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Chalkies’ Corner
We are pleased to catch up with some more long-serving former teachers (once known as Chalkies), who were happy to share their memories of Uppingham and update us on where they are now, a popular feature in last year’s issue. If you’d like us to find out what became of one of your favourite teachers, do contact the office and we’ll do our best to track them down.
Christopher Richardson
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Member of Staff 1966 to 1986
I arrived in Uppingham in 1966 at the behest of the Headmaster, John Royds, and of the Head of Art, Warwick Metcalfe. I was to join Myles Sewter in starting up the Thring Centre in the old Manor House, the forerunner of the Leonardo Centre, now resplendent in its Piers Gough (WB 59) home. The intention was to house all things mechanical, technical and electronic that was not covered by the Art School and the Woodwork shops. Myles, brilliantly ingenious and continually painstaking with all manner of grateful souls over the years, and soon to be Dr Sewter, was still immersed in his doctorate to do with measuring the earth’s magnetic field, which he still researches today, I believe!
I was obsessed with the metric revolution and with international paper sizes. The door openings in the Thring Centre all had their metric measurements painted on the wall and as part of the general somewhat untrusting system, every few moments a boy (no girls then) would ask you to sign a leave to say that he was allowed to be somewhere or was allowed to go somewhere. These leaves were printed on a quarter sheet of the unique Uppingham Quarto, not even foolscap! A sizes were unheard of! Indeed, when introduced to Mr Fisher of the Bookshop, he refused to stock enough blocks to furnish a term’s use of A4 on the grounds that he didn’t think they would catch on!
The Manor House, 1903 Uppingham Archive Collection
When, after a busy Saturday evening at the Thring Centre, it became time for all boys to be back in their houses, a young and perpetually smiling Peter Powell (B 64), later of BBC DJ fame, was in the queue for his leave to be signed; he was a little glum to see six fresh bottles of Ruddles Best laid out on my desk. I declared how kind it was of someone to leave them outside the back window and that I was much looking forward to sampling them when they had all gone home. I have, till now, rather failed to thank him for the gift.
As a House Tutor in Meadhurst, I was instrumental in the design and construction of the ‘quadropod’ in the Fourth Form dorm, which I believe lasted into the 21st century before being superseded; many Meadhurst boys will also remember other pieces of my furniture, such as the octagonal tables in the dining room and the ‘Slab’, which is still very much in use and a muchloved feature of Meadhurst.
I also ‘did’ plays, and was involved in building the theatre, which I then ran for 12 years, taking odd things to Edinburgh, until in 1984, after 20 years teaching, I decided it was time to move on and try something new. Edinburgh beckoned and The Pleasance Theatre was born.
I am still based in Uppingham and, of course, very much involved in all things theatre; indeed as I write this I am attempting to negotiate my way to the Edinburgh Festival, hampered by disturbed train movements, general forgetfulness and luggage that now includes a mobility scooter!
Staff Play Ghost Train, 1979
2022
Myles Sewter
Member of Staff 1966 to 2009
I arrived in September 1966 – an exciting time in which the Thring Centre (the forerunner to the Leonardo Centre) had just been purchased and was being modified to a design developed from a drawing by Warwick Metcalfe so that it could house free-time activities for our pupils. With Christopher Richardson in charge and myself as technical assistant, it was to offer pupils the chance to do approximate woodwork (for study shelves, etc. – the precise woodwork was done in the Scale Hill workshops under Bill Everington), to investigate Design, to do Photography, Electronics, find out how television programmes were put together and recorded and, in the Motor Workshop, to find out about the internal combustion engines with which they would inevitably have to wrestle later in life (sooner if they were farmers’ sons).
It was a time of expansion and new beginnings: I remember the almost ghoulish delight of a few of the heftier pupils, who, with suitable precautions, were allowed to take a sledgehammer to School property – two lath and plaster walls had to come down to convert two upstairs rooms and a corridor into one large room. Those who assisted in this and more constructive activities (we had to make our own tables and workbenches) developed a feeling of ownership for the Centre and a loyalty towards its aims. We hoped that pupils would bring in as big a range of ideas as possible and find space and a welcome for them.
