Going to a boarding prep school in the 1960s

Yes, that was me. My school was literally next door to my home, but boarding was heavily encouraged for two reasons: being a day boy meant you were treated as a pariah, and because we were being prepared for public school or other boarding private school which would come at us when we got to be 13.

 I started at Moorland House when I was 7 (as a contemptible day boy) and started boarding when I was 9. We were chased out every morning on to what the headmaster called ‘The Moors’ – a piece of tree heavy countryside with a pond or two and a grassy slope idea for tobogganing in the 1963 freeze, right next to the school. My family called it ‘The Heath’ and the maps called it ‘The Beacons’. Whatever its identity, about 70 little boys zoomed round it for a few minutes every morning. My father was usually walking the dog, Bengo after the TV personality – Bengo the Boxer Puppy

This was after breakfast taken in the dining room and what followed immediately, which was known as ‘lavatory duties’ where we were expected to visit the toilets on a rigid rota, and our duty was to empty our bowels.

I was really good looking when I was 13, and had a winning smile as you can see, with me sitting next to the assistant matron that we didn’t fancy (if that’s a correct word for an innocent). Gorgeous Miss Holgate is squeezed between Mr Cunningham and Lofty England. Don’t look like they enjoyed it. On the far left is my best friend, Mike Edeson from whom another and rather racy tale hangs, which I may come to sometime.

The dashing headmaster gets his own photo

The morning was lessons. After lunch we had games 2 days I think, Wed and Saturday but it may have been 3 days. Cricket in summer, football and rugby in autumn, hockey in the spring term. We had a massive playing field (now a housing estate) and I polished my football skills in the holidays as I lived so near. I really can’t remember what happened after tea. I think we had a ‘quiet time’ but that may have been after lunch.

On Saturday morning we were all sitting in the Gym. We had to each read out our results for the week in four subjects. Must have been Maths English French and Latin I suppose. Whatever, the ratings were G (good) S (satisfactory) Freddy (F for fair, but Freddy because F sounds too close to S) and B (bad). I was usually “all G, Sir” but sometimes “two Gs and 2 Freddies”. 2 Freddies or one Bad involved an invitation to meet the head. More often than not that meant – bury your head in the leather armchair and wait for 3 of the best with a slipper on your bum. Occasionally you got a reprieve because of a good history, but most of us troubled the scorer several times a term.

On one occasion we were confronted of an outrage: somebody had cut the fringe off the matron’s rug. Who is going to plead guilty for this heinous crime? OK, nobody has come clean, therefore I am going to beat everyone in this school. Nobody pleaded guilty so we queued up outside his study. Swish swash swosh. 3 of the best for 70 of us. Thinking back he must have been pretty fit. It makes me think absurdly of French villages where everyone was allegedly punished for some attack on the Nazis. Of course I’m not so daft as to compare three swishes to the buttocks with what probably was mass murder but the principle seems to be the same.

The final share for now about the discipline regime involves curry. Some of us were sons of soldiers and the like and had spent some time in exotic territories. It’s worth clarifying that eating everything on your plate was compulsory. Every second Wednesday we had kippers. I couldn’t bear them, so I had a handkerchief that was in my pocket on Wednesdays. When nobody was looking, kipper migrated to my pocket and subsequently paid its heroic part in lavatory duties. I had to get chums to lend me bits of kipper to leave on the plate to make it look real.

Anyway, the one food we were permitted to refuse was what then was very exotic curry. To avoid this, we had to ask for beans on toast instead. A rather weedy boy (he is probably the chairman of a merchant bank now) called Burns did not get his request in, or it was forgotten. He sat next to the headmaster. He refused to eat his curry. The dining room went deathly quiet as he was walked out with the head, and we heard the familiar swish swosh swash through the corridor. The pair of them returned, one crying (probably) and the other looking triumphant. But the dining room was still silent. Until I started giggling. “If you think it’s funny, Lambert, you can have a dose of the same treatment” so I was the next to the armchair.

Why am I boring you with all this guff? It’s because I lived with it 60 years ago, thinking if anything was wrong with the school it was my own weakness. We even liked or even loved the school. The teaching I think was OK (very small classes help a lot) and the head had been to Oxford which was another planet for someone like me from I suppose a lower middle class family with a bit of ambition. Any University was for different people altogether. It was in a nice suburb, in sight of a version of the sea (the Dee Estuary, now more a silted grass area) and with good food and some kindness amidst the physical abuse which I suppose we would describe it as today.

The school lasted a few years after I moved on, but is now a small housing estate called Moorland Close. tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. I have to show off my Latin though if I’m honest I remember virtually nothing. That translates as “the times are changing, and we change in them”

More when I get bored and take the opportunity to bore anyine who wants to read it!