1965 and memories of 3L

I hope visitors to the site have been enjoying Dr Stephen Willoughby's recollections of his time at the Gilberd during the 1960s. You can read his accounts from 1963 and 1964 by clicking on the highlighted links. Today we reach his third year at the school...

September 1965 saw me in form 3L, together with 33 others, under the supervision of Mr Jim Wells who also took us for History. Our form room was at the opposite extremity of the school to the Old Canteen, in one of the Medway huts by the Upper Paddock. This part of the school seemed to have its own identity, complete with its own tuck shop.

The Upper Paddock and Medway huts

By this stage we had spent a lot of time together so we knew each other very well. Our nicknames were well established (mine was Swig, the letters being drawn from within my first name and surname; there was Boris, whose surname was Goodenough, so named after the Mussorgsky opera Boris Godunov which we had encountered in a music lesson; and not forgetting Nez who was blessed with a particularly prominent nose). Those boys in the year group who were physically precocious, sprouting hair and speaking an octave lower than the rest of us, didn’t take well to being given nicknames; they were having all sorts of adventures of their own which the rest of us wouldn’t experience for another five years, and were just known by their surnames. Curiously, the girls had immunity from being given nicknames - by the lads, anyway.

3L was so labelled because it was the year group in which we were to be introduced to Latin under the instruction of Miss Valerie Smith. “Val” as we called her amongst ourselves was single, not a great deal older than us, and very personable. Fathers attending parents’ evenings would linger at Val’s desk, desperately thinking of other questions to ask so as to delay moving on to the next appointment, and it was well known that a few male members of staff (whose identities I won’t reveal) were keen to spend time in Val’s company. Most importantly, though, Val was an excellent teacher who always went the extra mile for us.

Miss Wendy Rowlingson was also a new to the school, and took us for French. Like Val, Wendy was amazingly tolerant and was an excellent teacher who was prepared to spend as much time as it took to help us. She also had the difficult task of calming down the young female French Assistant whom we managed to wind up with some of our antics. On one memorable occasion the Assistant based a conversational lesson around a picture of a maritime scene: à la plage, le bateau, la mer, le navire and so on were the items intended to enlarge our vocabulary, but we wickedly introduced the words “yacht” and “dinghy” into the discussion, knowing full well that she would struggle with their pronunciation!

3L had other treats in store, starting with the science labs on the second floor of the main building.  The most notable of these was the Physics lab, home to Mr “Dobbo” Dobson.  Dobbo’s appearance in lessons was punctuated by his trips into the prep room attached to the lab and into which he would disappear frequently for a cigarette. He was also known among the staff as the person to go to if your iron, kettle, radio, bedside lamp or any other portable electrical item that needed fixing; very often a lesson would be interrupted by a teacher bringing him something that was destined for Dobbo’s soldering iron treatment. Dobbo was great fan of Raymond Chandler*, and would read us passages from his work such as: “She was a blonde. The sort of blonde that would make a bishop punch a hole through a stained glass window.” This was all very entertaining to us but probably didn’t advance our knowledge of Physics to any great extent. 

Mr Dobson

Next door was the Chemistry lab, presided over by Mr John Rowe, otherwise known as “Bert”. Bert was a kindly teacher who not only knew our names but took an interest in us as individuals. I have a lot to thank Bert (and later Bernard Crowther) for my interest in Chemistry which I pursued to degree level, and was later the basis of my Doctorate.  Bert would spend the first 5 minutes of every lesson chatting with us about nothing in particular; it was a good tactic which settled us down, and is a technique that I used in my own teaching career years later.  As a bonus, Bert was very keen on organ music over which we would have long conversations.

On the subject of organs, I think it it was during my time in 3L (although might have been in a later year) that I took to playing the organ in St Peter’s while everyone was gathering for assembly. This was something that Norman Curd was accustomed to doing, but he kindly gave way so I could have a go. I used to play until Conrad Cole took over in time for the service when the hymn was played.  One day Conrad was held up in traffic and didn’t arrive in time so I was left to play the hymn. I was completely unprepared and made a complete hash of it so I had to apologise to the Head! 

A new subject on the timetable in 3L was Technical Drawing taught by Stan Burrows in the TD room on the ground floor. Although I quite liked owning what looked like a quite sophisticated set of instruments, I’m afraid it wasn’t to be a subject in which I would excel. No fault of Stan’s – just not for me.

I have previously mentioned Prize Giving Day, and in 3L I was fortunate enough to be awarded a prize in the “Progress Prize” category. Prize winners were allowed to choose their own reward, up to a value of 21/- (21 shillings), from Shippey’s bookshop on the corner of Head Street. I chose a chemistry textbook which I don’t think I ever read! I still have the “Presentation of Prizes” programme for Friday 19^th November 1965, showing that the event was held in the ABC Cinema. Over 100 prizes were given in all subject areas, many of them donated by local companies such as Paxmans, the Co-op, Woods and Williams & Griffin.

Around this time I became aware of an unofficial classroom in the form of a room at the rear of the sweet shop adjacent to Green’s Yard towards the bottom of North Hill.  The shop was owned and run by Mr and Mrs Day who allowed older students to gather there during school breaks and lunchtimes to smoke and consume snacks. It would be a couple of years before I became a member of “Mrs Day’s Club”, and I shall elaborate on that in a later episode!

Next: 'Killer' Jones and 4L

UPDATE 9th May 2022

I'm very grateful to Jerry 'Boris' Goodenough for providing a bit more information about Mr Dobson's literary tastes. Jerry explains: 'Mr Dobson’s end of term reading treats were not from Raymond Chandler’s tales of LA lowlife but from Damon Runyon’s tales of Broadway gamblers and gangsters – I can never read Runyon now without hearing Mr Dobson’s voice!'