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Kingham Hill Schooldays
Design and Maintenance
by
ViewPoint |
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Keeping Alive Our Memories |
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Buenos Aires to Kingham Hill |
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Richard A. Greenwell BA |
| I arrived on The Hill in 1958 first to Plymouth House
and then on to Sheffield leaving in 1967. |
Sheffield House 1961 |
My
first house photo in Sheffield House, that's me front
row last boy on the right.
I was supposed to follow
Peter Morris another Sheffield boy to Oxford Uni. I
had had tuition in Latin from a Jesuit priest. I got
my 'O' level
and filled in the application, but my 'A' and 'S' level
exam results were not good enough. |
| I had not bothered to apply to any other university
so went into banking in the City with the Bank of London
and South America, trading on the fact that I was born
in Buenos Aires. |
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After 18 months I was invited to join the management
trainee programme with 11 recent Oxbridge graduates and
was posted to Quito as soon as I was 21, then on to San
Salvador.
Subsequent postings included Bogota, Rio de Janeiro,
New York and Monte Carlo.
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Sydney Harbour Bridge |
I returned to London
just in time for the 'three day
week' during the miners' strike, 1974/1975 and so decided
to try my luck in Australia. After
a couple of years with their Department of Overseas
Trade I joined the diplomatic service and was posted
as second secretary in Nairobi, from there to Port
Moresby (PNG), and then to Caracas. I ended up as
Consul General in Miami. Next stop was to be Beijing,
which I did not fancy so chucked that in and went into
import and export. After 11 years in Miami and two failed
marriages I returned to the UK in 1999.
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| I have now remarried a lawyer, live in Cheltenham
and run a golf club.
My memories of KHS revolve around a number of things
of which the food seems now to have been important, was
it really based on half slices of fried bread with scoops
of either tinned tomatoes, baked beans, powered egg,
or even spaghetti hoops?
Mashed potatoes with a skin on top, jugs of weak tea
to drink, endless white bread with margarine? The only
thing sweet, apart from puddings like spotted dick and
bread and butter (neither of which I could now eat),
was the cupcake on Sunday evenings with a strict seniority
on who picked in which order. Chips were a real treat
as rarely served (a good thing).
Everything on the plate had to be eaten
(or surreptitiously dumped in the tea urn), and only
the prefects' table had brown sauce to kill the taste.
Fruit or salad? I think not. |
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But there was one
amazing teacher, Wetherill?, who actually invited small
groups of 6th formers to the Shaven Crown at Shipton
under Wychwood, one of the very first gastro pubs, and
paid for us to have a decent meal from his own pocket.
Cold
baths every morning in the summer term, in the Easter
terms Sheffield boys went for extra run and then the
house work in the mornings. |
| The photo above shows Sheffield House cross country team
in 1964: that's Jonathon Hall, rolling up his sleeves,
and Tony Thompson with hands on his knees and my close
friend Mark Mitchell with his hands on his hips.
Only two real baths a week, shirts changed once a week,
one sheet change a week, and then the top one went on
the bottom, and as for sports kit, only cleaned at half
term so you had to wash it yourself or bang your socks
against the wall to get the hardened mud off before being
able to put them on! |
Trips out included the Royal
Tournament
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| Billy Graham, The Flying Dutchman
at Stratford, the film Becket, and black and white films
shown in the main hall - I remember the Titchfield Thunderbolt
was a favourite. Scouting trips to the Broads, Cornwall,
the Gower, and Wales three times pulling our kit on wheelbarrows. The
Yorkshire Moors, where we were restricted to camp during
the 1966 World Cup Final - horror. As an Argie I had
already lost 2/6 (out of my 10 bob pocket money a term)
on the England Argentina match. |
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Of course my early days were affected by
the loss of the Rohilla. Jerry Rudman, a close friend
in Sheffield, had lost his brother Martin on it. Also
the funeral of Winston Churchill, the shooting of JFK,
yes I do remember watching illicitly on the schools TV
in the main
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hall hidden behind the curtains on
the stage. The Cold War, I remember joining the U2 class,
just after Gary Powers had been shot down in his 'U2'.
I got everyone to line up that first day sporting Beatles
haircuts, by combing our hair down onto the forehead
then going across with the fingers. |
| The blessed
end of term, and we could sing 'no more English no more
French, no more sitting on the old school bench' as we
waited for the Chippy Dick to take us back home. |
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Teddie Cooper and the school
prefects
including Richard Greenwell. |
I
do not remember much bullying, though us prefects pretty
much ran the place and meted out minor punishments. Being
a prefect was the best man management training we could
be given.
I was only flogged once, with a tennis shoe I recall.
I looked up to the athletes, like Les Hackett who broke
the school 100 and 200 yards records, and Jones with
his fast bowling, and Pugsley who played rugby for Oxfordshire
schools and had a trial for the England Youth team.
I was only the school table tennis champ. |
| I opened the batting for the First XI, and scrum half
for the seconds. Oh I did score the first goal at hockey
for the School when we took it up in the Easter Term,
the cross came over from the right, I lunged, shut my
eyes, and it ricocheted in. |
KHS First XI |
I have quite a few golf trophies, but
that I think will be my one sporting moment to remember
(if only I had my eyes open at the time).
I still
have my blue KHS First XI cricket cap incidentally I
last used this in 1970", I last
used in 1970 playing a Test Match for El Salvador vs
Nicaragua in Managua at the British American Tobacco
ground. I would be happy to donate it to any collection
of KHS memorabilia.
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| School plays were also a highlight, with Iolanthe,
Man for all Seasons and the Alchemist, in which I had
a small part.
The idea was we would have no teacher directing us,
just let the boys interpret their roles, very 60's. I
remember the director of the National Youth Theatre was
coming and the star of the show, Peter Rozycki went down
with the lurgy, being the trooper he is he came on anyway.
I never took communion, but still as a prefect read the
lesson, and it never seemed to hold me back in any way.
We did sing the whole Messiah, and I remember going
to Oxford to perform it on stage.
The school has changed enormously, but boy it did teach
me to appreciate the good things in life, which is no
bad thing.
My BA was gained in Spanish, Portuguese and Economics
at Flinders Uni in Adelaide, though I was classed as
a 'native speaker' of the first and had my course work
from the University of Madrid (where my exams where also
sent for marking). |
Richard A. Greenwell |
| My final illustration was taken
on holiday, in November 2008 in Langkawi in Malaysia. Richard
A. Greenwell BA. March 2009. |
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