Memories from the 1960s

Tim King (OW of 1965 to 1974)

I walked through what appeared to be the enormous front door of Wells Cathedral Junior School for the first time at the beginning of the Summer term in 1965. My family had long associations with the City as my grandfather had studied at the Theological College and lived in Vicars Close. My mother had received some of her schooling in the Bishop's Palace as the St Brandon's School moved there from Bristol during the War to escape the Blitz.
I was 8 years old when I arrived at Wells. The family lived in Yeovil where my Dad worked for Westlands. I suffered from asthma so a move to Wells was considered to be good for my health. It was and I never suffered again. I had musical leanings and took to learning to play the violin and piano and eventually got into the school choir.
Claude Holmes was Head of the Junior School at the time. The teachers seemed friendly enough but we were kept in check from time to time. I would not describe myself as excelling at sport but enjoyed all the activities on Munday's Meadow including tennis in the summer. Friends included Chris White, Jeremy Asher and Tom Wright. Most of us were bonkers about football and I became a Chelsea fan. We played in the yard whenever we could. 1966 was a pretty exciting year with England winning the World Cup!
I enjoyed the school play and started as an extra in Emil and the Detectives graduating to sharing the lead with Nigel Hyslop as one of the cubs shipwrecked on a desert island in one of Claude Holmes own creations. I also spoofed Dr Watson (as Dr Hooson) and got black paint all over my hands from a fake revolver in another of Mr Holmes plays.
My parents used to come and take me out and we would go and sit next to the mainline railway near Bruton and watch the Western and Warship locos go by.
I moved on up to the Cedars into the tender care of Alan Tarbat. Looking back this was the least happy period at Wells. Being in the big school was a bit of a shock to the system and it took time to adjust. During this time there seemed to be a lot of dramas with fires in the Ritchie Memorial Hall tower and the music practice block. I became a keen member of the School Film Society enjoying such epics as Major Dundee and Ice Station Zebra which were shown on a rather duff Bell and Howell 16mm projector.
One of the highlights was the visit of the Queen Mother for Speech Day. She looked magnificent in a pinky/orange outfit and sat in a large chair as the Second Orchestra with yours truly amongst the second violins gave her a virtuoso performance of something we had been practising for weeks!
The end of the Summer term in 1968 was notable for the terrible weather washing out Sports Day and causing horrendous floods particularly in Pensford.
Eventually I left the Cedars and went into De Salis House sharing a small study dorm and listening to Radio Luxemburg after lights out! I joined the Gardening Club and spent many happy hours tending the large garden out the back and admiring the wisps of smoke leaking out of the bushes!
The new sports hall and swimming pool were built around this time and were much enjoyed by all. The diehard footie fans from the Junior School used every spare moment to play in the yard between the cookery department and the sports hall. We were only evicted when the CCF wanted to parade up and down!
A new innovation was the arrival of girls in the school. First there were one or two and then there seemed to be floods of them, even earning their own house halfway down the Liberty! I was particularly put out when I failed to become top of the form again because a new girl called Julia usurped my position! She was the one who took to the stage to receive a prize from the good old Queen Mum as I sat sulking in the crowd!
'O' levels came and went. Britain was in the throws of mighty industrial unrest in the early '70's and we had to contend with the three-day week. The power would go off with great regularity and I remember sitting on the stairs of De Salis in the glow of candles and gas lamps unable to do any homework and with Mr Bigny fretting over our plight.
Eventually I made it into the Sixth Form and in the last year of 1973-4 was promoted to prefect. I was in the Cross Country Team with future Olympiad Danny Nightingale and went to far flung places such as Milton Abbey to run through the mud. My interest in films had blossomed and together with George Bushell ran both the School and Sixth Form Film Societies. We bought a widescreen lens and constructed a bigger screen so we could enjoy Clint Eastwood Westerns in their full glory.
I left Wells in July 1974 and went onto the University of Sussex at Brighton. I eventually got into tourism marketing and worked at Salisbury, Southampton, Romsey, Exmoor and Shropshire where I still live.
Tim King
PS - There's still a host of stories to tell and mysteries to solve like who kept nicking my blimmin film posters that were put up to advertise Film Society screenings???!!!

Richard Lambert (OW of 1966 to 1973)
I was looking for something in my loft the other day and came across a number of ancient items from my time at Wells, including a programme from the WCS Concert tour of Norway, Sweden and Finland in 1973. It was from our first concert in the Johannes Kirken, Bergen on Friday 24th August
Although I had technically just left the school and was awaiting my "A" level results, several recent leavers were invited back to swell the numbers, including Michael Stubbings. I can remember driving by coach all the way up from Wells to Newcastle Airport, where we caught a flight to Norway.
