K.E.S., thinly
disguised as “King William’s”. Coe was
a former KES pupil in that decade. In
the tale, a well-endowed boy flaunts his impressive nude physique from the top
diving board where he is seen by passengers on the upper deck of a passing 62
bus. Several passengers contact the
Chief Master, mostly to complain, but one eager lady is keen to obtain the
boy’s telephone number. Sadly, the
truth, as so often, is less interesting;
passing buses are at least 200 yards away, so passengers wishing to
admire the school’s finest would need good binoculars and a steady hand.
The next year took me to the Upper Middle
with F.L. “Freddie” Kay as form-master, followed by a year in the Fifth form
with A.J. “Gozzo” Gosling. “Freddie”, who taught English and History,
was unlike the general run of schoolmasters at K.E.S. He was short and ebullient to the point of
chirpiness. He was also a keen
motor-cyclist and would arrive at school heavily disguised in black leathers
with goggles, looking more like a despatch rider just in with news from El
Alamein. “Gozzo”
was, by contrast elegant and laconic with a neat but sarcastic school-masterly
turn of phrase. One of his lessons was
interrupted by a practical joke which misfired. Two boys, Payne and Rogers, had rigged up a
device with a ruler, elastic and string, which they meant to go off, making a
rat-tat-tat noise inside a desk, after the lesson had finished. Unfortunately it went off unaided while “Gozzo” was in full flow. He stopped, tapping his fingers
while the noise continued, his face growing steadily more flushed. When the noise eventually ceased he barked
that the whole form would be in detention the following Saturday, but the perpetrators
owned up and the rest of us escaped. [Addendum: since writing
the above, S.P. Tyrer, one of twins in our year, has
claimed responsibility for this modest outrage. I trust it is not libellous to say that it
would not have been entirely out of character for Payne and Rogers!]
There were other masters encountered
through these first four or five years, many of whom are easily remembered for
individual characteristics. G.C. Sacret (“Sacco”) taught Latin to younger boys. A big man, he had easily the loudest voice
in the school, heard to best effect across the South Field on a summer’s
afternoon when the windows were open.
He had memorable ways of emphasising points of Latin grammar. “A gerun-dive is
an adjec-tive which takes the subjunc-tive”; “didicissem? – iubet” (“did ‘e kiss ‘em? – you
bet” - though what that was supposed to illustrate I cannot remember). “Sacco” was generally of a cheerful and
sunny disposition and a splendid teacher for small boys, but if he were in a
bad mood he would draw a flagpole up the side of his blackboard with a red flag
at the top. This warned that anyone
who larked about did so at his peril.
As a housemaster, his stentorian voice was used to good effect on the
touchline to support the house team. An
early initiative by “Sacco” to encourage new boys to take an interest in their
surroundings was “hunt the motto”. Some
areas of the school had large skylights, incorporating Latin mottoes in a
pattern around the border. Sixpence
(2½p) was offered to the boy who could find Mens sano in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body). No one could, for that motto was very high
up in the skylight over the steps down to, appropriately, the Gym.
Latin was also taught by Tom
Freeman, known, presumably for alliterative reasons, as “Ferdy”. My encounter with him was during the time
when the Cartland Room was being built above the Classical corridor. The construction work involved a rope and
pulley system outside his window for hauling up building materials. To a bunch of fourteen-year-olds this was
inevitably of more interest than Caesar’s exploits in Gaul. “Ferdy” stopped
the lesson and made us all face left and solemnly watch the bucket going up and
down for five minutes until we were so bored with it we were glad to return to
our copies of Latin for Today, the
covers of which were often so cleverly amended to Eatin’ Pork Today.
“Jack” Hodges was the patient and
helpful master who ensured that I developed a basic understanding of
French. Many years later, his former
pupils were amazed to read Hodges’s obituary in which his remarkable military
service was summarised. He had had a
distinctly ‘exciting’ wartime career as Officer Commanding the 3rd
King’s Own Hussars, experiencing action at Ovieto in
Umbria and Monte Cassino as well in Egypt (after El
Alamein) and in Palestine. Few could
have guessed that this charming, self-effacing man had such a distinguished
military record, culminating in the award of the Military Cross. Other masters also had distinguished wartime
military careers, including Canon Lunt who was awarded M.C. for service with
the Parachute Regiment in the Western Desert in 1942. One of the Maths masters, Mr J.C. Roberts,
suffered appalling medical problems for several years having been a prisoner of
the Japanese and who had been numbered amongst those labouring on the Burma
Railway.
“Spike” Jackson was a charming and
kindly man, who took Holy Orders on retirement.
He was, however, sadly incapable of maintaining discipline in class and
his maths lessons could be turned into a shambles by a determined form of
troublemakers. On one occasion he
arrived to take a lesson to find that all the desks had been turned to face the
wrong way. By contrast, Mr W. Traynor (Physics) tolerated no trouble. A small man with gingerish
hair, he gained the nickname “Cocky”. As
Flight Lieutenant he led the R.A.F. section of the cadet force. They possessed a curious manned glider kit
which could be assembled and, in theory, launched for a few yards of flight
from a kind of catapult which seemed to rely mainly on elastic and brute
force. In practice it seldom left the
ground, but on one occasion the school magazine reported that the Officer
Commanding had succeeded in getting a few feet off the ground. The report added “He should not get too cocky over this flight in the trainer.” This was then thought to be quite daring.
The CCF Glider on the South Field in March 1957
The Temporary Buildings, used while the new school was under
construction, are at the right
Other members of the Science Department whom
I encountered were Mr S.D. “Slasher” Woods and Dr R.S. Allison. “Doc” Allison was a forthright Lancastrian
who once caught me pouring a small quantity of acid into a test tube without
having first measured it. “Dorn’t joost lob it in laddie” he
shouted at me. The chemistry laboratory
was the scene of my greatest inadvertent attempt at mayhem. I lit a Bunsen burner with a spill of paper,
threw the paper away and walked to the balance room down the corridor to weigh
some chemicals. When I returned three
minutes later everyone was running round in chaos, the air was thick with smoke
and all the windows were all open. My
spill of paper had not been completely extinguished and had set fire to the
contents of the waste bin to quite spectacular effect! I succeeded in having accepted my plea of
not guilty to attempted arson.
The teaching staff was all male, but
there were three females on the premises.
Miss Chaffer was the long-serving chatelaine of the kitchens, and there
were two secretaries, of whom Miss Minshull was the
senior. For a short time there was an
extremely attractive assistant secretary called Wendy. She was about nineteen and was immediately
appropriated by Wilkins, the deputy School Captain, who thus became an object
of great envy by the rest of the older boys.
It was hardly surprising that Wendy did not remain long at K.E.S.: the pressures on her must have been
enormous! It would have been about the
same time that I was sweet on a rather pretty girl from the adjacent
school. Even though I occasionally sat
next to her on the ‘bus and spoke to her from time to time, I was far too shy
to mention such matters and she presumably remained forever ignorant of my
brief infatuation. It was often said by
opponents of single-sex schools that they encouraged relationships between boys
which were then deemed ‘unnatural’. I recall
no evidence in my day of any serious examples of such activity, although there
were some superficial and unsophisticated associations between individual boys,
discovering new bodily delights as they grew to maturity.
There was, of course, no formal sex education in those innocent
days and boys acquired an often garbled knowledge of the subject from their
contemporaries. I initially held out
against believing the information I gained in this way as the procedures in
question seemed to me utterly bizarre and quite absurd. One of my classmates who clearly had a
bright future in business acquired a pin-up magazine with some discreetly posed
black and white photographs of unclothed females, which he hired to his fellows
at two pence a go. He did a brisk trade
but I failed to take up the offer, whether through prudery or because I feared
a maternal audit of my pocket money expenditure I cannot now recall. But in the chaste atmosphere of the 1950s
such distractions were little more than a passing fad to naïve
fourteen-year-old boys who found sport or such popular hobbies as philately,
train-spotting or ornithology offered greater fulfilment in their everyday
lives. Swearing too was far less
evident in conversation in the 1950s than was to be the case in later years. I had already encountered the ‘f…’ word when
about eleven years of age but dutifully followed the convention that it was
never to be used. But I remained
completely unaware of the existence of the ‘c…’ word until enlightened by a
form-mate when I was fourteen. I
remember asking him what it meant: his
reply was an indication of our innocence in those years: “Oh, it doesn’t mean anything” he said
airily, “it’s just a swear word”.
Music was a feature of importance at the
school, but with what would now be regarded as a decidedly elitist
approach. The Director of Music was Dr
Willis Grant who later left to become Professor of Music at Bristol
University. He was especially
interested in Church Music and extracted phenomenally high standards from the
Choir. He was supported in my time by
one of my Sixth Form contemporaries, J.W. Jordan, who became an Organ Scholar
at Cambridge and was to be Director of Music at Chelmsford Cathedral while
still in his twenties. Jordan was a
truly remarkable organist, accompanying morning prayers on most days. He could extemporise freely and on the
morning in 1957 that Sibelius’s death was announced his voluntary was a set of
improvisations on Finlandia. Another musical contemporary was David Munrow who became a performer and broadcaster of
international note before his tragic early suicide.
My own contact with Willis Grant and his
Music Department was negligible apart from the weekly school hymn practice
sessions, although he did once tell me to stop whistling in the corridor: it was, he quite correctly remarked, “antisocial”. He showed relatively little obvious
enthusiasm for music beyond his specialist field, and displayed a strong
disapproval of any form of popular music.
