KHS School Report
1975 - 1990
by
David Shepherd MA
Housemaster to The Warden (Head teacher)
The school in 1975 would have been familiar to boys from forty
years earlier; the school in 1990 would be recognisable to
today's students. But both groups would have found the other
periods unusual and in many respects very strange.
My wife and I came to The Hill on a short
term basis. Our predecessors in Bradford, the Underwoods, were
moving on to Eastbourne where Adrian had been appointed head
of a girls school, Moira House. Teddy
Cooper had recruited a successor,
a man called Peters on the staff at Charterhouse but Peters
had asked if he could delay his arrival until the following
January as he wanted to complete his final term as the soccer
coach there. Teddy, showing one of his many attributes but
one which was known only to those of us who were beneficiaries,
had a sympathy for men trying to find work in the UK after
periods of service overseas. Edward Bachelor and Ralph
Mann are two who come immediately to mind.
I was returning from having been head of a school in Jamaica,
was finding it difficult to obtain a suitable post from overseas
so Teddy offered me the opportunity of running Bradford and
keeping the English Department warm for a term between the
departure of Adrian and the arrival of the Peters. He generously
said that being in the UK would make it easier for me to be
available for interviews.
A recent photograph of David Shepherd.
On the first day of the autumn term Teddy received back-word
from Peters - his wife was in ill-health - so he asked us to
join the staff on a permanent basis.
Those of you who were there at the time and in previous generations
will recognise what it was like. The House-parents accommodation
and the boarding facilities were inextricably mingled together,
in different ways according to the layout of the individual
houses but marked by a sharing of many facilities. None of
the traditional 'green baize door.' The hall and landing in
Bradford were used indiscriminately by my family and by the
boys, the access to the dormitories went past my children's
bedrooms, of necessity they went to their bathroom in dressing
gowns, the boys upstairs loo was immediately opposite our bedroom
so my wife and I had the pleasure of the royal flush all night
long, the house-parents kitchen was immediately off the hall
so that boys stood at the door chatting with Mrs Shepherd while
she prepared the family meal. Thus there was a very strong
sense of family, of shared living.
Bradford House
The other distinctive characteristic was the fact that all
the boys shared in the housework, again familiar enough to
those who were there but quite remarkable to later generations.
You will remember the rota. All the jobs needed to enable the
house to operate - cleaning the house kitchen, mopping the
showers, hoovering the day rooms, sweeping the dormitories,
wielding the Ronuk polisher on the wooden floors - plus those
in the school kitchens and dining rooms - appeared on a list
with the boy's house number against it. Each week the rota
changed so that by the time a boy had gone through three years
in the house before Sixth Form he had done every job that needed
to be done to enable the house to operate as a living, domestic
community. And the system was operated by the House Prefects.
I recognise that you can rationalise almost any system. Current
staff have observed to me, on occasions when I have visited
the school, that it is quite impossible in the present climate
to expect parents to pay the sort of fees they meet and have
their children do domestic chores. And it easy to present the
system as a source of cheap labour. Yet you can also acknowledge
the lessons that the system taught - how to look after yourself,
how to contribute to the overall welfare of the community of
which you are a part, how to do things you would rather not
do simply because the community needs your involvement, how
you benefit from what others do just as they benefit from what
you do, how the less than satisfactory performance of your
duties reduces the effectiveness of the whole body politic.
It also meant that from the moment a boy joined the house
he had a function, a position, a responsibility which was uniquely
his. He might have preferred not to have it, but he immediately
shared in a corporate life, a life which was less effective
if he did not do that which was solely his to do. There was
no point in complaining that the showers were dirty if you
hadn't hoovered the day room properly.
And finally it reflected the history of the school, a place
where in its earliest incarnation the boys lived as 'at home'
because for whatever reason their real home had drawbacks.
And how many of us at home have paid staff to do the cooking,
the washing up and the cleaning?
Of course there were odd whimsies, not always
known to the boys. All the boys had a house number, a combination
of the house letter - in the case of Bradford this was BH -
and the individual number, and labels bearing this number were
stitched on to everyone's clothes. Mrs Shepherd, as those of
you who were there at the time will recall, is Austrian. On
occasions her mother, who spoke no English, would come to stay
with us and would help by sitting in the linen room stitching
on labels. If ever you found her chuckling it is because BH
is the abbreviation for the German word for bra - Bustenhalter - she
found it wonderfully amusing to sit there stitching 'bra' into
rugby shirts and underpants. A silly story I know - sorry -
but distinctive to Bradford House.
Teddy Cooper retired in 1978, John Mash succeeded him and
for reasons that do not concern me here left suddenly at Easter
1981. The governors asked to me to act after his departure
and officially appointed me Warden during the course of the
summer term.
