Recollections of an Old (but young at heart) Oswestrian, circa 1952 - EPISODE 33, CAP BADGES AND MEMORABILIA - REMINDERS OF A BYGONE ERA
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| £1,000 was a pretty good annual salary in 1955 |
The School cap badge is, for those like myself who still have one sitting quietly on an office desk or attached to a laptop in the corner of a room, a daily reminder of life at Oswestry School during the 1950's, and it triggers many memories for me.
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| Badge No. 1334 (summer term 1960) |
It was even a powerful influence outside term time, and our aunt and uncle persuaded me and my brother to wear them along with our caps when they took us on holiday in the summer of 1953.
During the holidays we would do our best to distance ourselves from boarding school, but at their suggestion (they were footing the bill) we wore the full monty (as was meant in the original, more accurate interpretation of the expression), and as you can see, we were sporting full school uniforms whilst feeding pigeons in Trafalgar Square, feeling like unpaid adverts for Oswestry School.
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| David Pickup (left) and brother Bernard Pickup - suited, booted and capped! |
This was a far cry from just a few years earlier when we would run wild, morn 'til night, roaming the Lancashire countryside looking for mischief, clad casually in shorts, snake-belts, and smiles. Like carefree ragamuffins we would play all day with our friends and a dog up in the foothills of the Pennines, returning to the bakery intermittently at the behest of our stomachs, not our parents, who rarely knew where we were.
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| Not a ferret, whippet or flat cap in sight! |
Our cap badges made their photographic debuts when my brother and I arrived at school on a miserably wet day in May of 1952, and I recall vividly being received warmly by Mr and Mrs Williamson in their private quarters before bidding goodbye to our aunt and uncle who had brought us down by car.
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| May 1952 |
Later that evening we met three other New Bugs and the five other boys with whom we would share our dormitory, and everyone seemed to get on very well.
Identical twins, Danny and Parker Jones made an instant impression on us with their lively personalities, so much so that my brother mentioned them, between soundbites about food, in his letter home the following day.
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| Bernard's first letter home |
A year later in 1953 I took the photograph below and became quite friendly with Alan, whose parents owned The White Lion Royal Hotel which was situated on the High Street in Bala. He was a bit older than me and a few years later he very kindly invited me to stay with him during half term.
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| Bernard (left) and Alan Semple |
Alan owned a shotgun and I nearly had my head blown off when accompanying him and his best friend on an unofficial pheasant shooting expedition in nearby woods.
As hungry boys do, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen, which was the engine room of the family business, and all sorts of dodgy looking characters appeared at the back door bearing freshly caught salmon and game birds, obviously of the feathered variety, which were destined for the hotel menu.
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| A snippet from our version of the song 'Dahn Below' |
Turning to memorabilia, Dahn Below, sung by Ian Wallace in the fifties, was a popular comedic song about the sewers of London, and my brother and I decided to write a parody, which included some of the Masters, as our contribution to the end of term Last Night concert. It was written in the library late in the afternoon prior to breaking up for the holidays, and I remember J F Tilley being rather miffed as the evening wore on because we had not included him in our lyrics.
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| Postcard from Bavaria 1958 |
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| View of Lake Konigsee from the mountainside |
Another surviving piece of memorabilia is a postcard I sent home during the 1958 school trip to Berchtesgaden, situated on the shores of Lake Konigsee in Bavaria, just a stone's throw from Hitler's Eagle's Nest. My father complained later that I arrived home before my postcard.
Like many people I still have a collection of school reports, some of which invariably evoke much hilarity when read by my children and/or grandchildren. On reading the extract below I was a little put out by the sentiments expressed by Headmaster Frankland in the last sentence, and felt that his words revealed more about his character than mine, but perhaps it was a reflection of his military background.
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| Words of wisdom from the Headmaster |
In addition to the above, dotted about my bookcase are several prizes, one of which I am holding casually like a clutch bag in the photo below, and somewhere there is a pair of nail clippers, thoughtfully provided to help me give up biting my nails (I did tell my parents the food wasn't up to much). I even have a travel rug complete with a Cash's nametape, and a very poignant memory of my friend Jack Greves in the form of a five-minute tape-recorded message he sent me days before he died, tragically, in a car accident a couple of years after leaving school.
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| Bernard (tagged Radio Blackburn by J F Tilley) venting his thoughts to the Earl of Powis on Speech Day 1953 |
In concluding this episode I would like to add that although I have no sporting trophies to mark my time at Oswestry School, I have lots of happy memories of the camaraderie we shared on and off the Maes-y-Llan, and just a few copies of The Oswestrian dating back to the fifties.
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| Bernard, Uncle Sydney, Aunty Annie, and Jack |
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