There were, however, occasional concerts named after Julian Horner who
had evidently bequeathed money to promote music at the school. From time to time afternoon school would be
suspended and everyone directed to Big School for a concert provided by an
ensemble of “semi-professionals”. I
enjoyed music but have to admit that the baroque ensembles which seemed to
provide the usual fare at Julian Horner concerts did little to encourage my
interest. There was, however, one
occasion when a group of singers, with piano accompaniment, came to give a
“potted” version of a Mozart opera.
Excerpts would be sung and then one of the characters, in costume, would
come in front of the curtain to set the scene for the next excerpt. But on one occasion, after explaining what
was to come, he could not find the gap in the curtain to return to the
stage. He chased backwards and forwards in mounting
panic, tugging vainly at the curtain to find the gap. Clad in 18th century wig, jacket
and breeches, the poor man looked increasingly absurd as he darted to and fro
while his neck became redder and redder.
Titters began in the audience and before many seconds had passed the
entire school was paralysed with laughter, the masters joining in with great
gusto. Eventually, he found the gap and
retreated to loud cheers. At the next
break he prudently held the edge of the curtain to ensure safe passage after
his speech, and he departed to great applause.
South Field from the Library, July 1959:
stone-picking in progress on new rugby pitches.
The Chapel is at the left.
Until I was about fourteen my knowledge
of classical music was negligible and confined mainly to a handful of pieces
used as incidental music on wireless or television. The impetus to broaden my knowledge came one
sunny Friday afternoon in May 1954, a few weeks before my 14th
birthday. It was half term weekend and
school had finished at lunchtime. Most
boys had gone home but I had arranged to meet my parents in the centre of
Birmingham late in the afternoon before driving to South Wales for the
weekend. To while away the time, I sat
reading in the sunshine on the South Field.
In school, another boy who had remained behind was practising the piano
and the sound was drifting through the open windows into the warm spring air. He was a competent player, but repeated the
same magical theme several times. I had
no idea what it was but soon learned that it was the piano part of the first
movement of Grieg’s Piano Concerto. I
could understand why it was one of the most popular works in the classical
repertoire. This encouraged me to
listen to broadcast concerts where I was to discover a world of endless delight
and fascination. I also found that
several of my friends had a similar embryonic interest in classical music and
this led to interesting discussions during our leisure time which, in turn,
developed one’s interest still further.
Music is a delight which has remained with me ever since.
Pop music, as known today, simply did not
exist in the early 1950s and so it was not difficult for Willis Grant to
maintain the purity of classical music in the school. In pop terms, neither the market nor the
product existed. Things began to change
later in the decade, especially under the influence of Bill Haley’s “Rock
around the Clock”. Cliff Richard
arrived on the scene and a phenomenon called ‘skiffle’
was introduced. By now Willis Grant had
moved on and his successor, Thomas Tunnard,
recognised that a more flexible attitude was appropriate. For a while a ‘skiffle
group’ was established in break, performing in the tuck shop. It was all very low-key by the standards of
later decades, but made a musical change from the break-time practice of the
cadet force band who only knew one tune, endlessly repeated over the years. The skiffle era
coincided with the rising popularity of the Espresso Bar. One such establishment was El Sombrero in Bristol Street. It was popular with a group of rather
maverick boys who could be found there on half-days, capless
and smoking cigarettes. Eventually, the
Bar was placed out of bounds by Lunt.
Another place which neither boys nor staff were expected to patronise
was the Gun Barrels public house on Bristol Road. There is an apocryphal story that a boy and
a master met in the Gun Barrels on one occasion. Each is reputed to have said to the
other: “If you don’t split on me, I
won’t split on you.” Further up Bristol
Street from El Sombrero, on the
opposite side of the Horse Fair, was another
The school tuck shop was run by
Allard, the Head Porter. His
predecessor, Kelly, had ruled the shop in the days of sweet rationing. The only ‘sweets’ not on the ration when I
started at K.E.S. were very strong ‘Troach’ cough
sweets to which I became slightly addicted until rationing of other delights
was ended. Sweets were loose in those
days and paper bags very insubstantial.
Thus my mother regularly found in my blazer pockets a solid wedge of
sticky sweets, all covered in navy blue fluff, the paper bag having
disintegrated long ago. Allard was a
former policeman of substantial build and conducted himself accordingly. His chief assistant was Cradock, a bluff
individual with a sharp sense of humour, essential in his job. He had an artificial leg, which gave him a
characteristic gait, as he hurried on his business about the premises. When a new porter, Hewlett, started who,
like Allard, was a retired policeman, Cradock was heard to mutter “place gets more like a bloody police station
every day.”
In an era of military conscription
it was customary for most boys to join the cadet force in their third year, as
it would advance their chance of officer status in the forces. I was not keen (albeit for probably all the
wrong reasons) on the idea of “playing soldiers” and rather taken aback when my
parents supported me. They felt that
there were already too many other activities which tempted me away from those
studies with which I was experiencing difficulty. I thus joined a few dozen other boys as
“Remnants”, usually spending the afternoon doing Art, or, in later years,
revising.
When I started at K.E.S. I travelled
by tram, a means of transport to which I was then devoted. But after a year the trams with their solid
timber bodywork and brass fittings were replaced by ‘buses which I found bland
and lacking in character. I soon
transferred my interests to trains. On
half-days when there were no games my form-mate Marks and I, clad in school
caps and full length navy blue belted raincoats, would drop in at Snow Hill
station for an hour or two on the way home to collect steam engine
numbers. We usually waited until 4
o’clock when the Cambrian Coast Express came
through on its way from Aberystwyth to London, usually pulled by an immaculate
locomotive of the Great Western Railway’s Castle
class. After a year or so the
numerological fascination of engine-spotting withered away, but my interest
broadened to travelling by train to out-of-the-way places served by remote and
attractive branch lines, often unchanged since Queen Victoria’s heyday. Thus, on occasional Tuesday or Thursday
afternoons two or three like-minded sixth-formers might be found in delightful
west Midland market towns such as Bromyard and Much Wenlock where rail services
are now but a memory. I usually took a
camera on those expeditions, little knowing that some of the resulting
photographs would be published over fifty years later in books on railway
history. That interest in railways,
their history and operation, has remained with me throughout that time.
The entrance from
gas-lit Edgbaston Park Road, showing the Governors’ Offices.
= = iii =
=
The outside world impinged on our lives at
school to only a modest extent. Perhaps
the greatest impact was that of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 when boys were
encouraged to devise fund raising ideas to support refugees. General elections, won in 1951 by Winston
Churchill and in 1955 by Anthony Eden, provided brief excitement and boys with
access to the not-very-portable radios of the day found themselves in great
demand. The 1955 election coincided
with subsidence by the left-hand gate as one left school by the Main
Drive. This necessitated the temporary
closure of the gate and replacement of the sign urging one to keep left by one
requiring motorists to “Keep Right”: a
demand which then seemed to coincide with the political allegiance of most (though
certainly not all) the boys! The Suez
crisis of 1956, however, brought about more sophisticated political argument as
heated exchanges raged over the government’s intervention in Egypt.
On Thursday, 3rd
November 1955 H.M. The Queen and H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh braved torrential
rain to visit the school, belatedly to commemorate the 400th anniversary of its
foundation. An exhibition of school
activities was laid on for the edification of the Royal party. One display related to the School’s Meteorological
Station which was my responsibility. I
was required to stand alongside, ready to enlighten the visitors. But school plans required that the
exhibition must be finished and all charts mounted on display a few days in
advance of the royal tour — i.e., before the end of October. In consequence, the rain and temperature
details for October were not included.
On the big day, H.M., smiling serenely, was escorted by the school’s
Chief Master, honouring the display with the briefest of glances. A few paces behind came the Duke who halted
and eyed the display up and down. Then
came the awkward question: “Where are
the figures for October?” A reply was
stammered about lack of time. The Duke
swept on. The smart reply might have
been “I will have the figures sent round to the Palace this evening, Sir”, but such thoughts only occur after the
event! The royal visit concluded with a
visit to the school Chapel where the
choir appropriately sang William Byrd’s anthem “Make thy servant Elizabeth to
rejoice …”. While the royal party was
in the Chapel, members of the girls’ school, who had been standing dutifully in
the rain to line the royal route through the school grounds, spectacularly
stampeded through the waiting motorcade to take up new positions to watch the
royal party depart, causing the raising of a few eyebrows!
This photo, taken by my
one-time school chum I.F. Colquhoun who was waiting with other boys in the
pouring rain, shows the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen leaving the Chapel,
prior to their departure for lunch with the Lord Mayor. The School Chaplain, the Rev F.J. Williams is
at the right of the group, in the Chapel doorway. Note the exhaust fumes from the leading
vehicle in the motorcade!
As boys progressed up the school, so
they encountered different masters.
Older boys were taught Geography for ‘O’ and ‘A’ level by J.F. (“Uncle
Ben”) Benett, and by W.L. Whalley. The former was fairly volatile, striding to
and fro as he spoke. In the process, he
often caught his gown on his chair, with the result that the gown was slowly
but surely being torn to ribbons. Whalley appeared the gentler character but was no soft
touch. On one occasion in my ‘O’ level
course he was talking about grain production on the Canadian prairies,
supported by illustrations from a projector.
He showed a picture of a tall grain elevator alongside a river and asked
the form what we could see across the river.
