Recollections of an Old (but young at heart) Oswestrian, circa 1952 - EPISODE 18, THE CLASS FROM HELL AND PRANKS GALORE!

It would be a complete dereliction of duty if I failed to address the sometimes totally inappropriate behaviour of me and my classmates during the mid 1950's, and I wish to express more than a little contrition for one of the more bizarre, dramatic episodes which took place in the newly built Memorial Hall.

The Memorial Hall

But what fun it was!

To spare feelings, I will not name the mild-mannered teacher in question who was an assistant housemaster at Holbache House at the time. Well liked, his inability to enforce discipline left him vulnerably out of his depth where form 1V-B was concerned and his teaching career at Oswestry School was finally brought to an untimely end by members of my class who treated him rather badly.

From the day he arrived in late 1953, this likeable personality exercised no control whatsoever, and we were brutally relentless in disrupting his vain attempts to impart some of his knowledge to us. He was an accident waiting to happen in the classroom, and the denouement came about unexpectedly on a miserable Monday morning in the Memorial Hall, with the artful dodger again at the center of the action. As the Master was scribbling on the blackboard, 'Cobber' Walton (son of Ma Walton, Headmistress of the Preparatory Department), suddenly opened the lid of his desk and pulled out two powerful water pistols which he kept next to his copy of  Health and Efficiency and can of shaving foam.

From his position in the middle of the naughty row at the front of the class, doing a very laudable impression of John Wayne in true wild west cowboy style, he proceeded to gun down the writing so painstakingly chalked on the blackboard by the Master, and everything slowly washed away. 

Although the popular class clown was a disruptive and slightly malevolent influence, the rest of the boys were eager accomplices, and a shoe in for a male remake of The Belles of St Trinians, a film made in our era, c1954, depicting girls running riot in a boarding school.

As Cobber reached back into the desk for his pea shooter, the Master slammed the desk lid down, accidentally activating the can of shaving foam which spilled out everywhere, and things went from bad to worse. The old boy began to protest vehemently, but more misery was to follow and, to the accompaniment of classmates banging loudly on the radiators, we strafed him with pellets of barley from all corners of the room through pea shooters smuggled into the hall earlier in the day. It was mayhem for several minutes as he blew his top and started screaming at us in a high pitched voice in an attempt to regain control. Alas, it was of no avail, as pandemonium prevailed, and he finally threw in the towel, fleeing towards the door, slipping and sliding on the barley covered floor like a distressed duck trying to run across a frozen pond. It was an unbelievably comical sight and, to our shame, we delighted in his suffering and hooted and whooped as he made his escape, never to be seen again. He is probably still lying quivering in a yurt somewhere in outer Mongolia, or has taken monastic orders in Myanmar; in any event, he deserved to be in much calmer waters thereafter.

On leaving the Memorial Hall he locked us all in the building and was last spotted heading for Mr Williamson's study to complain about our unacceptably unruly behaviour, and request some kind of suitable retribution. We will never know the content of this conversation, but we must assume the outcome was unsatisfactory from his point of view, since he picked up his P45 and left! We never saw him again.

He was, understandably, tired of  being pranked and this was not his first experience of such, as on a previous occasion at School House he had been 'stoned' with bars of soap which were hurled from the changing room window as he collected the car which he kept behind the main building.

Nor was he exempt from similar treatment at Holbache, where the boys took delight in climbing the fire escape to blackout his window with blankets to ensure he overslept in the morning.

Another Holbache housemaster, whose nickname was 'Bumble', ended up on the wrong end of a jape one night, finding himself in a very sticky position. Boys would often tease the sensitive master by buzzing gently like bees during 'prep', and one night it became too much for him and he stormed out in a fury, retiring to his room.

My friend and classmate, Nigel Birch, who was one of the conspirators that same evening, told me that after lights out a group of them crept up into the dimly lit toilet to smear treacle on the dark wooden seat, and awaited the inevitable.

In due course, there came a horrified shriek, followed some seconds later by a thump as the toilet seat finally separated itself from Bumble's rear quarters and came crashing down. Stifled laughter drifted out into the corridor as the unfortunate housemaster retreated to lick his wounds (if not the treacle), in the privacy of his room. The following morning, needless to say, not a soul knew anything about it, and Bumble sat down very gingerly at breakfast to scarcely disguised sniggering. He was seen later in the day conducting a very animated conversation with Matron.

Chapel (taken from the organ loft in 1947)

Chapel was a daily part of school life, and our snuff taking organist used to invite boys into the loft to pump his organ; the ancient masterpiece required the services of someone to pump air into the bellows in order for it to function. Having been asked to do this once too many, I decided to take action, or to be more precise, inaction, and in the middle of morning service I stopped pumping, with the obvious consequence. Needless to say, to my obvious delight, invitations dried up immediately, and my services were never required again.

The organ loft with organist

John F. Tilley taught Geography, and also collected local weather data for the meteorological department on a daily basis, enlisting the help of various boys in the collation of this information. What he had not bargained for was the specific help he received early one morning at his rainwater collection point on the grassy upper quadrangle between the chapel and the school building.

At approximately 2am, returning from a moonlit sortie to the Dingle, we decided to play a prank on 'Purdy' by enhancing his rainfall results, and he was surprised to see that a supposedly dry night had turned out to be a very wet one!

The rainfall collection point was on the grassy area (bottom left)

Even reaching back to 1407, every intake of scholars would have had its fair share of pranksters, and perhaps it was quills and codpieces that were tampered with in those days to produce a laugh. 

I am sure current OOs, both boys and girls, will recall the many pranks and much of the tomfoolery that undoubtedly would have taken place during their time at Oswestry, and, such is the nature of the human spirit, I expect the future will prove to be no exception to this.