“The Saint”

on our way south and in Rome. One highlight was joining the hundreds of thousands in St. Peter’s Square in Rome on Easter Sunday morning for the Pope’s address to the crowd at midday, but he was visible only as a tiny white dot at the window.

The group of us in the photo above, including Messrs. Langford, Booker, Lucas and Martin, was photographed outside the school just before boarding the coach and departing on our trip on 1st April 1955. I can unfortunately remember very few of the names, though many faces are familiar, but would be interested to hear news of any of my VI Classical colleagues.

The full article can be found online, scan the QR code on the right. ↩

EXCERPT

Memories of BGS

by Paul Stickland OB 1950

The Great Hall was (and is) very impressive, and when I first saw it, it had wooden-railed daises and desks in front of the masters’ seats that remain in the wainscoting. It was lit by eight or so large gas lamps suspended from the ceiling by long pipes: each lamp contained eight or ten gas mantles. To light them, a traditional lamplighter’s pole was used, first to hook the hanging eyes on the end of the control lever of the gas cock and then to insert the pilot flame of the pole. Later on, electric lamps were fitted near the tops of the masonry columns where they met the wooden roof beams, and painted coats of arms appeared near them. The walls had full-length portraits of past headmasters.

School Lunches

My father, John Goss, was taught by the Saint for all four subdivisions of Latin and Greek after his entry into the classical sixth at the age of 15. I rather think that he would have regarded teaching junior forms to be infra dig. A friendship developed between them so that they remained in touch for the rest of S.T. Collins’ life.

When I was about four, S.T. Collins was living in a first floor flat of a large Victorian house on Durdham Downs not far from our home. I remember calling there once or twice with my father who was no doubt lending or borrowing a book. I was intrigued to discover that the flat could only be accessed by a very slow and old lift. There were no stairs at all. He had a black cat and always wore black buttoned boots.

for tobogganing. But in my last year at BGS in 1957-58 I had my most memorable winter weather experience, on a ski trip to Mjolfjell, Norway. This was a life influencing experience. Before leaving our group was shown a training movie of a US Army ski patrol in which one of the skiers was Alan Ladd (“Shane” 1953 movie). We were a large group pictured at Temple Meads station before we left. Standing tall on the right is trip leader. I’m barely visible in the back row wearing glasses.

I think the masters’ desks and daises were removed when the SE end of the hall was converted for school dinners, with a servery behind a screen and dining tables.

I was once privileged to go up the crawling ladders on the roof, accessed by a spiral staircase at the side of the main entrance that passed a door into the prefects’ room. These ladders were used in the early part of the war by senior boys who spent nights at school fire-watching – with ‘stirrup pumps’ they could, with difficulty, put out incendiary bombs.

(Note: Night air raids commonly lasted throughout the hours of darkness. If the ‘All Clear’ was later than 6am, you were excused school that day).

The full article can be found online, scan the QR code on the right. ↩

Sometimes he would visit us. When I was 11 and had just started learning Latin, he turned suddenly to me to ask if I knew what “gallina” meant. Although a first declension noun, I had not encountered it, but have remembered it ever since.

My father always referred to him as “S.T. Collins”, a mode of address he never used for anyone else. He was the first fully fledged classicist I had met and struck me as very academic, august, steeped in both classical languages and one who would not take fools gladly! Years later I realised that he was the product of a bygone era. The linguistic simplicity of today’s GCSE Latin would have horrified him. ––

Lynda Goss

Our journey was epic; first by train to Newcastle, then by ferry across the North Sea to Bergen, where we shared a brief evening with a group of similarly aged lady skiers and their chaperones. I recall playing “truth or dare” and when it was my turn some bright spark in our group called out “kiss”. Next day we boarded the Bergen-Oslo train and got off about a quarter-way to Oslo, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, halfway up a mountain at the Mjolfjell station. From the

At the Mjolfjell ski centre, we were fitted with cablebinding skis, did lots of cross country skiing and even enjoyed an occasional rope tow. In the distance beyond the tow is a glimpse of the Ski Center buildings and further away the Bergen-Oslo railway cutting across the mountain. It seemed that much of the time to ski down we had first to hike up, sometimes with a break to rest half way up. Our trip back across the North Sea was stormy and we all learnt what paper buckets in the ship corridors were for! This BGS trip hooked me on skiing and the habit continued over the years in the Alps, Cascade and Sierra Nevada and Sendai Japan. I would be delighted to hear from anybody who was part of our group!

–– Michael R Philpott OB 1958

I read Geoff Wright’s item about school dinners, and if they were as bad as he says in 1956, a lot must have changed in the two years between my leaving and his arrival, but that may say more about my discernment, for I never found them unpalatable. Incidentally, I believe that it was John Garrett who started these lunches. There are three things in particular that I recall happening during lunch. The first was the day John Garrett said in his announcements at the end of assembly, that boys were not to wear yellow socks –they were not part of the school uniform... I was the culprit. My home was in Burnham on Sea, which was just too far to travel there and back in a day, so I was in digs during the week, going home at weekends. Every monday I brought my clean washing, and my mother had put in yellow socks. At lunch that day, who should sit beside me but the Head, who greeted me with “Hello, Malvolio.” I must have explained the situation, because I heard no more about it, thank goodness.

I’m not sure how it was actually organised, but every day two older boys were responsible for saying grace before and after the meal. My colleague was down to say the first, longer Latin grace, which started off well enough, but halfway through he had clearly forgotten the words and struggled to the end. I had the much shorter grace at the end which was all right. As a result, word went out that grace should be said, I think, by a prefect.

The third event that happened, this time at the end of the meal. Eric Dehn had been on an exchange visit to the USA and had brought back a whole lot of American ties. I’m not sure if he was selling these or simply handing them out to those who wanted one. I still have the one I received, though haven’t worn it for years.

–– Marc Trickey OB 1954