The Great Sausage Roll Robbery An extract from Memoirs of a gold mining man By Stephen L Worsley Pr. Eng. B.Sc. Norwich House 1965 ~ 1969

Back in the 1960s a watershed event for every 11 year old school boy and girl was the 11 plus examination. By and large, the results of that examination would have a very large influence on the future destiny of that boy or girls life ahead. I promptly failed mine!

I was therefore precluded from attending a Grammar school and the opportunity of sitting for GCE "O" and "A" level examinations and final entry into a University.

My parents did not want me swallowed up with the masses of a Comprehensive school "sausage machine" education which ensued at that time and I sat the entrance exam for Kingham Hill School.

I do not believe that I passed the written exams. I do however believe that I was accepted on the strength of the interview with the Warden, Mr. EC Cooper. He must have seen some miniscule spark of hope smouldering somewhere out in the far distance galaxy of my mind. He closed our interview with a story from his childhood days when he had asked a Scottish gardener as to how he kept their garden looking so magnificent. His answer was simple:

"What ye nay put in, ye will nay get oot".

It is only now, in the autumn of my life, that I am truly struck in awe with the splendour and magnificence of Kingham Hill School, its surroundings and the invaluable foundation it provided to embark me on life's journey.

The school lies nestled in wooded parkland surroundings on a hill overlooking the village of Kingham and the rolling grandeur and splendour of the Oxfordshire Cotswold countryside. It was founded in 1886 by Charles Edward Baring Young, a devout Christian, an extremely wealthy philanthropist and MP for Christchurch. During my time it was a boarding school facility for boys from broken homes or those whose fathers had been injured or died in service with the Armed Forces and in particular the Royal Air Force. There were others who had lost a parent or parents under other such tragic circumstances. A few places were also reserved and allocated to the sons of Church of England Clergymen. The Warden, Teddy Cooper, was very sensitive to the past circumstances of his boys and with great care and thought he had hand selected staff having the specific skills to heal past wounds, to mentor and to grow his prodigies for the rigours of life ahead. Although the Masters were extremely strict, they were fair, kindly and had a genuine concern and interest in the welfare and well being of their boys. Most were academics in their own fields and held MA degrees in classics, sciences and mathematics from prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. A common single thread held them firmly together: that being their great passion and vocation for teaching and mentorship and which they imparted selflessly.

School life on the "Hill" was Spartan and tough. However, it was very simple, structured and we only had two basic school rules. Firstly, to exercise common sense. Secondly, to display common courtesy and respect towards others. Otherwise, it was a veritable boys' paradise with miles of rolling, wooded countryside to explore, a whole variety of cultural activities, hobbies and sports. We all participated in the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) and a junior "cub" version of the Army.

Lee Enfield Mk II .303 rifle.

I question where else in the World would you be allowed once each year to be issued with rations, a tent, a Lee Enfield 303 combat rifle and several rounds of blank ammunition and to run amok playing real life cowboys and indians in the outlying countryside?!

I further question where else in the World, on a hot summer's afternoon, whilst fielding on the boundary, could one gaze skyward and have a free show of the Royal Air Force "Red Arrows" crack aerobatic team as they practiced their split-second timed manoeuvers in those cloudless blue skies from their nearby airfield at RAF Little Rissington?

The Red Arrows over Kingham Hill School

We swam in a large outdoor swimming pool during the summer term, endured long cross country and road runs in the snow laden winters, foot slogged with the CCF on strenuous route marches, and played sports two afternoons each week. In short, if you lasted the laps at Kingham Hill School, you came out with a pretty robust, tough constitution and with quite a respectable brace of GCE "O" or "A" levels.

My elder brothers, Andrew and Peter, had been at the school some years before me and had done reasonably well. Andy academically in the class room and Peter on the playing fields of rugby, cricket and athletics. In a way I was therefore quickly accepted by the Masters and their wives because of my brothers' former worthy reputations.

Andrew had always been keen on boating and sailing. One summer in the late 1950s one of the Masters chartered a yacht named the Rohilla to take a party of boys into the English Channel and over to France. Andrew was very keen to go and put his name down on a very oversubscribed list. After the Master had whittled the list down, it was between Andy and another boy as to who would be selected to accommodate the last bunk. It was all left to the fate of a coin spun into the air. Andy lost the toss.

Of all of the Masters on the Hill, four in particular had a profound influence on my future: the Reverend Harry Wilkinson, Frank Ball, John Essame and Teddy Cooper.