My claim to fame, if you can call it that, during this trip was to be taken seriously ill during the first part in Norway. We were scheduled to perform in Bergen on Friday 24th August then go on to Sweden and Finland, returning again to Stockholm to catch the ferry back to England. I can remember feeling unwell on the coach trip from Bergen and then going into hospital at Karlstad in Sweden, as an emergency to have my appendix removed. We had just crossed the border from Norway by coach and Karlstad was the first stop. I do not recall whether I even made it to the concert there or not, but I know I should have been reading something in Helsinki Cathedral once we got to Finland, and was very disappointed to not make it.
I also found two postcards sent to me from Uppsala, which I think was the next stop after Karlstad. It's a get well card in two parts, addressed to me in Ward 44 of the Centrallasavettet in Karlstad from Mike Stubbings and is also signed by the following members of the tour :
Bill Whittle - T.J. Goulter - Penny Fitzgibbon - James Coles - Paul Glass - Jeremy Richardson - Benny - Robert Longstone - Nicholas Williams - Tim Lake - Hugh Eveleigh - Pete Linstell - Ian Towers - Peter Ham - P.J. Mazur - Tim Auge - Sylvie Simelnikoff - Richard Stubbings - Mike Graves - Andrew Nichol - Miranda Ford - Diane - Nick Winfield - James Titt - Dick - Mary - J.R.H. (? Headley) - Daniel - Phillip - Liz Shenton - Julia Wilcocks - James Shenton - Simon Butteriss
I can remember Liz Shenton and brother James playing the solos in the Vivaldi double violin concerto. I also have another programme from St. Jacobs Kyrkan in Stockholm that shows the Wells Cathedral School Choir and Orchestra directed by William Whittle giving a concert on 3rd September. They are described as a "Boy's Choir from England" (no mention of the girls)! This concert must have been just before they returned to England. I was out of hospital after a week or so and rejoined the party in Stockholm, but flew back to the UK rather than catching the ferry. The cost in those days for the flight to England was £90.
I can also remember getting physiotherapy each day from an obviously very dishy nurse who always wore a facemask. When I asked why, I was told she liked garlic and wanted to cover up the smell. I insisted the next day that she took off her mask before I would let her pummel me about. She was blond and very beautiful indeed when the mask came off! In the bed next to me was an American who was in Karlstad on business when he was taken ill. He was receiving treatment and had to be fed intravenously. His Company were sending £500 a week to pay for his treatment. Britain had a reciprocal arrangement with Sweden so I got free treatment, but it was a good job that I had not been ill in Norway, otherwise I too would have had to pay for the operation and a stay in hospital. I came home with my appendix in a jar, but it's not in my loft with the other items anymore!
I also found this item in hand-written form that was performed at an end of term concert in the Ritchie Hall. I can remember it being sung, and especially the "English Public School Choral Tradition" pronunciation of "..information" and "..hesitation"! It's called "The Electronic Freshman" and was written collectively by a number of us but especially Andrew Jones, who I believe pinched the idea from his brother. It was dedicated at the time to the new Physics Master, Peter Thomas who had just arrived at the School. This may enable you to date it accurately.
"The Electronic Freshman" (with apologies to W.S. Gilbert)
I am the very model of a modern electronical
I know it all, though not as yet with thoroughness Teutonical
It's underlying mysteries which puzzle some, don't puzzle me
And diffidence I don't possess and so it doesn't muzzle me.
And thus I go about the place and air my views ad nauseam
And people view me doubtfully and ask me on what course I am
And though I can elucidate with devastating clarity
I find it doesn't help me to develop popularity.
If you can pose a problem in a circuit that's transistorised
Which I can't solve in half a mo then I'd be quite a bit surprised
I can as quickly recognise a crystal of Germanium
As any horticulturalist can pick out a Geranium.
The laws of electronics seem as clear to me as light of day
I sometimes read a textbook just to pass the time of night away
With solid states and microwaves I've learned familiarity
Twixt me and my professor I can see no great disparity.
The workings of computers whether digital or analogue
I understand as easily as falling backwards off a log
I undertake to clarify and answer curiosity
With confidence which some would say was next door to precocity.
The striving and retrieval of all programmed information
I can explain in full without the slightest hesitation
Whilst programming and punching tape are matters of simplicity
Which I perform at any time with satisfied felicity.
Although I've only started yet and only have a smattering
This will not of necessity inhibit me from chattering
In short, you'll see quite clearly if you've really read this chronicle
I am the very model of a modern electronical!
Best regards, Richard Lambert

Mark Brown (Brown RME) OW of 1961-68

Singing the tune is all very well; but providing the harmony is usually so much more rewarding.
