Contents & Illustrations Lists

V.

THE YEARS OF DISPERSAL 1939-1956

Sir Kynaston Studd

1.

          "ON Friday morning, September 1st, there came an event in the life of the School that none of us who took part in it, boys or staff, will ever forget. We all assembled in the familiar hall, sang, as we had done so often before, "O God, our help in ages past," and heard the voice of the Padre leading us in prayer. And yet how different it was. We listened, deeply moved, to the quiet kindly words of Sir Kynaston: ". . . You are going away; it may be only for a few days, it may be for a few months; it may be even longer. No one can tell. The Polytechnic will seem very strange without you, but wherever you are, our wishes, our thoughts, and our prayers will be with you . . . Good-bye."

          Thus did C. E. Eckersley, writing in the Quintinian,[38] describe the moment when, in common with other London schools, the Polytechnic Secondary School prepared to set off on the Great Evacuation of 1939.

          "You are going away; it may be only for a few days; it may be for a few months; it may be even longer. No one can tell . . . Good-bye." Looking back, one can see that it was "Good-bye" indeed. It was the last time Sir Kynaston Studd was to speak to the School in time of peace. It was the last time in its history that the School would know the Polytechnic as its only home, for it would never again work in that building as one undivided unit. For this School, the Great Dispersal that began on 1st September, 1939 would not end even with the ending of the war. It would continue until that then unimaginable day when, seventeen years later, it would assemble for the first time in buildings in St. John's Wood of which in 1939 no man had yet dreamed. Most poignantly, it was a last Good-bye from the familiar surroundings of their peacetime days to more than one whose life, cut short by war, would be a boyhood with no sequel in manhood.

          "A last look round . . . and then we braced ourselves, shouldered our kit, formed our squads, and waited the word of command. Then, off into the unknown . . ."

The rest of the memorable day may be told in the words of some of the boys themselves[39] : -

          "At about 10.30 we had the order to get ready; then a few minutes later, the order to GO. Everything went like clockwork. We marched out of that so familiar building, and the two police constables outside stopped the traffic for us to cross over Regent Street and proceed to Oxford Circus station . . . Here we re-assembled on the platform. Nobody could be accused of not obeying orders; all were playing their part to make the scheme go without a hitch . . . The train pulled into the tunnel and we sped off on our way to Ealing Broadway. Here the job of re-assembling took place again. All along the line of boys, prefects could be heard calling the roll . . . Although lots of orders had to be obeyed . . . everybody waited patiently and quietly for the next move. We started off (on a Great Western train) from Ealing Broadway after a long wait, still in doubt as to where we were going. It was not until we were about ten miles out that the guard came to tell us that our destination was Cheddar."[40]

At Cheddar,

          "We tumbled out with our luggage and macs on to the platform. We marched into Cheddar village, and rain began to drizzle. Kind hearted villagers handed out jugs of cool, clear and welcome water, and apples. Everyone was parched. We then lined up outside the Church and a coach came to transport us to Weare, while other squads went to Blackford, Theale or Wedmore."

Of one of these other squads, the story runs,

          "The task of boarding the coach was by no means pleasant as we had to enter with all our luggage, and the rain had added to our difficulty by returning once more in far more ferocious mood . . . The coach was definitely not a 1939 model, and it gave one the feeling of holding on to a road drill as it ploughed its way through the murk on its long journey to the little village of Blackford."

          Then, in each of various widely separated villages came the slow process of sending boys to billets. The following incident was paralleled at many a Somerset front door on that dark rainy evening: -

          "Our hearts sank as the lady of the house assumed an expression of surprise and horror at the sight of us, dripping wet and laden with bags, as we presented ourselves on her doorstep! Her dismay, we learnt later, was due to the fact that she had been told to expect children of four to five years of age.

          Dr. Worsnop has his own vivid recollections of early billeting problems. He writes: -

          "The variety of billets for boys and staff was remarkable and we began to understand the full meaning of the phrase 'the luck of the draw.' One common feature, however, was the kindliness of the people of the villages.

          "Dr. Matthews and I were offered a billet with a village school headmaster who could 'accommodate two masters.' We found that we were to share a double bed; obviously our collaboration was going to be a continuous twenty-four-hour-a-day affair. The arrangements for bathing were as crude as they were ingenious. A bath in a small room off the kitchen was set below the kitchen level. The drill was to light the fire under the copper in the kitchen and at the right moment to let the water go through a pipe to the bath, making sure there was still some water left behind in the copper, since otherwise the consequences might have been serious. The emptying of the water afterwards was done with cans! I sincerely hope the school house has by now acquired more modern sanitation.

          "Mr. Byrne was well known for the difficulty he had in returning to school in time after the summer holiday, usually because of unexpected troubles in Spain, Morocco or Algeria. The beginning of the war naturally delayed him in 1939 and as usual he joined us a few days late. As he had so often decried modern progress and had championed the simple country life as the only real way of living it seemed a good chance to let him have his heart's desire. We therefore found him a billet about two miles out of Wedmore, which gave him a pleasant cycle ride up the hill to a charming old-world cottage, with excellent candle and oil-lamp illumination and equally excellent country sanitation-at the bottom of the garden. It was just the thing he formerly longed for! I think it converted him to something like an appreciation of electric light and 'all mod cons'."