The most obvious change during John Mash's time was the physical
restructuring of the boarding house, so that staff accommodation
became separate from that used by the boys. Thus the situation
described earlier in this article, of staff family and pupils
living closely together, disappeared. Of all the changes, no
house jobs and separate accommodation are perhaps the two most
obvious differences between the lives of current pupils and
those from generations prior to 1980.
The Eighties
What shall I select? Some physical differences first. The
Trustees decided to sell the farm, the principle being that
they believed they could generate more money for the Trust
from investment than from farm income. The evidence of this
sale is apparent to me every time I drive along the road from
Chipping Norton to Churchill, glance across at the Hill and
see the square of land carved out from the large field behind
the chapel. I persuaded the governors to save a piece of land
from that field, not because I at that time had any specific
use for it in mind but simply because I was pretty sure a need
would arise and that once the land had been sold it would be
impossible to get it back. It pleases me to see it being used
for the relocated assault course.
Top and Bottom. The two
small pitches below Bradford are known, or at least they were
in my time, as Top and Bottom. Are they still? The reasons
for the name are not that one is higher than the other but
that we dug them out of a fenced paddock, in which grazed two
horses, called Top and Bottom. Boys rode them, though they
were both such well fed and solid beasts there was little danger
of their galloping off into the sunset. The names of the horses
have a family history. Jim
Woolliams, housemaster of Plymouth for many years,
had an aunt living in the neighbourhood known as Auntie Top.
You must ask Jim why she was so called among her relatives.
She gave the horse to the school, so it was named after her.
When the school acquired a second horse it was inevitably named
Bottom. So when current pupils go for a kick-around on Top
or Bottom Field, they might like to remember the horses, and
indeed Auntie Top.
| The Pool. Those
who were there before the 1980s will remember the uncovered
pool. Indeed the very old ones might even remember the
pool down the hill close to Cornwell Manor, formed by
damming the brook. But swimming in the open air, unheated
pool, the one beside the gym, was a test of resolve.
Indeed it was rarely before the middle of summer that
the pool became warm enough to use with any pleasure
and by then the boys had gone home for their holidays
and it was a popular facility for the resident staff
and their families. The question of covering and heating
it was discussed at great length. Eventually I paid a
visit to Cranford School down in Dorset to see the plastic
bubble they had used for their pool. It seemed suited
to our needs, the cost was something we could consider
and so it was during the 80s that we could at last use
the pool all year round. Of course it was a primitive
solution compared to the present magnificent facility
but it was better than its predecessor. |
The open air swimming
pool at
Kingham Hill School
|
More important though than physical amenities are the activities
in a school. Again, what to select!
The Greens. The
school has an enviable and fully justified reputation for excellence
in Learning Support of various kinds. You have to realise that
dyslexia, SLD, learning support and so on were only just emerging
as educational phenomena in the early 80s. There was the education
officer in I think Kent who famously said that dyslexia was
a disease invented by the middle classes to account for the
poor educational performance of their children! Much of the
credit for the development of this crucial side of school's
work goes to Hilary Green, who I appointed initially as a teacher
of rural science but who rapidly moved into the full range
of SLD. Where to locate her department? Above the two rooms
at the end of the corridor in top school were storerooms, used
as places in which to keep props and supplies for school plays,
hence known as the Green Rooms. They seemed a possible place,
so the SLD department moved there and the combination of Mrs
Green in the Green Room made it right to call the new department
the Greens. And I'm happy to see that the name has stuck, and
the current magnificent facilities for the Greens show that
the work started by Mrs Green has flourished.
Green Room exterior
Mention of the green room reminds me of the occasion when
a member of staff took some boys up there to get some props,
but came back down having left one poor lad locked in. He banged
and shouted to no effect so eventually looked in the props
baskets, found a sword obviously left over from a production
of Hamlet, and pushed it down with all his might between the
floor boards. Godfrey Nicholson, teaching maths in the room
below, was amazed, and his class delighted, to see a sword
coming down through the ceiling. Maths was never the same again!
CDT. The other great educational
movement as the 70s moved into the 80s was the shift from traditional
craft work - woodwork, metal work, engineering drawing - to
Design Technology and all the developments eg computer aided
design, which have followed. Bob Herringshaw and I travelled
round the country, visiting schools such as Shrewsbury where
arguably the whole initiative began, to a huge comprehensive
school in Milton Keynes which had just opened a state of the
art facility. On the basis of what we saw and in discussions
with the architects we came up with the present lay-out, obviously
modified over the years in response to shifting demands but
serving, it would seem from the visits I have subsequently
paid, the purposes for which we created it. We might not have
got it totally right - you will have to ask our successors
- but we seem not to have got it very wrong.
| CCF. It
is impossible to overstate the importance and the influence
of the CCF in the school's life. Of course this is not
restricted to the 80s but that period saw the development
within the CCF programme of a range of outdoor pursuits
under Bob Shepton and specifically the sailing trips
in his boat, Dodo's Delight. Starting with short expeditions
across the Channel, then to the Azores, then across the
Atlantic, then to Greenland and Newfoundland, and leading
eventually to the round the world venture in the 90s.
