A REMINISCENCE.
Lydney Secondary School as it was then called, made it possible for
me to become a graduate teacher in September 1930. I was and remain
very grateful to it. I accepted the post offered to me by its Headmaster,
Frank Dixon, when I was still at Durham University and I cared not
at all what Lydney or the school was like. I was the only woman in
academic year to be offered such a post and, in my eyes, it could be
nothing but good. At the beginning of the thirties education was in
the doldrums. There was little money about and not much of it was set
aside for pampering the young. Almost all schools were ill-equipped
and under-staffed and too many teachers had been trained to teach them
in. Lydney Secondary School sheltered me from a cold and unwelcoming
world.
As it turned out, L.S.S. was a vigorous and cheerful place. Its buildings were
inadequate, draughty and unlovely. As the years went by the draughts were not
stopped, but better central heating kept them in check, new classrooms were
added and equipment improved. Nothing could give the place beauty or even dignity,
but its vitality and kindliness surmounted its physical difficulties and carried
it forward to the more affluent years which were to come. I learned then and
have never ceased to believe that fine buildings and expensive facilities cannot
make a good school without the spirit which informed the community where I
worked for more that twenty years. Without the buildings, it can be done if
it has teachers and pupils of the right caliber.
During Frank Dixon's last two years as Headmaster and my first two years
as an assistant, Lydney Secondary School was a curious amalgam of boys and
girls of varying ages, abilities and interests. The great majority gained entry
by academic achievement -"the scholarship" as it was called and
forerunner of the 11+; some paid half-fees having presumably got fewer sums
right and more spellings wrong than the non-payers and yet another group paid
full fees. These were low by modern standards but they no doubt took some scraping
together in those hard-up days and the school was supported by its self-sacrificing
parents. In addition there was a preparatory class for under-elevens. Miss
Dorothy Jones was in charge of this group which must have been an exhausting
mixture of able and not-so-able girls and boys. Not many of the teachers who
were then my colleagues will be known to those who read this - but some remained
for years to stabilise the character of the school through the coming years
of change. There was Miss Hatton - fairest and strictest of Geography teachers,
she whose homework was never left undone, but who never went on teaching after
the bell sounded for the end of the lessons. There was Joe Ellison, coach,
referee and ally of the school teams, terror of the woodwork room and the man
who throughout the 1939-45 war wrote regularly to former pupils serving in
the forces while relentlessly extracting contributions to the Comforts Fund
from every member of the war-time school. There was Miss Cleaver who made even
the least sensitive sixth-former respond to her own enthusiasm for English
Language and Literature and turned gangling schoolboys with no hair on their
chest into Greek and Trojan warriors for the delight of parents. There was
Leslie Willatt battling against the school's unanimous refusal to learn
French. The folk of Dean Forest were known to be insular and their reluctance
to recognise the French and their crazy language was manifested yearly in our
examination rooms. No less a man than the Headmaster joined the struggle; he
was a science graduate, and perhaps for this reason he taught French to the
first years with the help of coloured chalks and diagrams - this was an idiosyncrasy
worthy of a Headmaster of the old school, revered and respected for his unorthodoxy
and indeed Frank Dixon did share the best qualities of his great fore-runners.
He knew all his pupils by name and often by personality. He knew the staff
too, and worked with them in the classroom and out of it. I wish I had known
him in his heyday,
Science proper was taught by Eric in the Physics Lab, a dismal room separated
by a thin wall from the traffic on the South Wales Road. It was some time before
I knew that Eric was occasionally dignified by being addressed as Mr. D'Aubyn;
if fact I did not immediately distinguish him from the senior boys (no uniform
in those days). In an equally dismal and colder room upstairs, Harold (Jones)
revealed the mysteries of Botany and Biology to those who clattered and chattered
up the stone steps to his lair. These two were joined later by ‘Hotch' teaching
Chemistry and John White who were to raise the school's academic standards
to a high level in county annals by the successes of their pupils in open and
county scholarships.
In 1932 J. C. Burch was appointed to succeed Frank Dixon and an exciting period
of physical and intellectual development began. His impact was immediate. A
vigorous and solid man, he was bearded and walked with a limp. Later we learned
that he had lost a leg in a field amputation during the First World War. This
did not prevent him from moving at great speed when occasion required; then
he seemed to sweep from his office to the furthest part of the school wearing
always his gown and carrying his university cap. Generally soft spoken, he
was given to calculated outbursts of furious anger, which he could cut off
at will. He was certainly well equipped to handle the school of 700, which
number was exceeded before he died.
When, during the first term, he threw out of the school two fourth-form louts
and their departure reverberated throughout the building, our suspicion at
his quality as a Headmaster was confirmed. Having cleared the air, he settled
down to develop a plan that was clearly well prepared and which he was determined
to bring to fruition. The school was to have a new look and to serve Lydney
and district by offering it the best kind of secondary education he could devise.
First, the school became Lydney Grammar School and its motto"Keep Faith" became"Tenete
Fidem" and the Chairman of the Governors pronounced it"Tineeti
Fighdem". This confused my Latin classes but fortunately they thought
the chairman had got it wrong. Fee-paying Pupils gradually disappeared; the
preparatory classes faded away; we no longer marched out of prayers to the
music composed long ago by Dr. Herbert Howells
Snr; regimented movement from class to class ceased and standing up for formal
greeting of teachers was held to be a waste of time - as far as I remember
most of the staff were delighted to see this embarrassing custom disappear
- prefects become more powerful and were able to give lines, in return for
which privilege they under-took some pretty onerous duties formerly performed
by the staff. All the pupils seemed to grow up a little too.