          Neither before, nor even afterwards, was the School scattered over so wide an area of country as it was that night and for the next two or three weeks. It is a tribute to the organisation that numbers of boys did not simply disappear into some of the remoter hamlets of that lost Somerset countryside never to be seen again. For the moment, the school set up a sort of headquarters at Wedmore; apart from Monmouth's Rebellion, it must have been the only major event of importance in the history of the village since Alfred the Great had signed his famous treaty with the Danes there in 843. There could be no question of the school staying, strung out unmanageably over a number of small villages and hamlets: facilities for carrying on its work just did not exist. A Quintinan contributor writes, for example: -

          "The village of Blackford consisted of one main street and about three side streets. There were four shops."

          Accordingly, Dr. Worsnop at once embarked on strenuous days of exploration, negotiation and persuasion, and of numberless conferences, formal and informal, with he cannot remember how many Somerset Head Masters and officials of boards and bodies and organisations and committees, at the end of which, triumphant and not quite exhausted, he was able to arrange for the school to be moved to Minehead.

          It had been no easy task to arrange for this move. The various government and local authorities concerned were more inclined to congratulate themselves on the efficiency with which they had got the evacuees away from London in the first place than to listen to Dr. Worsnop's demand that as far as his school was concerned the evacuation must be done all over again. To find a suitable school in Somerset to work in conjunction with was hard enough. To get the boys transported from the Wedmore district to Minehead was not easy either: the Ministry of War Transport needed some persuading that its resources should be called upon for moving 400 schoolboys across half Somerset by coach. To organise the despatch of the boys to new billets once they reached Minehead was another problem. Minehead had already had one set of evacuees to deal with - and dispose of, once it was settled that the School was coming; and the amount of work and the sheer nervous strain of organising the billeting of evacuees had been so exhausting for the local people (it was in every reception area) that they were loth to do it again. But a resourceful Head Master, a tough and versatile teaching staff and a body of well trained prefects did much of the job themselves.[41]

          It was soon obvious that some sort of hostel life was the only real solution for accommodating many of the boys. Good billets could not be found for all of them and the hearty appetites of some of the seniors made nonsense of the official billeting allowance paid to the householders who were looking after them. Here again, Dr. Worsnop made rapid moves in directions in which the bureaucrats were for the moment unwilling to tread, and soon had three hostels in being somewhat ahead of his receipt of official approval for doing so. He was fortunate in obtaining the use of the large house known as "The Dene"; and the school was even more fortunate in that with great self-sacrifice, Mrs. Worsnop closed her own house for the duration of the war to take charge of "The Dene's" domestic side, caring for some fifty boys at a time there.

          And so, out of the chaos of those first September weeks, something like order was restored. With the Minehead County School as an educational base, and the resources of the houses and halls of an established seaside resort and its environs to call upon for accommodation, the School carried on, always giving a good account of itself, until the end of the war. From not entirely welcome strangers, the school became transformed into acceptable guests, and then into established friends of the people of Minehead. Many boys will long retain affection and respect for the men and women of the town who did so much for them. In the long record of those who have served the School well, a place will always be found for Mr. Gibbs, the Head Master of Minehead County School (who gave up his school for half of every day to the Poly visitors) and for Mr. A.G. Mansfield, the Clerk to the Minehead Urban District Council.

 Minehead County School, 1940.

2.

DR. Worsnop himself has provided a more detailed account of conditions in Minehead, and of the way the School was organised there: -

          "In many respects the setting in Minehead was ideal and the many facilities in the town, even with wartime restrictions, were much appreciated. I therefore felt I was in a position to go to London, hold parents' meetings in the Fyvie Hall in the Poly, and persuade parents to let their boys join the rest of the school in Somerset. Conducted parties brought reinforcements down after these meetings, and the number of Poly boys in Minehead rose to about 420, which I believe was a record for a school of our normal size. But this success in getting such a large number of the boys to come to Minehead created two more problems: we had to find more billets and we had to find more accommodation for teaching, since the Minehead County School was not built for such numbers.

          "The billeting problem was solved partly by finding more private billets, but chiefly by the establishment of hostels. The second difficulty was dealt with by renting various halls, especially the Methodist and Masonic Halls, known to us as "Meth" and "Ma." These were three-quarters of a mile from the County School and the walks to our different branches were a good introduction to our post-war travels between the Polytechnic, the Titchfield Street Extension and Pulteney. Mr. Gibbs very generously used his school premises in the mornings only, and gave us the afternoons. It was a long afternoon from 1.15 to 5.15 - but at least it gave us twenty hours' teaching as against 27 1/2 in London. Later, as the Minehead County School did not want to use "Meth" and "Ma" in the mornings, extra classes were arranged there for most forms. The examination forms had as many as thirty hours' teaching a week. This was reflected in the very good results in School Certificate, Higher Certificate and University Scholarship examinations.

          "The responsibility for looking after so many boys was no light one and I felt that the interval from the end of Friday afternoon to the first lesson on Monday was rather long - a lot can happen in two whole days! I therefore, for the first time (and I hope the last) had Saturday morning school. This was merely a "Hall" followed by House Meetings. After roll call the House Masters and Matrons (a band of hard-working staff wives - Mrs. Merrills, Mrs. Haskey, Mrs. Broodbank, Mrs. Newman, Mrs. Chevrollier among others) were able to investigate billeting problems, check clothing queries and the like, while the science staff made full use of detention "volunteers" in the cleaning of apparatus in the laboratories.

