A Visit to the School in 2025 - David Hedley (F 52-57) writes:

“In May 2025 three of us drove over to St Bees, Robert (RJ 50-55), David (JD 52-57) and Charles (CA 58-64), the three Hedleys.

Seldom visiting since those years, and never together, we came back for a guided tour and lunch arranged by Charles with Pam Rumney, who was so generous with her time and made us so welcome.

So, three brothers, sons of the youngest of another three brothers, also OSBs, returning to a world which these days seems so different.

Yes, the same hollow valley, straggling village and an oddly surviving railway station; the Crease and that row of Cumbrian sandstone buildings with the Chapel tower. Inside Hostel the familiar dining room and corridors, though somehow shrunken, but dayrooms and dorms all rearranged for new circumstances.

I had doubted whether, after three years of closure, the school could be revived, so remote on the western tip of West Cumbria but locked 'in perpetuity' to a late 16th century foundation document permitting no alternative purpose. Amazing then to realise that the school of 250 boys of our time has now recovered to 125, half day pupils, half boarders, some from a range of European and Asian countries.

Back to our visit in May: we didn't actually talk much, each of us I think reflecting on our individual memories as we were walking round and taking in more recent changes. In my time, the Memorial Hall opened so we could experience a well-equipped stage for drama productions, compared with the limitations of Big School, with its dodgy electrics. The swimming pool and other sports’ facilities now much improved and shared with the wider community. Not much fives played these days, but it is developing.

No more The Bogs*, in our time an improvement on the Roman facilities down at Ravenglass, but what a waste of space: that opposite row of stalls largely unused as we clung to some semblance of privacy; the brazier protecting it all from winter frosts, providing a social hub for a few prep time smokers.

Back further to the 1950s, and for myself very aware of family tradition, I was already conditioned to accept the prevailing discipline. So, no questioning of the endless trivial differences, aka privileges:  which doorway, which blazer buttons, which bench (under the Chapel tower) etc. Also, the humiliating regime of being tested on this trivia or held to summary trial for minor infringements by senior boys, 'supervised' by a (slightly more senior) prefect.

(The three of us were, I strongly believe, fortunate not to have been sent to a boarding prep school, and I wonder about those who had ­– whether they brought with them that culture of verbal bullying.)

Those minor infringements incurred some punitive activity: 5 or 10 runs (the pre breakfast circuit, out of the quad, down to the gate, along the edge of the Crease, up the steps to the Terrace and back into the corridors to the quad door). Ten runs took out most of our mid-morning break. For more serious misdemeanors (not meriting the cane) an extra afternoon dose of cross country, notably the endless road up to High Walton and back.

[That reminds me of the harsh winter of many weeks of frost when High Walton duck pond froze over. A few of us had skates and I remember the patch of darker ice out in the middle. As I didn't weigh much (still don't) I ventured too close and fell in - only two feet deep. Thoughtfully I decided against walking to the edge which would have ruined the ice rink for everyone. So, I lay down to spread my weight. Inevitably the ice level sank enough to leave me in a puddle of freezing water. I rolled across to safer ice before getting to my feet, so to that extent I succeeded. The bike ride back to a hot bath still rates as the coldest I have ever been!]

Coming to classroom discipline, teachers could sentence us to ten or twenty minutes of physical jerks supervised in the gym by Company Sergeant Major Morse, then in charge of physical education (also managing the Armoury in Hostel basement). In my time he was replaced in the gym by Lads Kerr, less regimented, more educational: he scrapped the custom of physical detention so no more would we hear, for example, 'Hunter! 20 minutes pd!'

Did all this encourage us to become open minded, questioning, tolerant adults? My memory of the sixth form weekly double period of General Studies: first and second sixth Arts and Science together in the Library, an article or two of required reading from the basically Tory periodical, Time and Tide, discussion chaired by Headmaster Wykes. Did we learn anything of alternative viewpoints?

On a lighter note, we enjoyed the idiosyncrasies of our teachers. Cyril Wood as junior Housemaster: a tilt of the head, a long look down a long nose, 'Some specimen, has been .....', something nasty in the petrie dish! Spiv Dearle in lederhosen on pushbike overtaking a straggle of scouts up that hill out of Gosforth en route for Wasdale Red Pike (I can date that to Coronation Day 1953). Don Legato in his red TR2, accelerando. Percy Lever, piu lento, his majestic Jag Mark 10 squeezing through the gateway onto the Terrace (he who not long before giving us our O level French dictation introduced us to a novel  falsetto 'e acute' – getting technical here as there should be no audible difference between two different word endings: a past participle '-é with the accent' and an infinitive ending '-er'). Then Snips Brown with her endless reams of handwritten cyclostyled notes to be added to our History folders.

Not after all to forget Piff Williams, every 'r' flipped off the tongue precisely: 'Ferry, you really are an incredible bastard!'

Many contributors to this magazine describe the freedoms we enjoyed to explore our surroundings, bike excursions into the western lake valleys and fells. Those country lanes with little post war traffic, early Sunday chapel, free with a blue ticket (notional destination Wasdale) till evening chapel, was it 6.30? I'm not aware of any serious mishap over five years as we pedalled far and wide to climb Gable, find a stretch of fine scree for a quick descent, jump off the bridge over Stanley Gorge, park our bikes behind The George for a little refreshment, or climb the classic route up Pillar Rock. One abiding memory of two of us sharing a tin of beans warmed over a puddle of meths in a rock hollow on that promontory that juts out into Wastwater: a real sense of awe, no one else in the landscape. We needed that freedom.

Our parents clearly wanted the best for us and this was only a few years after the 1944 Education Act. Class sizes were smaller, teachers perhaps academically more qualified, access to closed scholarships (established to benefit a handful of schools with subsidised places at Oxbridge colleges). We had professional coaches in rugby and cricket, and there was the golf course. I recall a guest speaker** at Speech Day exhorting us to go forth to become 'Captains of Industry'. Despite all the privations we knew at the time we were privileged, maybe giving us a sense of entitlement, later perhaps to recognise the costs, emotional and social, that could come with it.

Footnotes:
* In some Public School Slang Dictionary 'bogs' has been attributed to – St Bees.
** Possibly the OSB named Farquarson, Head of ICI Product Distribution.
F.B. Kerr – PE Teacher - (M 54-56)
J.C. (James) Wykes – Headmaster - (HM 51-63)
C.W. (Cyril) Wood – Chemistry – (M 45-59)
A.N.R. (Anthony) Dearle – English/History – (M 48-87)
Donald Leggatt – Music – (M 52-53 & 56-65)
P. Lever - Modern Languages - (M 46-67)
Mary Brown – History - (M 42-61)
P.F. (Paul) Williams - English – (M 48-58)”

Photos relating to the above piece (the Hedleys’ visit) may be seen in an article by Charles Hedley in the July 2025 Bulletin here.

 

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