Lydney Grammar School - L.G.S. 1903-1973


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A book produced to celebrate the school
Various authors

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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