Convinced of the genius of my wit, I shouted out, accurately but
unhelpfully, “A bridge”. The rest of
the form were kind enough to laugh moderately at my contribution but Whalley was less impressed:
“Darlaston - out” was his terse response, and so I spent the rest of the
period contemplating the architecture of the corridor. Echoing the words of Sir Isaiah Berlin, “Wal” would on such occasions describe teaching as “casting
sham pearls before real swine”.
My facetious answer was somewhat out
of character, as Geography was my best subject and so I was generally held in
reasonable favour by the masters. I
was, moreover, one of the team of weather observers who ran the school
meteorological station, supplying readings to the Meteorological Office, then
part of the Air Ministry. This entailed
someone attending the school every day, including Christmas Day. Entries had to be made in monthly returns
which stretched my modest mathematical abilities when it came to producing
figures for total rainfall and average maximum and minimum temperatures. I rose to the position of School
Meteorologist for my last two years, having the privilege of keeping the school
barograph during the holidays. This
gave me a fascination with these beautiful brass instruments which culminated
in the purchase of a barograph some forty years later, after my retirement.
Geography Room ’A’: the
empire of Mr W.L.Whalley, but Parke seems to have
taken over for the moment! The
barograph can be discerned just below the folding projection screen
The School Weather
Station: the thermometer screen (left)
and Cartwright demonstrates the rain gauge!
(These photographs were taken for the display
mounted on the occasion of the visit by H.M. The Queen in 1955)
Mathematics was proving the weakest
of my subjects and it was becoming evident that unless something dramatic was
done I would fail my ‘O’ level. Credit
for remedying this position must be given to Mr G. Cooper. A quiet man of infinite patience, he
regularly sat down at an empty desk by me and explained things repeatedly until
I had understood them. I was always to
be grateful for his work in getting me through ‘O’ level, although some boys
had their suspicions about him as he used hand-cream after handling chalk!
After my third year games ceased to
be compulsory. This was, to me, a
welcome change after plodding round a Rugby field.
Cricket enjoyed a glorious reign in
my time at school – although, sadly, I made no contribution to that
success. Contemporaries at school
included O.S. Wheatley, who was to become captain of Glamorganshire Cricket
Club, and A.C. Smith who became captain of Warwickshire and an England Test
Match player. I liked cricket and, for
once, understood the rules of the game.
My enthusiasm was probably based largely on an aesthetic approach to the
game, which presumably accounts for my rapid loss of interest in professional
cricket in more recent times! With
friends, I made several visits to the County Ground at Edgbaston on school half
days. One match to remember was the
First Test against the West Indies in 1957, where I witnessed the record
partnership of 411 by May and Cowdrey. This was followed by the spectacular
collapse of the visitors (including Sobers) to 72 for 7 at the hands of Lock
and Laker, before the match ended in a draw.
But the simple fact is that I was no good at cricket. I could neither catch the ball, nor could I
synchronise the bat in such a way as to hit the thing. My recollections now of school cricket are
of long spells fielding in the hot sunshine while sucking Spangles or Refreshers. On one occasion, by pure chance, I made
a catch to dismiss the opposing team’s last batsman, thus securing my house’s
victory. So, just once in his career Darlaston
was chaired off the pitch by the rest of the team in traditional style, but the
action was somewhat ironic.
In some schools there is no doubt
that my general lack of interest in sport would have made me a marked man. But at K.E.S. there was a broad church of
pupils so that different attitudes and enthusiasms were happily accepted. The football cult that rules in other
quarters today was quite unknown.
Moreover, bullying, the bane of pupils at so many schools, was almost
totally non-existent and quieter boys or those with unusual interests were
happily accepted. Boys’ diverse
interests were well served by the wide range of societies which met after
school, often with interesting guest speakers.
Such societies included, inter
alia, Debating, Photography, Music, Railways, Drama and Archaeology,
although I did not participate in the activities of the last two and my
contribution to debates was minimal to say the least. In my last year I also joined the
Shakespeare Society which met to read plays on Saturday evenings in the relaxed
red leather comfort of the Cartland Room, where I like to think I contributed
near Gielgud qualities to such distinguished roles as Third Messenger and
Second Page.
The England Garden: B.R. Steventon
passes by
The Ratcliff Theatre, complete
with blue plush tip-up seats –
and a fume cupboard at the left!
In 1956 I took my ‘O’ levels, gaining
reasonable passes in Geography, Maths, Chemistry and Physics, and just scraping
through the rest of the subjects apart from Art. It was assumed that I would choose to do
Physics, Maths and Geography, a popular combination at ‘A’ level. But, I found Physics and Maths unrewarding. Literature and History seemed more
worthwhile and so I went into History Division to study History and English
along with Geography. Only one other
boy, Brown – known to all as D.G. to distinguish him from I.W. of that ilk-,
had chosen the same combination and the rest of the form did French instead of
Geography. This resulted in the two of
us having to do certain subjects in different groups from the main body of the
form. I was thus able unofficially to
drop the hated Gym altogether on the basis that one P.E. master thought I was
in the History and French set and the other thought I was in the Physics and
Maths set. At last I had escaped from
the torture of hanging like a trussed turkey from the wallbars,
or, worse, vainly trying to leap over the vaulting horse. The latter activity never seemed possible
without a pain-inducing collision, the suffering varying in intensity according
to the delicacy of the portion of my anatomy involved. To be fair, the usual Gym instructor, “Sam”
Cotter, was a genial man. More agile
than his short, barrel-like figure suggested, he usually stood still while
issuing orders, military-style, but occasionally surprised us by leaping into
action. He reluctantly accepted the
ineptitude of the unathletic with a resigned
tolerance.
I was taught English Literature for
‘A’ level by Mr A.J. “Tony” Trott and by K.G. Hall, a
young master, christened with the infinite wit of schoolboys as “Albert”. Tony Trott, who
was Head of the English Department, showed no false modesty and had an
encyclopaedic knowledge of literature.
He responded to a challenge by the form and identified correctly an
obscure couplet from Henry VI Part 3. A
natty dresser, with a taste for exotic shirts and ties, he was very much the
aesthete. His moment of glory in the
1950s was undoubtedly his starring role in the Common Room performance of Peter
Ustinov’s Romanoff and Juliet. Trott played the
indecisive president of an impoverished central European state being wooed by
Russia and the United States whose scheming ambassadors were played
respectively by Messrs Leeds and Hodges.
Some years later Trott achieved more permanent
fame by writing an excellent and entertaining history of the school. Nothing would stop Keith Hall talking. He seemed to know everyone of note in the world
of literature (“As Lord David Cecil told me over sherry…”). He would quote the opinions of unknown
American Professors of Anglo-Saxon literature, and never ceased to remind us
that he had studied Beowulf in the
original. (Didn’t all English
undergraduates at Oxford do so?) The
main problem was that he never seemed to mark or return essays we had handed
in. Although Hall was clearly highly
gifted, he was later to leave K.E.S. rather abruptly amidst a spate of
rumour. Another English master was
Peter Robbins, the England Rugby Football player. He had a disconcerting habit of doing his
exercises while lecturing, so that he would sit talking while raising and
lowering his legs, a heavy brief case being balanced on his feet.
I was now studying European History
with Charles Blount (who was to be my form master in History VI the following
year). He became a good friend in later
years. Studying with him gave a real
insight into the subject, with fascinating diversions into side issues. It was only appropriate that part of the
syllabus he covered included the Renaissance, for he was surely Renaissance
Man, knowledgeable on a host of topics both in the arts and science. Unlike many other masters, he was able
succinctly to explain a topic in a perfectly formed grammatical sentence,
comprising subject, verb and object, and without hesitation, repetition or
deviation. This skill may have been
aided by his successful career as an author of history textbooks.
In most forms throughout the school it was necessary for boys to
“give a talk” on a chosen subject once in the year. In my year in Charles’s form I chose to talk
on the music of Elgar. When he knew of
my topic, Charles expressed great interest and provided invaluable technical
help in preparing musical examples.
Thus, I made the first of many enjoyable visits to his home, on that
occasion to copy old 78 r.p.m. records onto tape to
provide illustrations for the talk.
Room 174: Charles
Blount’s History VI form room: Molineux
relaxes at 4 pm!
The blackboard
displays in Charles’s handwriting the family tree of the Leszczynskis,
a noble Polish family who occupied a variety of government posts in the 17th
century and ultimately provided a king (Stanislaus) and also a wife for Louis
XV of France..
Several good and lasting friends
were made in the Sixth form, and the use of surnames in addressing them began
to give way out of school to the initially daring use of Christian names. Such friends included Roger Guy (a geographer
and later to be my Best Man), with Jim Parke and Anthony Mills amongst the
historians. Bill Oddie
and David Munrow were also close contemporaries, but
I did not keep up the friendship with them after school days. Oddie was a
prefect and always immaculately turned out – quite unlike the image he was
later to adopt on television. In
addition to his interest in natural history, he was a competent artist,
specializing in cartoon posters for school events, and he had an enthusiastic
interest in jazz. Although Munrow was a keen and successful practitioner of music, he
showed few indications then of the tremendous success he would achieve in his
tragically short career as performer, composer and B.B.C. ‘personality’.
In my last two years at the school I
was School Librarian, which also involved working closely with Charles
Blount. He had overall responsibility
for the library and my duties were to organise rotas of junior librarians and
ensure that the shelves and indices were kept in order and records of books
lent and returned were maintained. The
routine work thus involved was good experience for later years working in
banking. Acting as School Librarian
gave me very valuable privileges. I had
immediate access to all new books, but, best of all, I shared a small but
elegant office with Charles Blount which became my ‘study’. With carpet, damask curtains, desks and
green leather armchairs, and access to a vintage typewriter I had excellent
facilities for personal study in free periods.
