RHYS CLIFT

Rhys Clift (above age 11 andbelow at age 18 in 1976) is anEnglish solicitor based inLondon, specialising inmaritime law and marineinsurance.He attended WellingtonBoys’ Grammar Schoolbetween 1969 and 1976 andgraduated in law (fromAberystwyth University) in1979. He has been a partner withHill Dickinson LLP inLondon since 1989.

© Rhys Clift, 2017

Wellington Boys’ GrammarSchool (WBGS) openedin 1940.

It had been built on agriculturalland off Golf Links Lane inWellington, Shropshire (now partof the conurbation of Telford),having moved from a siteoriginally shared with the Girls’High School (WGHS) on KingStreet, at which time one half of thepremises comprised WellingtonBoys’ High School. Boys and girls,were segragated, a situationreflected in mutual antagonismbetween the two head teachers.

Strictly, the Boys’ GrammarSchool came to an end in May 1974.

There was then a joint Boys’ andGirls’ Grammar school ‘run-off’(for First to Fifth year pupils) onthe Golf Links Lane site, whichsubsequently continued as ErcallWood Technology College (EWTC)and operated there for about 35years.

The first year of my Sixth Form(1974/75) was on the original site; afew girls were admitted. Thesecond year, Upper Sixth(1975/76), was at the formerWGHS where boys and girlscombined to constitute a SixthForm College under the name NewCollege, Telford.

A small reunion (or site visit) forWBGS Old Boys was held at theGolf Links Lane school in July 2014,shortly before the old buildingswere demolished to clear theground for replacement premisesand sports grounds for EWTC anda number of small housing estates.

The history of schooling inWellington makes a fascinatingread.

Looking back fifty years (to1969) I was about to enter WBGS.Looking back a further fifty years

(to 1916) the picture is quitedifferent.

And a further fifty years (1866)the educational landscape iscompletely unrecognisable withaccounts of ‘gutter children’ andchildren withdrawn from school inwinter or removed at fourteen, sothat their incomes couldsupplement strained householdbudgets. See: h t t p : / / w w w . b r i t i s h -history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol11/pp245-251

Enormous strides have beenmade to spread knowledgethroughout the population … andin the latter years without regard tothe ability to pay.

Shortly before I went to WBGSin 1969, the UK embarked on thepath of joining the EEC (EU);grammar schools were beingphased out at the same time (apolicy then shared by bothConservative and Labour Parties).

The UK is now on the verge ofleaving the EU (about which thereis still a huge legal and politicaldebate, and now a parallel debateabout membership of the EuropeanEconomic Area, previously theEuropean Free Trade Association)and there has been talk ofexpanding the number of grammarschools … a curious turn of events.

It is forty years this year since Ileft the grammar school, and nearlyhalf a century since I first wentthere, which gives pause forthought. Temporal and physicaldistance lends perspective.

This article focusses on the finaldays of WBGS, in particular 1969 to1974, and touches on aspects ofhistorical and geographicalcontext. In many ways it was anastonishing time; and the schoolwas, in many respects, remarkable.

WELLINGTON BOYS’GRAMMAR SCHOOL

BY RHYS CLIFT

Published March 2017

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THE ORIGINAL BUILDING

I am looking first at the place andthen at the time.

This was the layout of the landand buildings as I remember them,described first as if standing in themiddle of the Quadrangle andlooking north, south, east and west.I also set out the location as iflooking down from the air. Thereare some splendid photographsnow readily accessible at librariesand on the Internet.

The original school buildings,built nearly eighty years ago in1940, were something of anarchitectural gem, beautifullyaligned in a plot that sloped gentlyfrom south to north at the foot ofErcall Hill; largely symmetrical andbuilt around a central quadrangle.

It was probably modelled on acloister; perhaps a subtle referenceto the monasteries that hadpreserved education and learningin much more distant andunsettled times and where, amongother things, Latin was spoken.Indeed, there was somethingmonastic about the place in thatthere was hardly a woman to beseen, particularly in the early years.

Standing in the Quad on thegrass and looking to the north wasa pitched-roof central block,containing the art room with ahuge glass-roof on the northernface, clearly visible in oldphotographs. The glass roof wassheltered from direct sunlight inthe summer by the pitch of theroof, and still flooded with light inthe winter when the sun is at itslowest. It was later tiled over.

On each side of that northernblock were two short flat-roofedsections. When I attended theschool (1969 to 1975), there was astaff room and headmaster's studyto the east and a music room(where Eric Cliffe would rapidlyidentify those who were tone deaf),a tuck shop and a small class roomto the west.

There were roughlysymmetrical entrances either sideof the main block, the eastern setfor use by the headmaster and staffand the western set used by pupils(in earlier times, this situation wasreversed). At break time the boys’

Top: View of the original school from the north-east, 1940s. Centre: View of the school buildings (and allotments) from the south, 1940s.Below: Mid 1960s aerial view showing 1959-1962 extensions and playing fields.

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entrance would be piled knee highwith satchels crammed with books,while we played soccer with atennis ball on the play-groundwhich doubled as staff car park, orspot kick against the wall of thegym.

To the south, backing ontoErcall Hill, one of the cluster of hillsscattered around The Wrekin Hill,was a flat-roofed two-storey artdeco-style block of class rooms. Atthat time the school grounds werenot bounded to the south by theM54 which runs east-west from theM6 towards Shrewsbury.

The external east-west corridorsof the class room block, facinginwards into the Quad on theupper storey, were originally opento the weather. Although they werehardly exposed, they wereenclosed by glass long after I left.

There were symmetrical left-and right-handed open staircasesat the east and west ends of theblock, each end featuring anelegant, two-storey curved tower-like walls with windows. Thesecurved walls faced due south,admitting sunlight into thestairwell all year round. The south-facing classroom windows(effectively all along the back of thebuilding) were from shoulder-height to ceiling, whereas those onthe Quad side were almost floor toceiling in all rooms.

Someone had clearly thoughtvery carefully about theproportions of the building and theuse of light. The doors werepainted dark blue. There weresteps down onto the immaculatelawn which occupied the entirecentre of the Quad with a fewflower beds at the edges. No-onewalked on the grass.

Behind the class room block, tothe south west, were two singlestorey structures initially used ascommon rooms for the Upper andLower Sixth, one later used for Art(which I recall using for Artlessons); to the north-west of thosesmall buildings were cycle racks,behind the hall.

On the eastern side of the Quadwas a two storey pitched-rooflibrary (originally the gymnasium)with an elegant metal spiral

Top: The new Assembly Hall, 1963, which replaced the original hall.Centre: The Engineering Workshop, part of the new Technical block, 1963.Below: Playground and northern side of school buildings, late 1960s.

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staircase and beautiful woodenfloors; crowded bookshelves floorto ceiling and a respectful silence(but with few occupants). Thesports fields were further due east,behind the library and invisiblefrom the Quad.

On the western side of the Quadwas the original pitched-roofassembly hall, the externalstructure almost a mirror image ofthe library though slightly longer,aligned north-south with a stage tothe south, and dining facilities onthe northern side (and kitchens tothe west). This was cleared onelunch time in something of a panicwhen mercury was spilled onto thefloor by some miscreant, anddrained through the floor boardscausing chemistry masters to arrivein great urgency equipped withsulphur.

On the wall at the northern wallof the hall were Honours Boards,although I do not recall any entriesmade on them in my time (and wehad moved buildings anyway bythe time I reached the Upper Sixth).There were also smaller boardsshowing the Captains of particularsports (cricket, rugby, etc.). Theygave a glimpse of a time longpassed; the institution was by 1969

nearly thirty years old. And underthe stage, at the south end of thehall, was what had also been thePrefects Room which was relocatedelsewhere in the late 1950sfollowing complaints aboutbehaviour (such as excessive noisedisrupting music lessonsconducted in the hall, and the smellof cigarette smoke drifting throughfloorboards on the stage).

At one time the kitchensexperimented with reconstitutedpotato, no doubt some ludicrouscost-saving idea, and only worthmentioning here because it bringsto mind ‘For Mash Get Smash’, themost inspired piece of advertisingof the era, with real potatoesmocked by convulsing Martianmarionettes with the voices ofDaleks (the kitchens did notnecessarily use Smash,incidentally). The Martians had thejerky articulation of dementeddescendants of The Flowerpot Men(to which they had a vague passingresemblance, but no Weed, ofcourse), rather than the smooth,faux American glamour ofSupercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray,Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet inwhich the main heroes seemed tohave the look of James Garner orSean Connery. CGI had not evenbeen imagined at that time.

In the centre of the Quad stooda white geometric statue inlimestone (not Henry Moore orBarbara Hepworth but rather by astudent in the 1960s) standingabout six or eight feet tall, made ina series of horizontal blocks,isolated and untouched in themanicured lawn. As I recall, theUpper Sixth (when I was in mySecond or Third Year) removed itby some means after A Levels.Quite how, and where to, and howit was recovered was neverexplained but, at the start of thenew term, there it was.

