Mr. R. Hawkins

outside the dining hall has produced a marked reduction in the use of pink paper. When the system was familiar to staff and boys a choice of meal was introduced, first at breakfast, then at lunch. This has been very popular but meant extra work for the kitchen staff. However, this is compensated for by the absence of table laying and clearing up after meals.

G.D.C.

During the past twenty-five years there can have been few figures more familiar about the School than Mr. Hawkins, the Clerk of Works, who retired from full time work on January 30th, although we still hope to have his advice from time to time.

Mr. Hawkins came to St. Peter's in 1944, a highly qualified joiner by trade, having added to his technical skill by many years' teaching in evening classes. His first task was to deal with problems left over by the bombing in 1942, and he recalls vividly that his first contact with St. Peter's boys was in a study in The Rise where he went to put right the black-out. Indeed, we could regard it as symbolic of the progress of the School over the last quarter of a century that the man who came to black out the buildings should have played so vital a part in bringing light into them by supervising the improvement of old ones and the construction of new.

The essence of the calm approach to any problem, Mr. Hawkins recalls that his first difficult job was helping the Revd. P. Fawcett in the construction of the stage for a school play, in the days when there was only a small platform as the basis of a stage; those who saw Mr. Hawkins later doing this as a matter of course appreciated how quickly he grasped any new requirement.

And what a range of new requirements there was to be! From a relatively simple alteration to a complete new boarding house; from a row of shelves to a Memorial Hall. Let us not pretend that we are attributing all this to one man. Mr. Hawkins insists that his part has largely been that of seeking and finding co-operation; co-operation with the many contractors and their staffs who came to do various jobs, and who were always ready to accept his general guidance; but above all, he has valued the co-operation of Jack Coates, who has been here only two years less than Mr. Hawkins himself, and latterly of Frank Maddison.

It is with a sense of deep satisfaction, mingled of course with sadness, that Mr. Hawkins has completed his full time work here with the building of the Chapel Stalls as a memorial to the late Kenneth Rhodes, a man for whom he had a great regard, and whose unique knowledge of the School, and warm readiness to help were always there for Mr. Hawkins to rely on.

To Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins we offer our respectful good wishes, and to their sons, Kenneth, now a Methodist Minister in Chester, and Raymond, who was a boy in The Rise and is now an architect in Northallerton. We shall remember the man with an idea about every problem of the fabric, fittings or furniture of the School, whether it came within the scope of his trade or not; the man for whom the very difficult would take a day or two, the impossible a little longer. 5