It was not easy for the school to sanction them. The
memory of Rohilla is
still keenly felt. Teddy Cooper gently asked me to
be careful of what we did - he felt the pain of Rohilla
as much as anyone and he feared a repeat.
But the fact
of so many boys following service careers is tribute
to the inspiration which the CCF at that time, and
in other periods too, provide for generations of
Kingham Hill students. I think of Malcolm
Brecht, just completing his three years as CO
at RAF Brize Norton, Adam Mallalieu who was very
senior in the SBS, Roger Hughes and Nigel Bartlett
who appeared in full Marines rig at the funeral of
Les Peake. There are many more. |
|
Les Peake at
David Shepherd's farewell party. Les was
the SM of the CCF and he was very popular among
lots of the Old Boys in the 1980/1990s. |
|
Cycling in Europe. The
cycling and camping trips, which I and Rodney Chapman and Bob
and Elizabeth Herringshaw took for several years, are another
indication of the way in which things were changing as the
80s merged into the 90s. We would take a couple of school mini
buses, laden with camping gear, and perhaps 15 or 20 boys on
bikes and off we would go - Waterloo, Holland and Arnhem, First
World War sites in Northern France, the Normandy Beaches. First
thing in the morning we gave the boys maps and sent them off,
in groups of two or three, with instructions to be at point
X at mid-day for lunch. Then we'd all assemble at the appointed
time, something to eat, then another map to the next camp site
at 5.00. Risk assessment, health and safety, pre-visits to
check that all is appropriate - all these things were yet to
come. But I admire enormously the accounts I hear now each
year at Speech Day of working parties to Romania and such like;
clearly the challenges of Health and Safety are being met and
overcome.
Centenary. 1986
saw the celebrations of the school's centenary. All sorts of
events with perhaps the highlights being a special service
at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, with the sermon from
a Kingham Hill Trustee, Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith; Centenary
Speech Day with Speaker of the House George Thompson, Lord
Tonypandy, who apparently entertained lots of parents and boys
on the train back up to London that evening; and the days outing
for the whole school, teaching and non teaching staff and boys
in a fleet of coaches to Alton Towers with a pig roast waiting
for us when we got back.
This is already too long. One can
go on indefinitely, and I've said nothing about studies
- scandalous.
Reminiscences can give the impression
that things should not change, that the past was always,
somehow, better. Not so; institutions, like people, must
develop and change; if they don't they stultify. I am
always greatly cheered when I visit the school and see
so much wonderful work going on and so many new developments.
|
|
Speech
Day 1990. "The man behind
me (foreground) is the then chairman of the Trustees - Peter
Dale - and the lady with my wife is Mrs Dale".
DS |
|
I am a Trustee of the Frank
Buttle Trust, which shares in the funding at any one
time of some 250 youngsters at schools up and down the country,
youngsters whose circumstances are such that their interests
are better served by their being in a different school to
that which the state provides. Kingham Hill is the second
largest provider of places for Buttle students, normally
between 8 and 12 Kingham Hill children are there because
of help from Buttle. It is relatively easy to produce the
money; it is much more difficult to provide the support and
nurture and education and opportunities that they so desperately
need. I know from my work with Buttle that the record of
the Hill is second to none in its success with the children
it takes. The Founder would be proud.... and content.
David Shepherd
Kingham Hill 1975 to 1990.
Mr and Mrs Shepherd enjoying their retirement.
"And
finally" - a couple of anecdotes received from David Shepherd.
I was the warden (head
teacher) when Andrew Adonis was at school. I read in
his article that he
says he was 'no good at sport'. True - he even now is a relatively
slight figure and so the hurly burly of rugby or basket ball
clearly wasn't for him. But recognising that some kind of
sporting achievement was helpful in establishing yourself
in a boys school he made himself, through sheer determination
and hard work, into a very competent cross country runner,
to the extent that he won, if my memory serves me right,
the mass cross country on one occasion. He is in this respect,
as in so many others, a fine example of what can be achieved
if you set your mind to it.
[Readers might like to read
a BBC
article in which Lord Andrew Adonis refers to his time
at Kingham.]
Likewise
Malcolm
Brecht and his quite remarkable integrity.
I was refereeing a rugby house match between Clyde - Malcolm
was in Clyde - and another
house, it doesn't matter which. Clyde had on the team
a boy who was - how can I phrase this? - less than honourable. There
was a clearing kick into touch by the other team, everyone
was running back for the line out, Malcolm passed me with
several of his team mates and turned to this boy as he passed
and said, "Do that again, and I'll send you off!" This to
a member of his own team! I'm afraid I as referee hadn't
seen what he had done - shame on me! - but it was apparent
that Malcolm wasn't prepared to have playing for a team of
which he was captain someone who behaved in an unacceptable
way.
|
