Alex Riley (G 61-65) has contributed the following:

“I enjoyed reading Chris Lord’s Grindal recollections from the 50s. I would like to add my own from the 60s. Also, I went round Grindal on Old Boys’ Day in 2015, so saw how it ended up.

The physical layout remained as Chris described. Downstairs, to the left of the door, was the boys’ only means of access to the house - a block of four studies. The first two housed the six prefects, then Senior Studies (four?), then Junior Studies (six?). My recollection is a bit hazy because I never made it into these exalted locations – except as a fag to one of the prefects. Chris made a point about just how lowly a life-form you were made to feel as a junior. At the 2015 reunion, one OSB introduced himself as William Hind. ‘Goodness’, I thought, ‘The last time we had any contact you were a prefect and I was a fag.’ It came as a bit of a shock to realise that we were now equals. Time is a great leveller!
The toilets deserve a special mention. The Grindal ‘bogs’ were unspeakable. There was a pervasive stench of ammonia. On one side was a long urinal. On the other a series of stalls, none of which had a door. However, they were strictly segregated. First stall was for Baby/Junior Dayroom, second for Senior Dayroom, then one for the Studies and the last one for prefects. You could ‘trade down’, but not up. Juniors had to stand at the nearest end of the urinal. I’m astonished that these arrangements were ever acceptable, but by the 60s they were a shocking anachronism.

I believe that soon after girls were admitted to the school, Grindal became the Girls’ House. I doubt the ‘bogs’ survived that change!

The fagging situation Chris described was unchanged in the 60s, except that prefects couldn’t bellow ‘FAG!’ from the top of the stairs because they were in the new studies. 

Grindal would have contained around 55 boarders, with perhaps eight more in the feeder houses of Meadow and Eaglesfield, where one usually spent one’s first year. Grindal had a very strong esprit de corps, heightened by the considerable return distances we had to walk four or more times a day to get to the rest of the school. We knew we were the best house. (Similar logic would have applied at the other houses.) Inter-house team sports were fiercely competitive: rugger and cricket, of course, but even fives. For some reason, lawn tennis did not figure, though this had begun to change by 1965. All boys wore shorts all the year round.

Grindal had a nether world in the basement which had concrete floors throughout. All boys went in through the rear side door, which was a floor below the front door. To the left was the block of four studies. On turning right you had the bogs on your left. To the right you went through an archway to a small, dingy, area where house notices were displayed, with stairs up to the ground floor. Beyond there was a corridor. To the left of the corridor was the boiler room where all manner of soaking, sweaty clothes would be left to dry off. The smell could be pretty overpowering. Beyond this there was a room in which bikes belonging to all boys on the house were stored. My goodness, but it was chaos! To the right of the corridor were two large changing rooms (Junior and Senior), each with a bathroom containing perhaps three baths and (though I can’t recall this) surely a shower area. I don’t recall being required to take a cold shower, so there had been some softening-up since the 50s. The changing rooms contained lockers in which each boy stored his games’ kit. They were aromatically challenging environments.

I’m recalling this from a distance of over fifty years so there may easily be errors. No-one whinged. We were all in the same boat and somehow it all contributed to our feeling of being part of a team. Even the bogs!

Apart from having to do fagging for the first year, one’s first term on Grindal was dominated by the Priv (short for Privilege) Test. For this one had to memorise an extraordinarily complex list of arcane privileges, whose only point was to emphasise to the learner (who had no privileges at all) just how insignificant he was. ‘Gliding’ was a case in point. School uniform required all three buttons of one’s blazer to be done up at all times. Gliding permitted one to have some buttons undone. Now logically this should mean that one keeps only the middle button done up, but no!  Fads would arise to have only the bottom button – or the top one (which looked dreadful) – done up. Or even two of them. The kinds of awards that permitted gliding were: school colours in cricket, rugger or athletics, being a prefect or in your fourth term in the 6th form. Very big boys indeed were permitted to ‘fully glide’. This meant having no buttons done up at all. Gosh!  School prefects (i.e. Heads of House) could do this at all times, house prefects only when on their house. The sheer pointlessness of these privileges was balanced by the vigour with which any breach was punished.

There used to be a barbaric ritual called a ‘session’ in which a hapless junior boy would be hauled into the senior study after supper and screamed at for ten minutes or so for some minor infraction, whilst forced to stare down at his feet (or he would be screamed at all the more). Certain boys were found to provide good sport and would consequently receive regular sessions. Mercifully this practice ceased at Grindal when I started there (but continued on Foundation).

Prefect beatings were by then a thing of the past at Grindal. In fact this only happened once while I was at St Bees, on Foundation (which confirmed our view that they were a bunch of savages). But punishment runs were very much the order of the day, starting with the simple ‘Triangle’ (or multiples thereof) up to a ‘Sandwith’, for which the prescribed time was an hour.

All food was eaten communally in the Dining Room. Senior boys on chairs near the door, plebs like me on benches further away. Distance from the door indicated one’s status, or absence thereof. The housemaster, or failing that the senior prefect, would say Grace, normally in Latin. There was a great scandal once when the task fell to the head of Senior Studies, who uttered this: ‘For egg and cheese and greasy toast, thank Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ The flipside of our hierarchical regime was that this boy was too senior to be punished. I dread to think what would have happened to any of the rest of us for such behaviour.

