WOSA Reflections - Reminiscences and extracts from the School Magazines.

The style was taken down and made slightly smaller, cleaned and painted in off-white, then re-fitted with rawlbolts. An oval face was worked out and painted on the wall with two undercoats and three topcoats in the same colour as the style. Roman numerals in black were used to mark the hours 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the half-hours also were indicated, all these points being plotted from the sun within two consecutive days. The  geographical position of the school was recorded above the style in Gill Sans italics.

However, to those who wish to know the time we must say, “Ask someone with a watch”, for by this mechanical means alone do we measure the hours, making each one exactly the same length, whereas those of the sun vary a little, For this reason you will see our sundial alternately lose and gain as the days go by. Although therefore, our work may largely be ornamental we proudly present True Solar Time for anybody that wants it.
 

“Cross-Country”, by Kenneth Greaves, Headmaster 1961 - 72

I expect you will have heard long ago of the great day when the three houses scored exactly equal scores in the senior boys cross-country, but it really must be recorded. I believe it was Paddy Malone who  thought of the idea in Meeting for Worship one Sunday morning, and it only took a little ingenuity and careful arithmetic to do the rest. That, and organising the checkpoint just out of sight up Cuddy Lonning to ensure that  boys crossed the finishing line in the appointed order.

To the rest of us, everything appeared to go as usual until the amazing result was announced, and by that time George Heslop quietly confirmed my dawning suspicion that this had been “fixed”. Fred Bell, who was always eager to publicise any exceptional happening with which he might claim connection, was already proclaiming the result far and wide.

It had already gone too far for Fred to be likely to take it as a joke, and so we decided that he must never be allowed to know the truth of it, and as far as I know he never did.

(Webmaster’s note: I must confess some involvement in this particular scam)
 

“The Exploding Steak and Kidney Pudding”, by Peter Iliffe, Staff 1948 - 1979

Beside myself, as a resident master in the school boarding house was my friend Colin. He was not very musical but was interested in the big works (I must mention that he used to express wonder that Handel had written his Messiah in only three weeks, and when he was unwell). He had an extraordinary flair for leg-pulling on paper, or tape; together we wrote many little verses about other staff, and sang them. These things were for  nobody’s amusement but our own.

However, on one occasion this fun backfired in an unexpected way. There was at this time also resident in another house off the school premises, a fairly V.I.P. master who always seemed to find it hard to get away from our common room when the time came for him to be on night duty. This was simply because he enjoyed the company, but we found his “Well I must go…” amusing and a little tiresome. Then late one night, while we  were quietly working, Colin suddenly gave a choked chuckle and said, “Got it!” and rushed out of the room. He came back after about an hour, giggling and handed me a school exercise book. On the cover was written “The  Saint”, and inside, occupying half the book, was the libretto for a complete mini-cantata based on the theme “I must go”, with parts for Narrator (Recitative), The Saint, Conscience, Temptation, the Boys and Chorus. Mostly in rhyme, it was heavy and awkward as though translated from German. I was amazed, I read it through and said “Come on, let’s sing it”.

We collected his little tape recorder, put one of those tall tins of steak and kidney pudding (laid on its side - the way to cook it quickly and make the crust crisp) on the gas ring in the mistresses’  study, unoccupied at this time of night, and rushed off to the little music room at the end of the boys’ corridor, out of earshot. We put the tape recorder on the floor, and then, making it up as we went along, sang it all  the way through, chorals, solo, four-part choruses, the lot. Then we took the recorder into the comfort of the lecture room and listened to it. We were soon rolling on the floor with laughter. Undoubtedly it was our finest achievement!

The time was now midnight, we were very hungry, and we went to get out steak and kidney pudding. We found the room in darkness and smelling strongly of gas; when we found the tin it had ripped down one side.

The pudding had been deposited as a fairly thick layer of gravy and suet on the walls, the ceiling, schoolbooks, desks and furniture all around the room. So bang went the meal and it was three o’clock when we got to bed! It was two years before the last marks were finally removed from the ceiling. Meanwhile on my bookshelf alongside Handel’s Messiah and Haydn’s Creation, the libretto of our (now named) mini-cantata The  Departure had found its permanent niche.
 

“Time Capsule”, also by Peter Iliffe

When the music / domestic science wing was added in 1961, a little party was held in the music room the night before the space under the stairs was finally bricked up. Anybody who un-bricks it will find a bottle with a note of our names inside; there may also be a little tape recording largely of improvised pieces - including Liszt’s Last Song written on his death manger - a hideous thing with piano noises and trombone by somebody who had not played one before. The work began and ended with the word “Hello!”
 

“Friends and Masters”, by Elisabeth Alley (Marsh), WOSA President 1991

I remember an early chemistry lesson in which Charles Marshall poured dilute acid on to a piece of zinc in a test tube and asked us what we could see. There followed a long pause, then I said “it’s fizzing” and the others all laughed. Charles, to encourage me, said I would make a good scientist. I didn’t take up science, but the memory of his kind words has stayed with me through all these years, and so has his  acceptance of the truth of my childish remark.