During my two years in office there were a few other boys entitled to
share access to the Librarian’s Room.
We turned the room into a very homely base, even succeeding in making
toast on the electric fire, although on one bitter winter’s day it was
necessary to open the windows to let out the smoke from burnt toast before
Charles came back!
The
Library: Darlaston in action!
Darlaston at the card index while
Molineux, apparently in mafia guise, has him covered
In the Librarian’s Room, with vintage
typewriter;
Note the book suppliers’ bills on the spike, Gloy for attaching book labels, and the inevitable boater.
Librarians Line-up, 1958
(front row) Cartwright, Birch, Darlaston, Mr C.H.C. Blount,
Coombes, Walker, Bryant
(Photo by R.F.L.
Wilkins)
The Library: Mr J.D. Copland stands at the Heath Memorial Library desk
Note also the ‘Queen’s Beast’, carved
for the 1955 Royal Visit, and the bust of Edward VI
Saturday mornings in the Sixth Form concluded
with a lecture given by an outside speaker.
Many well-known and entertaining people came – and some who were, to me,
neither well known nor the least bit entertaining. The most enjoyable by far was the
percussionist James Blades who assured us that although he had provided the
sound effect for the gong which opened J. Arthur Rank films, the torso in the
film sequence belonged to a mere actor.
Less enjoyable was the gentleman from the Amateur Athletics Association
whose speech was like a Rolls Royce (almost inaudible and seemingly capable of
continuing for ever). He appeared set
to keep going for the afternoon, but was eventually interrupted by Lunt in
characteristic manner: “I’m afraid I
shall have ter stop yer
there, as parents will have soufflés waiting on the luncheon table.”
Speakers on Sixth Form Speech Day at
the end of the summer term were more illustrious. Memorable visitors in the late 1950s
included Roy Jenkins, and Lord Denning who opened his speech by telling the
gathering that while he did not mind the audience looking at their watches when
he spoke, he would be hurt if they held them to their ears and shook them. After the formalities of Speech Day,
everyone adjourned to the playing fields for the annual cricket match between
the school and the old boys, with accompanying strawberry tea. This was essentially a social event where
mothers showed off their hats, fathers watched the cricket and boys tried not
to look too embarrassed by their parents.
The last day of the summer term
provided leavers with an opportunity for high spirits with no fear of reprisal
by authority. Most of the activities
were harmless fun, but a few involved minor vandalism or graffiti and thus
provoked official displeasure. Even
worse, it was not entirely unknown for young ladies from the girls’ school to
insinuate their way into proceedings.
The most entertaining episodes involved senior boys arriving in a
variety of eccentric means of transport.
In 1957 these included a ‘tandem’ for three, a pony and trap, and a
short convoy of disreputable cars with an escort provided by the U.S.
Army. This episode offended Canon
Lunt’s sense of dignity as he was at pains to ensure that nothing disrupted the
sacred end of term routine. This culminated
in the singing of “God be with you till we meet again” and the rousing School
Song, beginning “Where the iron heart of England throbs beneath its sombre
robe/Stands a school whose sons have made her great and famous round the
globe/Great and famous round the globe…”
End of Term, Summer 1955: the girls of KEHS invade.
End of Term, Summer 1957
My ‘A’ level results in 1958 were, alas,
disappointing and inadequate for university entrance. I therefore stayed for an extra year for
another attempt, but it soon became clear that there would not be a place for me
at university. I stayed to complete the
year, retaking my ‘A’ levels, as by now a career in banking was looming and
better examination results would ensure a higher starting salary. But to a large extent the pressure on me
during my last year at school was lifted.
I had been at K.E.S. for almost eight years and the experience had
changed me from a child to someone equipped both to make a contribution to life
in the outside world, and to appreciate what the world had to offer. Moreover, associating with boys and masters
of fine ability had taught me a great deal about self-assurance. But above all, I had been privileged to
receive (in those days at no cost to the family) a first rate education in a
delightful environment with facilities and amenities of the highest standard.
With examination pressures largely
removed, my last term at school remains in memory as one of elegant ease,
enhanced by one of the finest summers of the century. I sauntered to school wearing a boater and
occasionally with a rose in the buttonhole of my double-breasted blazer. I was lord of the library and enjoyed my
privileged use of the Librarian’s Room.
If not unwinding in the comfort of its armchairs, I could read in the
sunshine on the South Field or overlooking the swimming pool in the shade of
the Chapel – perhaps even occasionally joining others for an impromptu dip in
the pool. Occasionally, with friends,
one would take a relaxed afternoon stroll through the sunlit horse-chestnuts
and copper-beeches of Edgbaston, animatedly discussing music, or literature, or
the best trains to Much Wenlock. There
were still, of course, some lessons to attend.
One might have to dash off an essay on the domestic policy of Louis XIV
or the nobility of human nature evident in “King Lear”, but on the whole, life
seemed to be a sweet succession of free periods and sunshine. Cold reality would catch up with me before
long, but that enchanted summer of 1959 remains a grateful memory of another
world.
Details from the School photograph taken in June 1959
Four
Sixth-formers. Left to right: Darlaston,
Mills, Jordan, Walker
How well I remember this occasion when the four of us, good
friends, clambered onto the trestles set up for the photograph, chatting
amiably as we did so.
Mills became a solicitor in Manchester; Jordan became Director of Music at Chelmsford
Cathedral before moving to South Africa;
Walker became a Director at Manchester University.
Sadly, those three all died in the first two decades of the
21st century.
A reminder of the
glorious summer of 1959:
School v Old Edwardians, Eastern Road, Speech Day July 1959
“The Manager”
Part Three
Reflections on a
Banking Career:
Some Light-hearted
Incidents
1959 – 1997
1 - The
Birmingham Years – 1959 - 1972
Colmore Row: the St Philip’s Cathedral with
the bank frontage at the right
Colmore Row looking towards Snow
Hill station with Barclays at the left.
On
Monday 7th September 1959, I joined the Trustee Department of
Barclays Bank (later, Barclays Bank Trust Company), in Colmore
Row, Birmingham at a salary of £350 p.a.. The Manager was Lt Cdr J.B. Dale, R.N. Ret’d, a man whose mood could switch in a moment from great
charm to seriously brusque with more than a hint of naval discipline! The bank occupied a rambling old building
with a delightful view across to St Philip’s Cathedral. It had recently been refurbished and the
staff assured me that I would have things easy, as, following the recent
introduction of central heating, there was no longer any need for the male
office junior to carry up coal to the office fires. Hours were 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays to
Fridays, and 9 a.m. to 12 noon on Saturdays with one Saturday in four off. Over the years Saturday leave increased to 1
in 3 and then 1 in 2, until, in July 1969 Saturday closure became a
reality. Holidays were two weeks and
one “travelling day” per annum. The
latter was intended for use on the Saturday prior to one’s main holiday, but in
practice could be taken at any reasonable time.
My
initial duties were somewhat puzzling as I was to be responsible for the
waste. It was re-assuring to find that
the work involved neither litter collection nor plumbing. Nevertheless, writing on one sheet of paper
all debit entries and all credit entries and totalling them to produce the same answer to both columns was no
mean task for someone who had dropped Mathematics three years earlier amidst
scenes of great rejoicing by the school staff.
In those days, the office had no mechanical aids to arithmetic. There was one huge adding machine, probably
constructed by a firm which had built military tanks in the war and still had
parts left over; use of this machine was
strictly forbidden unless a paper list of items was absolutely essential.
The office was
divided into two groups, each with a team of administrators and supporting
staff to deal with the estates of deceased customers. Each group was supervised by its own Trust
Officer, a management appointment. Most
of my thirteen years at Birmingham were spent on ‘B’ group, then under the
control of Mr E.W.P. Grice. For several
years after I joined the Bank, Christian names were not acceptable when
addressing older staff and it was many years before I dared address Mr Grice as
‘Eric’. Staff were addressed by
surname, with the ladies being additionally awarded the courtesy of the prefix
‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’, as appropriate. The regular use of unadorned
surnames amongst older male staff was still customary into the mid-1960s. Memos to managers at other branches would
begin “Dear Jones”. Junior staff used
Christian names amongst themselves, usually in diminutive form, so, for the
first time in my life, I had to get used to being ‘Bob’ rather than
‘Robert’. I strongly disliked being
called ‘Bob’ which was, to me, a dog’s name, but as a mere teenager I felt it
inadvisable to stand on my dignity. I
would have been happy to continue simply being called ‘Darlaston’, having been
known thus for almost a decade by anyone who wasn’t family. But I eventually came to accept being ‘Bob’
without responding “Woof” when my name was called.
Protocol was important when
dealing with the management: one of my junior colleagues once
acknowledged an instruction from the manager by saying “Right ho, Mr Dale.” He
was quickly and tartly told that the correct response was “Yes, sir.” He had three ways of addressing me: for normal business conversation I was
‘Darlaston’, if he needed a personal favour then I was ‘Robert’, but if I was
to be reprimanded for a shortcoming, then I was ‘MISTER Darlaston’. In his managerial role he regularly toured
his office firing questions at staff about progress with cases. When the question had been satisfactorily
answered he would bark “Right, carry on” in best naval style before continuing
to the next individual.
The management was entirely male in
those days and the trust administrators substantially so, but the clerical
staff was largely female. Coming from a
boys’ school I was largely unfamiliar with the female of the species and,
initially at any rate, rather unimpressed.