          "At first I arranged for parties of boys and masters to go to the various local Church services on Sunday mornings. These crocodiles were not at all popular with either boys or masters and so I substituted our own service in the Assembly Hall at school. I must admit I found the first five Sundays involved me in a considerable amount of preparation, because the Chaplain immediately fell ill and I had to prepare and conduct them myself. After the service we soon had a second, quite voluntary, assembly. Mr. Checkley gave Beethoven recitals on the piano, and later gramophone recitals with a similar classical programme were arranged. I was delighted to find that a high percentage of the boys remained for these programmes.

          "The hostels Mr. Seaman has mentioned were an important addition to the life of the school. The first was Alcombe Lodge, known to us as "The Lodge," which in peacetime had housed the Minehead Youth Hostel, and which was offered by Mr. and Mrs. Hepple, the Warden and his wife, who entered into the scheme with zest. Living in the Lodge, to represent the School and to keep an eye on things in general, were Mr. Russell and Mr. Broodbank, the latter being replaced later by Mr. Judd. It is a pleasure to record what invaluable work they did. It would need a chapter to deal with stories of The Lodge. Boys slept in bunks, and took a share in such domestic duties as making beds and the inevitable potato peeling. The Lodge housed mainly younger and middle school boys.

          "Meanwhile, people in Minehead were finding that the government billeting allowance, even when supplemented by the little extras sent by parents, did not cover expenses, especially for the bigger boys. I decided therefore to establish a hostel for Sixth Formers. Early in 1940 I found a large house, "The Dene," on the outskirts of Alcombe, with about eight acres of paddock. It was to let - at £100 per annum. By a curious coincidence I found, at the same time, a Board of Education circular authorising the use of such premises by Head Masters. I therefore approached the authorities in London after making a tentative offer for the property. Three months later no progress had been made and the rent had been increased to £120. So, I took the place on my own authority, went to London, bought beds, furniture and kitchen equipment, had gas laid on, and a supply of good cookers fixed on deferred payment. By that time I had spent well over £500 and was committed to a fairly large annual charge. I was so convinced that it was a good thing that I would have run it as a private venture; but at last everything was "whitewashed" by the authorities and the place was taken over officially. After trying very hard to get a matron to run the place at a nominal honorarium I had to confess myself almost beaten. I therefore rang up my late wife and told her of the final snag. The result was that she closed our home and arrived with half our furniture and two children and ran the place from 1940 to the end of the war. We had about thirty-five senior boys and a staff that included two in the kitchen and other domestic help. This was not always a constant number. I well remember one whole month during which Mrs. Worsnop cooked for the lot of us in addition to her duties as Matron. Dr. Matthews came to live with us and shared with me the duties of Warden. Of course, we had boys with us for 365 days in the year and I must say we were grateful to Dr. and Mrs. Haskey for their offers from time to time to act as deputies whilst we had few days in London. Incidentally, the paddocks provided an excellent football pitch and in the summer term two cricket practice nets. When Sir Kynaston and Lady Studd visited us, as they so frequently did in spite of the difficulties of travel, Sir Kynaston was often to be seen giving the boys practising at these nets the rare benefit of his expert advice as an England cricketer.

          "This second experiment with a hostel was such a success that in 1942, after six months' negotiations, we were able to acquire, by requisition, a third house, "Glen Lynn," which was run under the guidance of Mr. and Mrs. Merrills - and a very fine job they made of it. Both had the right temperament, and the essential qualities of not being afraid of doing any job at any time and of being fond of boys. They cared for about twenty boys of all ages. Later we found a fourth house in Hopcot, on the hills behind the town, which I took over as a matter of urgency without official sanction. By that time there were regulations and rules of procedure in such matters; however, the authorities - in this case Lady Helen Asquith - once again "whitewashed" me "for the last time" - but in the knowledge that my method had worked whereas delay would have been fatal to the scheme. The Rev. R. T. Newman and his wife took charge of this smaller place, with about a dozen boys, and remained there until the school returned to London.

          "Most boys found the boarding school conditions in the hostels very much to their liking. When homework was finished there was always something for them to do. For the benefit of those not in hostels, arrangements were made for boys to become honorary members of various social clubs in both Minehead and Dunster. In this and many other unpublicised 'behind the scenes' activities Mr. Frank Cox, Editor of the West Somerset Free Press, was an invaluable friend both to me and to the school. He printed The Quintinian for us and so presented Mr. Eckersley's work as Editor in a way which made the school magazine an outstanding feature of our life in Minehead. In the same way the late Rev. R. H. Balleine, Vicar of Dunster, did a tremendous amount of good for the boys and their billeters in that parish.

          "The friendly relations established between boys in good billets and their 'landladies' and families lasted for a long time. In fact, quite a few of the boys of those times have married girls they first met in Minehead during evacuation and some have settled in the district.

          "Once a month I used to go up to London by car to see parents and Mr. Humphrey, the Director of Education of the Poly. I remember that the good friends with whom I stayed in Teddington on these occasions always looked on me as a Jonah, because air raids always started whenever I went up. On returning to the peaceful surrounding of Minehead I was always thankful for evacuation. Because of it, not one of the boys was killed by enemy action while at school. During this period, however, the same cannot be said of the boys' parents, compelled to go on living in London.

          "For me evacuation and the problems it involved proved completely absorbing. It was indeed the time of evacuation which by bringing me into such close contact with the boys, the parents and the staff, gave me such a deep attachment to the school and all it stood for. In fact, it made me forget my original intention to stay as its Head Master for only two or three years."

