Reminiscences
by
Robin Sinclair
1968 - 1974
These "memoirs" cover my recollections of the time I spent at Wennington School from autumn 1968 until summer 1974. They were written largely from memory about events that occurred over a quarter of a century earlier. The only documentary sources I have are a few old school reports and an old prospectus. The original version of this document was written under the assumption that almost no-one would actually read it - with the creation of the official website for the Wennington School Association this is no longer the case. I have therefore decide to tone down some of the criticisms of individual members of staff. Whatever impression the following account gives I would like to make it clear that overall I am glad that I went to Wennington.
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| Me aged about 12 |
I started at Wennington in the autumn of 1968, the year in which Brian Hill took over from Kenneth. The school itself was doing rather well; it had a new theatre and science building but the rest of the school was much as it had been for years before.
My first memory from those days was tea-time on the first day - I had travel up from London in the morning, it was always the same train from King's Cross in a carriage reserved for the many pupils travelling from London, there was a coach waiting at York station to pick us up - anyway I was hungry and the item on the menu was baked beans. "Great" it thought - then I tasted them! The appalling quality of the food was to be one of the most consistent features of the place.
Things were not all bad however. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the school for an 11 year old Londoner were the woods. I spent most of my free time during the first few weeks exploring the woods in the company a classmate. The idea that kids could actually build dens in them was like something out of fiction - I still remember being impressed at how big the "Blue Den" was. Names like "Bob's Pond", "The Old Oak" and "The Pancake Tree" stay with me to this day ( unless of course if I have got them wrong ). In those days even the tiny puddle called the "lake" seemed impressive. Playing down the woods so much had its effects - my group parent report for the summer term of my first year states :- "He also succeeds in getting dirtier in a short space of time than any other boy I have known". It is not surprising I acquired the nickname "Scruff".
My class was quite small, eleven boys ( I think ) and two girls and I was the youngest boy there. Of that group only two boys made it through all seven years - I lasted six.
Boarding school life did not come as a shock to me as I had already spent almost three year at another boarding school from the age of seven - besides it was good to get away from my psychotic mother. Despite this I still felt lonely and homesick for the first few terms.
Life in general was not too bad for me, in the first year I was bullied a bit by a couple of idiots but that did not last long. There were always the odd one or two in every class that did get long term harassment from the others ( it is interesting that the staff seemed to do absolutely nothing to help the victimised pupils - I know that it was the same in other schools but Wennington was trying to be better ). Personally I tended to leave my fellow pupils alone as I was more interested in making life hell for the staff ( if there are any of my old teachers reading this, may I take this opportunity to apologise for being such an utter bastard to them as a kid ).
One of my major concerns throughout my time as the school was food. This was always of extremely poor quality and in short supply. Sometimes you were lucky to get a meal at all. One time they managed to leave my name off the table list for breakfast/tea and I was still far too shy to complain so went for about a month eating only lunch and scavenging for scraps. Another time there were eleven on my table ( as opposed to the standard ten ) and I effectively got squeezed off. Sundays were the worst. Pupils went off with parents or whatever and so some of the table were taken out of service. The pupils allocated to those tables had to find spare places on the others - not a chance. No-one knew who was not coming so they would not give any apparently empty places away - at least the staff fared no better.
The main leisure activity I remember from those days is drinking. Even today, after a quarter of a century, the smell of cider still evokes memories of sitting in the woods with a few friend and a couple of bottles of Woodpecker. In truth I was probable drunk no more than twice a term, but I seems so much more. I was not alone, there was one famous Saturday on which several groups got drunk - it must have been about a third of the pupil in the third to fifth forms ( that may be an exaggeration - but not by much ).
In the next couple of section I will cover some aspects of the school that were not in existence in earlier times.
I believe this was as innovation of the Brian Hill era - if it did in fact existed earlier please let me know. In the first term the school was organised by form - each class had a form master; around my second term the 'family' concept was introduced. Each family was headed by a member of staff and consisted of about ten pupils spanning the whole age range - natural siblings were not usually in the same family. The idea, I assume, was to try and induce more cross form contact between the pupils. In general there was very little contact between pupils in different forms - it was unheard of for someone to have a friend in a form more than one year above or below their own. Even siblings avoided each other and you rarely spoke to you dorm leader outside the dormitory block.
The families had a formal meeting one morning a week - instead of the normal morning assembly - regular informal meetings in the evenings and occasional family outings - to the cinema, camping etc. It was a nice idea but I am not convinced it really succeeded.
This I am sure was a Brian Hill invention. In days of old the privileges a pupil had depended purely upon the form to which he or she belonged. Early in his reign Brian introduced a scheme where each pupil was awarded a 'colour'. There were six colours running from red, the lowest, to purple, the highest. Your right to go to Wetherby unaccompanied by a staff member and such were determined by your colour. The scheme was scrapped afters about three years. The headmaster and the staff assigned each pupil their colour based on little more than blind prejudice. I was always the last to get promoted - so I was officially the least responsible in my class despite being a technician the language lab ( are we really meant to believe that Roger would entrust his equipment to the least responsible in the class ), I was also a science lab technician ( again quite a responsible job ) and I was also for a time responsible for the geography room boiler - I rest my case. Fortunately once I reached about "orange" and was allowed to go to Wetherby alone the rest did not really matter - not been allowed to go to Leeds did not bother me too much as I was not one for going out; and the one occasion I did want to go there I did anyway!
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