Bill Greetham (G 53-58)
poses a question:

“I wonder what happened to the Last Post?
For about two years, at 10 p.m. prompt, I stood at the top of Grindal’s fire escape, just outside the dormitory I think we knew as New Dorm, and I played The Last Post on my bugle. This was a Grindal tradition that had gone on for some considerable time, and I took over from C.P.P. ‘Stan’ Baldwin.
At times, attempting what is not the easiest of pieces to play could be rather fraught. If I was a minute or two late there was the possibility of a call from the Headmaster in School House to Sam Parkinson, our housemaster at the time, to enquire what had gone amiss. Then there was the peril of others trying to put me off. I recall the late D.C. ‘Squire’ Ryce-Roberts, a rather colourful Grindal character, occasionally doing his best to put me off by tickling me, and doing this successfully. Try blowing an instrument with someone tickling you!

By and large, however, I successfully carried out this exercise for some two years, and I wonder for how long this tradition carried on after 1958, and how many Grindal boys carried on moving out onto the top of the fire escape at 10 p.m. each evening, whatever the weather, to blow the Last Post and inform the people of St. Bees that it was 10 p.m.?”


The St. Beghian Society, St. Bees School, St. Bees, Cumbria, CA27 0DS

tel: 01946 828093         
email: osb@st-bees-school.co.uk     www.st-beghian-society.co.uk