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Sunday, 7 March, 2010
The first term at Hurn Court School – Summer 1952 :
| I suppose for most of us there is a period in our lives about which we can say, “I was so lucky to have experienced that”. I had a happy childhood, but possibly the very happiest time was a ten week period of early summer in 1952, when I attended the very first term of the freshly established Hurn Court School. My parents had been researching schools for me and serendipitously selected the soon to be opened Hurn Court. When they looked at it, it was not a school at all. It was an idea. Possibly their choice may have had something to do with the colourful Indian counterpanes on the beds of the one show-dormitory. It would certainly have been based on the integrity, progressive educational beliefs and abundant kindness of the school’s founder, Mr. P. G. Tyler. Mr. Tyler had paid 6000 pounds for Hurn Court in 1951. That was at a time when the then current Atlee Government had instituted very high taxes on the wealthy and many of the aristocracy were having to unload those vast palaces for whatever they could get. Two years later my father bought a comfortable, but normal, six-bedroom house for the same price! |
| The first photo shows Mr. Tyler welcoming me, as the first boy to arrive on the inaugural day of the new school. The other boy (sorry I’m not certain of his name) may have been the second boy to arrive. This would have been in April 1952. I seem to remember that the photo was actually staged on the second day of term. | |
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| That first summer term was golden. It was a magical time of sunny, warm and joyous days and, as I say, it was possibly the happiest ten weeks of my very happy childhood. As you will see from the second photo we were only 19 boys then and two teachers - although close friends and surrogate elder brothers could be a better description. My parents kept my first letter home, which reads: | |
Clearly I was content, though I don’t remember the rain. I do, however, continue to think of E. R. Morris with great affection. He was a truly wonderful Man. |
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| The school at that time was still pretty much as the Earl of Malmesbury had left it. The gardens were still beautiful and the gardener to the previous owners continued to be employed. The master bedroom was still papered in black and silver striped Edwardian type wallpaper and most of the bathrooms in the main part of the house were true throne rooms. After passing through the door to a toilet one would proceed to the distant end of the room before mounting two or three mahogany steps to sit upon a vast mahogany cabinet that, my memory says, was about ten feet long. Centered along that polished wooden structure was a seat above an elegant porcelain toilet with a brass chain above. Being denied personal valets we boys had to pull our own chains. As I remember there were very few other restrictions to our activities or to our enjoyment. I personally was in awe of the many remaining glass cases containing an assortment of stuffed birds many of which were native to the Americas. A typical class size at that time was five to eight boys and the classes were really private tutorials. E.R. Morris taught English and History in ways that were beautiful and captivating. So we were a small group of very fortunate small boys who found ourselves spending a summer in a palace in transition. Hurn Court was still a very stately home but without the old family. The school was as yet an embryo and more of a holiday camp than an academic institution. It was paradise. The three big questions that occupied our young minds throughout that lovely summer were: How are our pet jackdaws doing? Where is the entrance to the secret passage? And What are E.R. Morris’s given names? (did we ever find out) |
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It is over fifty years since I last looked at the faces in the group photo and I now recognize very few. I am sitting on the far right of the second row with beside me, I believe, Michael Cox. Is it James Vietch standing on the far right back row and could it be Michael Geddes standing on the far left? E. Brownjohn seems to be missing from this photo, but I know that amongst those faces are Stephen Clegg, John Rawlings and Leonard Pridham. Beyond that I can’t seem to match the faces to the names that I remember. Any assistance would be very much appreciated. Barry Cogswell
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