Around 1946, having recently left the Royal Navy after WW2, John Woollan took over as Headmaster of Kingham Hill School from the Rev Douglas Horsefield.

Junior boys started boarding school life in Plymouth House – so ably run by Mr Durrant, the art master, and his wife Ruth.

At about age 12 boys moved up the hill to the main school houses located above The Plantation.

One such house was Norwich House midway between the Wardenʼs House downhill and Sheffield House uphill. (It has since for unknown reasons been renamed.

The Headmaster, John Woollan asked an old friend, Denys Woods, to run the newly reopened house. Thus Denys Woods became Norwich Housemaster around 1950.

He was a confirmed bachelor from a wealthy family in the Guildford area. To help him run Norwich he was assisted by the elegant Mrs Ryman-Hall from one of the nearby Heythrop villages.

Denys Woods was a wonderful, encouraging and very fair Housemaster to his 20 or so boys. He did not teach classes in the school. His strength lay in the stylish yet common sense upbringing he provided by personal example to his boys.

He was always immaculately dressed, punctual and polite. He had a wonderful living room, which he called his study, with a whole wall of books which he often allowed ʻhis boysʼ to borrow. On the wall were original pen & ink drawings including the famous ʻHoolok Gibbonʼ. His desk was always busy yet tidy.

He dined in his dining room at a mahogany table with silver candelabra; sometimes he invited his more senior boys to join him for dinner. In those austere post-war years he bought a brand new maroon MG 4-door Magnette with leather seats, in which we very occasionally had a ride to Chipping Norton.

Denys Woods retired to his home of many years in Grayshott, near Guildford where he died in 1965.

Story by Martin Bee an Old Boy of The Hill in the 1950's