Tales of japes and initiation rites
Last updated 05:36, Friday, 05 September 2008
Carlisle Grammar School by Mary Scott-Parker (published by Parker-Leigh, £12)The head- master of Carlisle Grammar School, Vincent “Jankers” Dunstan, caned George Macdonald Fraser for reading a “tuppenny blood” during a lesson.
It is hard to know what sort of formative influence such a proceeding had on the famous creator of Flashman. Did the “tuppenny blood” inspire him? Did he seek to relieve his pent-up hatred of school and bullying through his writing? Was he simply getting back at his old head by spending his life writing the most sophisticated of “tuppenny bloods” or did the caning make him buckle down, get on with his work and make him the great writer he became?
The school had since its earliest days – it was reputably founded in 632 – always sought to promote the best of behaviour among its students. It may not always have been successful. An eighteenth century school ordinance outlawed the practice of “barring out” which consisted of “taking violent possession of the school and coming armed with swords and pistols, and shooting with guns and pistols”.
Neither were the best of teachers always successful. FW Wadely, the greatest musician ever to grace Carlisle’s cathedral, failed to instil any respect for harmony into one Edwin S Towill: “I remember with nausea ‘Who is Sylvia?’ which we seemed to sing from Form 2 right up to Senior School. I never could sing and before long I discovered that Dr Wadely’s pained expression and constant remark, ‘There’s a boy singing an octave below!’ both stopped when I kept quiet.”
During the war years Paddy Maloy “went to Tullie House for Art and passed some of the time by letting down on a rope a skeleton called George, through the trap door into the public library below”.
Michael Finlay kept a 25lb German howitzer shell in his desk for almost a term until the maths teacher discovered it and the whole school was evacuated and the bomb disposal unit called in.
Other japes were less dangerous. Ian Johnstone recalls “how brave Reg Hill, Dick Wilson and I were one autumn evening when we tied a long string to the knocker on Willie Spier’s front door, pulled it mightily then ran like hell even though it was never opened.”
Reg Hill, himself, remembers the school in a more serious vein: “On its staff were some of the finest teachers you could hope to find, on its staff were two men bordering on certifiable insanity; out of school we were expected to behave like young gents, in school we were allowed to persecute one unfortunate master close to the point of breakdown.”
And for the timorous first formers, there were initiation rites. Roger Bolton, who later became a fearless campaigning journalist, remembers: “We squirts of the first form needed courage as we went through the initiation rites at break. We were lined up on the small wall over the chemistry labs and thrown down into the nettles that seemed to be specially cultivated to sting hard and often.”
Masters became legends. There was “Buff” Scott who drove a nifty roadster and kept a bulldog that the boys thought was the image of him; caning Laurie “Banko” Banks; the highly strung Mr Watson who was reputed to have carried Monty’s briefcase on D-Day and many others.
Above everyone else, judging by the fond memories of old boys, was Adrian Barnes. Eric Robson sums it up best of all: “He was quite simply the best teacher on the planet.”
Mary Scott-Parker has assembled a book of recollections from some of the pupils who went to Carlisle Grammar School over the years. Many have been successful in various walks of life. The school seems to have had a huge personality, at times frightening, cold, hard; at other times inspiring, endearing, formative. The staff and the boys did many things that would be way beyond the pale today, and yet, nearly all speak of the school with affection, a place to which, despite its disturbing idiosyncrasies, they owe a deep debt of gratitude.
The last word can be left to George Macdonald Fraser: “We were wiped out as a school by the Vikings – but recovered. And now CGS is no more – ironic that what Bruce and the Danes couldn’t destroy has been thrown away by social reformers!”
Carlisle Grammar School is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.co