3.

Boys and masters alike entered with gusto into their strange new life in a Somerset seaside town. The masters seem to have seized energetically the opportunity of indulging in tasks they had had little chance of performing when their charge of the boys did not begin till 9.30 and ended at 4 p.m. They became zealous and unremitting in their demand that boys should clean their shoes, their teeth, their necks, their finger nails and the backs of their ears. There are hints that the cry, "Haircut by the morning!" became as frequent and as sinister in Minehead as in the basic training centres of the Army. Many "House" masters became so in fact when the hostels were set up. Mr. Andrews came into his own, rejoicing in the chance of bringing boys up in the way they should go instead of merely teaching them mathematics. There is a tale that, one young member of his house being reported to him as an incorrigibly late riser, Mr. Andrews cured him by calling at the young man's billet at 6.30 in the morning, rousing him personally from his slumbers (some reports say by handing him a cup of tea, but perhaps this is a mere legendary accretion) and then escorting him on a long pre-breakfast walk. One wonders what can have been the subject of their conversation, if any. This treatment was repeated daily until such time as the delinquent had fully grasped the point at issue.

          The School entered fully into Minehead's wartime communal life. The Dramatic Society provided the neighbourhood with notable entertainment, and by many successful plays and concerts the School enlivened the dark nights of wartime and raised funds for charitable and other causes related to the war effort. The staff gave frequent talks to local Rotarians, to Toc H, and other clubs and societies. Along with some of the senior boys, masters also joined the Home Guard; and, so the story runs, two highly respected masters roused half Somerset from their beds one winter's night by giving, under a quite mistaken impression, the signal intended for use only in the event of the actual arrival of German invaders. Boys did a host of voluntary jobs proper to the School which had originated the Polytechnic's Christmas Dinner Fund. An allotment was started. Boys dug a considerable area of ground into a cultivable state (and made a profit from the sale of their produce) under the supervision of Mr. Hough, chosen for the task because of his special knowledge both of gardening and of the working habits of schoolboys.[42] There flourished a Flight of the Air Training Corps of which Flying Officer Checkley was O.C., and although newly formed in Minehead, it was soon known and respected throughout Somerset not only for its high percentage of proficiency certificates but also for its successes in athletics in which they were County Champions for two out of the three years of their existence. Besides a Scout troop of the orthodox variety there was a troop of Air Scouts and one of Sea Scouts. The Cadet Corps, under the command of Captain H. B. Smith, vied with the A.T.C. Flight in the gaining of proficiency certificates. The '49 Club' (the Sixth Form Literary and Debating Society, which had been founded in the early thirties) took on a new lease of life, and so did the old Natural History Society. Sports Day was held as usual, though in surroundings greatly different from the usual; and football and cricket enjoyed remarkable successes.

          Dr. Worsnop writes thus of this aspect of the School's work in Minehead: -

          "In the conditions of evacuation where the Staff had a more intimate control of the boys than is customary in a day school we were able to do quite a lot in moulding their outlook, as quite a few have been generous enough to admit. The idea of Service to our fellow creatures was often 'preached' and certainly often practised by them. When anything was wanted in the town they were not the last to respond. For example, in Savings Weeks, and in old books and paper collections they set up a record. The most spectacular was the old iron collection. They found every conceivable form of transport and collected from houses and surrounding farms the most incredible collection of objects in iron and steel which gave the organisers a real problem in getting it all removed to the smelting centres. An effort to raise money for the local hospital gave them a chance to outdo any 'rag' day. I still have a mental picture of Mr. Merrills' face, red with pleasure and wreathed in smiles, as his masterpieces were paraded. The spectacle of Senk sitting on a lorry playing an out of tune piano as he passed down the Avenue had to be seen to be believed . . . Yes, there were many amusing sides to what was otherwise a very full and responsible time for us all.

          "Across the Estuary we saw many night air raids on Swansea and other South Wales towns, as well as on Weston on our side, but in Minehead there was nothing - unless you can count the single bomb which some careless German jettisoned about two miles outside the town. When a Heinkel was brought down at Porlock, the boys streamed on bicycles or on foot to inspect the remains. The same evening the local police came to see me at the Dene and alleged that the boys had removed most of the plane and that it was vital to have the parts for examination - and what was I going to do about it? I told them to call the following afternoon. They were rather sceptical but there was nothing else to be done. At the morning assembly I explained the situation to the school and said that the souvenirs must be returned by two o'clock. The police came at the appointed time and if possible were more amazed than I was at the collection of spare parts assembled on the Dene tables. Yes, the boys were always to be relied upon to come up trumps when the need was there!

          "By this time we were very much part of the town and still 'news' in the local press. Our football team was first class and played Army teams from units in the district, drawing considerable gates. It was not unusual to meet the local postman during the week and to be asked "Who are We playing on Saturday"? The summer performances of the School Dramatic Society too were sure to be a good draw for a week for visitors and townspeople.

          "In the early days Shuttleworth used to collect a party of Scouts in the lifeboat house and from these meetings was formed the Sea Scout Troop which still flourishes. They were very useful to the Minehead lifeboat in war conditions and one of the troop became its second engineer."

          School work in the academic sense went on without interruption all through the Minehead period, thus providing a marked contrast to the state of affairs during the First World War. Public examinations were taken almost as usual. In 1942, for example, 71 boys were entered for the General School certificate and 47 for the Higher School certificate, the pass list being of the order of 82 per cent. Sixth Formers continued their old habit of gaining Open Scholarships and State Scholarships.