They stayed together in chatty groups and were mostly cocooned in
voluminous thick woolly jumpers, and hairy tweed skirts, the ensemble generally
completed by a full-length nylon overall for which mauve was the most popular
of a particularly bilious range of colours.
It was to be almost a year before I conquered these initial
disconcerting prejudices concerning the female sex!
One young lady whose presence helped me overcome
those reservations was Vivienne Morgan, a 15-year old girl who was transferred
from Aberdare branch in Wales as her father, who worked on the railway, had
been moved in his work. Vivienne was a
pretty little girl with an attractive Welsh accent and a cheeky
personality. She was the giggliest girl
I ever recall encountering and was for the short duration of her banking career
in Birmingham a strong distraction to the male staff. She often wore skimpy low-cut blouses with a
short flared skirt. On one occasion
when so dressed, she leaned back in her chair, as many folk do, but leaned too
far. The chair tipped backwards with an
enormous crash and Vivienne was upended.
Her legs waved shamelessly and delightfully in the air. She clearly relished the experience (as did
I) and she didn’t hurry to remedy her position, giggling infectiously and so
affording good opportunity for all to survey the scene. In those days before tights, I was
interested to note that she wore stockings secured by pretty garters, something
quite new for the Darlaston gaze to feast upon. Thereafter, I thought of her as Polly
Garter, the rather forward young lady in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.
Mr
Dale, known behind his back as ‘Dickie’, was almost certainly the most dynamic
individual I ever encountered in the bank.
He was clearly regarded very highly in the bank, as in the late 1960s he
was taken from Trustee Department and given the responsibility for setting up
Barclaycard, the U.K.‘s first credit card, also the first such card outside the
United States, and a major achievement both for him personally and for the
bank.
My
own career moved quickly, if less spectacularly than that of Dickie. After a few weeks grappling with the waste
and writing out cheques (for others to sign!) I graduated to hand-posting
ledgers which were permanent records.
Neatness was always demanded, though not always produced at times of
high volume. After nearly a year I
progressed to the securities desk, a demanding role, involving listing
investments in new estates, safe custody of certificates, deeds and recent
wills, buying and selling stocks and shares through local stockbrokers, and
correspondence with company registrars.
The scope for error and consequent financial loss to the bank was huge
and the task initially rather daunting. After a few weeks I discovered that I knew what I was doing
(most of the time!) and I started to enjoy the lively action, in particular
dealing with the local stockbrokers who were a friendly bunch.
The
first few years of my career were punctuated with periodic courses in
London. The first was for three weeks
starting immediately after Christmas 1959.
As I was under 21 the bank boarded me with a bank family, the manager of
Caterham branch and his wife. I thus
spent three bitterly cold weeks commuting on the Southern Region between
Caterham and London Bridge, whence I walked across the bridge to the old Head
Office building in Lombard Street. In
those days,
Learning
the vast range of skills required for trust administration was very demanding
and it was necessary to study for the Institute of Bankers Trustee
Diploma. This was no sinecure,
including papers on Law of Wills and Intestacy, Investment, Taxation, and Law
of Real Property. The latter proved an
especial bugbear, but eventually I achieved the Diploma in 1967. At this stage I reported to Eric Grice. With his bristling moustache, he brought a
clipped military approach to management when compared with the naval attitude
of Dickie Dale. He was a master of
using silence as a conversational gambit, occupying the time by filling his
pipe while one waited anxiously for his pronouncement. His silences, when combined with his
frequent use of the negative, could prove daunting to staff and customers
alike. A typical conversation might run
thus:
Customer: “Can
you pay me £1000 from the estate?”
E.W.P.G.:
(after long pause to fill pipe) “No.”
Customer: “Why not?”
E.W.P.G.: (after
lengthy drawing on pipe) “Out of
the question”
Customer: “When
will I get some money?”
E.W.P.G.: (after further pause attending to pipe) “Difficult to say.”
And so the verbal fencing would continue. After the customer’s unhappy departure Eric
would grin broadly beneath his moustache:
“That’ll teach the bugger to come begging for money!”
My first trip
out of the office on business was to assist a colleague to gather information
following a testator’s death late in 1963.
Early on a cold December 27th we went to interview a widow,
with the unlikely name of Amelia Parrott.
This lady was elderly and trembly, with an all
too obvious liking for the bottle. Her
first action was to offer us a drink, and it appeared that the choice available
straight after Christmas was down to just brandy. I had never had brandy before, but decided
to give it a go. Mrs P. went in search
of glasses, but the best she could do for me was a wineglass which had lost the
foot from its stem. This she filled to
the brim. As I was supposed to be
taking notes I would need somewhere to rest this eccentric glass – so I was
given an old jam jar in which to stand it.
I gradually developed a taste for brandy – which was just as well, as
Mrs Parrott refilled my glass as soon as the level dropped slightly. Eventually, the meeting concluded and we
walked uncertainly to my colleague’s house half a mile away, where we sobered
up slowly before returning by train to the office late in the afternoon.
During
the nine years in which I dealt with trust administration in Birmingham I
handled a very wide range of estates and met a variety of individuals as
beneficiaries. Strange names remain in
mind: the lady Christened Fanny Evangeline,
the sisters Hattie, Mattie and Iseult, and the popularity (long ago) of William
Ewart Gladstone as Christian names. There were the strange bequests such as “my
ferrets equally between…” – happily it was not necessary to divide a
ferret! Some families fell out over the
terms of a will: one brother and sister
quarrelled over who was to take their father’s lawn mower. Other families became quite close friends
for a time, including a one who had a chain-making business in Cradley Heath which supplied anchor chains to the R.N.L.I.,
but who moved to a farm in Dorset when it finally became necessary to close the
business.
Another
connection with a traditional local industry involved control of a Birmingham
jewellery manufacturer from whom I was able to purchase Barbara’s engagement
and wedding rings. There was
involvement too with the copper trade, coal merchants, a grubby back-street pub
called the “Oddfellows Arms”, and, memorably, with a local chain of butcher’s
shops. These were to pass to the son on
his 21st birthday but his inclinations lay elsewhere. Despite being apprenticed to the trade, he
defected, first to be a ladies hairdresser, and subsequently to be a ballroom
dancing instructor. He regularly
telephoned to ask for money: one knew he
was on the line before he spoke as quick tempo dance music was to be heard
immediately one picked up the telephone.
His mother regularly appeared in the office, demanding money with
menaces backed up by an ample frame squeezed into a colourful frock, wearing
enormous diamante earrings, and with an overpowering smell of cheap
perfume.
Not
all beneficiaries were friendly. One
who was a thorn in the flesh was a Mrs S who lived in York. She had some very hostile correspondence with
the Assistant Manager of the office, Alfred Took. Now it was one of his jobs to review the
carbon copies of all letters leaving the office, but on the day after they had been sent. Eventually, Took was promoted to be Manager
of the branch in York, and so a letter was typed to Mrs S giving her this
information and telling her that any time she had any queries or problems to
discuss (which was all the time!) she was welcome to drop in on Mr Took. The top copy was duly destroyed but the
carbon was left in the filing. It was a
somewhat distraught Alfred Took who came rushing into the administrators’ room
to demand whose silly idea this was.
Another obnoxious pair were brothers who were let out of
I
was introduced to the complexity of human relationships by a case which called
for delicate handling. The testator was
a man whose work took him away from home during the week, and he returned
to his wife each weekend. After his
death the widow was horrified to find his will left her a life interest only in
one half of the estate, with the other half held for the benefit of a hitherto
unknown lady in North Wales. After
their respective deaths the whole capital was to pass to the children of the
Welsh lady – of whom the testator was the father. In an era of traditional morality such
circumstances were a cause of much excitement, but great care was necessary in
dealing with the two ladies!
A
widow living in Knowle asked me to visit her to
discuss her husband’s estate. She
wanted to deal with a property in a manner not permitted by the will, so I
politely refused to cooperate. By the
time I had returned to the office, she had telephoned the Manager to
complain. I was, she said, “nice, but
ineffective”. It sounds like an
epitaph!
Mention must be
made of the two Bank Messengers who served the office. Fred Trubridge was
a large and loud ex Royal Marine whose main aim in life was to drink tea and
regale anyone in earshot with his service stories, described in colourful
language. Trubridge
wore a navy blue belted raincoat and a huge Bowler hat, necessary to cover his
generous cranium. It was regularly
donned in his absence by my contemporary Roger Guy and by me for general
amusement as it covered both ears and also one’s nose! When not in use, the Bowler hung on hook in
the Gents. One of the most bizarre
sights was Roger wearing it whilst standing at the urinal, singing “My old
man’s a dustman, he wears a dustman’s hat…”
The hat came down well below the eyes and one hoped Roger could see
where he was pointing. Trubridge was succeeded by Tom Wilks, a small industrious
ex-military man, with a turn of language even more salty than his predecessor
when in conversation with male staff members.
Every noun was preceded by an unprintable adjective, even if he was
quoting alleged instructions by the manager’s somewhat matronly secretary,
Muriel Harman, always addressed as ‘Miss Harman’ but generally referred to
behind her back as ‘Mu’ or ‘Moo’, depending on whether the speaker was on good
terms or not.
In
1970 the office moved from the front of the building in Colmore
Row to the side in Church Street. We
thus lost our splendid view of Birmingham Cathedral and instead looked out onto
the side of the Grand Hotel. This had
its compensations for the male members of staff, when some of the bedrooms
across the street were used as changing rooms by models putting on fashion
displays of lingerie and swimwear!
