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Memories of the Chapel
On 16 June we shall celebrate the centenary of the School Chapel. Rather than just telling our current students how and why the Chapel was built, we thought it would be lovely to share the experience and memories of those who have spent time in it. These are the replies received by the Association;
MICHAEL JEFFERSON (HALL HOUSE 1955-59)
“It was probably in the summer term of 1958 that one Sunday evening a boy in the School choir sang a solo in counter-tenor. It seemed to go down quite well.
Shortly afterwards parents, staff and boys gathered in the School Hall for a concert. The School’s ‘male voice group’ went on stage to perform. I sang one or two bass solos.
Afterwards a number of parents came up to me, keen to be introduced to my identical twin brother. I had to confess that we were one and the same person.” MARTIN SPUFF SPUFFORD (KS 1955-59)
About 1956 I kept a pet jackdaw and he flew into the chapel during morning service. It landed on my shoulder!!!!!!
“Boy. Get that bird out of here”, Arnold Sackett.
Mr Sackett was not amused and I had to take it out of the building. Most embarrassing!
KEITH SCOTT (KS 1948-55)
A.B. Sackett's long and convoluted, but always interesting, sermons; The tedious sermons delivered by many visiting preachers, The embarrassment felt by boys when their fathers were the guest preachers; ABS singing hymns loudly and mostly out of tune; John Sykes's organ voluntaries after morning chapel, passing along his inside knowledge that a whole holiday was about to be announced - usually by the playing of Mendelssohn's Wedding March; The glow of light from the chapel on dark winter days, and the welcome warmth once one was inside; Older boys showing off their newly-developed deep voices by bellowing out such Welsh classic hymns as "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah".
MEMORIES FROM REV. ROGER PARSONS (KS 1950-58)
The chapel was one of my favourite places during my time at Kingswood in the 1950s.
A few cherished memories are:
Several hundred boys singing the great hymns of the Church from the Methodist
Hymn Book; The spellbinding preaching of the
Headmaster, A.B. Sackett; a wonderful way with words; Early on Sunday mornings, the quiet and moving service of Holy
Communion for those who were Methodist
Church members; John Sykes, Head of
Music, at the organ, playing - forte - Widor’s
The Kingswood Chapel had a fundamental influence on my life. It was there that I learned to love music! Of course as a son of the manse I knew the Methodist hymns. But in the Kingswood Chapel, I was introduced to the great oratorios and taught to sing them. They remain one of the greatest pleasures of all. I was in the choir, and later continued to sing in various choirs as much as possible right up until 2020.
Kingswood, in my time, was very strong on music. The composer John Sykes was of course one of the masters among that fascinating war time and just post war staff group. Certainly we boys were also exposed to prayers and sermons, dwelling on the good life and public service. I was influenced by that too, and indeed my whole career was in public service. But there is no doubt that it is the music which is my most vivid memory and the great gift of the Kingswood Chapel. MEMORIES FROM DAVID NEWTON (HALL HOUSE 1946-52)
A vivid memory of long ago. Approaching the Chapel via the school library on a frosty morning, seeing the church spires of Bath thrusting through the morning fog and entering the Chapel to hear John ("Bill") Sykes thundering out on the organ Bach's Tocato and Fugue in D Minor.
Looking back all those years ago, I remember a succession of ancient Methodist preachers thundering on about a divine power that would lift you out of the mire when, as a 14-year-old Junior boy, all I cared about was being first out after the service to bag the table tennis table in our Day Room.
MEMORIES FROM PAUL TRANMER (KS 1954-58)
1. One Sunday evening, visiting preacher the Bishop of B &W, an explosion in fourth/row on the left caused by a bomb made by a certain Paul Moody. Timed to go off just as the
Bishop had entered pulpit. Service chaotically terminated when Sackett strutted to the culprit and 'hoiked' him out of his seat....to be instantly sent home. 2. My organ 'lessons'...were: I took my seat on the organ, a piece of music had been laid out: I was to sight-read it and after playing it through, I awaited instruction from the teacher.
John Sykes, sitting at the back of the chapel with a bottle of Dry Fly, despite which he could pinpoint every mistake (eg. Bb was wrong in bar 76). I sometimes played for morning chapel. Enjoyed making as much noise as poss on the organ especially Sousa marches! Happy days.