Photographs taken from the airin the 1940s and 1950s show thatthe configuration of schoolbuildings remained the same foralmost thirty years; the picturesstill breathe elegance, newness andoptimism. It is particularly strikinghow open the site seems.

Top: Captain of Cricket board which hung in the original Assembly Hall.Centre and bottom: corridors on the southern side of the Quad facing northwards,2014. All sides of the quad were open to the elements until the school became ErcallWood Technology College, presumably because post-Grammar children were lesshardy. The original Assembly Hall/Dining Room can be seen (centre right) from theupper floor corridor in the bottom photo.

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THE EXPANSION

There then followed majorextensions due east of the originalbuildings, disrupting thearchitectural harmony of theoriginal but providing functionaland essential amenities for anincreasing intake and improvedfacilities for sports and subjectsassociated with science andtechnology.

First, to the east, behind thelibrary was a new small enclosedgarden with paved pathways andbushes, surrounded by a twostorey maths block to the south (atleast one room set up theatre style)and a two storey science block tothe east, always with a faint whiffof Bunsen burner gas (out of theupper windows of which (Biology)one in my year was ‘suspended’ byhis ankles).

There was then due south asingle storey science classroom(used for Physics, which bringsback sharp memories of the Vander Graf Generator and modestwater battles over the ripple tanks);a technical block further south (inwhich was made a splendidworking man-sized hovercraft, thatlater glided over what remained ofthe eastern sports fields) and amuch larger new hall to the north,aligned east-west, with the stagedue east and an elevated sectionthe full length on the south side, onwhich sat a full sized grand piano.

On one occasion, someone witha shaven head was summarilyejected from assembly in that hall

Right, top: Construction work on the newAssembly Hall and Gymnasium (in thebackground). On the right is an entranceto the new Science block, 1962.Centre: Building work on new classroomsand Technical block, 1962.Bottom: Shropshire Star report, 1973.

A FLOATING SUCCESS

Boys from Wellington GrammarSchool, whose light hovercraft (Atlast2)came second in the Hover Club ofGreat Britain Schools’ HovercraftContest, held in Gloucestershire at theweekend, talk to Mr. RonaldPhilliskirk, industrial regional manager,BP Marketing Ltd.

They are Laurie Cartwell (15),Stephen Woodland (16), GeoffreyFarnham (19) and Mike Liebman (15).

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before proceedings could start andobliged to stay at home until it hadregrown. Judging from where I wassitting, I must have been in theSecond or Third Year at the time; hemust have been in the Fourth orFifth year, so some time in 1970-1972, say.

Shaven heads now grace someof the boardrooms of Britishbusiness but at that time the schoolhad certain standards: short hairwas permitted, perhapsencouraged, a legacy maybe of warand conscription (we were not longout of the era of ‘short back andsides’, a standard instruction tobarbers on Saturdays).

However, shaven heads werenot. Skinheads were the new faceof anarchy, as a DA and winklepickers had long since become oldhat. However, completely baldheads amongst the staff passedwithout comment (well withoutformal comment, let’s say). Onehad an uncanny resemblance toDavros, the head of the Daleks.

Last, there was what seemedlike an enormous new sports hall,aligned north-south, due east of thenew hall, with a zigzag roof, theverticals in glass (on the south side)and the slopes to the north of whatwas probably steel sheets.

It had a full length basket-ballcourt (north-south) and severalbadminton courts painted outlaterally on the floor and was, forsport, superior in every way to theoriginal gymnasium it replaced inthe early 1960s, which wasoriginally the large room on theeastern side of the Quad, whichbecame the library (i.e. opposite theold main hall/dining room).

This development programme,built over part of the upper sportsfields, commenced in 1959 andconcluded in 1962 or thereabouts.You could see it in the architecture.The new buildings were plain andfunctional but not ungenerous and,although in some parts muchlarger, were, in some subtle way,not quite of the same grade as theoriginal. Or is it my imagination?

The work commenced only fiveyears after the ending of ten yearsof post-Second World War foodrationing (in 1954/55). It was

completed just before thecommencement of the latestprogramme of railway cuts,following the publication of DrRichard Beeching’s first report in1963, and shortly after thecommencement of the new trunkroad programme, now motorways,the first of which (M1) opened in1959.

There had, of course, been hugecuts before Beeching but it seemscurious that the task of brutalrationalisation of the rail networkhad been allocated by the Ministerof Transport to the chairman of ICI,a chemicals business.

There are, incidentally,magnificent photographs of thetesting of the E-Type Jaguar on theM1, which was practically empty,in 1961. The E-Type was testedthere to see if it would, indeed, do150 miles per hour, long before the70 mph speed limit was imposed.

Perhaps at this point the schoolhad hit its apogee, in the surge ofoptimism that greeted the start ofthe 1960s, coinciding with thesecond post war baby boom.

This was notwithstanding theeffective post war collapse ofEmpire (most starkly illustrated byindependence for India in 1947),the ominous humiliation in theSuez Crisis in 1956 (a devastatingdemonstration of Britain’s thenmilitary and economic weakness),and the haste to de-colonialise(notably in Africa), substantiallycompleted by the early 1960s; all ofwhich may have influenced thedecision to seek membership of theEEC/EU. Indeed, there wereseveral applications to join duringthe 1960s, which might lend someperspective on the presentintention to leave.

The retractions from Empirewere increasingly obvious (toadults) where I lived in Albrighton,by the military families repatriatedfrom abroad to RAF Cosford,notably from Yemen (Aden) in 1963and Malta in 1974.

Their children were enrolled inAlbrighton County Junior Schoolwhich was built on NewhouseLane in 1952 (four years beforePark Junior, now called WrekinView, opened at North Road in

Wellington in 1956) and which Ifirst attended in 1965.

We watched the eclipse of thesun through tinted glass (just asMacmillan had observed the worldthrough rose-tinted spectacles afew years earlier) when I was stillin the First Year at Albrighton in1965 or 1966.

That school was one of two, theJuniors’, then the Infants’, built inAlbrighton partly to complementthe minute Victorian school (builtin 1856, I believe) which I attendedbetween 1962 and 1965. My motherwas headmistress there in the early1960s.

SPORTS FIELDS

The new extensions constructedbetween 1959 and 1962 at WBGShad been built on part of the sportsfields to the east. There remainedonly a rugby pitch on the higherground behind the Physics lab andTechnical block (aligned north-south), and a football pitch behindthe gym (aligned east-west) wherewe would play Sag or soccer atbreak time (and return somewhatmuddied).

At breaks we went outside,largely whatever the weather (sono opening the classroom doorlocks with a set of dividers, then).

Looking at old photographs andlistening to Old Boys, the sportsfields were created to the north onland previously used as wartimeallotments: a cricket and anotherfootball pitch were first to appeararound 1953, and fenced tenniscourts soon after.

When I attended the school, afirst team soccer pitch lay to thenorth east on this lower lyingground (to the right, standing withyour back to the school) and rugbypitch to the extreme north (deadahead as it were) which I recallbeing water logged (not that itmattered much) up to the gardensof the houses abutting theHolyhead Road.

There was also a soccer pitchimmediately dead ahead due north(abutting the car-park/playgroundlongitudinally), part of whichdoubled as cricket pitch andathletics track in summer, not thatmuch used in my time (at least byme), unless you count vaulting the

(very solid) steeplechase fencesand crashing into the water. Thissoccer pitch was divided from theplayground by a row of trees, akerb and a low fence (really only awhite horizontal bar, rather like anextended scaffold pole) the fulllength of the playground andsupported by short curved-topwooden or concrete posts abouteighteen inches high. This was acomfortable but potentiallyhazardous place to sit.

To the north and west was thelong jump pit and then, over on thefar left, abutting Golf Links Lane, anetted set of black (shale) tenniscourts; again hardly used in mytime for tennis but rather forhockey, and falling into disrepair inthe mid 1970s with the odd tuft ofgrass at the edges. Perhaps this wasan early sign of decline and fall.

This was the configuration ofthe land and buildings when I firstarrived in September 1969.

NUMBERS, TEMPERATURE

AND CURRENCY

In 1969, England had yet to join theEuropean Union (EU, or theEuropean Economic Community(EEC) as it then was). Outdoortemperature was always inFahrenheit, not Centigrade (exceptfor ice).

We also still had at that point abaffling array of numbers andmeasures in multiple differentbases (12 (inches/foot), 14(pounds/stone), 16 (ounces/pound),20 (shillings/pound), 21(shillings/guinea)). We had (or hadhad) farthings, groats, pennies,threepenny bits, shillings,sixpences, florins, half crowns,crowns, pounds, guineas, inches,feet, yards, chains, poles, perches,rods, furlongs, miles, acres, ounces,pounds, stones, hundredweights,tons, gills, cups, pints, quarts,gallons. Perhaps this was why wechanted times tables up to 12 but, ifso, why not 14 and 16 at least?