Meanwhile,
in September 1969, I had been appointed Trust Officer, at the then generous
salary of £2015 p.a., the youngest person so appointed in the whole of the newly
formed Trust Company. There now began
one of the two happiest periods of my career.
I had been dealing with trust administration long enough to feel
confident in the job (although there is always something new to learn). I got on well with the new Manager, John
Raby, as well as with the staff as a whole and the group ran well and generally
happily. I was also fortunate in
enjoying excellent relations with many customers and professional contacts
(e.g., solicitors, stockbrokers and estate agents) which resulted in lunch
dates and enjoyable socialising at Christmas.
Life, however, moves on. The
Bank decided that I should be moved to its office in Princes Street, Ipswich. After thirteen years in Colmore
Row it was to be a wrench moving on, but I had been appointed Trust Controller
at Ipswich starting on 13th August 1972 and the promotion was a fine
career move.
2 - South to Suffolk: Ipswich Interlude 1972 – 1974
In my East
Anglian contacts I became aware that there was often a noticeable suspicion of
one whose origins lay outside Suffolk.
Nevertheless, there were aspects of my stay in Suffolk which were highly
enjoyable. Once or twice each week I
would be out of the office on business.
Such trips in Birmingham had seldom taken me beyond the suburbs, but
distances from Ipswich were such that I would often combine two or three visits
in a particular area on the same day, not visiting the office at all. On such occasions Barbara would accompany me,
strolling around the town or village while I interviewed a customer. In addition to visits to attractive Suffolk
destinations, including Lavenham and Long Melford with their half-timbered properties, or Southwold and Aldeburgh on the coast, there were trips over
the border into Essex, including classy Frinton, and
to Mersea Island where a tide table was necessary as
the road vanished under water at high tide.
Gradually, I
found I was getting acquainted with Suffolk.
The event which perhaps most impressed the staff was certainly strange. The beneficiary of one estate was a
decidedly eccentric woman, who spent periods in an asylum. She had a habit of visiting the office
unannounced, and once she had got inside the office no one seemed able to get
rid of her. The first time she came to
visit me, she was shown into my office and I took her coat and gave her a
seat. She claimed that she had evidence
that someone was embezzling the Royal funds at Buckingham Palace. After a short discussion, I thanked her for
the information, promised to get onto the Palace straight away, and held up her
coat for her to put on, a trick I had seen John Raby use when he had had enough
of an interview. Like a lamb, she put
on her coat and left. It was the
shortest time anyone had known her to be in the office, and my technique was
for a time the talk of the staff!
Meanwhile, the
bank had plans for centralising certain functions and had acquired Radbroke Hall in Cheshire where some activities were to be
concentrated. A year to the day after
moving into our Suffolk house I was asked to move to Central Administration
Office at Radbroke Hall, so, after less than eighteen
months, the interval in Suffolk was abruptly and prematurely over.
3 –
North to Cheshire: Radbroke
Hall: 1974 - 1987
Central Administration
Office was in ‘Block 8’, one of nine 1940s vintage blocks built under
government auspices when Radbroke Hall had been
occupied by the Nuclear Power Group.
Needless to say, the French chateau-style hall itself was occupied only
by the upper echelons of management.
Around the Hall were some twenty acres of grounds with a wide range of
sports facilities including tennis courts, a putting green and a croquet lawn
as well as attractive rose gardens and areas given over to a large variety of
rhododendrons. There was also a bar.
The Chief
Manager, R.O. Smith (usually referred to in his absence as Ronnie, or as R.O.)
made a magnificent job in setting up the complex structure of the new office. He had, however, an enthusiastic adherence to
rules and procedure which was not always shared by the rest of the staff. All letters were to be signed by the manager
controlling the group regardless of who dictated them. This required a quick response when the
recipient of a letter telephoned next morning to discuss it, expecting the
signatory to have a full, in-depth knowledge of the matter. Special rules applied when decisions were
called for which were beyond the discretionary limits allocated to the Trust
Controller. Each successive tier of
management had its own limit and full documentation was to be passed up for
authorisation at the appropriate level.
The highest levels were reserved to R.O. Smith himself and to Head
Office. This somewhat military
procedure could take several days, while, perhaps, a beneficiary would be
waiting for a reply to his request for an advance. It contrasted with the approach at Ipswich
where I was often the only member of management in the office and so reached my
own decision which would be retrospectively agreed by the Manager if required!
Staff hard at work:
Karen, Doug Couling (then with inevitable
cigarette), Jean, Sarah, Diane
A minor example
of R.O. Smith’s heavy-handed style of management arose when one of my
administration team, Jim Bottomley, made an afternoon trip to the dentist. Jim returned to the office to find there was
no parking space available in which to leave his VW ‘Beetle’. He, therefore, parked in a “Visitor’s”
space, in clear contravention of an R.O. Smith edict. When R.O. noticed the transgression he
immediately circulated the entire office to demand who owned the offending
car. Jim, who would have owned up like
a lamb, must have been in the loo at the moment the question was asked, as, to
R.O.’s fury, no one owned up. To pin
down the miscreant, he therefore parked his own car adjacent to and almost
touching one side of Jim’s car and ordered Les Knight to park his car in a
similar style on the other side. R.O.
then sat back to wait for the offender to come once 5 o’clock passed. But he had reckoned without Jim’s
transparent innocence. Jim emerged from
the office, looked at the cars and thought how inconsiderate some motorists were
when it came to parking. Being as thin
as a lath he was able to squeeze between the cars and to take advantage of the
‘Beetle’s’ old fashioned running board which enabled him to open the door a
crack, to post himself inside, and to drive off, leaving R.O. to wait, … and
wait … and wait.
Another member
of my team, Colin Soden, pinned on the office notice
board a montage from three Financial Times headlines (which had originally
referred to terrorism in Rhodesia as well as financial dealings in the
City). It read:
Smith hangs eight Trust
Controllers
R.O. Smith entered into the spirit by adding his own footnote :
“…and justice was seen to
be done”
Initially, the
administration staff of the office comprised trained personnel transferred from
other offices of the Trust Company.
Junior staff were all recruited locally by R.O.. New entrants were almost entirely female and
it was widely held that they were selected chiefly on account of their
looks. Certainly, in the days of
mini-skirts and flimsy blouses the office was a delightful environment in which
to work, even if it could at times be difficult to concentrate on the more
mundane aspects of work as a succession of goddesses wafted past one’s
desk. It should be added that the girls
also worked extremely well and without any of the petty backbiting which had
often been evident in my years at Birmingham.
There were a few male entrants, but by and large (and with only a couple
of exceptions) they were a poor lot, showing up badly when compared with the
girls, and mostly they left after a short time to pursue such careers as
car-salesmen.
Feminine
attractions were not lost on my colleague Doug Couling,
who shared my delight at the presence of pretty girls on our group. This led me into trouble one icy winter’s
morning when I commented quietly to him that Cindy, a young lady whose
skin-tight jumper emphasised every detail of an eye-catching figure, appeared
to be “feeling the cold today”. Doug
did not catch what I said and asked me to repeat it. Foolishly, I did so, a little louder. Several of the girls overheard the remark
this time, and promptly fell about laughing.
Darlaston wasn’t to be allowed to forget this indiscretion. So,
when the time came for me to leave the group, in the course of an evening’s
general mayhem and hilarity I was duly presented with a “custard pie” in
satisfaction of the debt I owed! The
staff also arranged to inflict on me (during working hours) a ‘kissagram’ who arrived in the disguise of a disenchanted
trust beneficiary.
Mayhem at Christmas 1984:
1: Thanks
from a grateful ‘customer’! (photo ©
J. Worrall)
Darlaston seems to be
enjoying some unexpected attention!
2: Diane and Sarah offer encouragement
3: Darlaston’s Gorgeous Harem; Christmas 1984
In relaxed attitude with
Karen, Sarah A., Diane, Sarah W., and Elaine.
4. The “demure and innocent” Lindsay looks on as
Darlaston pays
the price for his momentary indiscretion.
Inset: The lovely Cindy who set off the chain of
events (photo © Colin Soden)
The typing
system at Radbroke Hall was quite different from any
in my previous experience. Typists no
longer came to your desk to take dictation;
one did not even hand a cassette tape to a girl. Instead one dictated over the telephone to a
machine in another building, the typist removing the tape to type the letters
which were sent back to one by internal delivery. The system was efficient, but lacking in
personal contact. This probably
contributed to an increased howler rate as these memorable examples show:-
“We
are investing the money wildly” (instead of widely)
“Crude”
instead of accrued “income”
“short
comedian turn” (instead of short to
medium term)
“we
wish to construct a solicitor” (instead
of instruct)
“Please
repair a Deed of Appointment” (instead of prepare)
“Fat
Fee” (a heading in a letter to a solicitor, instead of Flat Three)
“Sweet
Sixteen” in an address, instead of Suite Sixteen)
My first
business trip out from Radbroke Hall was with a
colleague, Bill Cowmeadow, to meet Mrs A**** and her
family in the north of England. Her
husband had died young and left the house in trust for Mrs A for life and
thereafter to their five children. Mrs
A wanted to move house and had gathered the children, then aged from about 23
down to 16, in order to discuss the matter.
It was not long before Bill and I could see that in making an early
departure from this life, Mr A had made a wise decision. We were all wedged in a small room, with
Bill and me facing each other across the family circle. The discussion started quietly, but the
excitement level soon rose in crescendo.