          Finally, the years at Minehead gave the School for the first time daily contact with fresh air, and with the sea and the countryside. Despite the rain that greeted them on their first day in Somerset, that autumn and the summers that followed were of quite exceptional beauty. A Sixth Former, writing in the Quintinian, pays tribute to the landscape within which the School now found itself: -

          "I climbed North Hill (Minehead) from the south . . . I was not disappointed with what I saw, for although the view extends for no more than ten miles, it had a beauty peculiar to this part of England. The tops of the Quantock Hills and the other hills which hem in the narrow coastal plain are not jagged like those found in more mountainous regions, but rounded, and covered with purple heather and golden bracken which give them a soft and peaceful air."

          But perhaps it was an anonymous poet from Lower 5B who celebrated most happily the School's new found pleasure in country blisses: -

4

IT may well be that the four years during which the entire school was in Minehead was a time when its communal life was closer and more integrated than in any other period of its history, despite the scattered accommodation. The complete separation from home, and the feeling, despite the beauty of the place and the kindness of Minehead people, of being strangers in a strange land combined to draw the boys - and the staff - very much together. Some observations by the boys themselves when 1944 brought the chance of a complete return to London indicate how divided they were in their minds about leaving Minehead: -[43]

          "I have far more friends in Minehead than in London . . . In Minehead I live in a hostel and therefore have many companions, whereas in London I should only have my small brother . . . I shall miss the beautiful countryside and the sea, swimming, grand cycle rides and the open, free and easy way of living . . . the friendships I have made with fellow students here will become casual "Hello's" in London."

          Of course there was, to set against Minehead, the natural pull of home: "I was born a Londoner: the never ending movement, the buses and the teeming traffic - I miss them all," - there, one feels, speaks the essential Poly boy. But many of the reasons for wanting to return home hint at what must so often have underlay the cheerfulness of appearances: -

          "I left home when I was nine, and since the War began I have not been at home for more than six or seven months altogether . . . I have been away from home for the last five years and when I return for my holidays for the first day or two I am treated more as a guest than as a member of the family . . . In Minehead I often worry about the family. Down here I am not sure of the safety of anyone at home."

          Gradually, as the menace of the Luftwaffe receded, it was found necessary to arrange for some of the boys to attend school in London. In the autumn of 1943 a London branch of the School was opened (at St. Katherine's House, Albany Street) and the School continued to be partly in Minehead and partly in London until the end of the war. And when that happened, the School found, as did the country as a whole, that its troubles were by no means over.

5.

WITH the ending of the war, the problem of the School's accommodation could no longer be avoided. It was a difficulty which in most respects war and evacuation had aggravated rather than created, for there had been an increasing awareness all through the 1930's of the difficulty of housing within the Regent Street building both a full-time college of further education and a large secondary school. The opening of the Great Portland Street Extension in 1930, like every previous extension or rebuilding, had failed to keep pace with the Polytechnic's own need for space. Moreover, the era when the Day Commercial and Technical Schools had a virtual monopoly of the Poly in the daytime had long ago ended. Quite apart from the great increase in daytime further education in the Polytechnic, it now contained, besides the Secondary School, four other day schools for boys: the Preliminary School of Architecture and Engineering, and the Schools of Motor Body Building, Tailoring and Hairdressing, collectively known, after 1930, as the Polytechnic Craft Schools, and accommodating well over three hundred boys. Yet at this period the Secondary School itself at times numbered over 700, and often had a waiting list of a hundred. The abandonment of the Preparatory division in 1933 and the reduction of the entry into the school from four forms per year to three in 1937 were symptoms of the gravity of the problem rather than a solution to it.

          There was also the fact that the whole conception of what a secondary school for boys should be like had so changed since the beginning of the century that there were weighty arguments against continuing to house the Secondary School in the Poly building at all. As early as the mid-1920's the other London Polytechnics had ceased to accommodate secondary schools. Moreover, considered as places where secondary education was being given, many of the rooms used by the school retained in the modern period a lack of amenity which was still (despite several re-buildings) reminiscent of a distant period when the choice had been between learning something in an improvised room in the Poly, or simply going without. Speaking at the Founder's Day Service in 1920, an Old Quintinian recalled that when he came to the school in 1887 his 'form room' had been one half of the Large Hall, divided from the other half by a curtain. On one side of it was a form taught by Mr. Woodhall, on the other was another form under the ministrations of Mr. W. C. Lee. Reaching back for his earliest recollections of J. Preston Davies the Art master, P.A. wrote, in 1934,

          "My early memories are of his teaching (in the 1890's) under most difficult circumstances in a large underground room, situated, I think, where the present locker rooms are."

          Reporting on the school on Prize Day, 1894, Q.H. himself had said,

          "the school has been so successful that the accommodation . . . has had to be augmented, and it is still difficult to keep pace with the ever increasing requirements. Fresh classrooms are constantly being added, but they are immediately occupied."

