The Chronicle January 2020

32 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

the beck and call of Prefects throughout their first year at the School. The day room was the arena for social encounters, friendly or hostile, and was where all one’s leisure hours were spent. It was the occasional scene of bloody fights with cheering onlookers, and the theatre where one’s image was established most especially during the first term as a new boy. The ‘Horse Box’ allotted to each of us was a piece of private personal real estate, three foot by two and a half, constructed of wood, scored with the initials of past generations, fixed at right angles to the day room wall. It comprised a bench, writing top, drawer and book shelves to a height of six feet. This territory was decorated according to the owner’s fancy and the private world of one’s ‘Horse Box’ was seldom profaned - a ‘Horse Box’ raid was an act of extreme provocation. The rest of the day room was common ground, a central table for newspapers, posters on the walls, a throne-like cushioned seat for (Rowland) Gradwell, the Dayroom President, or for the Prefect presiding over Prep. Traditional feeding by Houses had now been superseded by meals in a central Dining Hall, a vast space where 350 of us sat by Houses at a dozen or so long oak tables beneath a display of cups and sporting trophies acquired by one’s House teams. The High Table, from which Latin Grace was said, was presided over in state by the Prefects. Food was served from heated trolleys brought from the kitchens by ‘Johns’.

Term began the following day, new boys arriving 24 hours before the others to find their bearings. There were six others in my House - three became lifelong friends: (Michael) Pitt, a parson’s son, (Robert) Castley, the son of a Housemaster at Worcester Grammar School and (Hugh) Osborne. First names were only embarrassingly revealed during school holidays when one overheard them used by parents of one’s friends. Opportunities to mix with boys from other Houses were limited to playing fields and classrooms. For the most part one’s companions were limited to the contemporaries with whom one lived in the close proximity of day rooms and dormitories. That first day each new boy was issued with a speckled straw ‘boater’ from the school shop, known as a ‘Basha’. One’s ‘Basha’ underwent ritual christening by being floated across the canal, which flowed at the bottom of the playing fields, and being recovered from the other bank. Each of us was allocated a dormitory bed, locker and chamber pot, and, in the day room, a ‘Horse Box’. Tilly’s House was a three-storey building of stone staircases, bare boards smelling of ink and dust, dormitories on the first and second floors, a 40ft attic bathroom with rows of basins and cold showers, and a ground floor where most of the action took place. Two studies were shared between six House Prefects who were served by a roster of ‘fags’ from the junior day room. Fags remained at

The 1st VIII in 1937

There were also ‘Annies’ to make our beds and empty the slops but who, alas, remained invisible throughout our schooldays, so there were few or no opportunities for sightings of the opposite sex, with the exception of the school Matron, Sister Philips, known as ‘the Dragon’ and the lady behind the counter of the Tuckshop, Lizzie Johnson. The Dining Hall walls were festooned with shields engraved with the names of the great and the good, who had represented the School at rugby, cricket or rowing. The names went back to the foundation of the School. If lists of academic achievements also existed, they were not visible; academic distinction was a dubious asset - athletic prowess was all. The whole School assembled on the first evening of term to attend Evening Chapel and the Dining Hall. That night in the day room and dormitory one kept one’s head down, to escape, as far as possible, scrutiny from old hands. From getting up at 6.30am next morning until lights out at 10pm five years later, one conformed to a routine carefully structured to exclude any opportunity for privacy; even the row of lavatories in the ‘Rears’ outside were without doors, permitting no concealment. As a new boy one slowly learnt the arcane rules and labyrinthine regulations which governed behaviour in House and School, enforced by punishment or fear of punishment, for the most part inflicted by the Prefects themselves. The 6.30am ‘getting up bell’ was the signal for naked bodies to gallop upstairs and shiver under cold showers in the attics; then in one’s ‘Horse Box’ for

Tilly’s in 1936, with Tom Barns in the centre of the first standing row