Around the dining room were shelves, on which each boy had a jar of jam and also a 1lb jar with a green screw top on which his number was painted. This would be refilled with sugar every two weeks. I don’t think these jars were ever washed. The jam jars had to last a term.

After the morning run we had breakfast. Normally porridge plus bread and jam, I think. Then to morning ‘shed’ (chapel) and a couple of lessons. Then back for elevenses. Our Spanish cook, whose name I think was Maria, would dish up trays of bread and jam which we would fall on and stand around the dining room munching. I would normally put away six slices every day. Then back for more lessons then returning for lunch. Sport every afternoon. Then we’d go back to school for two more lessons, followed by supper. We were unbelievably fit!

I never got the chance of thanking Maria, who lived in, for looking after us so well. The food was basic but wholesome. Boiled potatoes or mash accompanied every main meal, except chips on Friday and roast potatoes with Sunday lunch. I was never hungry.

By the 60s there was no .303 range any more, but there was a .22 range which I managed to find on my 2015 visit, though it was derelict. To fire live rounds from one of the Lee Enfields we lugged around in the Corps, one had to go to Corps Camp for a week near Aldershot at the end of the summer term. I went at the end of my second year and thought it absolutely brilliant fun. The Lee Enfield, a relic of WW1, had user-friendly features like a brass butt plate to go hard against your collar bone when you fired it on the range. The kick was unimaginable and as a fifteen year old I was unquestionably not man enough for it. We tried scrunching up our berets to use them as padding, but it didn’t help. Our collar bones were black and blue afterwards. There was of course no question of anyone using ear protectors, though the noise was pretty ferocious too. The high point of the camp was getting the chance to fire Bren and Sten guns, the ultimate big boys’ toys. Recently I saw a presentation on the local Cadet Corps. They showed a picture of fifteen and sixteen year olds on a firing range. They all had ear protection. I asked what weapons they were firing: air rifles!! And with ear protection! How times change!

I was very happy at Grindal. We were a real community. 

I came back to the school a couple of times in the five years after leaving. There was a 60s Gaudy around 2013 which I had intended to attend, but eye surgery meant I couldn’t drive. So I didn’t get back properly until 2015, by which time the very sad news had broken about the school closing. I spent the Friday hoofing round all the old haunts and the words from ‘Abide with me’ kept returning: ‘Change and decay in all around I see…’ I walked up to Meadow House. I was exhausted! Did we first-years really cycle back and forth up that hill on top of everything else? It was sold off and divided into flats. On to Eaglesfield. Ditto. Both tuck shops converted into private homes. Two of the three fives courts seemed to be used as storage areas. But what I really wanted to see was Grindal. I had asked Pam Rumney if she could arrange for me to get a tour next day and she had arranged this. In the mean time I had a quick look ‘round the back’. First thing was that our quirky outdoor, roofless, fives court had been removed from the field to the left. It was still perfectly usable in the 60s. Then I noticed the studies block. It was a sorry sight, blocked-off and derelict. Maybe they had discovered asbestos in its construction, but this was a shock for me. I carried on to the house notice area. The staircase was clearly unused, as was the whole basement area. I was genuinely puzzled.

Next day was Old Boys’ Day and was one of those perfect summer’s days that in my memory used to coincide with threequarter holidays. The Headmaster made it known that Old Boys were not permitted to go round any of the school buildings, a truly extraordinary announcement to make on Old Boys’ Day. (He later relented and allowed a guided tour, but we had all picked up on the message.) I went to Pam and asked what arrangements there would be for my Grindal visit. Pam made a phone call and was shocked to be told by the housemaster that I wouldn’t be permitted to visit. How extraordinary! Pam remonstrated with him and eventually he backed down, saying that I should go and find one of the cleaning staff, who would show me some of the rooms, but that most of the building would be off-limits to me. In retrospect I was probably being naïve but I was genuinely shocked at his attitude. With no great confidence I approached the imposing front door and rang the bell. I waited ages. I was about to try again when the door opened and a young man came out. We were both as surprised as the other. It transpired that he was an American student in his final year. It would be his pleasure to show me everything. I have two abiding memories of my visit. The first was a boys’ kitchenette with kettles and a microwave and signs in Chinese and, occasionally, English. So the boys used to either cook up a ready meal in the microwave or get a pizza in. Nearly all the boys in the house were from China, all of whom had gone back home when the announcement of the school’s closure was made, leaving only my guide to stay till the end of term. The dining room and the various dayrooms had all been converted into two or three person study/bedrooms, as had the dorms on the first and second floors. There was a very agreeable suite of rooms that belonged to the deputy housemaster, so I assume that the actual housemaster had even better ones. In our day the deputy housemaster would have a small room in Lonsdale and would turn up when required.

So what few pupils remained in the school would all have lunch in Foundation, but other than that I could see no sign of communal living at all. I couldn’t even see how they sorted themselves out after coming back muddy from rugger. Surely they couldn’t tramp through the house to their rooms? Did they even still do sport?

I would be delighted if a recent member of the school could tell me how Grindal actually operated at this time. Was any use at all made of the basement area?

I am very grateful to have had the experience of belonging to the Grindal community when I did, but even more grateful not to have been there in 2015.”

 

Home

The St Beghian Society    
St Bees School,    St Bees,    Cumbria,    CA27 0DS.

         Tel: (01946) 828093      Email: osb@stbeesschool.co.uk      Web: www.st-beghian-society.co.uk