          In the 1930s things were no longer as bad as in 1890; but the problem was still there. The School was being choked, as it were, by its own success. Boys were being taught in rooms all of whose windows had to be firmly closed if their masters were to have even a reasonable chance of triumphing over the competition, not simply of boyish restiveness, but of the surging, grinding roar of Regent Street traffic; or perhaps, when they entered the Sixth Form, were instructed in the finer points of literary appreciation in those dim, cramped clubrooms of Polytechnic Cyclists and Harriers off the Lounge, which existed up to the creation of the Hailsham Room'

          Most English boys, however, have been educated in out-of-date, crowded rooms. The expression "hallowed by time" when used of the premises of more than one ancient public school may well imply classrooms in no way superior either for beauty or for ventilation to some of the rooms at the back of the Polytechnic. But what was peculiar about the situation of the School was that in all that vast assemblage of rooms in the Poly building there was literally nowhere a boy could point to and say, "There is my school" or even "This belongs to my school." In 1939 as in 1886, the Polytechnic Boys' School was not a place at all, but a phenomenon, something that could be observed to occur in the Polytechnic daily from 9.30 a.m. till approximately 4p.m., after which time it gave place to the activities of an evening institute and a social club.

          Yet to part with this vigorous offspring of its earliest days would be a break with an essential Poly tradition. The Secondary School only looked like a cuckoo in the nest. Vociferous and demanding - and different - though it was, its birth certificate affirmed that Quintin Hogg was its true and only begetter. Much of the complexity of the situation arose from the circumstance that neither the Polytechnic nor its Secondary School had committed any fault more grave than that of succeeding to the astonishing degree that their ebullient and sanguine Founder had hoped they would. Nor could it be denied that even in the strictest educational sense the School had derived great practical advantages from being housed in the Polytechnic. Its ability to make use of the Polytechnic laboratories meant that the School had far greater facilities for the teaching of science than most schools. Similarly, though by 1939 the School was strong enough to provide its own full complement of science and mathematical specialists, it had been able during the preceding period to supplement the teaching of its own highly qualified teachers in these subjects with the services of the lecturers on the staff of the Polytechnic. This freedom to call, as required, upon the services of additional science and maths teachers had given the school's organisation great flexibility and had greatly facilitated the rapid expansion of its sixth form work. Like considerations as regards staffing had enabled the School to develop its Inter. B.Sc. (Econ.) and Inter B.Com. courses for the sixth form in a way which would have been much more difficult for a normal self-contained school with its rigidly controlled staffing ratio.

          All the same, it is in the nature of Head Masters to wish to feel themselves monarchs of all they survey in their schools; and the Head Masters of the Polytechnic Secondary School were masters of nothing. To every inch of space over which they had their (limited) jurisdiction somebody else had a rival claim which there was no gainsaying. Rooms were wanted by evening classes almost before the boys had clattered out of them. Every staircase was shared with hundreds of other people. The School Hall was a public cinema, the school refectory was almost a public restaurant, the school library a collection of shelves in a borrowed classroom somewhere. It was more difficult even than that. Although each successive School Head resisted the idea with the tenacity of a Scotsman refusing to be called a "North Briton", the Secondary School was in effect a department of the Polytechnic like any other of its various day and evening schools. Educationally speaking, the Poly was a kind of gigantic departmental store, and it would not have been out of keeping if the liftmen had sung out, as they ascended and descended, "Second and Third Floors, Boys' Department, all types of secondary school subject taught, General and Higher School examination successes to suit every taste."[44] But it is the essence of a departmental store that however much one part of it may flourish, it cannot expand or make demands on the higher management without regard to the needs of other departments.

          It was a situation which could be managed successfully only by the exercise of a great deal of fact and forbearance. One of the inescapable features of any large scale administrative body of the complexity which characterised the Poly is the continuous competition for power, for prestige, or for mere survival to which its constituent parts are committed. It is a competition which arises out of the facts of the situation and not because of the human frailty to which it sometimes gives rise. But a School, and its Head Master, should, one feels, be free from this necessary strife. Beyond and outside most schools there are education offices, and other schools all making their insistent rival claims on a limited supply of amenities, space and public esteem. But, within the Polytechnic building, the Secondary School was compelled to live day by day within the very heart and heat of the battle. The consequence was that ordinary simple things like the timing of lunch hour, the choice of the moment to send a class to a laboratory, the use of a room for an after-school activity, were matters which at times required, not the issue of a simple instruction, but the exercise of an infinity of consultation reminiscent of the plight of a branch of the Civil Service wanting to by-pass a "usual channel." Nor did this affect Head Masters only. The Sixth Form official of a school society wishing to arrange for a meeting in the Reading Room after school in those days knew well enough that the society's lien on the room, whether officially registered as valid in the education office's records or not, could not be made good until it had received the final approval of the lady with the feather duster who really reigned in those parts.

          One cannot doubt that this problem had been lurking all the time at the back of the mind of P.A. It was in the forefront of Mr. Wilkinson's during his years at the Poly. For Dr. Worsnop it was to prove a constant preoccupation for the best part of twenty years. As those who knew him will agree, Dr. Worsnop was not the man to be cast down by the difficulties, human and administrative, which the School's position within the Polytechnic involved. But Evacuation enabled both him and the School to taste the sweets of independence for the first time, and with Reconstruction very much in the air, what better topic for reflection and exploratory conversation during Minehead evenings than A Better Future For The School? One can imagine a typical scene, several times repeated. Sir Kynaston Studd, in his dual role as Chairman of Governors and President of the Polytechnic is on one of his cherished war-time visits; he is comfortably ensconced with Dr. Worsnop after a good dinner at Minehead's best hotel, or better still at The Dene; and as Sir Kynaston recalls Quintin Hogg's Middle Class School of the 1880's, Dr. Worsnop thinks forward to the 1950's and, as their conversation proceeds, finds himself taking Sir Kynaston on a varied tour of possible futures.[45]

A plan emerged, to acquire premises near Regent's Park. Details were worked out, estimates obtained for the cost of the necessary alterations. Pipe dreams became architects' plans. Hopes went up; but a flying bomb came down. Holford House would need rebuilding now, not just altering. The plans were folded away. The first of the four building schemes in Dr. Worsnop's Headship had run its course.