MEMORIES FROM GARTH WILLSON, DR MA (CANTAB), MRCS (ENGLAND), LRCP (LONDON) (KS 1949-56) The only sermon I remember at KS was one given by our Headmaster, Mr Sackett. Primarily it was short and to the point, instead of being long winded, not clear and lasting the usual twenty minutes.
“Today my sermon is about one of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt honour thy father and mother. I have been receiving letters from some parents complaining that you have not been regularly writing to them. I would like all those boys responsible to write more regularly to their parents. And remember at all times, thou shalt honour thy father and mother!“
MEMORIES FROM TONY JARVIS (KS 1954-58)
Half-hidden by bushes beside the School vegetable garden was the Chapel in the 1950s. Daily, ‘Chapel’ followed breakfast setting a tone that guarded the benign prefectorial regime operating in our School.
Once Dr Leslie Weatherhead, President of the Methodist Conference, came to preach but I cannot now recall his message. Other Ministers came offering advice from the pulpit, pieces of which I can remember but not their names. Our Chaplain was the gentle Mr Culshaw, while ‘Bill’ Sykes played the organ at the front of the Chapel invariably dismissing us on Sundays with a blast from Widor’s Toccata. MEMORIES FROM RAY LANSLEY (KS 1947-55)
Mid-week morning chapels, hymn practices, Sunday services, and choir rehearsals total about 1000 hours spent in the Chapel. From the many erudite Sunday sermons preached, I have only one memory - a reference to prostitution, a topic bound to arouse the attention of a dozing all-male, all-boarding congregation. However, eight years of compulsory chapels did not drive me to atheism. I decided to become a Methodist minister, and during my ministry have served as Chaplain to two Methodist schools. It seems that, although I experienced no theophany within the Chapel walls, there was a subliminal influence towards a living Faith, for which I am so thankful.
MEMORIES FROM LAWRENCE LOCKHART (KS 1948-54)
In Headmaster Sackett’s day we used to enjoy his idiosyncratic and thought-provoking prayers. I can’t give you a date for this, but at a morning chapel on the day after a ‘Whole Holiday’ he led us with the prayer ‘Thank you God, for the speed of downhill bicycles.”
I was most impressed by the pipe organ in the School Chapel. Particularly when the then music teacher, Mr Sykes, sometime went to play alone on a quiet Sunday afternoon to the empty Chapel in the mid 1950s.
MEMORIES FROM PAUL BROWN, PhD (KS 1952-58)
Professor of Organisational Neuroscience, Monarch Business School Switzerland - a proud member of EFMD. Visiting Professor, Henley Business School.
On July 15 2015 the School Chapel was the setting for my (most recent) marriage to Ketta, my (unexpected, later life) wife. Ketta is Lao, and I have been visiting Laos for the past twentyfive years and living here since 2012. Marrying at KS seemed to tie both ends of a life together, and the weather was perfect. It was also the final pre-retirement act in the Chapel of the Chaplain at the time, Mike Wilkinson, though I believe he has been recalled to the colours and has been on active service again since then.
At the time my twin brother (D.M. Brown, of whom you will know as previously on the Staff and Archivist as well as keeper of the sundials) and I were at KS (1952-58) the main tower entrance to the school was used only by the Headmaster, A.B. Sackett. So as we came to the main entrance of the Chapel he could be seen stomping down the gravel pathway towards the chapel, tall and with his gown typically flapping, using his stick in a distant gesture of herding us in. It is more than a hundred years since he was wounded in the Dardanelles of WW1, yet he was such a towering figure one can hear and see him still. So the Chapel was built within his lifetime - and not so very long before he became Headmaster, it seems.
Now a slightly scurrilous story.
It was the practice that a Head of House would read the lesson at morning Chapel, doing that duty for a week. The reading lectern was at the very right hand side of the steps leading up into the chancel, closely abutting the choir stalls in front of the then organ. It was possible for someone sitting on the congregation end choir stall immediately behind the person reading the lesson to irritate the lesson reader whilst reading - a poke in the back, or some such. Such a person would be himself senior, sitting in the choir stalls where the tenor and bass voices sat. On one occasion, however, (and it may have been Wilson-Price who was reading the lesson as he had a slightly pompous approach to everything and it might have been thought he needed taking down a peg or two), the malefactor managed to crouch behind the reader and undo his shoe laces and tie them together whilst the lesson was being read. So at the end of the lesson W-P (if it was he, or some other unfortunate) was unable to leave the lectern. The succeeding hymn made it possible for him to sit on the steps generally out of view of the masters at the back of the chapel and get his shoe laces untangled.
Enough.