In the period up to 1969 when Isang solos (usually Oh, for the wingsof a dove) at Albrighton church(built in beautiful Shropshiresandstone and already nearly 800years old) when married coupleswere signing the register after theceremony, I would be paid one

crown in a velvet box. Crownswere, strictly, no longer legaltender. That church was originallybuilt a few years before Richard theLionheart came to the throne in1189 (in other words, before TimeImmemorial), with further worksin the nineteenth century. For thefirst 400 years it must have beenringing to the Latin mass.

It is curious how the move tometrication has become conflatedwith membership of the EU in thepublic mind. In fact, proposals tometricate weights and measures inthe UK were initially whollyunrelated to membership of theEEC/EU, going back to 1862.

This was part of the Victorianurge to systematise and rationalisewhich touched not only numbersand counting but also on thestructure of courts (in the greatJudicature Acts), on thefoundations of legal commerce (inthe laws regulating the sale ofgoods, bills of exchange and,latterly, insurance) and on the rulebooks of multiple sports (includingbadminton, tennis, cricket, rugbyand football).

Finally, after a struggle of onehundred years and shortly before Iwent to the Grammar School,

around 1965 the Board of Tradedecided to metricate by 1975, aboutthe time I was due to leave school.A Metrication Board was set dulyup in 1968; before accession to theEEC.

The UK then finally joined theEEC in 1973, previous applicationsin 1963 and 1967 having beenvetoed by France. Some sort offormal commitment to metricateweights and measures wascertainly made then, on joining.Metrication was to be taught inschools from 1974.

But the subsequent process wasmuddled and slow. As a result,those from my era can probablyvisualise weights and measures farmore easily in imperial rather thanmetric units (and, for that matter,outdoor temperatures inFahrenheit, not Centigrade).Decades later there were stillprosecutions threatened in the UKfor those who wanted to sellbananas (it would be bananas, ofcourse, straight or otherwise)solely by the pound, as some sort ofprotest against creeping Europeanintegration.

As to decimalisation of thecurrency, the UK was also a lateconvert although proposals to

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An aerial view of the Grammar School grounds bounded by Ercall Hill in thedistance at top centre, with Holyhead Road traversing from bottom to centre right.Golf Links Lane runs left off Holyhead Road towards Ercall Hill. School ground isshaded and shows the extent of playing fields. The photograph was taken in theSpring of 1966, some seven years before work began on constructing the M54 whichhad a devastating (some would say welcome) effect on the Junior Cross Countryroute as the motorway cut through the northern foothill of Ercall Hill.

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decimalise went back to the 1820s.The UK finally converted todecimal currency on 15th February1971. By way of contrast, Russiaintroduced decimal currency in1704, the USA in 1792, France in1795 (as part of the earlierNapoleonic fervour to moderniseand rationalise), Sweden in 1855and Austria-Hungary in 1857.

RULES, HOUSES AND LANGUAGE

Life at school was, even by my timein 1969, still modelled on a minorpublic school, presumably the idealwhen it was first built but withperhaps less overt emphasis in thecurriculum on sport. We had justone period (about twenty minutes)of PE in the week and an afternoonof sport on Wednesdays.

It was a different world:uniforms, a full sports kit, and fourhouses to instil some competition(Ercall, Lawrence, Maddocks andWrekin, named after nearby hills).In winter, often when the pitcheswere too icy or waterlogged to use(the northern parts had previouslybeen wartime allotments) wewould shiver in striped house vests(yellow, green, blue, red) runningcross-country, around the edge ofthe pitches, gasping up Ercall Hill,through the mud, trees and rock-strewn paths on the hills, alongLimekiln Lane then back along theHolyhead Road, usually in the rain.

The Holyhead Road was part ofthe ancient Watling Street, so wewere running along the route usedby Roman legionnaires 2,000 yearspreviously (which certainly did notoccur to me at the time). Rugbywas compulsory, at least in the firstfew years I was there, butsomewhat withered away in lateryears.

Incidentally, we had the samesystem of Houses in junior schoolat Albrighton County Junior:(Admiral) Rodney, (Sir Philip)Sidney, (Charles) Darwin and Clive(of India). It certainly neveroccurred to me that any of thesemight be a real person; looking at itnow they were a curious grouping.

At WBGS there was a strict rulebook, to be signed by pupils (I stillhave mine somewhere, thoughsome of the stricter rules perhapshonoured in the breach), a school

badge, blue blazer, cap and tie(both of mine have been eaten bymoths) and Latin (at least for thosewhose misfortune it was to ‘pass’the linguistics test which I have avague recollection of sitting).

There was also a motto (above)inevitably in Latin, extracted fromthe poem De Rerum Natura byRoman poet Lucretius(c.99BC–55BC). It means, ‘Likerunners, they pass on the torch oflife’.

There was no Greek, althoughone of my contemporaries canrecall being offered the opportunityto study Greek. Like most, I wasthen oblivious to the manythousands of Greek words thatpopulate or contribute to theenormous modern Englishvocabulary, with its complexetymology (quite apart from thecatalogue of neologisms and theexpansion of the language through‘linguistic miscegenation’). Notsurprising for such a group ofPhilistines, as we were. There wasno easy path to Greats at Oxbridgefrom WBGS. A view had taken rootat that time that there was little tobe gained in the study of ‘deadlanguages’. How wrong we were.

Those who ‘failed’ thelinguistics test (if, indeed, they did)were ‘relegated’ to German, whichmight well have proved far moreuseful in later life. Even in 1969there was still some antipathytowards the Germans, real orotherwise, nearly twenty-five yearsafter the Second World War ended.

As I recall, comics such asTopper, Hotspur, Beano, Hornet andDandy were full of war stories. Thisincluded Second World Warstories, such as I Flew with Braddockand, incredibly, First World War

stories with Tommys wearingmud-encrusted khaki outfits, theircalves wrapped in puttees. Becauseof them, many schoolboys had asmattering of German; for example‘Achtung!’ and ‘Hände hoch!’ (andjust a few more words, unlikely tobe useful in German lessons, nor inmodern business for that matter),but that was about it.

But who knows? Latin mayhave been a pre-requisite for entryinto the legal profession, part of thearcana of Law, but I didn’t need itin 1981 when I entered theprofession. One year’s Latin leftmost with only ‘amo’ (a source ofhuge amusement to many), ‘amas,amat, amamus, amatis, amant’ toshow for it, which we had learnedby rote (incantation by rote reallyworks, as times tables prove); and avague recollection of not onlyconjugating verbs (whollyunrecognised by most of us in ourlearning of English grammar) butalso declining nouns (something ofa novelty: nominative, vocative,accusative, genitive, dative andablative have really stuck in mymind).

Those who managed two yearscould regale others withincomprehensible insults(‘sordidus senex’ comes to mind)and perhaps a stock phrase such as‘radix malorum est cupiditas’;although on reflection that wasfrom Chaucer (and from the KingJames version of The Bible). Whowould think that such would befixed in the memory?

The Prologue was dull andimpenetrable, but for some reasonthere was quite a bit of interest inThe Wife of Bath, even for those ofno academic inclination. What I doremember is that, on account of hispassing resemblance to 1950s popsinger Adam Faith, the gentle andscholarly Latin master Ray Hortonwas nicknamed Adam.

Talking of Chaucer and wherethe pilgrimage of The CanterburyTales begins, I now pass SouthwalkCathedral every day, with aglimpse of the roof from theVictorian viaduct at LondonBridge. One can imagine thepilgrims gathering below.

ENTRANCE, COMPETITION

AND STREAMING

I think we were streamed at thepoint of entry into WBGS, but thiswasn’t the case for newcomers inearlier years. First years weredivided into Forms 1X, 1Y and 1Z,although I don’t recall academiccompetition as such. Whichevernamed stream you were allocatedto on entry, you stayed there for 5years. I entered in 1Y, by whichtime my brother was in 3X; I’llleave you to guess how the systemworked; although we were laterstreamed by results, but only forsome subjects (certainly for Mathsbut not, from memory, Chemistryand Physics).

For my year, original streamingon entry at 11, may have been doneaccording to pass mark in the 11-Plus taken, without coaching orpreparation (nor, perhaps, muchinkling of how important it was) inthe last year at junior school. In mycase this was at Albrighton CountyJunior School in the spring of 1969,a little while before we had made apapier maché model of CaernarfonCastle, situated on the south side ofthe Menai Straits, to mark theinvestiture of the Prince of Wales inJuly of that year.

I can remember the day of thetest vividly: small desks originallyset in pairs were simply separatedinto lines of single desks facing thefront. I think that there were aboutforty in the class. There was amagnificent elm tree in the schoolgrounds, on a ridge outside thewindows to the left (now longgone), many years before thedevastation of Dutch elm disease.