The Reverend Wilkinson was a wonderful evangelist and mentor. Although I did not get confirmed whilst at school he sowed a tiny seed in my mind and many years later I was confirmed into the Catholic faith. He would have been very proud me today.

Frank Ball taught me woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing. He was a true perfectionist who instilled in me a great love for engineering, an eye for detail and to strive for precision and perfection. Renowned for these words: "First you Plane the Face Side then you Plane the Face Edge then Gauge and Plane to width".

John Essame saw a spark of latent potential in me and lobbied his colleagues to approach Ted Cooper at a staff meeting to have me promoted from the lower "CSE" stream into the upper "O" level stream. Effectively it was John Essame who gave me my first major opportunity and break in life. Ted Cooper taught me the values of honour, hard work and diligence, perseverance and honesty.

John Essame

My housemaster in Norwich House was John Turner MA (Oxon). He was also our geography master and had been an RAF navigator during the Second World War. He was badly burned and facially disfigured when his Lancaster bomber was shot down and crashed. Occasionally morose, and a tad of a tyrant, he was a great lover of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and would bellow verses out around Norwich House.

Depending on which song he was singing you could accurately gauge his mood. If he was singing the policeman's song from The Pirates of Penzance then better you stay well out of his way as a thunder storm was brewing on the horizon!

In the footsteps of Bruce Arnold, a former Kingham Hill School pupil, who wrote the famous novel "Singer at the Wedding", I too got my first taste and love for the mining profession by exploring the maze of underground cellars and service tunnels beneath the old Victorian, Cotswold stone built school and boarding house buildings.

With two of my best friends, Geoffrey Meace and George Stonehill, I ventured beneath Norwich House with a torch - accessing those redundant chambers through an old coal bunker. We explored the myriad of tunnels and found an excellent chamber where we could go and have a smoke quite undetected. We even went to the effort and extent of furnishing it with a table and some chairs which we pilfered from Dickie Durant's art studio. In our initial planning we were even contemplating laying on electrical power in order that we could brew a pot of tea whilst enjoying our Woodbine plain tipped cigarettes.

Those were the days before pocket-sized global positioning satellite navigation systems and at that stage our geography and general orientation skills were rather poor.

Unbeknown to us our selected den was positioned right under our House Master's study.

On lighting up our very first Woodbine to christen our new smoking abode, the smoke and aroma wafted upwards and ingressed between the cracks of the old teak floor boards right beneath his desk. On that particular afternoon John Turner, a non-smoker with a keen sense of smell and a razor sharp mind, was in a very morose mood indeed, and humming the dreaded Policeman's Song.

He was sat in his study behind his desk marking geography examination papers and must have paused to sniff the air like a pointer gun dog. He quickly concluded the nature and origin of the aroma and surmised there was only one point of entry into the cellars. He patiently waited at the top of the bunker. Quite oblivious to our impending doom, we climbed out of the bunker and were well and truly nabbed. Retribution was swift and painful. After prep and evening prayers that evening our names were called to wait outside of his study. One by one we were called in to face our doom. That particular punishment paled into insignificance compared with a dreaded summons and appointment with the Warden.

Although Teddy Cooper was a very kindly man indeed, he tolerated no nonsense. He was powerfully built man and a mean rugby player during his school and university days. Life was physically rigorous on the Hill and the chill of those searing Cotswold winds made us eternally ravenous. Again, with my friends Geoffrey Meace and George Stonehill, I was egged on one Sunday afternoon to steal some sausage rolls from the kitchen which had been prepared by Dixie Dean for our tea. The sausage rolls were fresh out of the oven and lay steaming in their trays. Dixie was seemingly out of the kitchen and probably attentively listening to the Palm Court Hotel Orchestra or Desert Island Disks on his Marconi wireless. This proved again to be a rather naïve and misguided assumption and I was caught red handed in the act.

After that evening's prayers at Norwich House I was again summoned to John Turner's study to be notified that I was to report to the Warden's office after Chapel the next morning. Overcome by sheer trepidation and anticipation of the events to come I had a sleepless night. Like Ronald Biggs, in the great train robbery, some two years prior to my particular dastardly and heinous crime, I even contemplated fleeing the country. After filing out of Chapel the next morning I waited outside of the Warden's study for what seemed an eternity.

John & Pauline Turner

Finally, I was called in and told to close the door. He did not even have to explain to me the reason for our appointment as I had guilt etched into my face.

He asked me if I had anything to say in mitigation. Using my best acting skills, I tried to assume the entity of a modern day Oliver Twist and, in a waif like manner, I merely pleaded to him that I had been very hungry indeed and had succumbed to the delicious aroma of the freshly baked sausage rolls. He then growled at me that not only was I a thief, but a very greedy one at that as Dixie had caught me with three steaming sausage rolls. With a stern and stony face he told me that my act was tantamount to downright theft and that he intended to give me the appropriate punishment for that offence of six strokes of the cane.

