Bill Roberts - Dr William Roberts (M 58-62) writes:

St Bees on a Thursday Afternoon.

“What I remember most fondly about my time at St Bees was Thursday afternoons - activity time.

On appointment I had been talked into the CCF and my use of this privilege was to start a mountain rescue team, which practised on Thursday afternoons. I had been an instructor at the Outward Bound Mountain School at Eskdale and so I was primed at least in the essentials. We had odd days at Gatehouse (the Outward Bound school) up the Eskdale valley hauling a stretcher (with patient) up Ranks Bank; other days with a well-trained search team looking for lost walkers, and one special day with the Thomas stretcher bringing down a walker with a sugar deficiency from Hollow Stones. On one particularly memorable day I took two boys, whose names I sadly do not recall now, up the north climb on Pillar. This is not a very difficult climb but it does have a sensational top pitch in which the vital move - easy if you are tall enough - is out of reach if you are 5ft 8ins or less. I was so pleased to get up that climb that I forgot all about time and so was rather surprised to be met with a line of searchers at the top of Black Sail, who were looking for me because I was late back, and a bright youngster had raised the alarm. I found it difficult mounting a convincing explanation for Mr Wykes next day. Of course, I was younger then and a lot more foolish: I had been given a flare-pistol as part of my equipment as a leader of the search team and I thought that it needed testing. The flare shot off into the sky and landed in the coal yard by the railway line - to my confusion and with some danger of starting a fire. There were consolations, one of which was being sent on a glider course to Kirton Lindsay in Lincolnshire. I remember the thrill of the air rushing past as we jettisoned the tow rope and the bump as we landed.

My time in the CCF did leave me with a heightened sense of awareness of the value of the military, in particular of the St Bees hero, Capt Leefe Robinson. It was an extraordinary coincidence that my parents lived at Cuffley, outside London, where Capt Robinson had brought down the first zeppelin. Of course I walked up to the memorial on Plough Hill in Cuffley in the fifties, and again a few years ago when the 100th anniversary of the shooting-down occurred.

One other event I suppose that I should mention, since it was such a remarkable thing at the time, is a debt I owed to Donald Leggat, who was the extremely talented music master and who shared the house at 11 Lonsdale Terrace. One evening Donald was probably on the point of complaining about the noise I was making. Fortunately, he came upstairs to my bedroom and found me moaning and unconscious. He raised the alarm and probably saved my life. I was shipped off to Workington hospital, where I remained unconscious for a fortnight. Later I was visited by a doctor friend, who had me sent down to a London hospital, where I was properly diagnosed and operated on. A piece of plastic was put in my aorta and I have lived on happily ever since.

One further event I should have mentioned but nearly forgot is that I met my wife-to-be while at St Bees and that is a debt I shall always be glad to acknowledge. I spent only three years at the school and wish now that it had been longer. It was a formative and important time in my life: I loved the school then, I made so many good friends, and I hope so much for its future.”

 

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