At that time, classes were stilloversubscribed by the post-warbaby boom which had led to afrenzied scramble to build a newschool on Shaw Lane inAlbrighton, backing onto therailway line, after the planning orvaluation battle between the localauthority and the then nationalisedGas Board.

The old grey and rustedgasometer, a feature in manyvillages, towns and cities at thetime before coal gas was replacedby North Sea gas (which in turn isnow being progressively replaced

by Liquid Natural Gas importedfrom Qatar, Algeria and Nigeria),sat on the land immediatelyadjacent to the railway, also thennationalised. To protesting adults (Iwas blissfully unaware of it at thetime) there was incomprehensionthat two (or perhaps three)nationalised bodies could not finda simple solution to the need forbuilding land. The problem waseven raised in Parliament, as aquick look in Hansard will attest(August 1965); quite remarkablefor a village with a population ofjust 4,000.

In fact, the village had grownsubstantially in two recent phases:firstly, because of the building ofthe adjacent Cosford airbase whichopened in 1938 (immediatelybefore the outbreak of war) andsecondly in the construction of theBushfields estate in 1959-1962 orthereabouts. What was particularlynoticeable in the 1960s and 1970swas that there were (or seemed tobe) children everywhere. And,given the pressure on school placesat the time, this was real, notimagined.

After the 11-Plus results, thosewho had passed were solemnlygathered in the office of theheadmaster, Ron Mathias (whowith his wife Gwen was a stalwartof the local Gilbert & SullivanSociety; my father was in ThePirates of Penzance), who advised ofour good fortune. I can rememberstanding there, and can rememberhis face, although nothing ofexactly what was said; but we werecertainly told not to make a fussabout it.

OLD BOYS

There were about 600 boys in totalin WBGS while I was there(including Sixth Form) and, if Irecall well, the mysterious FifthRemove (possibly the ‘victims’ ofthe increase in the school leavingage from 15 to 16 in September1972 but more likely unfortunatesrequired to retake failedexaminations). So, in 34 years (1940to 1974, say), with SchoolCertificates followed by HigherSchool Certificates at 16 and 18(and, later O, A and Special Levels

at the same ages), some threethousand boys must have passedthrough the school, a fair numberof whom must still be alive.

But, quite unlike ex-pupils ofthe Girls High School, who havetheir own separate association,there is no longer an ‘OldWellingtonians’ – the name of theformer WBGS Old BoysAssociation; perhaps we are simplytoo far scattered to the breeze?

TRAVEL TO SCHOOL

I left WBGS 40 years ago this year,but many memories are sharp andclear. For a period, a small flood ofpupils (like me) took the train duewest from Albrighton (the mosteasterly village in Shropshire), thenCosford, Shifnal, Oakengates, NewHadley Halt (almost a bareassembly of railway sleepersconstructed on overgrown wasteland adjoining the line, with noshelter) into Wellington. This wasalong the line built over 100 yearsearlier (1849). Telford Centralrailway station was notconstructed until years later, in1986, adjacent to the new shoppingcentre previously constructed inwhat seemed to be the middle ofnowhere, not far from theheadquarters of the TelfordDevelopment Corporation atPriorslee.

For some of us, this was earlytraining in commuting. The trainswere also packed with pupils goingdaily to Shifnal, to The BlessedRobert Johnson College, toWellington Secondary Modern andto WGHS; and on one occasion,travelling back towardsWolverhampton (one afternoonafter school), Enoch Powell, M.Pfor Wolverhampton West, sitting inFirst Class. He was a well-knownClassics boffin; he of the infamous1968 Rivers of blood speech, anallusion to Virgil’s Aeneid,unknown to other than a tinyminority at the time I suspect, themajority may simply have takenhim literally.

For five years (1962-1967), thehouse where I originally lived inAlbrighton was close by theembankment bringing the train upthe hill from Cosford going east to

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The quantity and variety of subject matter inphotographs of WBGS varies considerably fromone decade to the next.

Much seems to have depended on eachheadmaster’s perception of what was absolutelynecessary and his attitude towards taking pupilsaway from important lessons, while at the sametime acceding to a greater or lesser degree to thewishes of parents and guardians.

Few photographs from the Boys’ High Schoolperiod at King Street survive (panoramics of thewhole school in 1927 and mid 1930s, forexample).

The 1940s saw the beginning of ‘regular’panoramic photographs ... sometimes they weretaken in adjacent years (as in 1946 and 1947)but there was a tendency towards leaving a gapof a few years: the 1960s saw full-schoolphotographs in 1962 and 1965.

Between 1969 and 1971, probably due toincreased annual intakes, the one-Form-onlyphotograph was reinstated; it had been popularduring the late 1940s and early 1950s but, in

1969/70, such was the size of Forms thatphotographs had to be taken as panoramics, as inthe one for combined First Years below fromMarch 1970.

Thereafter, again probably in view of thegrowth in pupil numbers, 1972 panoramicswere taken for Lower, Middle and Upper Schoolgroups.

The final panoramic taken at WBGS wasthat for 1974/75 (above) showing the combinedWellington Grammar School, which includedboth girls as well as boys.

Joint theatrical performances combining thetalents of WBGS and WGHS students hadoccurred many times from the late 1940s. Somewere operatic (The Gondoliers, 1965),although many were performances ofShakespeare’s plays, always popular with thepaying public. All presented opportunities forpublic aoppearances and undoubtedly boostedconfidence. Right: the cast of the 1972production of Henry V.

COMMEMORATIVE PHOTOGRAPHS

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Wolverhampton. I could hear thesteam trains labouring at night, thenote dropping and the rhythmicpace of the steam being expelledslowing as the trains tackled theincline. These would be freighttrains; steam had been phased outfor passengers from the early1960s.

Later, on journeys to school, wewould take diesel multiple units(DMUs) which must have beennearly new. These wereanonymous and soulless,compared to steam trains whichhave a certain life and vitality yetstill attracted a dedicated group oftrain spotters, gathered at the endof the platforms at Wellington(who feverishly wrote downnumbers in notebooks), severalfrom WBGS.

Off the trains, we would streamthrough Wellington town centre,up Tan Bank, past the record shop(in the window of which for yearssat an unsold Isley Brothers record(Who’s that Lady?), past the cinema,snooker hall and the police station,then up the fenced alley betweenthe houses and the allotments onthe right and up to Holyhead Road.

This was the same alley that wethen ran back down on days thatwe had swimming at the 1910 townbaths, demolished in 1981. Then wecrossed the horrendously busyHolyhead Road (before the M54was constructed) into Golf LinksLane to the school, joshing andjoking, frequently getting soaked inthe rain. The road layout at thesouthern end of the Tan Bank istraversed by part of the 1970s ringroad. Much of the rest is just as itwas.

In the crowd going to schoolone day in Lower Sixth, my groupof friends followed a girl, a recentlyconverted self-avowed bible basher(newly admitted in Lower Sixth)up the alley; we were absolutelystaggered by the range, depth andfilth of her slang. She was taken totask by one, who later became afamous journalist and author: howcould she say such things? ‘It’s myday off,’ she replied, lifting hersnub nose indignantly.

On half days at the start or theend of each new term (or year),

another legacy of the public schoolmodel, we would slink into theimmense, dark snooker hall in ouruniforms and, in my case, shorts (inthe First Year) to play at the tablesbefore wending our way up the hillto school or down the hill to thetrain.

THE STAFF

The headmaster in 1969 was Mr. J.L. Morgan-Jones (the ‘Beak’ or the‘Morg(ue)’), a tall, rather gaunt,dignified, kindly but somehowrather intimidating individual,who wore a black university gownto daily assemblies which alwayshad a religious component. Thetone and atmosphere of the schoolwas set by his personality.

The names of many of the staffare grafted into the memory:

Kenny Cole (who preferred•soccer; (PE),

Webster (who preferred rugby;•(PE),

Powell (Chemistry, and rather•fond of dictation, but left memystified by gram-moles),

Bardsley (Physics), •Bloom (Physics, the magician•

of the Van Der Graaf Generator), Phelps (Biology, not Mission•

Impossible), Williamson (Biology, who•

supervised the famous bullseyeballs test),

Armstrong (Metalwork), •Hughes (Geography, an•

enthusiast of Arthog field trips,when I recall we ran up CadairIdris),

Brown (Geography), •Horton (Latin), •Charles (History), Hartley•

(History), Cliffe (Music, imprisoned by•

the Japanese during WWII), Brown(Chemistry),

Dr Heath (French), •Mrs. Marsden (French), •Frank Arkinstall (French and•

originator of the fabulousexchanges with the Orleans Lycée),

Collins (German, who also•taught Russian to some in the SixthForm),

Pierre Jackaman (French), •‘Kiri’ Kaye (Maths, lethal with•

the blackboard rubber), Francis (English, and always•

the same tweed jacket), Broome (Maths), •Johnson (English), •Ackerley (Economics and Law,•

but new at the start of 1975),Hammond (RE),

Stephenson (who taught•Physics in his first year, but hadjoined as the new Head in about

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1973 to lead the new Sixth FormCollege, New College, Telford)and, of course,

Roger Sykes (English and•History, the highly regardedDeputy Head). To many of thesewe owe a huge debt of gratitude.