The greatest apparent change was the introduction of School uniform. This
roused expected opposition in some quarters, but it soon caught on. Social
differences
were ironed out, the poorer children - and many were ‘poor' - received
grants from the county authority. In those days school uniform was not a mere
fetish peculiar to Headmasters: it really seemed to have social value. What was
unusual and characteristic of Burch was to carry the matter to its logical conclusion.
Uniform was worn at school parties (or fancy dress costing not more than 2s.
6d.). Consequently, parties came out of the drawing room and became riotous affairs
run by the prefects. Almost every child eligible to attend his age-group's
turned up and judging by the noise, this was a very popular innovation. J. C.
B. stayed on the premises unseen until the last child had gone home and no-one
had to pressure the staff into accepting invitations.
These social changes were being matched by others. The Headmaster had already
set out about the task of improving the school's amenities and its academic
achievement. Taking advantage of an easier financial situation and the school's
increasing size and above all of a growing sixth form, he was bringing pressure
to bear upon the administration and the purse-bearers. Supported by the school
governors and exercising his own craft, he extracted from a reluctant Local Authority
and a parsimonious Ministry the funds needed for the purchase of new buildings.
A new Hall-cum-dining room was built, a number of new classrooms formed what,
I am sure, is still called the new corridor. A new Chemistry laboratory was built
on to the old hall, the Physics laboratory was doubled in size, and the school
field was enlarged and later, wonder or wonders, one of its boundaries was enhanced
by a gymnasium with showers.
The inevitable school stories attach themselves to these developments and demand
to be told. While the battle for the new hall was in progress a remarkable number
of senior girls were overcome by the heat in the crowded old hall and had to
be carried out by one or other of the personable young men who were members of
staff at that time. Strategic positioning ensured that no-one was helped into
the fresh air by the wrong teacher, and no doubt equally strategic use of these
disturbing occurrences was made by the Headmaster in his conflict with the finance
department. Finally, in the summer months the hall was abandoned and prayers
took place on the field. So no-one was really surprised when the new hall was
announced. The new corridor, too, was not without its attractions. In spite of
protestation by those who knew, the architects made the inner walls of the new
classrooms of a curious kind of asbestos which was like soft cardboard. In no
time at all, holes appeared at appropriate places in the dividing walls which
permitted the passing of notes from classroom to classroom and some said that
romantics in different classes held hands in silent communion through these handy
gaps. However, the most interesting and revealing of these stories centres round
the showers. Saga is not too highblown a word to describe the contest that followed
the Headmaster's instruction to the P. E. staff that all pupils must shower
after P.E. and games. This was calmly accepted by the boys, but parents of some
girls were astonished at the idea that their modest daughters should display
themselves naked before other girls and their women teachers in the privacy of
their own lavatories. Unexpectedly, the Local Authority supported the rebels.
J.C.B. fought long and hard on rational grounds without success; then he suggested
a compromise; girls who wished to do so might wear bathing costumes (swim suits)
while showering. This was accepted and the battle was over. No girl wet her bathing
costume under a shower; though it was rumoured many had to be dried at home.
There was also the battle of the Tuck shop - this was brief but it was bitter
and cost the Headmaster some friends on the governing body. Self-interest dies
hard and trades people do not forget their losses in committee. It was worthwhile
if costly victory, for the Tuck Shop has given the school a long and beneficent
income and more pupils have been helped by it than the first harassed prefects
who ran it in the beginning can have guessed.
All these amenities, halls with stages, dining rooms, gymnasia and showers, tuck
shop and the rest are as normal as desks in today's schools but J.C.B.
and others like him had to fight for them. Their foresight and determination
in doing so deserve to be recorded in school histories. It seemed to me that
at Lydney there was more value in these struggles than the mere improvement of
school facilities. In the passion that was engendered by them, adult personalities
were revealed and their effect upon their pupils became clearer to all; the senior
members of the staff were welded together by a common understanding and they
came to know and respect the Headmaster common understanding and they came to
know and respect the Headmaster even when they did not agree with him and often
they did not. Staff meetings were invigorating occasions and I'm bound
to say that it was generally safe to put your money on J. C. B. to win. Much
of this energy spilled over on to the School. I cannot remember any teachers
who were bored at Lydney Grammar School and do not doubt it was their refusal
to be deadened by routine that gave the school the vigour to which visitors constantly
referred. Nothing destroys a school so quickly as an enervated staff. Some of
us in those days began to believe that good grammar schools could stand comparison
with the best public schools and that Lydney need not be left behind.
Much more could be told, of the introduction of Rugger, of the formation of a
staff cricket team, of the
enthusiasm for swimming and athletic sports, or increasingly improved academic
standards which enhanced the school's reputation then and into the future
and of the darkening clouds of war. Others will continue the story. It remains
only for me to say that being an assistant at L. G. S. in its and my formative
years was a privilege and an experience.
Alice Higgs
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