I came to Aldenham as a new boy in 1934, commencing in the Summer Term at the age of 14. I left at the end of the Easter Term in 1936, just before my 16th birthday.
The background to my coming to Aldenham I can still remember vividly. We lived in Wallington, Surrey, at the time and I went daily to Whitgift School in South Croydon, some 5 miles or more away. One Saturday my father, who was a textile executive in the City, returned from his office at lunch time (everyone worked on Saturday mornings in those days) and said to me “You’re going to Aldenham”. He had come to this decision following a conversation with a fellow executive in the City in which the latter had described his own son’s improved manners and general behaviour since sending him to Aldenham; his name was Flatt, I think, although it could have been Pratt.
At all events, some while later my parents took me to Aldenham one day to look over the School. All I can remember of this is our meeting with Sam Cox, who was to be my Housemaster when I eventually came to the School as a new boy some while later – to the chagrin of one of the masters at Whitgift, Mr Claude Lowing, who taught me rugger and pleaded with my father not to take me away from Whitgift as he felt I had great potential as a rugger player. (I doubt if he would have been proved right, but it was a flattering note on which to leave Whitgift to go to a soccer school!).
To be a new boy at Aldenham in those days was a fairly daunting experience, although it was probably not so much so as at the more established and larger Public Schools like Charterhouse, Rugby and so on. Aldenham had 240 pupils in my day, divided into five Houses – School House: Odds and Evens, Mead’s, Allsop’s and Cox’s. Dress was (I think) black jackets and dark grey trousers on weekdays (but black stripped trousers on Sundays) white shirts with stiff collars and black ties. As a new boy you had to keep all three buttons done up on your jacket the first term, but I seem to remember you were permitted to keep one undone your second term and two your third term. Whether or not this seemingly ridiculous piece of protocol was laid down by the masters or by senior pupils, I never knew, but it was rigorously employed and to fail to observe it was known as ‘plussing’, which brought down on you the wrath of boys who were no longer ‘new boys’. On Sundays and when going out we wore straw hats (Boaters).
Living conditions were suitably Spartan, we slept in dormitories of either 12 or 16 (in Cox’s House that is, and I think that was the right number of beds) with basins, one per bed on long wooden tables between the rows of beds. Bathrooms and toilets were on the same floor and one was suppose to start the day with a cold bath, but nobody ever did and I do not recall any measures to enforce this practice. ‘Lights out’ in the dormitories was I think at 10.00pm and either the Housemaster or House tutor or Matron would come round later with a torch to check that we were all asleep or trying to be.
The Dining Hall at Cox’s had a top table for staff – and, I seem to remember, Prefects as well – and two long tables with benches. The food was adequate in volume but for the most part thoroughly unappetising. Bread (and butter?) was provided but you had to provide jam, or whatever you wanted to go with it, yourself. The main meal was midday, with some sort of high tea between games and prep, and a cup of cocoa after prep and before going up to bed – after brief prayers in the Common Room.
At one end of the two long tables sat the House tutor (Mr Roach) or the Matron, Miss Stokes (known as ‘Stoker’ to the boys) a rather charmless middle-aged lady. You moved up one place on the benches each day so that each in turn had the dubious pleasure of sitting and making conversation with ‘Stoker’.
One pleasing and distinctive feature of the Dining Hall, where the food was served by maids (unpleasantly called ‘skivvies’ by us boys) were panels mounted on one wall showing the initials and names of previous and current members of the House, term by term. Sadly I have never been back to see if my name, at that time ‘ J D Taylor’ is still there!
The working day started with a brief service in the Chapel, where we had two full-length services on Sundays. As a result I still do not need a prayer book in church for the Venite, Benedicite, Numc, Dimittis and other permanent features of the Sunday morning service and Evensong, as I soon came to know them by heart.