Few were known by their realnames, needless to say.

There was a notable change ofatmosphere when Stephenson tookover as head and, in my brother’syear, a prefects’ strike (1973/74);the two were connected in someway, I think.

Maths was not my forte,although I did find myself in theAdvanced Maths group, by someodd quirk of fate, with theawesome Kiri Kaye and driven tounderstand Differentiation andIntegration. Homework was, in myrecollection, relentlessly tough. Ibecame very familiar with theletter E in end of term reports.

Kiri would mark books andthrow them with astonishingaccuracy at each pupil (at abouthead height) the following day,having first shouted out the result.Having ground through one set ofquestions at home and obtained arare, genuine and rather goodresult he threw my book at me withsomething of a theatrical sneer:‘Clift, I see your brother is home forthe weekend’.

Mr. Geography Brown ran thesoccer team (in the Fourth Year) hewould walk round the silent classlooking at books as we worked,occasionally offering comment orconstructive guidance (‘excellent,Griffiths’, he would say). He wouldstop by me: ‘Fit for Saturday, Clift?’he said, ignoring my hopelessdrawing of some unrecognisableescarpment.

FOOTBALL AND GRASS

I can hardly remember England’svictory in the 1966 World Cup but,having won, expectation at schoolwas high for Mexico 1970.Needless to say England lost,eliminated by the Germans (whoelse?).

But that was not the mostmemorable part of thattournament. That was theastonishing ability of the squat,

muscular Brazilian, RobertoRivelino, to bend the flight of theball, especially at free kicks.

At the time, the ball I had athome was a case ball, a leather ballcontaining an inflatable bladder,sealed with a six inch laced seam. Itwould inevitably absorb water. In1969 a size five ball would comehalf way up my shin.

If waterlogged, it was barelypossible to hit the ball hard enoughto lift it off the ground. When dry(or dried out) it could be as hard asstone. When kicked it went deadstraight. It was lethal to head theball and, if you were unlucky, it lefta red welt in the shape of the seamand lace on your forehead.

Little wonder that someprofessional footballers of that era,whose heading of the ball wouldsound like the crack of a cricket ballon willow, now say (or theirrelatives now say) that this hascaused brain damage.

In the first few years of WBGS Iplayed not only for the school (thatyear group had a strong team) butalso for Hartshill Park Rangers (asthey were then called) inOakengates. The coach used to drythe ball out in the oven in hiskitchen before games. As a result itwas hard as a pebble at the startand waterlogged later while wechurned through the usualquagmire.

All pitches we played on weremud-baths by mid-season (some atthe start of the season), as were thepitches of First Division teams andWembley. The 1969 League CupFinal was one where the pitch waseffectively a ploughed field, theappalling playing surface blamedon the fact that the Horse of theYear Show had been held there justone week earlier; incredible.Imagine dressage or, worse, show-jumping at Stamford Bridge today.

I played one game where I recallchipping the goalkeeper only forthe ball to fall in the muddy poolbehind him and stop dead beforecrossing the line. Typical of clubfootball maybe, but the samequality of pitch could be seeneverywhere in professionalleagues.

The game has been transformed

beyond recognition, probably bylightening the ball, making itwaterproof, including a wholerange of plastic and foamtechnology and converting thepitches to the condition ofmanicured lawns. When strucknow, the ball will not only curvepredictably but also seem to dipand swerve unpredictably like aballoon, and skim across theperfect surface like a stoneskimmed on water.

And the ball struck by Rivelinowas not the historical pebble butthe new Adidas Telstar (namedafter the satellites) first introducedfor the 1970 World Cup; there wascertainly strength, art and skill inabundance, but the underlyingchange was scientific.

COMPUTERS AND CONNECTIVITY

As to computers, at school in 1969and indeed up to 1974 there werenone. It is now said that thecomputing power of an iPhone 6 isgreater than all the computingpower available to NASA in theApollo11 project which put a manon the moon in 1969; the hardwaresuperior to the Apollo GuidanceComputer designed by MIT, usingbuilt in code operated using acompiler called Luminary(apparently).

But it was not just a matter ofcomputing power; it was the rocketpower that launched Apollo 11 intothe atmosphere and beyond. I donot recall that it was ever discussedat the time that NASA waslaunching Apollo 11 with theSaturn V rocket developed with theknowledge and expertise of Wernervon Braun and his team; the sameteam who had designed V2 rocketsat Peenemunde which had rainedhavoc on London in 1944. Theywere captured by the Americans atthe end of the Second World War inOperation Paperclip.

The Russians captured anotherpart of the team and a large part ofthe equipment. I am not sure thatthis was well known in the UK orat least not much discussed untilTom Bower’s expose in 1987, butall the Allies were seeking tocapture German technology.

Modern computing power

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would have seemed impossible tobelieve in 1969. At WBGS we sawthe first primitive hand calculatorsthat could add, subtract, multiplyand divide, but nothing else. Usingcalculators in exams would havebeen treated as cheating; modernopen book exams would have beenconsidered bizarre.

We had slide rules for Maths(for, I am told, roots, logarithmsand trigonometry). These weremade obsolete by the first handheld scientific electronic calculatorsin 1972. We also had Napier’sBones (designed by John Napierabout 400 hundred years ago andused for similar purposes to sliderules). My brother made a set but Icannot ever remember using them.These would be practicallyunrecognisable to a modern eye.

I visited my brother atManchester University in 1974. Atthat time Manchester had one ofthe very few supercomputers in theUK. I went with him to see it. It wasvast, filling a whole room; andnoisy. Looking back, I see that thevery first Computer Sciencestudents were admitted byManchester in 1968, shortly before Iwent to the grammar school. One

can now carry more computingpower around in a pocket.

And as to phones andtelecommunications, the change isequally stunning. When myparents moved house in 1967, eventhough we remained in the samevillage and wanted to keep thesame number, they were obliged towait six weeks for a line to beinstalled and a grey-green circulardial telephone delivered. Not muchhad changed by 1969. Unthinkabletoday when one can order aSamsung 7 Edge for deliveryovernight by courier. However, ingetting the new line we no longerhad to share it with our next doorneighbours. Party lines at that timewere still quite common. Whowould share today?

The capacities of the iPhone 6would, in 1969, have seemed asimprobable as the handheldcommunicators seen on Star Trek,first shown on BBC in July 1969.Star Trek was a mythologicalconcept, each programmesomething of a morality play, withcardboard sets, generally a poorscript (‘It’s life, Jim, but not as weknow it’) and concluding withsome quaint homily or worn outcliché, but absolutely compellingnonetheless. This is what filled ourTV viewing, along with such gemsas The Magic Roundabout, a Frenchchildren’s programme created bySerge Danot which, whenconverted (rather than translated)into English, attracted a huge adultcult following, just before the SixO’clock News. My father was adevotee.

The prevalence of mobilephones has utterly changed society.One of the great advantages of nothaving a mobile phone when I wasat WBGS was that no one knewwhere you were at any given timeand no one fretted about it. No onewalked in the street reading theirphone. No one played a tastelessring tone at 100 decibels. No onelistened to tuneless music, playedat full volume. No one could hearjust the bass line or drums ‘leaking’from headphones without the‘pleasure’ of the rest of the band,the melody, the voice and thewords.

We can now access, at the touchof a button, knowledge previouslylocked up in dusty tomes or piles ofunread scientific journals. We caneven look at the Dead Sea Scrollson line; the arcane has becomefreely accessible. Perhaps it is nolonger a matter of learning much atschool (and fixing it in the mindlearning by rote, chanting tables,reciting conjugations, memorisingformulae) but rather learningwhere and how to findinformation, on line.

But perhaps we are also nowliving precisely the dystopiannightmare predicted by AlvinToffler in Future Shock (1970),where inanities can be re-tweeted,frenetically, into the ether and themost unpleasant cyber bullyingsent invisibly across a classroomwithout the need to throw a rubber,pencil or punch. The existence ofmobile phones has also made theplots of thrillers incomprehensibleand taken the bite out of isolationas a literary device, precisely themechanism artificially engineeredand then resolved in manyepisodes of Star Trek.

The disadvantage of the lack ofmobile phones is also obvious, theinability to contact anyone if youwanted to unless at home in ahouse that had a phone (and manydid not), or unless you could find ared phone box that had not beenvandalised, and had the right coinsto make it work.