As for Fred Bell, I recall how well he coped with the presence of a five-year-old in the woodwork room. “What would you like to do, Elisabeth?” he asked me with that beaming smile of his. “Something with a sword,” I replied - meaning a saw. He took this unusual request in his stride and in due course I was able to give my mother a wooden scissor rack. Each rounded corner had a different curve, but it held three pairs of scissors and it lasted for years.

Over fifty years later, I was in Wigton Meeting House giving WOSA presidential address and I looked again at the brass plate on the table at which I stood, It says “Fred P. Bell, Friend and Master”.
 

“Gwen Bagwell - an Appreciation”, by Joseph Carruthers, Headmaster 1946 - 61

I first met Gwen Bagwell at the Wigton Old Scholars’ Reunion in August 1946, just before taking over as Headmaster. It was at a fancy-dress dance and I hope I may be forgiven for remembering chiefly a mass of raven hair, let down especially for the occasion. Afterwards, I learnt that her connection with Brookfield dated right back to 1924, when she joined her sister who had come a year earlier. David Reed had just become Headmaster and, in a sense, the Bagwell link with him had been forged even earlier for, either by chance or through the intervention of a kindly providence, David Reed and Gwen’s father had met during the Great War. It says much for David Reed that the Bagwell children were sent to Wigton all the way from the Isle of White.

I know little of Gwen Bagwell’s school days except that she made lasting friends and did well enough to qualify for a university course, a rare achievement in those days when most of the pupils left at  sixteen. I do know, however, that she came very much under the influence of David Reed, especially in her decision to take up teaching as a career, and that his integrity and singleness of purpose shone through her. Many of us have heard her speak of the way in which he compared the work of a craftsman who could see the table he had made and finished, to that of a teacher, who could rarely, if ever, see his “finished product”, the mind and character of a child.

I may have paraphrased this parable inaccurately, but it does at least explain the attraction that Gwen Bagwell felt for teaching and something perhaps of her philosophy as a teacher. For to the skill,  patience and “finish” which she brought to her craft as a teacher, she added the qualities of sensitiveness, and “understanding heart”, and faith in the ultimate purpose of her work, however dimly discernible that might be and no matter how “raw” some of the material she had to work with. These qualities, together with an infectious enthusiasm, and a faculty for really enjoying the surmounting of difficulties, characterised all she did as a class teacher and also in the infinitely more difficult task of character-training, the ultimate test of a good educator or a good school. Every girl and boy who has been a pupil at Brookfield during the last twenty-one years has benefited from “exposure” to these qualities as seen in Gwen Bagwell, and many of them will look back on that experience as the strongest influence in their lives.

It would be impossible and in any case out of place here, to recount the innumerable ways in which Gwen Bagwell has contributed to the life of the school, but I can perhaps try to assess her contribution by a comparison. Each of the Friend’s Schools looks back with pride and thankfulness to devoted men and women who, at each stage of history, have characterised and indeed embodied all that was best in its traditions and at the  same time supplied the vital force necessary for the fulfilment and enlargement of the school’s purpose. One such person was Hannah Williamson, another Old Scholar of Brookfield, who gave outstanding service to a previous generation as senior mistress of The Mount School, York. Of her it was said by an Old Scholar of The Mount that, although she had been utterly tireless and selfless in the work she had done for that school, she never thought of  it as anything more than her “reasonable service”. Gwen Bagwell would, I am sure, think no more highly than this of her service at Brookfield, but we who know her would not hesitate to number her among the immortals.
 

“Farewells”, 1974 - 75

Mr. Joseph Joachim retired in 1974, after twenty years’ service. He has put on a series of productions in his term of office, culminating in Rattigan’s Separate Tables in 1974. He had also run a thriving Senior Literary Society, whose annals may be found in “The Brook”, our predecessor as school magazine, which he brought about in the sixties. We hope he is now enjoying a pleasant retirement.

An epoch came to an end with the retirement of the immortal Tommy (Suart) as caretaker in the autumn of 1974. The editor has rarely met a more straightforward Cumbrian or a saltier wit. He was ruefully  admired by generations of Brookfield pupils and staff for his forthright tongue, his dry humour and for his fierce, grumbling devotion to the school, which never faltered. We were all very fond of him, and what he did over the years of hard work stays in the minds of those fortunate enough to have known him. Alf Graham, a very hardworking man, also accompanied him in leaving the service of the school. Many thanks to both.

Miss McBeath, veteran matron, a stalwart minder of many ailing children, left at Christmas, rather tired after years of devoted service. She is a sweet-natured person who soldiered through short-staffed  conditions and, latterly, much ill-health, while preserving an old-fashioned charm and a willingness to be helpful which are not easily forgotten. Please put up your feet, Matron, and have a cup of tea on us.
 

Note: these items are reproduced in the book “Friends’ School Wigton” by Peter J Carey, published by Wigton Old Scholars’ Association.