Meanwhile, I had to develop my teaching style in the Science School (then almost new), whilst simultaneously trying to write a thesis to complete my Exeter PhD. Bob Noakes (the writer of many widely used Physics textbooks) had just retired, and Richard Hull was in charge of the Physics Department with Garth Wheatley, Henry Faulkner, Malcolm Tozer and myself. I remember Garth’s method with his top A Level set: “Get a piece of paper in front of you and be intelligent!” he would say, and then challenge them with a piece of Physics related to the content of their last session, but different enough to make them think hard.
There were a number of very scholarly colleagues at that time (as no doubt there are now): Ted Kendall set his top Maths pupils a problem once, and they puzzled over it for some time, finding ways that solved a part of it, but nothing that defeated it. So, in their next period, they asked how it might be done. Ted looked at it for a few moments and then said: “I know a nice little way to do that” and solved it in three lines on the board. Then he went on and showed them two other ways to solve it, which were not quite as good because they took four lines each!
After five years in the School, I went off to Australia to broaden my horizons (teaching in a State comprehensive mixed day school so as much contrast as possible) and returned a year later to continue at Uppingham. I had intended to move on after a while, but there were always interesting challenges to address. There was the introduction of GCSE and A Level Electronics: on the computing front there was the School’s first [five ton] computer, which I had to look after; then the advent of personal computers, the network of computers and eventually the network’s use in writing reviews and reports; the move to the Leonardo Centre, with a bit more space and a proper TV studio...the list goes on!
I was very fortunate to have worked in the School for so many years, and to have done so at the particular time that I did; there was a flexibility and an aura of warmth which would be hard to match.
Since retiring in 2009, I have been making use of the hobbies room/ workshop which I built onto my home in 2002: it has facilities for metalwork and woodwork, and of course electronics. I am able to design and construct most things that take my fancy, from trivial items to the more challenging metastable helium magnetometers which log the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field and which I am still trying to improve. As a Chartered Physicist, I am qualified to act as a consultant for commercial firms in need of advice or suggestions, and I have done this informally for two companies, too. No doubt at some point in the future I will find myself at a loose end and bored – but not yet!
John Hodgkinson (WB 56)
Member of Staff 1973 to 1988, Housemaster of Constables 1982 to 1988
John and Hilary Hodgkinson - Constables House Photo, 1986
Having been a boy in the School (WB 1956 – 1961) I returned on the staff from 1973 to 1988. The Colonnade was still at the hub of school life, alive with the buzz of daily chatter before Chapel and in break. Notices flapped on the boards, books suffered untidily on the floor, open to the rain and buffeted by careless feet. The broken iron grating alongside (now gone) still sang with a music all of its own. The major change which saw to the eventual demise of the Colonnade’s system of communication was the advent of computers.
To produce the academic timetable in earlier days, Ian Bridges (Fgh 35), (member of staff from 1949 to 1981 and notable mathematician) had used a method of brightly coloured cards, a different colour for each subject. It worked brilliantly. Later, Myles Sewter (wizard of the Physics department) showed me round the School’s first computer, and I mean “showed round” as it took up most of a room in the science block, and we walked all the way round it. Somehow this machine spewed out large sheets of paper covered in a myriad of green hieroglyphics, the magical modern timetable. Many staff attended short computer courses from which emerged cries of exasperation, while Peter Cannings (Housemaster of West Deyne 19861995) an early enthusiast, proudly produced all his house reports on computer, pressed the wrong button and lost the lot. Nothing for it but to go down to the pub!
Another radical change was the arrival of Sixth Form girls in 1975. The first few brave ones were allotted various houses and it was Jeff Abbott (Housemaster of West Bank 19681983) who announced to his house, “This term we have six new boys and one of them’s a girl.” Since the days of those early pioneers, girls have long been thoroughly integrated throughout the School, and a very good thing, too.