The iconic red phone boxes,incidentally, were designed by SirGiles Gilbert Scott in the 1920s,grandson of Sir George GilbertScott who designed the AlbertMemorial and the magnificentMidland Hotel at St Pancras Station(a masterpiece of Victorian neo-gothic later refurbished with thestation a vast expense as the newterminus of Eurostar). Perhapsthese two were an illustration ofthe theory that genius might run infamilies. Design of genius or not,the routine experience with theblack phone in the red box wouldbe bent coins, or whatever, stuck inthe slot making it impossible to getthe coins to drop for a call bypressing button A, or to get thecash back by pressing button B.

Harry Parr had been a gifted pupil atWBGS who courageously fought acrippling illness which resulted in hispremature death in December 1971.

A Memorial Cup was awarded tothe Sixth Former who made asignificant contribution to the life ofthe Senior school. The first recipient,seen receiving the trophy in June1973 from Headmaster RobertStephenson and Latin master RayHorton, was Geoffrey Farnham.

Even if there was a phone, it mightnot work and you were on yourown.

THE ATMOSPHERE IN SCHOOL

AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Single sex grammar schools were(at least between 1969 and 1974)the accepted model, if WBGS wasany indication.

Some recall that there was,perhaps, a hidden undercurrent ofthuggery, but I saw hardly any signof physical bullying. Although, inretrospect, some people werewincingly cruel, verbally, toanyone who was small, weedy,didn’t play sport, liked art,(Classical) music, literature andwas not obviously heterosexual(political correctness was thenunheard of, quite apart from anychange in the law which may sincehave proscribed such behaviour).Participation in sport, andmembership of school soccerteams, granted some sort ofimmunity.

For the most part, theatmosphere was (at least on schoolgrounds) reasonably respectful and(self) disciplined, in a somewhatrelaxed way, if you discount thethrowing of bulls’ eyeballs at theblackboard in History (brought infor weight testing (don’t ask) inBiology – they would stick to theblackboard and slide downslowly); the mercury incident; thewindow hanging; fags (cigarettes)behind the gym; the disappearingstatue; the heavy wood-and-feltblackboard rubber that would hitthe odd chest in an explosion ofchalk (and the skull of a fellowcommuter in my year with a dullthud); and the odd thick earadministered in History to onewith a spectacular cascade of curls(who is now a train driver, if he hasnot retired, and was then a greatmotorbike mechanic; we used todrive his ancient BSA 250 and AJS350 round the deserted railwayssidings in Albrighton). True, insome lessons there was relativechaos but there were relatively fewfights.

It was the era of platform shoes(for boys), Ben Sherman shirts,cheese cloth shirts, tank tops,

penny round collars, Doc Martens,Oxford bags, huge ghastly trouserswith side pockets and six buttonwaists, long hair, centre partings,the scent of Brut (‘Splash it on allover’, said Henry Cooper) and thesound of T Rex, The Eagles (One ofthese Nights), Motown, Cat Stevens,Jethro Tull (Acqualung), CreedenceClearwater Revival (Proud Mary),Roberta Flack, Stevie Wonder,Lindisfarne (Lady Eleanor), MarvinGaye (Grapevine), Diana Ross,James Taylor, Mud, The Sweet,David Bowie (Jean Genie), Cream,Blind Faith and the first emergenceof Elton John (Your Song); few ofwhich were seen (or heard) inschool; and just before the dreadfulcacophony of Punk Rock.

In a sense, my time there beganwith the end of the optimism of the1960s (we were not of theWoodstock generation),immediately after the so-calledYear of Revolutions, theassassination of Bobby Kennedyand the explosion of the Troubles inNorthern Ireland (all in 1968); theBeatles split, the convulsions of theprogressive dismemberment ofheavy industry and massemployment (shipyards, mines,railways, steelworks), the 1972dock strike (the consequence ofcontainerisation), endless otherstrikes, the 1973 OPEC crisis (thefirst major peace-time shock at theloss of cheap power, which hadbeen the foundation of theIndustrial Revolution, lateralleviated by the discovery ofNorth Sea Oil), the shock oframpant inflation triggered by thatcrisis, power cuts and the three dayweek in the miners’ strike (longbefore the 1984 Battle of Orgreave),homework by candle light (nearly100 years after Edison invented theelectric light bulb), the shock ofelimination by Poland from the1974 World Cup (after the drama ofMexico 1970 and the arrest ofBobby Moore), the slow-motion carcrash of the car industry; laterplunging into the Winter ofDiscontent in 1978, following thehumiliation of the IMF bailout.

At home, there was a catalogueof IRA bombs on the Britishmainland. Abroad, there was the

Munich Massacre (1972), theexpulsion of the Ugandan Asians(1972), the Six Days War (1973), theassassination of Salvador Allende(1973), and the invasion of Cyprus(1974). But for the most part wehardly noticed domestic or foreignproblems. We were having a greattime: the heedlessness of youth.

Indeed, things we may forget inadulthood are the huge exuberanceand joy of youth, particularly in thepleasure of jokes (heard for the firsttime). We would laugh until ourribs ached and we couldn’t breathe.We also forget the staggeringstrength, vitality and optimism ofyouth. We could shin up treeswithout difficulty (my brother usedto hang in the dangerous upperbranches on Kingswood Common)and easily pull ourselves up ontothe garage roof at home to recovera shuttlecock or tennis ball. Wewalked, ran and cycledeverywhere. Few, if any, wereferried to school or to sportsevents. We found our own way.

It was obviously a time ofconsiderable industrial unrest.With frequent strikes, trade unionleaders were often on the eveningnews and seemed to go in and outof 10 Downing Street with whatnow seems astonishing regularity.One such was Len Murray, an OldBoy of WBGS, born in Hadley to asingle mother in 1922 (whichprobably carried quite a stigma atthat time).

He took part in the D-Daylandings, was injured andinvalided out. He was a man ofvery considerable ability; he laterwent up to Oxford to readPhilosophy, Politics andEconomics, something about whichhe said very little in the mid 1970swhen, for the most part, tradeunion leaders spoke with strongregional accents (think DerekRobinson at the height of theBritish Leyland strikes), while BBCreporters spoke in ReceivedPronunciation (RP; about 3% of thepopulation spoke in RP in 1974).Listening now to the narrators onListen With Mother, Watch WithMother or Andy Pandy, the piercingtones and strangled vowels weheard in childhood would be hard

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to believe. RP has since somewhatevolved into so-called EstuaryEnglish, which would have beenridiculed at WBGS in 1969.

Indeed, there has been a hugechange in pronunciation since theend of the 1960s, as is apparenteven in The Queen’s ChristmasAddress. And, going further backto 1945 (almost to the building ofthe school), the language is almostunrecognisable. For example, CeliaJohnson and Trevor Howard inBrief Encounter: did anyone everreally speak like that? There wascertainly no elocution at WBGS.

MILITARY CONFLICT, WAR

AND CONSCRIPTION

The twentieth century was also aperiod of widespread militaryconflict, and of conscription in theUK for much of the duration of theFirst and Second World Wars. But itlasted far longer than that.Conscription initially for theSecond World War continued rightup until 1960, and conscriptsserved until 1963, including in theCyprus emergency (EOKA and thestruggle for enosis), at Suez, inKenya, in Malaya and, perhapsmore controversially, in Korea.

Throughout my time in WBGS,the war grumbled on in Vietnam.Colour TV was almost completelyimplemented for BBC1 and BBC2by 1969 (although at home wewatched the moon landing on asmall, portable, grainy black andwhite TV in the summer of 1969).By 1969 the horror of Vietnam wasthere in colour on the news for all

to see (the first news of thenotorious 1968 My Lai massacreemerged in late 1969).

Going backwards and forwardson the train, attending school orwatching the news at night,Vietnam seemed distant andalmost an irrelevance to us. We didnot realise at the time that theWilson Government hadapparently resisted the manydemands and entreaties of the USGovernment for armed support(whereas New Zealand andAustralia had complied, just asthey had for the Korean War). Mycontemporaries and I mightotherwise have been eligible forconscription to fight in the mud ofVietnam, bombed into a quagmire,its foliage stripped by AgentOrange.

In the event, US direct militaryinvolvement ended in 1973, thewar only finally ending in 1975(twenty years after the defeat of theFrench in what was then calledIndo-China). This latter phase tookplace against the backdrop ofNixon’s impeachment in theWatergate scandal and, before thatprocess was concluded, hisresignation in August 1974(following his 1973 appearance onUS TV: ‘There can be no whitewashat the White House’).

There were documentaries ofwar on TV, especially All ourYesterdays (shown in black andwhite) and most particularly TheWorld at War (1973/74), in colour.In retrospect, the juxtaposition

between these latter two and thegentle and whimsical Dad’s Army(commencing in 1968) isremarkable.

As to The World at War, theSecond World War seemed distantand somehow unimaginable but in1969 in Albrighton and Wellingtonand, indeed, all over England andWales, many in their forties orfifties (hardly old I would now say)would have fought in that war orlived through it as adults and manymore, of course, as children. Forthem Dad’s Army would have had aparticular resonance. It was almostcertainly true of many staff atschool. And a period of twenty-fiveyears now seems a very long time… but also curiously a short time.