The classrooms were all grouped around the central School House buildings, separated from Cox’s and Allsop’s Houses by the large cricket pitch. Unlike Whitgift the masters stayed in their own classrooms and the classes came to them, whereas at Whitgift it had been vice versa. Quite a lot of walking was thus involved, and the carrying of books. Lessons were mornings only, with games in the afternoons and then prep, done in the House Common Room, after tea, and supervised by a teacher.
As for games, it was soccer in the Autumn Term, hockey in the Easter Term and cricket in the Summer Term. Fives courts existed between the School House buildings and the soccer and hockey fields beyond and were used throughout the year.
There were no prolonged half term holidays then, just one full day off, I think. In addition, however, there were Exeat Sundays (2 or 3 per term) when your parents could come and collect you (after morning Chapel) and take you out for the day.
Life in the Junior Common Room at Cox’s, where of course you spent most of your time when not in class or playing games, was quite a cheerful place. A portable gramophone was constantly on play, though I do not remember how the records were selected or paid for, just as I do not remember how much pocket money we received, or how this was organised. Magazines could be ordered via an elderly man who came weekly to the School House quadrangle for this purpose. Once a week we were permitted to have a ‘brew up’, at which we gorged on cakes and cereals mixed with condensed milk, etc in the Common Room in lieu of the normal House tea in the Dining Hall.
Cox’s House then was something of an ‘Irish Mafia’, since Sam Cox and his wife were both distinctively Irish and the leading personalities in the Junior Common Room were boys named Clarke and Courtney from Eire (I think) and B H McCorkell From Ulster, an accomplished games player.
The only fellow new boys in my term whose names I recall are R A E Milton (whose death and brilliant war record were recorded in ‘The Aldenhamian’
No. 21 in October 2000, and to whose son Peter (65 - 68) I have subsequently written but without reply), the younger of two brothers named Michell, C W Swordes and St G Sproule. The senior Prefect was J B S Pagden who died years ago but whose son-in-law was in the Foreign Office with me and with whom I am still in touch.
The Headmaster was G A Riding, and the other teachers I recall were
Mr Roach, the Cox’s House tutor who taught me German, the acerbic and unsmiling Fred English, who taught French (and very well too), a
Mr Evans, an excellent teacher of Geography, and the Rev. Snell, the Chaplain, who prepared me for my Confirmation (by the Bishop of St Albans) during my time at Aldenham.
So much for the main body of the recollections; what follows are sundry points which have subsequently occurred to me as being of possible relevance or interest.
Curiously I can remember little of this, even what uniform we wore and how often we paraded, and in general the Corps was a less active feature of life than it had been at Whitgift, where I had been a side-drummer in the very well trained drums and pipe band. At Aldenham the Corps was smaller and (I think) consisted only of kettle drums and bugles. Thanks to my training at Whitgift I was soon made the leading drummer and as such was even selected by the very dedicated and enthusiastic music teacher, Mr Leighton, to play the drums with the professional orchestra he brought down in my last term to give a concert at the School.
There were occasional visits from outside preachers to give the Sunday sermon. Once a term one of these was the Rev. Edgar Bentley, Vicar of a deprived parish in North London with which the School had some kind of pairing arrangement, ‘Eggar Beggars’ sermons were always popular, as his somnolent delivery tended to make one nod off during them.
The Headmaster (Riding) also preached regularly and I still recall vividly one particular one for which he took as his text Psalm 15, which he termed most movingly, I thought - “the gentleman’s Psalm”. I never forgot that, and indeed had the first verse of it engraved on the headstone of my father’s grave – “Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? Who shall rest upon they holy hill ?” – for if ever a man deserved such a citation it was surely my late father.
I also recall one memorable Sunday when the actress Wendy Hiller, then starring in the film “Love on the Dole”, came to the service in Chapel with her brother, who was in School House. They sat at the back, and needless to say all the boys turned round to gape at them throughout.
This certainly impacted upon the ability of some parents to cope with school fees, and my own parents had to make economies to keep me at Aldenham. I remember at least two cases of boys who had to leave because their parents could no longer manage the fees.