I arrived in 3A (1st form) at the age of 10 to find that a few of my colleagues always missed the first period of the day - being Choristers, they were at practice down in the cathedral. For them, this went on for up to another two years. Others of us, not so vocally polished, were quickly signed up for the school choir by the then music master Mervyn Callaghan ("My dears ....."); our rehearsal time was after lunch on Fridays. (Within 2 years, MC had emigrated to Oz, making way for Bill Whittle's arrival.) Some stayed only until their voice broke; others like me served the full 7-year term! Likewise, most of the cathedral trebles joined the school choir once their voices broke - or gently slid downwards (as in my own case). To what benefit?
Well, there were the occasional off-site concert trips to venues within the county - not far, but the change of scenery was important. Then, in Spring '65, was mounted a production of G&S ‘Pirates of Penzance', by which time Nick Ralph and I were singing alto at 1st and 2nd Chorus Girls respectively. Richard Pothecary was now out of the cathedral choir and singing tenor; he took the part of Major General Stanley. (I remember I had just received a massive black-eye from a goal-mouth scrimmage in a house hockey match, so had to be plastered - quite literally up to the eyeballs - in grease-paint to hide the purple and black!)
But, for me, the best thing about being a school chorister was the regularity of singing in the Cathedral. Most of all this meant the annual School Advent Carol Service (9 lessons & carols), and school Choral Evensong every Sunday evening. Every boarder then was required to attend one of the three morning services: 8.00 communion, 10.00 Sung Eucharist, or 11.00 Mattins. In the VIth form, pretty well alone amongst my fellows, I used to go to Mattins for a bit of peace and quiet (as well as the music, of course); and you were senior enough by then to sit in the cushioned prebendary ‘thrones' around the edge of the Chancel. And doze off comfortably during the sermon. Best of all for me was to be invited up the Organ Loft to turn pages for the organist ‘Dapper' Pouncey. And to look down on the proceedings from a great height! Oh yes, and an 11.00 service meant that you could catch almost an hour of Kenny Everett on Radio 1 beforehand!
Meanwhile, back at school, in the senior houses in those days, the communal showers for after-Games ablutions were at the back of No.4 Claver Morris, underneath the old school library. "Where two or three are gathered together ...." - games and matches mostly happened simultaneously but did not always finish at the same time. But when the coincidence occurred, and people like Nick Pearson and Richard Pothecary were showering, the harmonies rising from within the steamy showers were pretty good. Being the mid-60s, we indulged ourselves mainly with the Beatles, depending on the current album at the time. Top of the list was most definitely: ‘If I fell', supported by ‘And I love her' and ‘Things we said today' (all from the ‘Hard Days Night' album); also ‘Yesterday' (‘Help'), ‘Michelle' (‘Rubber Soul'), and ‘For No-one' (‘Revolver'). But ‘Go Now' (the Moody Blues) featured regularly, as did ‘House of the Rising Sun' (The Animals), and ‘Juliet' (the 4 Pennies - now long since forgotten by the world). Other choristers of the showers will have their own memories of songs once enjoyed and now either established as pop classics or else lost in the mists of time.
What price such memories now, in the current world of ‘techno-pop'?  Mark Brown

Andrew Shaxson OW of 1958 - 66
Few dates are inextinguishably set in my memory but the 17th of September 1958 is one. That afternoon my mother deposited me at St Andrew's, then the Junior School in New Street, now Ritchie House; we were both completely ignorant of what would my new life would be like. I soon began to find out, as I entered the well-oiled machine that was the school, held together by tight discipline, backed up by the ever-present likelihood of being caned. I was undoubtedly a high-spirited boy, and the school motto "Be what you are" should have been encouraging individuality. However it was not to be, as the moment you ‘were what you were' you were likely to be beaten for being so! I was - three times in my first term, five in the second and thirteen in the third. I thereafter learnt to keep my head down, lowered my profile, and accordingly suffered less pain. Events were to prove that my schooling had more in common with that of my grandfather than anybody born even five years later - from the mid 60s the long overdue revolution in schooling occurred.
I remember the oddest things from those early days. For some weeks I must have looked rather untidy as correctly knotting (an apt word) my tie and tying my shoelaces was quite beyond me. We were made to eat some pretty evil food which should have departed with the ending of food rationing, including spam in batter, pilchards in tomato sauce and porridge that was more lump than liquid - and horrible margarine that should have stayed attached to a whale. I say ‘made to' eat as frequently what you didn't eat at one meal was put in front of you at the next to finish before you could eat anything new. On a brighter side that first autumn was a wonderful Indian Summer, and we erected tents on Munday's Meadow on many evenings. Considering that bedtime for the most junior dormitory was ludicrously early 6.45 (6.30 in the winter) I cannot work out how we had time to do so.