We barged along the ShropshireUnion canal in the summer of 1972,with my parents and French andGerman exchange partners onboard.

We turned west into theLlangollen canal where there was ashort flight of locks and a lockkeeper’s cottage. The lock keeper,who seemed to teenage eyes to bequite ancient but might have beenabout 55, seemed particularlyinterested in our boat for somereason … and suddenly addressedus in perfect, fluent German,directed to our German passenger,Burghart. He was greeted withincomprehension and a stutteringresponse in English, The lockkeeper persisted, several times,and then, finally, in accentedEnglish said: ‘But, my boy, I AM

German’. He had been a GermanPrisoner of War who had decidedto stay in England.

There were many such men allover the UK and in Wellington forwhom the war must have seemedquite close and immediate (in theway that 1990 seems to me now).

The First World War, bycontrast, was impossibly distant,something for museums. Yet intowns and villages all over the UK,certainly in Albrighton and nodoubt in Wellington, there werestill widows who regularly woreblack (and spinsters who had nevermarried). In post-EdwardianEngland, attitudes to mourningwere quite different to those whichprevail today, but still quite strict,even though not quite so rigid andrestrictive as Victorian attitudes.

Rules on wearing black andbeing excluded from society havenow disappeared. In the early1970s, when we walked past themunaware in our school uniforms,they might have been in their mid-seventies or younger, hardly old,some never having married orremarried having lost a husband orsweetheart in the mud and blood ofthe Somme or Passchendaele, morethan fifty years earlier.

I have looked at the statistics:about 380,000 British military menwere killed in the Second WorldWar in contrast to about 880,000 inthe First World War, with adevastating impact on the breedingpopulation. Quite a contrast toabout 1,000 killed in Korea, 750over twenty-one years of theTroubles in Northern Ireland(although, shockingly, more thandouble that number of civilians)and 250 in the Falklands War(1982). It is no surprise that, in the1920s or 1930s, for some there weresimply no men to marry, anastonishing thought now. Instead,their names are engraved in thelong lists of ‘Glorious Dead’ onmemorials up and down thecountry, great long lists inalphabetical order, especially ofbrothers and cousins. And theirbodies buried in huge cemeteriesunder serried ranks of white grave-stones, such as those just off VimyRidge.

By contrast in the 1970s, wehardly ever saw death noranything on that scale. Death wassomewhat hidden away. Certainlywe saw little or nothing of thecatalogue of deaths in childhood,youth and young adulthood thatmy mother’s generation witnessedon the South Wales coalfields;deaths underground and death byillness or injury, when someinoculations were in their relativeinfancy and before thedevelopment of antibiotics. Whendeath did occur in my youth, it wasshocking.

TV: SCIENCE AND ART

Some remarkable TV programmeswere shown on during that period.Civilisation (Kenneth Clark, 1969),the great art anthology and its laterscience companion piece The Ascentof Man (Jacob Bronowski, 1973) aretwo of the most remarkable. I havethe books issued to accompany theseries.

The science writer Nigel Calderalso created a whole series ofprogrammes for the BBC. He madea remarkable contribution towriting about science in anaccessible manner (dying in 2014).The memories of two made in 1972and 1974 are particularly vivid, andboth foreshadowed in New Scientist(of which he was a co-founder).The first (1972) popularised thetheory that the earth was dividedinto large ‘plates’ that movedaround on the surface of the planet,crashing into one another creatingmountains and causingearthquakes and triggeringtsunamis (supported by proof ofocean floor spreading in the early1960s). ‘Plate tectonics’ seemedthen an astonishing if notridiculous idea, but hassubsequently gone through thetypical cycle for the acceptance ofnew ideas: first ignored, thentreated with contempt and hostilityand finally becoming part ofmainstream thinking.

The programme, looking backnow, was transmitted on 16thFebruary 1972. I was fascinated byit. I have the book on which theprogramme was based, transcribedby my father as a gift on 10th

March 1972. It includesphotographs of sandstone inScotland that had clearlyoriginated as an enormous sanddune in some great desert.

The Severn Gorge is cut througha similar antediluvian sand dune ofgreat depth, dating back to theTriassic Period (250 million yearsold). Many of the churches alongthe Severn Valley in that part ofShropshire, for example at thevillages of Albrighton andBeckbury, are also cut from stonemade from a great Triassic desert.The sandstone is a deep dark red,permeated and bound together byiron oxide. It has a particularlyfamiliar smell when wet in the rain.

The second programme wouldnow be considered heretical. In1974, Calder suggested that thedirection of travel in the earth’stemperature was downwards andthat we should be preparing for anew Ice Age. He was (deeply)hostile to the so-called globalwarming consensus, now referredto as climate change. Anyone whohad lived through the winter of1962 might find this entirelycredible.

When I first lived in Albrighton,Humphreston Brook (behind ourhouse) froze so hard you couldwalk all along it, most of the way toDonnington pond. That pond orsmall lake was created by theinstallation of an earthwork damand sluice gate between twochurches. The sluice gate was builtto create a head of water for a millrace down to a mill (long gone)located somewhere nearClockmills (the clock-makingworks also now long gone), shortlybefore the brook merges withCosford Brook to form theheadwater of the wandering RiverWorfe. (The ultimate origin of theWorfe is said to rise at WatlingStreet, just north of Shifnal).

The mill race, then muchovergrown, cut through the edge ofa paddock where I raked hay onehot summer, opposite the landwhere the local football club wassubsequently based. Views of someimpending global freeze might,however, have changed later afterthe long hot dry summer of 1976,

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father was choirmaster, and myfamily and I all sang there in thechoir. At the time, we had no ideathat our connections to the areawere so strong, and so longstanding.

From school, we went onFrench exchanges taking two fulldays by train to get to Orleans atEaster. The older boys playedthree-card brag in thecompartments, my brother smokeda briar pipe charged with BalkanSobranie (just as he did later on thequayside at La Rochelle in a kaftanand sombrero, sipping a Pastis on aschool cruise to Ireland, France,Portugal, Madeira and Morocco in1973).

In a London gym, we sleptovernight on camp beds on metalframes supported by invertedwashing-up bowls, one at eachcorner. Huge crowds of us arrivedlate at night in Orleans, via Fleuryles Aubrais.

Our spending money wasrestricted (or at least noted in ourpassports) because of foreignexchange control (abolished in1979). Just a few years later (1975?)a bare handful of us went toOrleans by plane, to Charles DeGaulle airport, I think, which hadjust opened. The mass Frenchexchanges seemed to haveevaporated.

We also went down by train tothe Science Museum in London in1969. The Kensington museumswere also then still black with thesoot of the Industrial Revolutionand dreadful London smogs ofunrestricted coal-burning fires. Ithought that the Natural HistoryMuseum was black. Only verymuch later, when it was cleaned,did the pink and blue Victorianbricks emerge in all their glory, justlike the yellow bricks of LiverpoolStreet Station.

When I started work in Londonin 1981, that station (built right atthe eastern edge of the old RomanCity) was also black. Taxi cabsdescended into the Stygian gloom,down a ramp at the front originallydesigned for Victorian carriages.

But for the most part we didn’t,through school at least, go five, tenor fifteen miles down the road to

over the Menai Straits, theCaledonian Canal in the Great Glenand St. Katherine’s Dock in London(next to Tower Bridge and close bywhere I have worked for the lastthirty-five years).

Although at the time I suspectwe hardly noticed that we weresitting near the cradle of theIndustrial Revolution. This isperhaps because the canal networklargely to the east had fallen intodecrepitude, filled withsupermarket trolleys, dead dogsand plastic bags which would foulthe prop-shaft (well before thesurge in leisure use, followingpioneers like L.T.C. Rolt); the nowelegant Birmingham Gas StreetBasin was still black with the grimeof the Industrial Revolution.

The Ironbridge Gorge museumat Blists Hill was muddy andempty, except for the modernarchaeology of the blast furnacesbuilt into the hillside and the sadrelic of the Hay Inclined Plane. Thiswas before blast furnaces weretransferred there from Priorslee. Inthe early 1970s, there was little signon Blists Hill of the eclecticgathering of industrial Victorianaand kitsch now located there, stillless had the astonishing collectionof Ironbridge Gorge Museums, ofwhich it is now part, beenrecognised by UNESCO on itsWorld Heritage List.

The List also includes thePontcyscyllte, which opened in1805, by way of context ten yearsbefore the defeat of Napoleon atWaterloo. How were the great castiron troughs raised into place?

I walked the grounds of BlistsHill in the 1970s with my brotherand my father (who had anenduring fascination withindustrial archaeology) and whosepaternal family had moved fromWellington due east to Cannock inthe eighteenth Century. Myfather’s maternal relatives (Wedgesand Griffiths) had also been livingin the villages of Tong, Pattingham,Patshull and Albrighton (all just afew miles east of Wellington) fornearly 300 years when I lived there.

