Sir George W. Moseley (FS 39-43) kindly sent in some reminiscences of his time at the school:

“How the decision was taken to select the small English Public School at St. Bees, on the Cumberland coast, I know not. Certainly there were no family connections with the school or its general area. But it had obvious attractions. It was in England - and I suspect Mother, at least foresaw that I would fare better there than in Scotland! The fees were modest, by public school standards; it was reasonably close to Glasgow for travel at holiday time; and there was plenty of room for me! Indeed when I joined the school there were less than 100 boys boarding! - the school having apparently fallen on hard times, leaving a number of the residential houses vacant. It was not long, however, before Mill Hill, a much larger and well-known public school, was evacuated from the outskirts of London - to fill the St. Bees spare accommodation for the duration! And St. Bees certainly gained more and more numbers during my four or five years there. The two schools stayed independent of each other, of course, but Mill Hill lost considerable numbers of their boys and staff over the succeeding years of the war. And off I went, and was duly very homesick for the next few weeks. But the generally welcoming atmosphere of the place must have had its effect; and the arrival of a brand new bike - whose cost I am sure was not welcome to my parents on top of all the rest of it - must have helped. The increasing absence of any other regular and affordable transport in this somewhat desolate part of Cumberland made it a matter of regular practice for us to explore the neighbouring Lake District - particularly on the so-called Three-Quarter day weekends, when the Friday was added to make it worthwhile cycling rather greater distances.

Just how soon I became close friends with Griff Jones I cannot recall. He was the youngest of a large family from Bangor, in North Wales. Two of his brothers had already attended the School; indeed the name of one was soon on the Roll of Honour in the Chapel, the lad having been shot down, in his fighter plane, in the early days of the War. Griff was an extremely good all-round athlete, and I was a somewhat inadequate one. But we seemed to find each other's company congenial right up the school. He was, and remains, my closest friend, even though we rarely see each other these days. The first term doesn't live in my memory, so my homesickness must have been short-lived. We were split into three Houses; Foundation North, Foundation South and School House for meals and for games. I was placed in Foundation South, where the Housemaster was G.C.(Gock) Smith, who administered corporal punishments on the seat with the cane, with fair vigour. He was an all-round sportsman, who tragically suffered a blow on his elbow in a cricket match, which later was followed by a cancer on the elbow, and the subsequent loss of his upper arm. Within 12 months he was retired, and within only a few more months he was dead! John Boulter, the Headmaster, was Head of School House, which was an entirely separate building. He had recently married, and, to his obvious delight, - for he must have been well into his forties, if not into his fifties, - they were expecting a baby!

It was a few days into the following Easter term that I secured brief national notoriety. Returning from holidays, the boys, occupying one of the Ground Floor "dayrooms" in which prep was done in separate wooden cubicles, rid themselves of last term's "junk" by burning their old papers in a metal dustbin, before retiring to bed! We were, consequently, awoken by clouds of smoke in our dormitories on the first floor, and ordered by the prefect in our room to escape by climbing out of the windows and descending to the ground down an escape rope. I did the first bit right; and, finding what I wrongly believed to be the ground beneath my feet, let go of the rope and fell ten feet or so, crashing my chin on a stone parapet, surrounding the building. I knocked myself out, and, as a result of the encounter with the parapet, bit through my tongue. I awoke on a couch in School House, being ministered-to by the newly arrived Boulter Junior's nurse. I must have narrowly escaped losing my tongue, or a very large proportion of it, but was fairly soon back in circulation. But the Daily Mail, short of real news in the so-called "Phoney War", before the Blitz, gave the story a banner headline with Moseley portrayed as brushing aside a serious wound, and helping his colleagues to put out the fire!

The next terms do not carry any real memories. GOC Smith, poor man, retired, and was succeeded by an ex-county XV scrum - half as Housemaster, and TAB Brown brought his excellent wife, Mary, with him to teach History in the school. I owe her a very great deal, for she also stimulated my interest in current affairs, politics, Parliament, and many other aspects of how the country was governed. The whole of the democratic system was compared, of course, with the behaviour of the dictatorships in Germany and Italy. She, and the English Teacher, a bachelor named Chambers, laid the foundations for my subsequent choice of Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University.

For exercise, I was relegated to the second row of the scrum in the first XV; I was useless at cricket and tennis; and my sole distinction in extra-academic activities was to head the School Cadet Force. In the absence of any younger male teachers, it was decided that I should become the Cadet Officer, heavily dependent on the guidance of the old Sergeant- Major who had served the Cadet Force at the School for many years. He took charge of the armoury, with its very serviceable rifles, which we took with us in our tours of duty with the Home Guard, whose responsibilities included not only "Coastal Defence" in the pill-boxes around St. Bees, but also the Railway Station, which the School OTC manned and protected at night.

By this time Dad had been appointed Telephone Manager of the Gloucester Area, and when I finally left school, it was Gloucester that became my next "Home Town". I left St. Bees at the end of the Summer Term 1943, with the necessary academic qualifications to apply for an RAF cadetship, and after interviews and a medical, I was told to report to Wadham College, Oxford, at the beginning of the Christmas Term 1943. With this came a virtual assurance that I would also be entitled to return to Wadham at the end of my military service, and I counted myself very fortunate to have achieved this attractive “return ticket”. Moreover, the RAF would pay the basic costs of university tuition both before and after the service in the Service!

I owed St. Bees a very great deal. The teachers were, for obvious reasons in a war, on the elderly side, but this meant they were experienced. The absence of younger staff gave the senior boys opportunities to take unusually responsible duties in the School and its Houses, and I believe this, together with the experience of managing our individual day-to-day affairs away from home, provided us with valuable confidence to tackle life at University and in the Forces.”

The St. Beghian Society,
St. Bees School, St. Bees, Cumbria, CA27 0DS
Tel: 01946 828093
osb@st-bees-school.co.uk