The following reminiscences have been taken from a letter written by
John Heslop (SH 40-45):

“Although living in Canada, we have been back to St Bees many times and have often stayed at The Pheasant at Bassenthwaite, which used to be run by W. E. Barry Wilson. At one time there was an informal OSBs dinner there on the Friday night before Old St Beghians’ Day. We have had contact with some Old Boys in Canada, notably Geoffrey Costeloe, who was a contemporary of Bill Fox. In fact Bill and Esme Fox did a cross-Canada tour on one occasion and finished up with us. We entertained both Bill and Geoffrey and their wives to dinner. We recommended Bill to stay at the Qualicum College Inn and to be sure to ask for ‘seniors’ discount. The young desk clerk asked him where he was from and he replied, “A small village in the Lake District you will never have heard of.” So she said, “Try me.” Once he told her he learned that she came from Seascale!

In recalling times at school, I remember that bullying was bad. It seemed endemic, probably due to too many boys who would not have been there but for the low subsidized fees (by the Old Boys) when the school nearly went into bankruptcy. It was my father who helped to found the Old St Beghians’ Guarantee Fund, which subsidized every fee by £40.5.0 from the proper fees of £140 pa. That was in 1938. My father bought a portable typewriter and I did all the typing of the Deeds of Covenant which had been obtained at the meeting in the school library, and subsequently for those pledges which came in by post. G. C. Mallaby was made a caretaker Headmaster and was then succeeded by J. S. Boulter. They wanted my father to serve on the committee of inspection but he decided not to as he knew the war was coming and that he would be recalled. In fact it was Friday, 1st September 1939 when he was called. Having been medically discharged in 1940, he was immediately co-opted by the governors. Back to the bullying: I decided that if ever I became a prefect, I would do all that I could to stamp it out, which I did on School House and for my last year, 1944/45, when I was a school prefect.

There is one more Old Boy I come across sporadically and that is H. Wilson, who was on Foundation North from 1942 to 1944 when his father, who commanded a small merchant navy vessel, was regularly sailing between Dublin and Belfast and Silloth carrying a full cargo of Guinness. The family put down roots at Silloth. He was a good rugby player and got his place in the 1st XV before he left to serve as a crewman on his father’s ship.

Of some other names I remember from my time, there was Herr Ofner, who taught Physics. He was incarcerated in the Isle of Man for most of the war. He had been a school Principal in Austria and spoke German as his first language. His son Paul was in the school at the time and had to report to the police every week along with Peter Sprinzels and Harry Jellinek. The Ofners had escaped from Austria in 1938 and we got him back in the classroom in September 1944. Of sporting matters, I think P. H. Herbert won the Senior steeplechase in the spring of 1945, with D. S. Tye second. Tye used to rise early about a month before the race itself and then practise every day before breakfast. My father had won this race three times and I was hoping to do well in my last year, but the cook on School House served up an indigestible pudding that day, which everyone ate (except Tye), not least because we were always hungry in those wartime years, and the result was I came in seventh!”

 

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St Bees School,    St Bees,    Cumbria,    CA27 0DS.

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