One Wedge was apparentlyeven christened in Albrightonchurch about 170 years before my

which exposed the sad remains offlooded villages at the bottom ofdried out reservoirs.

Perhaps there is now a greaterbody of scientific evidenceavailable. In the early 1970s therewas no discussion of ice cores or ofdendrochronology (Exodus toArthur was not published until1999). Shropshire had a warmtemperate climate, largely cool andwet.

But it was not always that way.Even when the Severn is swollenby roiling brown flood water (andShrewsbury and Tewkesbury areflooded), it does not seem big orpowerful enough to cut the SevernGorge through sandstone. And itwasn’t; the gorge was cut by melt-water from the end of the last IceAge, about 10,000 years ago.

What had previously been agreat desert, just a few miles southof the site of WBGS, was then cutby glaciers and melt-water;probably the ice had advanced andretreated several times. One reasonto go on school field trips to Arthogwas to see Cadair Idris, not the seatof King Arthur but a cwm or corrie,the root of just one of these glaciers.Past extremes make the currentchanges seem insignificant.

TELFORD AND THE

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The period 1969 to 1974 was alsothe beginning of major renewal, ofwhich the M54 was a keycomponent. The TelfordDevelopment Corporation wasestablished in 1968 (just one yearafter Milton Keynes), named afterthe great Scottish engineer ThomasTelford. Telford was appointedsurveyor of public works inShropshire in 1786 when he wasjust 30. His works still grace the Britishlandscape, notably the majesticPontcysyllte aqueduct (thefoundation of his internationalreputation) due north-west on theLlangollen canal, just 40 miles fromWBGS (we took a boat over it withmy father in the summer of 1972),and the huge works built on top ofthe Roman remnants of WatlingStreet up to Anglesey. Among hisother achievements are the bridge

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look at the majesty of our industrialpast in Shropshire. It might havebeen mentioned in school, but if itwas I don’t remember.

We did, however, learn a bitabout Egypt and the Romans, andwe were (vaguely) aware of ruinsof Viroconium, the fourth largesttown in Roman Britain, just sevenmiles west down the road fromWBGS at Wroxeter. Viroconiumwas built on Watling Street, theancient British road improved tosupport the Roman conquest ofBritain, including the destructionof the druid stronghold onAnglesey (Ynys Mon).

Roman soldiers must have beengoing up and down Watling Street(passed the school grounds, visibleperhaps from the top of Ercall Hill),first for consolidating the frontierrunning from Gloucester (Glevum)to Chester (Deva), and later for theinitial attack on Anglesey whichwas rapidly followed by the rushback to the Coventry area to quashBoudicca’s revolt, and thenreturning to complete the finalconquest of Anglesey in 78AD.

By way of context, this wouldhave been at about the same timethat Vespasian and Titus wereconquering Jerusalem (booty fromthe raid on the Temple is carved onthe triumphal arch near the senatein Rome: the Menorah is clearlyvisible).

SECURITY AND OPENNESS

I went back to see WBGS in early2014, one Saturday, to look at the

place before the imminent finalclosure and demolition. In the1970s the school gates, hung onsubstantial brick pillars, werealways open and, even if they werenot, in my recollection the footpathto the left of the gates was alwaysopen. However, by 2014 I wassaddened to see that the groundswere heavily fenced and the gateslocked with a code, perhapsbecause it was by then a buildingsite for the new school.

In 2016 I went to see the site ofthe Infants School at TeaguesBridge in Trench where my motherwas headmistress from 1967 (Ithink) to 1986. Throughout hertime there, the entrance was openwith a drive sweeping down fromthe road, open playing fields oneither side. Now there are the samegreen six- or eight-foot fences that Isaw at WBGS in 2014.

On the school trip to London in1969 we also went to DowningStreet. At that time you could walkalong the street off Whitehall andalmost right up to the door ofnumber 10.

While we were there, a womancame into the street in a cab, got outand threw a tin of baked beans atthe window. It just bounced off.Perhaps the glass was bomb proof?She was promptly arrested.Perhaps that’s why the railingswere installed at the end of thestreet (to the subsequentmisfortune of a Tory Chief Whip?).

THE FOCUS OF STUDIES

Great fortunes had been madeclose by during the IndustrialRevolution, albeit it moved awayas local coal and iron ore wereexhausted or difficult to extract,just as my father’s family moveddue east.

But at school, those who weregenuinely interested in makingthings in wood or metal were (Iwould guess) in the minority. Orperhaps that was just in myexperience. At home, by contrast,my father was an assiduousbuilder and serviced his own cars(a Thames van, a Ford Anglia, anAustin 1100, a series one LandRover, an MG Midget, two Austin1800s and an Austin Maxi), as didmany others.

Cars were simpler then, butprobably far less reliable. Engines would turn over lamelyand cars would cough and chokeon starting, especially on coldwinter days. A patch of oil underthe sump was a common site onroads and drives. But at least if youopened the bonnet you couldrecognise (and moreover get accessto) the spark plugs, carburettor,coil, brake and clutch reservoirs,fan belt and radiator. You couldbleed the brakes (if so inclined).You could grease the bearings (notthat you need to now). Therewould be no air-conditioning, ofcourse; indeed, I recall my fatherhad to pay extra for a heater to befitted in the Austin 1100 (in about1963). Were others really drivinground in the cold?

Even though the school hadbeen deliberately developed, tenyears after it opened, apparently togive greater scope for science andtechnology, we were subtlydirected away from Woodwork,Metalwork and Technical Drawingand towards purely academicsubjects (though some certainlyworked on the hovercraft or leftschool clutching lost wax castingsof copper or brass poured into sandmoulds or cuttlefish (as my brotherdid) or a bike chain link extractor).

Later, Maths, Physics andChemistry were the preferredcourse for the really clever ones(perhaps); Geography, History and

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English for those who wereperhaps considered less gifted (ormaybe not). Very few took modernlanguages after sixteen (we werejust four in French); vanishinglyfew took Latin A level (in fact, Ithink none).

CONCLUSION

The Jesuits may have said, ‘Giveme the child until seven and I willshow you the man’. But for me itwas the period between 11 and 18in which I experienced greatestchange. It was a transformativeexperience and probably true formany of my contemporaries,though I am sure that did not occurto any of us at the time.

We were all enormouslyfortunate. My mother had grownup in South Wales, in a small houseon a street cut into the hillside onthe edge of a valley outsideMerthyr Tydfil, with no indoortoilet. Anyone who wanted a bathwould do so in an enormous tinbath in front of a cast iron range inthe kitchen.

We visited the house in the1960s. The rooms were freezing inwinter, the beds heated by brickswhich had in turn been heated inthe ovens of the range. The townsand villages all around coweredunder the lowering shadows of theblack/grey, flat-topped spoilheaps. This was six miles north upthe valley from Aberfan, wherecollapse of one such spoil heapcaused death and destruction in thevillage school in October 1966 (oneof the survivors was later in myclass at Aberystwyth University).

My mother went to CyfarthaGrammar School in Merthyr andmy father to Wednesbury Boys’High School but, on the strength ofschooling in Wellington, mybrother and I were the first in ourfamily to go up to university (at

least as undergraduates rather thanas mature students). And after thatthere was state support for LawSchool and then financial supportfrom the French State forpostgraduate studies in Aix enProvence (with a good knowledgeof French-based on lessons atWBGS, but most especially learnedon French exchanges withOrleans).

One of my close friends, alsofrom Albrighton, had a family witha similar background. He took aFirst at Oxford in Mathematics,again after going through WBGS.

Many others must have similarexperiences to relate. WBGSundoubtedly opened the door toopportunities we would nototherwise have had. It was, inmany respects, an astonishing timeand, although we might not havebeen aware of it, the school was inmany ways remarkable.

The 11-Plus systemundoubtedly favoured a smallpercentage of the population andafforded an enormous privilege.And I enjoyed it enormously, mostof it, especially the football (otherthan when I put a ball through oneof the louvered windows in thePhysics lab).

I look back now on that timewith enormous gratitude and greataffection.

Rhys CliftMarch 2017

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I should very much like to expressmy thanks to Allan Frost for theillustrations and his assistance inthe editing and finalisation of thetext, especially in the correction ofsome of the historical informationabout the school which predates mytime there.

Wellington Boys’ Grammar School

DISCLAIMER: Every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this publication is correct atthe time of going to press. The author cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, nor doopinions expressed necessarily reflect the official view of the author. All articles and photographs arecopyright of the author or his supplier and must not be reproduced without prior written permission anddue credit being attributed.

Please send correspondence toRhys Clift at email address: n.r.clift@btinternet.com

High School buildings in King Street, 1975. Originally home to both Girls’ andBoys’High Schools until 1940 when the Boys’ Grammar School was created, bothcombined to form Wellington Grammar School for a short time before becomingNew College. This frontage has changed little over the 100 years of its existence.