By 1945 the school was using premises in Minehead for those boys still evacuated. But in London it was also using St. Katherine's,[46] a big, three storied house in Albany Street overlooking a disused section of the Regent's Canal[47]; rooms in the L.C.C. Institute for Distributive Trades in Charing Cross Road; and rooms in the Polytechnic as well. Even when this situation cleared up a little it was found that there was no longer any question of the school obtaining more than about a half of its pre-war accommodation in Regent Street. It abandoned the whole of the second floor, where the lower school form rooms had been, and where once Mr. Woodhall had reigned over the Commercial School; and soon afterwards its boys were to be found no more in those rooms on the back staircase into which the school had first spilled in the early thirties. Regent Street, after 1946, was the regular home of the Science and Medical Sixths, two fourth, and two fifth-year Science forms, and one third-year Science form. For the rest of the school, including the Sixth Arts and Moderns and all the lower school a "temporary" home was found at the Pulteney School. This had been opened as an elementary school at about the time when Q.H. first took over the Polytechnic, and was inaccessibly situated to the west of the southern end of the Berwick Market in the heart of Soho. No more precise statement of its location is possible. Not even taxi-drivers had heard of it, if only because no taxi-driver could reach it, or turn round again if he did. Of its former history one may record that it was used by the Auxiliary Fire Service during the war; that it was condemned by the authorities as unsuitable for use as a school in 1937; and that tradition has it that among its former pupils when it was an elementary school was Miss Jessie Matthews, whose only other connection with the School is that her opposite lead in a film once (about twenty years ago) was an Old Quintinian, Griffith Jones.

Views of Pulteney

          It should be recorded that in addition to Pulteney and the Polytechnic, the school also used certain of the laboratories in the Great Portland Street Extension, so that for ten years the boys of the Quintin School were scattered over three entirely separate buildings. The problems of organisation and time-tabling were extraordinarily difficult. The School was able to assemble as one body only about once a week-in the Large Hall of the Polytechnic - since to do so more frequently would have meant adding to the already considerable amount of walking to and fro between Oxford Circus and Soho or Little Titchfield Street to which the majority of boys and staff were committed as part of their normal daily routine. In the matter of accommodation perhaps the only feature which continued to be a source of satisfaction in the post-war period was the continued use by the school of the swimming bath and the football and cricket pitches, and stadium of the Polytechnic Sports Ground at Chiswick, and the boathouse of the Quintin Boat Club. In these things at least, the school had facilities more lavish than those available to many other London schools.

          Ten years is a long time, but the Education Act of 1944 made it certain that this post-war dispersal of the school should not be permanent. If the school was to survive it must be properly accommodated. Policy was now finally determined on the principle that the provision of grammar school education for boys within the premises of technical colleges for adults must cease. Very speedily too, the other boys' days schools in the Polytechnic were wound up, and by 1948, the Secondary School was, as it had been in 1886, the only boys' day school in the Poly. But it could not stay there.

          The Governors of the Polytechnic found themselves unable to raise the large sum of money which they would have had to provide if they were to retain their close control of the school and yet provide it with premises of a standard required by the law. It was therefore necessary for the school to cease to be what it had been since 1911, an "aided" school, and to become instead a "voluntary controlled" school. This meant closer control by the London County Council, and a reduction in the number of Polytechnic nominees on the school's Governing Body. The important difference however was that whereas an aided school had to provide premises of the proper standard out of its own money, the Secondary School once it became voluntary controlled, would have buildings provided by the London County Council.

          Two other changes followed the passing of the 1944 Education Act. One was the abolition of fee paying. After 1944 none of the boys paid fees, and something like ninety per cent of them now come to the school primarily as a result of their showing on the now famous "eleven plus" examination. The Governors themselves have full control over the admission nowadays of only about ten per cent of annual admissions.

          The other change was necessitated by the decision of the 1944 Act that all schools giving education to boys over eleven should be called "secondary" schools. Before 1944 the term "secondary school" meant a school giving what is now called "secondary grammar" education. Thus, the former title "Polytechnic Secondary School" had become ambiguous. It left unanswered the important question, what type of secondary school.

          The title "Polytechnic Secondary Grammar School" suggested itself. It was accurate, but cumbersome, and it was decided that, if change there must be, a better choice was "The Quintin School".