Hidden in its place behind a tall cupboard he retrieved a ferocious looking cane. I was then told to bend over a large heavy oak chair next to the door and hold firmly on to the bottom rung securing the front legs. Sentence was duly carried out.

Painful as it was, but no more than l deserved, it left me vowing never to return to his study again under such circumstances.

Before I was dismissed he mentioned that he admired me for not implicating my accomplices. This code of honour I should continue to keep. Unbeknown to me Dixie Dean had told him that, although he had caught me red handed with the booty, he had also seen my two accomplices scuttling off into the adjacent changing room toilets as I had made a bolt for the door, like a rogue elephant.

Teddy always had the vision to focus on the positive side of any particular situation, never the negatives. He knew only too well that I was not the only person involved, and gave me credit for not snitching on them. This illustrates the type of man that he was, having the ability to transform this negative painful situation into a positive one. His handling of the situation allowed me to leave his study with my dignity intact, also my pride that I had not flinched or moved nor uttered the slightest whimper. However, I had learnt a lesson for life. On closing the study door behind me, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed and never to be referred to again.

Now, over the ensuing years, I have been entrusted with compiling and evaluating tenders and awarding contracts worth many millions of £ Sterling for new gold mine shafts, infrastructure, equipment, and services. On the rare occasion I have been approached by contractors tendering for a new contract.

Mining for gold

One offered me a bung in an attempt to entice me to divulge a certain key competitor's information, or to sway my technical evaluation in their favour. This being in order for a particular company or person to secure the bid and in return for substantial financial reward - a bribe or "back hander". I have never succumbed. Not through any tiny twinge of temptation, but rather a sudden déjà vu which flooded over me as my memory peeled back the years to that fateful day and the events in the Warden's study.

Neither have I ever eaten another sausage roll!

On many occasion, as with all of us boys, he would invite me to sit beside him on the bench in front of Top School on the edge of the embankment that overlooks the magnificent school playing fields and grounds.

He would congratulate me on, for example, a good mathematics and science performance and enquire why I was struggling with history and geography. He would ask if I was happy at the school and how my hobbies were progressing. He would further enquire if my family were all well and so on. It was quite remarkable that at any point in time he had a precise snap-shot picture of the ongoing progress of more than 200 boys on an individual basis. In brief, he was an outstanding tutor and mentor and was perfectly attuned to the "pulse" of the school.

One summer's afternoon, just after I had been promoted to the upper GCE "O" level stream, he invited me over to the bench again and placed his arm around my shoulders. He told me that I had worked extremely hard and he was very impressed. He further told me that I had earned and presented myself with an opportunity which I would value for the rest of my life and should exploit it to the full. Some years later I had just completed my BSc studies in Mechanical Engineering and was attending the annual old boy reunion. He came over and shook my hand. I looked into his eyes which brimmed with sheer warmth and admiration. I felt as proud as a peacock.

A short while after the episode of the "Great sausage roll robbery" I had the opportunity to redeem myself and restore my reputation. Our School's Sanatorium's Matron, Sister Crosland -Taylor's family, who lived in Kingham, donated to our Norwich House library a large leather arm chair. Whilst sitting in the chair reading one afternoon I extracted from the lining a very valuable and sentimental antique sterling silver pencil. Lost many years ago by her Grandfather. I promptly returned it to her.

Because of the past sad circumstances of many of the boys on the Hill there was a tremendous bond and a close family like atmosphere. Bullying, common at many boarding schools, was virtually non-existent on the Hill during my days. I suppose many boys did not want to perpetuate the sad and bitter experience and conflicts of their past.

The sheer spirit of the Hill was personified to me in my own special and personal way by the school chapel and the hymn Jerusalem by William Blake. This we sang at our final end of term service. With the organ pumped up to full bore, the choir, boys, Masters and their wives would lift the roof in sheer gusto and praise.

"Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! ------ Till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land".

The magnificence of that Oxfordshire Cotswold setting in which the Hill stood was indeed the veritable epitome of England's green and pleasant land.

And so, at the age of 16 years I managed to bag myself a few "O" levels of a sufficiently respectable grade to secure an engineering apprenticeship in Birmingham. I left the Hill greatly enriched and ready to commence a new chapter in my life.

Stephen L. Worsley,

Norwich House 1965 to 1969.

Stephen L. Worsley