John Mitchell, the third form master who taught English, provided me with a skill that has served me well ever since. The school timetable was in those days sufficiently flexible for him to teach us to write italic script, something I took to with great enthusiasm. Within weeks I had an Osmeroid pen with the correct nib, and my writing had changed from spider to legibility. It nearly won me the Junior School handwriting prize, and the climb onto the stage at Speech Day held at the old Regal cinema, had I not omitted a word. John Bucknall won it instead. I never got anywhere near that dais again. When Mr Mitchell left he gave a small group of the boarders a choice of some books he had, and I chose ‘The Pad in the Straw', a collection of eerie short stories by Christopher Woodforde, the then Dean. I still have it.
I became a cathedral chorister in 1960. Every Ascension day the choristers went on an outing to Weymouth by coach. We were provided with a pack-lunch which was logically known as a Haybag, having been dished out by matron Haywood. The Haybag was usually devoured in the coach long before lunchtime; and on one journey somebody threw an unwanted hard boiled egg from the window. It landed on a car travelling behind us driven by an off-duty policeman who pulled the coach in, and climbing on board was confronted by the organist Denys Pouncey, and Canon Jones the Precentor in his canonicals. The policeman gave us all a severe dressing down! At Weymouth the highlight of the day was a trip around Portland Harbour on a paddle-steamer, and having what seemed like endless fun spending the then huge sum for us to handle of £1 at a funfair.
Another annual event was singing carols to the Bishop and his family in the palace on Christmas Eve. Half way through our repertoire we stopped for refreshments, and were asked what we would like to drink. The first year I went I was a junior and almost the last to be asked - and instead of requesting a soft drink I asked for a sherry! Without batting an eye-lid Bishop Henderson gave me one. You might well imagine the reaction of the older boys. In following years I was automatically given a sherry, and the others soft drinks. By Christmas 1964 I had become head chorister, and when it came to the break Edward Henderson gave us all cider. The outcome was chaotic, the second half being punctuated by mistakes and merriment. It wasn't the only time that Bishop Henderson, alcohol and the choristers clashed. The choir sang at his daughter's wedding early one Saturday afternoon, and the senior choristers were invited to the reception. By evensong many of them were hors de combat, and those who could still stand were the worst for drink. Fortunately Denys Pouncey must have anticipated a problem as unusually for a Saturday evensong the music was simple, and therefore (just) carried off by the juniors. Much later I heard that extremely strong words were spoken!
Chorister holidays were very relaxed, and as long as our singing duties were fulfilled we were fairly free to do as we wished. All choristers moved into one house, usually what was then Stuart Burt's house, No 4 East Liberty, though in January 1963 St Andrew's was the first house to be thawed out so we went there. A master was left in charge of us, and for most of the time I was in the choir Colin Shaw, then a bachelor, undertook the task. We got to know most of the tracks in Tor Woods, but a frequent pastime was to walk into a corner of the south transept of the Cathedral, open an (unlocked) door and climb up the central tower. No permission was needed, and we didn't have to pay the 2/6d fee levied on ordinary visitors. Not only did we climb the tower but also should we find that doors were open on the way up we explored the rest of the building, including peering through the bosses in the ceiling onto the nave floor below, and going out on the parapet. Oh we had such fun in those innocent days, before litigation and the Health and Safety Executive.
Munday's meadow holds many memories, good and bad. Paul Goodchild (shorter than me) hitting my front teeth out with a hockey stick, throwing a boomerang that didn't come back through one of the pavilion windows (I expect for that I was rewarded with another beating from Mr Webb-Jones). The relief road was definitely needed but destroyed the games field of my youth. Paul Goodchild was the prankster of my year, and these became ever more hair-raising. Our jam came in large tin cans and Paul would put water and calcium carbide in these, and by setting light to the gas create a small bomb. By using an insulated screwdriver and wire he rewired light switches in The Cedars to prevent them being switched off. Matters came to a head when he did it in Alan Tarbat's room.
Many people have written of Alan Tarbat. I was one of the people who benefited from his interest in stamps and trains - and also Sherlock Holmes short stories. Most Sunday evenings he would read one, inviting up to 15 of us to disport ourselves around his room. One evening he told us that he had a treat for us, the story called ‘The Speckled Band'. I spontaneously reacted by saying "Is that the one about the snake" - which of course it is! Having spoilt the punch line I was banished from the readings for some weeks. Most members of The Cedars had first hand experience of Little Willy and Jonathan, his names for respectively the cane and long handled clothes brush he used to exact punishment.
In one most important way I was probably judged a failure, as I had no affinity for team games. However my last two years at school were redeemed by Jim Barrett, an older boy, who turned about 10 rather masochistic boys into fanatical cross-country runners. No staff were involved, indeed I guess that they would have been physically incapable of being so. I recall weight training sessions in the gym, that was located in the Cedars stable yard, most winter evenings and endless runs. Our hard work paid off as we came second behind Millfield in the Somerset schools AAA crosscountry championship. Furthermore it is probably stood me in good stead as I still have stamina and the ability to walk great distances. Andrew Shaxson September 2008