          Many Old Quintinians regretted the change. For something, like sixty years O.Q.'s had thought of themselves as old "Poly boys". Yet to say that one was an old 'Poly boy' or that one had 'been to the Poly' had always been ambiguous. These expressions could be quite properly used by members of the Institute who had received no education at all at the Poly, by old boys of the Craft Schools; or by those whose "being at the Poly" had consisted of attendance at various evening classes. The expression "Poly boy" thus established connection, but not identity. In fact the school had no universally recognised official name at any time before it became the Quintin School. We have noted that in its first years it was referred to as the Day School, the Middle Class School, the Intermediate Day School, indiscriminately. After its division into Technical and Commercial Schools the labels used in the Polytechnic Magazine were usually Day Technical School and Day Commercial School, but very often their activities are recorded under the simple heading "Quintinians". Even after 1919 there was no uniformity. "Polytechnic Secondary School" was usual, but not exclusive. Thus, the Quintinian described itself as "The Magazine of the Polytechnic School" until the end of 1937. This, though it correctly interpreted the proud belief that ours was the only Polytechnic School that mattered, was carrying inaccuracy to the point of misrepresentation. Nor was the more modest "Polytechnic School for Boys" really justifiable. True, it admitted by implication that there were Polytechnic Schools for adults and a Polytechnic School for Girls: but it imperiously ignored the fact that there were four other Polytechnic schools for Boys. The 1950's are thus distinguished in the history of the school not merely by the fact that for the first time in seventy years it has a building of its own, but by its acquisition, at long last, of a proper name of its own as well.

6.

THE School was not merely changing its name and its status. Time was catching up with the men whose devotion had for so long contributed so much to its continuing traditions.

In 1944 death brought to an end the lifetime's service to the School and the Polytechnic which had been given by Sir Kynaston Studd. Year by year he had, besides his close watch over its daily activities, graced all its more important functions with the quiet dignity of his voice and presence. It was not the least of his qualities that when he presided over such events as a Speech Day he imparted to them an air of distinction. There are, it is fair to say, some Chairmen of Governors who are endured rather than admired on such occasions as Speech Days. That has never been the fate of our School, which was lucky indeed to have the constant service of one who had been a Lord Mayor of London and a President of the M.C.C. The School was much impressed by his readiness to visit Minehead, despite the hazards of wartime travel and the burden of his years. In due course, his place as Chairman of the Governors was taken by Mr. Bernard Studd, so that a son of Q.H.'s most loyal supporter now presides over the fortunes of the School, to see that now, in the unfamiliar surrounding of the Finchley Road, it will not forget the past. We may note here perhaps that another member of the old dynasty, in the person of Sir Eric Studd, continues to preside over the Old Quintinian Club and is an active Governor of the School.

Mr. Bernard Studd

           Among the ranks of the teaching staff Time took a heavy toll in a comparatively short period. Dench and Hester and Preston Davies, who had been in the school in the 1890's, had gone already in the early 30's, Kerridge in 1938. But from 1942 to 1953 death or retirement took from the school every one of the men who had been there when P. A. had taken over in 1919, or whom he had appointed within the first twelve months of his headship. H. O. Coleman was first to go, dying with dramatic suddenness in August 1942. Within the next two or three years, J. W. Andrews, H. J. Beadon and J. B. Lambert retired, and R. H. G. Byrne died. Between 1948 and 1953 the school lost, also by retirement, Stevenson, Newman, Broodbank, Chevrollier, Russell, Matthews, Coates, Hough and Walford.[48] All these men (except Byrne) had taught in the school for periods varying from just under thirty years to as many as nearly fifty in the case of F. Matthews. This swift breaking of the bonds with the past was made the more painful by the deaths very soon after their retirement of Newman in 1949, Matthews in 1951 and Broodbank in 1954. During the ten years after the ending of the war there also died in retirement those stalwarts of the school's earliest years, W. J. Saunders, H. A. Paffard, W. C. Lee, C. W. Hester, G. E. Dench, and P. A. himself. F. Judd, who had devoted at first some and then the whole of his teaching time to the School since well before the war, also died little more than twelve months after his retirement in 1949.[49] Tribute has been paid to the qualities of these men earlier in these pages. It is sufficient to say here that they were active for good to the very end of their careers and that the great length of service which such a large number of men gave to the school was a potent factor in binding the generations together. Nor is it altogether insignificant that four of the present members of the Quintin School staff were themselves taught by these men, so that even Lee and Saunders who retired over thirty years ago are still not merely names but remembered personalities.

7.

LIVING something of a makeshift life, poised uncertainly between a dissolving past and a future that seemed rather a long time coming, the School might be imagined as having been in a state of suspended animation during the post-war years. That would be quite wrong. The school, as a community, showed extraordinary resilience. The very difficulties of its situation called forth both the robust good humour and the readiness to improvise which were needed to overcome them - qualities which proved a real continuity with the days of the pioneers of the school. It would be churlish not to record how much of this determined refusal to be daunted by an accumulation of problems, great and petty, derived from the zestful ingenuity of the Head Master. It is difficult to recall an occasion on which Dr. Worsnop allowed himself to sound either depressed or pessimistic. He always assumed that, whatever the problem, the Quintin School could somehow find an answer to it, and that the achievement of what elsewhere would be regarded as impossible was part of the School's normal way of life.

          Among the best of the boys there was the same determination to treat unpropitious physical conditions as a spur to effort. If, for reasons not strictly within their control, football and cricket met with varied fortunes, footballers and cricketers were, as in the palmiest days of old, the mainstay of the active life of the O.Q. club, which put out more football elevens in 1954-5 than ever in its history. In basketball and swimming, the older traditions were equalled and surpassed. The Boat Club, a creation of the 1930's, also flourished. The Dramatic Society has of late been restored to a vigour that promises a future even more successful than its past. State Scholarships and Open Scholarships were obtained in numbers not exceeded at any previous period. The school's achievements in conditions of adversity gave good promise that it will prosper indeed in the more spacious surroundings which it is at last beginning to enjoy.

Views of Quintin School, 1956