School transport was much more limited in those days. Having never driven a minibus before, I undertook a twenty-minute lesson with Sebastian Greenlaw (master i/c school vehicles) by driving down to Lyddington and back. A few days later I had to take the fives team to The City of London School in the heart of the capital. Just north of London on the A1 a tyre blew! A merciful St Christopher must have been watching over us because a garage loomed up on the left, a mechanic changed the wheel for £1 and we drove on. Somehow, we got there and back safely, but I would never undertake such a journey now.
Something new in the 1980s was the introduction of “housemasters’ huddles”, informal meetings to clear matters of minor importance out of the way before the full meetings with the Headmaster. On one occasion we were gathered in the WB drawing room waiting for things to start when Henry Dawe, Ashley’s son and very young at the time, timidly put his head round the door and asked, “What are you playing? Pass the parcel?” Quick as a flash, Tony Land (Housemaster of Fairfield 1975-1992) replied, “No, we’re playing Pass the buck.” They were happy days!
On leaving Constables, my wife and I went to run Aysgarth prep school in North Yorkshire from where we sent a good number of boys to Uppingham. After 14 years in the post, I carried on teaching there for a few years and now we have retired to South Luffenham where we continue to relish the joys of living in Rutland.
Tim Montagnon
Member of Staff 1968 to 2012, Housemaster of Constables 1979 to 1982
“Of course, you will be happy to direct the school play....?” Gordon Braddy was not so much asking a question as making a statement, and the event, the staff party on the eve of my first term at Uppingham. A complete rookie, but eager to please and fuelled by not just a little alcohol, “Yes, of course,” I replied. “I’d be delighted.”
There was no quicker way to fall into Uppingham life! Auditions; rehearsals; negotiating with housemasters (some of whom unbelievably did not view the school play as the most important activity of the term); rescuing Shylock from detention (thanks to a bemused Roy Ford); late nights with the visionary Christopher Richardson; building the set and with the electronic wizardry of Myles Sewter providing the lighting – all in the School Hall, which was yet to be horizontally sliced in two; persuading the headmistress of Stamford High to allow us some girls for the female roles; collecting said girls in my Morris Minor; choosing costumes with the help of Jeanie Pattinson...And beyond all this, mastering with the pupils on New Boys’ E Game the rules of hockey under the tutelage of John Anslow, and house tutoring in the Hall where a key task was to help Jenny Ledger complete her pools coupon without her housemaster husband, Paul, knowing!
My actual teaching was doubtless a little haphazard. I spent most Greek lessons training one of my cast (who was later to become a successful professional actor) to say his one and only line in the manner prescribed by Sir Donald Wolfit! I managed also to put the Captain of the 1st XV into detention and then immediately found myself facing him at lunch with only the housemaster between us! All the while I was discreetly monitored by the downto-earth Yorkshireman, Mike Gavins, and the caring enthusiasm of Peter Attenborough, who with his wife, Sandy, kindly entertained me to lunch once a week in their home at 9 School Lane.
In the lake of talent that was the Common Room, I was a mere minnow. There were Oxbridge “Firsts”, Oxbridge “Blues”, Oxbridge “Firsts & Blues”, people who had played their sport for their county and sometimes their country, people with the most distinguished of war service, people who had worked at Bletchley Park, exKing’s choristers, and people who were to go on to build theatres, write poetry, design gardens and more.
Early on in my Uppingham career, I took my younger brother, who was on a visit and at the time working for Reuters, to the staff Friday night session at the White Hart. Here, crammed into the small bar, a large proportion of my colleagues drank copious beer and engaged in genial jokes, banter, stories and gossip. “You are so lucky,’ said my brother as later we departed. “Lucky?”. “Yes,” he replied. “In my office we would never enjoy such a high level of discussion and conversation of such quality.” Lucky, indeed!
Since retiring I have been working towards a maths degree with the Open University, taking piano lessons, and learning Spanish at a local evening 2012 class. When I can, I make trips to Spain or visit my relations in Crete. At home I like to go to galleries and theatres in London, to go walking with two former colleagues, Peter Bodily and Julia Watson, or to read the latest book on my book club’s agenda. I enjoy tranquillity cultivating an allotment (where I grow gladioli and runner beans) and the lack of it chasing after my two grandsons!
Staff play 1977