Unanimity was lacking to the extent that there seemed to be a different
opinion for each participant. With
hindsight, I should have said to Bill “Let’s go and look at the flowers in the
garden: we shall return when you have all agreed want you want to do.” But as the aggression level rose, so we
found the ‘discussion’ developed a hypnotic fascination. Daughter called mother a “silly booger”,
brother called sister a “stupid sod”.
Eventually the storm blew itself out, and I was able to suggest some
compromise which, in the end, seemed acceptable to all. But it had certainly been a wonderful study
of ‘happy families’ in action. The
eldest daughter seemed a friendlier person than her siblings and she lived
alone at a cottage in Anglesey. She often
telephoned me to invite me over, saying she would put on lunch and we could
discuss the trust, adding that the cottage was by the sea with access to a
secluded beach. There was really
nothing to discuss so I could see no valid reason to accept the invitation –
but I often think I might have missed an interesting afternoon.
One visit to
Manchester produced a surprise when I was propositioned by a prostitute in
Oxford Road at four o’clock in the afternoon.
She asked if I “would like some fun with me and me
friend”, but I seem to recall apologising to her that I had a train to
catch. She was scarcely an attractive
advertisement for her profession, being clad in scruffy jeans and T-shirt with
a denim bomber jacket. I would rather
have taken a vow of eternal celibacy than spend a moment in intimate contact
with her. In retrospect I found the
encounter quite hilarious, which is more than can be said for the occasion when
I was in my late teens and was propositioned by a young soldier in the ‘Gents’
on Bridgend station in South Wales. I
fled in alarmed haste (no, I didn’t stop to wash my hands) and hurried to hide
in the crowds waiting for the train.
That encounter did, however, give me much sympathy with blameless young
women who get unwanted attention from men.
During my years
in the bank I dealt with many Jewish customers. Most were no different from any other
customer; but a few had that special
Jewish sense of humour, and one in particular seemed to have modelled himself
on the prototype music hall Jewish comedian.
He used to ring me regularly and I quickly learnt to recognise his
querulous central European accent.
Initially he was always in a hurry:
“Mr Darlaston – can you ring me back? – I’m in a payphone and I’ve got
no change.” After this had been going on for some months,
I said to him, sympathetically, “It must be very inconvenient for you, having
to go out to a call box when you need a telephone.” His reply:
“Oh no, it’s not a public phone – I have a payphone in my hall.” He had an unusual technical estate planning
problem in which he tried to involve us, but which was, happily, not the Bank’s
business. He had married under Jewish
law but this was not recognised under Christian practice. He thus discovered to his horror that the
Inheritance Tax exemption on funds passing to a widow would not apply on his
death, as his widow would not be recognised as such by the Inland Revenue. The amount of tax at stake was
significant and so he was bombarding his M.P. on the unfairness of this
rule. His M.P. was none other than
Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister.
R.O. Smith
retired in 1979 and was succeeded by Geoffrey Gardiner, M.A. (Cantab), who had a keen interest in economics and business
practice. Like me, he had started in
Birmingham where he had attended the same school as me. He had moved on later to spells in Head
Office and as Manager of Cambridge office.
After the rigid and inflexible policies pursued by his predecessors,
Geoffrey brought a complete change of direction. When R.O. Smith was asked to exercise
discretionary powers under a will the first answer was invariably ‘no’. Later, under pressure from beneficiaries he
might concede, but only with full indemnities from the parties concerned. When asked to agree a release from a case,
soon after his arrival, Geoffrey surprised everyone by looking at the papers
and saying “I see no point in continuing with this trust: it has outlived its purpose. I suggest you offer them the lot.” With Geoffrey’s encouragement, in 1982 I
referred some anomalies regarding taxation of trusts to the local M.P., Jock
Bruce-Gardyne, which led to an interesting meeting
over lunch. There was lively and
fascinating discussion, but the wiles of H.M. Treasury were not to be
undermined by mere logic.
A popular
diversion for winter lunch hours was the “Brain of Radbroke”
general knowledge competition. The quiz
comprised team rounds, individual questions and a ‘buzzer-round’ where speed
was of the essence. Sections of the
various offices at Radbroke would enter teams of
four, usually under a pseudonym. My
group entered a team on a number of occasions, and in 1980, under the title of
“The Carbolic Smoke Ball Company” (recalling the name of the defendant in a
case well known to all legal students) we won the competition. I joined a team comprising Doug Couling, and Colin and Brenda Soden. It was an undeniable achievement for us to
win the final, after eliminating teams drawn from the many departments at Radbroke, especially as the teams entered by the sections
dealing with the bank’s computers included some very high-flying university
graduates. Winning the competition gave
us a moment of glory, followed by a year of agony, as the prize was a bottle of
champagne plus the job of running the following year’s competition, including
setting a total of 1500 questions! Much
effort was put into compiling questions that provided a balance of general
knowledge, history, the arts, elementary science, and sport. The burden was eased a little by including a
current affairs round which could be compiled quickly the night before by
reference to the television news. We
tried to lighten the atmosphere with mildly humorous questions and occasional
traps, but it was always necessary to ensure a balance between sides. The occasional wicked juxtaposition of
apparently non-related questions introduced some elements of fun, sometimes
bringing the house down, as when a question about a well-endowed lady Wimbledon
player was followed by an ornithological question to which the correct answer
was “Great Tits”. I usually seemed to
act as question master, relishing my moment of power. I persuaded Cindy to keep the score as I
knew that any awkward squad contestants would succumb to her undeniable charms
and refrain from querying the result.
The operation was on the whole good fun, but I was rather relieved when
my second career, as a Robert Robinson / Bamber
Gascoigne substitute, finished.
Brain of Radbroke Winners, 1980:
Doug Couling, Brenda and Colin Soden, RHD
In January 1985
I was promoted to Manager responsible for three separate groups. The promotion and status were welcome, and I
was nominally responsible for over 40 staff administering 4000 trusts. One of my responsibilities was to read all
the incoming post before giving it to the groups, but it was only necessary to
follow up items which seemed to cause (or have the potential to cause)
problems. This task was occasionally
enlivened by the unexpected, as when a retired naval officer wrote that he
wished in future to be known as Daphne X instead of Digby X as he had
“undergone a programme of gender re-assignment”. Such was the unique quality of that request
in the 1980s that I had to read the letter twice before I absorbed its
import! Some of the requests for the
bank to exercise its discretion as trustee in order to make payments to a
beneficiary were clearly inappropriate.
One wealthy family demanded that I agree to exhaust their son’s small
legacy fund in order to meet his school fees.
I refused, explaining the factors a trustee should consider before
making such a payment. The family
complained in very strong terms to the financial editor of The Times about the bank’s attitude: I was delighted to find that the newspaper
totally vindicated my stance. The
management at Head Office was also pleased, as it was not often that a
newspaper would miss an opportunity to criticise a bank. From time to time litigation would arise in
a case. Often this would be
non-contentious, arising because of a wish by a family to vary the terms of a
trust, but requiring application to the Court under the terms of the Variation
of Trusts Act 1958. An appearance at
the High Court in London would be necessary, preceded by meetings with Counsel
in Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn or New Inn.
Such occasions were endlessly fascinating, and I was always impressed
firstly by the gothic architecture of the Courts, but especially by the
sharpness of Counsels’ minds, which contrasted with the Dickensian atmosphere
of their Chambers, lined with leather-bound Law Reports dating back over a
century.
An odd (and
very boring) aspect of my role as manager was checking the output of the
computers. In 1977 the routine book
keeping had been computerised. The
computers in question were primitive by modern standards and comprised a number
of machines, each the size of a piano, fed with discs about 18” in diameter and
2” thick. They produced long rolls of
paper listing all the programs run during the day, and it fell to me to check
these hieroglyphics to ensure that no improper programs had been run. I never found a mistake, whether because
there were none, or because I missed them through sheer boredom I cannot
say.
4 – Gadbrook Park:
Decline and Fall: 1987 - 1997
For some years
the office had been known as Central Trust Office, abbreviated to CTO. This caused confusion with the Inland
Revenue’s Capital Taxes Office so a new name was sought. I achieved a temporary glory by suggesting
“Trust Management Office” , which was at least an accurate description, and
that was the name which was to be used until the mid-1990s. In addition to a name change there was a
move of location. The staff who
occupied the nine other blocks at Radbroke Hall were
largely employed in the bank’s ever-growing computer activities. Eventually they decided to expand into Block
8 and so we were evicted. We were moved
to a building at a site with a confusingly similar name, Gadbrook
Park, on the outskirts of Northwich.
Gone were the lunch time walks past the croquet lawn to the Rose
Gardens: instead we had a pleasant view
one way over fields to Davenham Church and a less
pleasant view the other way to Roberts’s Bakery. A Head Office dignitary visited the new
premises on opening and chanced to ask me how it had affected my
travelling. I told him, truthfully, but
with tongue in cheek, that it had virtually doubled my journey time. He looked shocked. I added that a journey which formerly took
me eight minutes now took fifteen! The
move was overseen with splendid thoroughness by a Manager, Werner Dengler-Harles, who had settled in England after serving in
the post-war Luftwaffe. In dress and
manners he was in many ways more anglicised than the English, but retained a
Teutonic thoroughness in his work which was seen to best effect on occasions
such as the office move. The move, in
October 1987, coincided with severe gales in the south, which caused extensive
damage to trust properties, and with a major stock market collapse. We were thus inundated with telephone calls
at a time when all our files were in crates in course of transit.
There was still
fun to be had on occasions. Peter
Hopkin, an Assistant Manager, had, at a particularly busy time, taken on a
trust distribution himself and was rightly very proud of the efficient way in
which he had carried it through. On
April Fool’s Day I slipped into his post a letter purporting to come from one
of the beneficiaries, the Bishop of Winchester. Signed by “Erasmus Brown-Windsor” as the
Bishop’s “Canon-in-Extraordinary”, the letter, couched in gushing language
based on that used by the curate in the contemporary comedy programme “All Gas
and Gaiters”, offered Peter fulsome compliments on the high standard of his
work. The “Canon” went on to say how
“my thoughts flew to you” in planning a seminar and then invited Peter, “as a
distinguished lay person” to address the Bishop and his fellows, after which he
was invited to join them for a “wafer or two in the vestry”. Peter proudly read the letter out to the
whole group, his voice steadily becoming more and more puzzled as the absurdity
became more apparent and the group’s laughter increased: happily Peter was a good sport and shared the
joke.
Christmas 1989: L-r: Sharon, Jane, Jeff Burgess, Nicola, Peter
Hopkin, Anthea
But the 1980s were the “Thatcher”
era. Increased efficiency was expected
in all quarters and no one embraced the philosophy more enthusiastically than the
banks, notwithstanding the continuous criticism they received from the
government. To Weary Bankers size
matters, and the new Chairman of the Bank was credited with devising a slogan
“number one by ninety-one”. Some staff
countered that by adding “... in the poo by ninety-two”. As the 1980s drew to a close a billion
pounds was raised from shareholders, ostensibly to finance the expansion of the
bank. In fact it was largely and
unwisely lent to businesses which went bust so that by 1992 most of the extra
funds had, indeed, been written off as bad debt. The Trust Company was not a suitable
candidate for major expansion, so the policy was to increase profits by cutting
costs. This was partly effected by a
major reduction in the office management team.
Thus, on three occasions between 1989 and 1996 all management jobs at
the office were abolished and the existing incumbents had to apply for a
smaller range of new appointments.
The first of
these sessions of “musical chairs” resulted in my appointment as Manager of a
different section of the office.
Amongst other changes, this led to a variety of business trips across
the country. These ranged from visits
to farms in the Lake District which made Wuthering Heights seem hospitable, to
a former artist’s studio in West Brompton to interview an aged and deaf couple
in a room replete with artist’s effects including a skeleton, various stuffed
animals and an ill-disciplined (live) cat.
But for a time most trips seemed
to be in response to problems in trusts in Wales and my Wellington Boots became
an essential travel accessory with numerous trips to muddy farms. There were visits with Jane Kerr to the Gelli estate in Glamorganshire to inspect a crumbling
retaining wall just about holding up the mountainside, to Llanwrda
in Carmarthenshire to view a farmhouse so derelict that a substantial tree was
growing out of the chimney, and to Pembrokeshire to sort out a bankrupt toy
shop. Another destination was Cwmllynfell on the Carmarthenshire border, there to inspect
the re-instatement of fields following a period of opencast mining. On arrival at the latter site with my
colleague Geoff Ambrey, we duly met the land agent
who I was amazed to discover remembered my grandfather from pre-war farming
days when he (the agent) had been a young man.
On rural visits far from the office there was often a desperate need on
arrival for a ‘comfort break’ and there would generally be a suitable hedge to
provide cover for furtive relief. But
the bleak newly restored and levelled fields at the windswept open spaces of
Cwmllynfell offered no such screen. Our
land agent was, however, a man well accustomed to protocol on such
occasions. We came to a brook crossed
by a rudimentary bridge of old timbers where our delegation quickly lined up
three abreast to make our long delayed but triumphal contributions, releasing
three glorious liquid arcs to swell the flow of the stream below. We must have been a bizarre sight but the
local sheep raised no objection. It’s
lucky we were an all-male contingent that day.
Left: a rare picture of Darlaston at work (?) in
the office.
Right:
Jane struggles with a map on a
breezy day whilst inspecting a Welsh farm.
Another
Welsh business trip found us visiting a family for earnest discussions about
their family trust. After a lengthy and
distinctly tiresome lecture from an ample Welsh lady beneficiary, she leaned
back in total satisfaction, forgetting that she was seated on a stool and not a
chair. Jane Kerr and I were thus
surprisingly confronted with a waving pair of legs encased in thick black
woollen stockings. Maintaining a
sympathetic and suitably solemn face was, for a moment, far from easy. Happily for the lady concerned, no lasting
damage occurred, but we felt that justice (and other more surprising sights)
had clearly been seen to be done.
In 1993 came
the second game of managerial musical chairs when the number of groups was
reduced from six to four and I found myself moving to yet another section of
the office. In this role I was
splendidly assisted by Barbara Killey but it was not
an easy task for us to maintain staff morale after so many changes and in the
face of creeping computerisation.
Unpaid overtime, including Saturday working, became normal, leading in
my case to health problems including migraines. My involvement in the detail of trust work
had to compete for time with gathering statistical information required by Head
Office officials who had no understanding of the nature of the work at the
office. Delays in administration work
mounted and it was only through the sharpness of the staff in spotting
potential problems that the number of complaints and losses was minimised.
With the enormous
expense of the computer and its support staff and of burgeoning Head Office
departments it was hardly surprising that the Trust Company decided that costs
must be cut even further. So, in 1996,
we entered the third game of musical chairs with the trust establishment
reduced from four to two very large groups.
Once more my fellow managers and I faced interviews as we all competed
for a smaller number of jobs. This time
I lost. So did Barbara Killey. In the
spring of 1996 Barbara and I found ourselves forming a new Business Support
section dedicated to writing circulars and procedures, keeping returns,
centralising complaints records and other routine tasks. After the frantic spiral of managing the trust
groups the new job was something of a rest cure.
More lovely
ladies: Karen, Gill and Barbara; Christmas 1995
But after twenty-five years of
the cut and thrust of managing a trust group and of dealing with real
customers, I felt something had gone out of life. Boredom and frustration crept in. I began to feel I could live very happily
without the Trust Company. After about
a year in the new job I enquired if early retirement terms were still
available. They were, and so on 30th
September 1997 I bowed out after a career of 38 years and 24 days. Although in many ways I emerged rather
battle-scarred from my banking experience, I had acquired on the way a
wonderful wife, a generous pension and several fine friends, so it was, on
balance, all a worthwhile experience!
Darlaston’s Swan-Song
Last day at the
office: 30th September 1997, with
colleagues Barbara and Jane.
POST
SCRIPT
The narrative above describes my
early childhood, schooldays and adds some tales from my banking years. But there is more to the story ….
Barbara came
into my life on Monday, 25th January 1965, when she joined me on the
staff at Barclays in Colmore Row, Birmingham. I well remember my first glimpse of a pretty
eighteen-year old with a delightful retroussé nose and a winning smile. We soon started visiting concerts and plays
together, and on 9th March 1968 we were engaged. We married on 11th June 1969 at
I look back
with gratitude on a life of fun and happiness (though I will concede that, like
all lives, there have been those occasional unwelcome interruptions, of which
root canal surgery springs rapidly to mind).
But for the most part one remembers years of joy and gaiety. Life in an English village is a delight,
even if one admits that in Cheshire the sun doesn’t shine all the time. Around us lies glorious countryside giving
opportunities to explore the landscapes, towns, villages and pubs of England
and Wales. There has also been plenty
of overseas travel, including cruises to places ranging from the Fjords and St
Petersburg in the north, to Rhodes and Istanbul in the east, Morocco in the
south and to New York and Quebec in the west.
Our love of the arts has been
a great joy with wonderful opportunities for attending concerts and for
theatre-going, mostly in Birmingham and Manchester (plus very occasional trips
to London, Cardiff and Liverpool).
Looking back we remember an amazing range of programmes including works
by Beethoven, Shakespeare, Elgar, Noel Coward, Mozart, Ibsen and others, served
up by superb artists including such names as Sir Adrian Boult,
Paul Schofield, Artur Rubinstein, Sybil Thorndike,
Daniel Barenboim, Jacqueline du Pré, Mike Gambon and
Sir Simon Rattle - giving just a hint of the splendours we have enjoyed. Leisure time is happily shared with our
daughters and their husbands as well as with fine friends, many of whom date
from schooldays and from life in Barclays.
Looking back, I am conscious
of having enjoyed a life mostly of ease and comfort, prompting thoughts of the
vastly different experiences of the generations to which my parents and
grandparents belonged. They suffered
two devastating world wars, the inter-war depression and post-war
austerity. How would I have coped with
such experiences, ranging from unemployment, severe food shortages and air
raids to possible military service overseas in the terrifying conditions so
graphically portrayed in old newsreels?
Merely viewing such film evokes feelings of horror and despair. Had I been born just fourteen years earlier
I might well have been an inept and expendable participant in the D-day
landings, gun in hand. These thoughts
prompt gratitude to providence for its kindly treatment of me and my
family. Furthermore, I owe an enormous
debt to my parents who ensured my early years were passed in an atmosphere of
calm and security despite the wartime terrors which affected their lives. Later, as I grew up, I was lucky to sit at
the feet of fine schoolmasters who taught me not just their own subjects, but
much about the world in general, its history and its arts. Some of those men remained friends for
life. Marriage to Barbara has brought
more than half a century of joy and companionship, not forgetting the company
of our two delightful daughters.
Blessings indeed! Some family
photographs from those years follow:
Robert Darlaston, October
2023
E-mail
address: robertdarlaston@btinternet . com
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More
family photos can be seen at www.robertdarlaston.co.uk/Family
Photos.htm