Newsletter - December 2018

[Rogernoble]

White Star Newsletter December 2018
 Dear All.
 
Can I start by wishing you all a happy and prosperous new year. We are now at 106 members (30 September - 103).  I am pleased to welcome Jon Botting, Paul Hallowes and Alastair Chalmers. Sadly in the last quarter we have lost Jim McClure, Evelyn Oakshott and Simon Hunt.

The search
We are finding it more and more difficult to locate the remaining old Hillsiders on the “wanted” list and quite frankly could do with all the help we can get. I thought it would be helpful if I explained the search process to explain how we do it and where you can perhaps help.The White Star magazine starts us off with a name, leaving date and public school. If you take me as an example the 1961 magazine records me as leaving in December 1960 as R H Noble (Dover College). As, in most cases, I left aged thirteen so it is reasonable to assume I was born in 1947. What is omitted is my Christian name. If you take a name like J Scott you will find the vast majority of Js are John but if someone tells us our man is say Jeremy the search is much easier. So any Christian names you can remember can be very valuable. Finally the White Star can give valuable clues in the old boys’ news on subsequent careers.The next stage is Companies House. A good proportion of us feature there and the companies involved are normally anxious to publicise their telephone numbers, unlike people like myself who use the telephone preference services to protect ourselves from nuisance calls. The next avenue is googling the name. We then try the British Phone Book and 192.com which sometimes produces results but generally show the individual as TPR protected. Finally we trawl through the family history sites for births, marriages, deaths and the electoral rolls. The real frustration is, having spent a considerable time tracking someone down, you find that they have died.How can you help? If you can give me the Christian names of your contempories that would be a good start. The last known location and or subsequent career would further narrow the search. Also if you know someone has died that clarifies the situation. It is also clear that a number of people live close to Godalming and its surrounding area. I have long felt that a look at the membership of somewhere like the West Surrey Golf Club could produce results.I attach the list of everyone who went to Hillside which includes the “wanted” list. I should be grateful if you could look through that and let me know if you can offer any assistance in tracing these people.

 Old Hillside School Old Boys Association
I received an invitation to attend the original Old Boys Association lunch on 21 November 2018. This group has existed since the participants were at Hillside in the 1940s. For many years there was an annual dinner on Diana Harvey’s (nee Bannister) birthday. Sadly she is now too ill to attend. There have been a number of venues but this year Harvey White arranged a private dining room at the British Medical Society’s premises off Oxford Street which proved to be a wonderful spot. As I was meeting a group who were at Hillside about ten years ahead of me I have to confess I was expecting some fairly elderly gentleman but what a youthful looking lot they were (Simon Hocombe tells me they all attribute their preservation to a spartan war time diet). It was a lively and very enjoyable occasion.

Old Hillsiders.jpg

Sitting L to R – Harvey White and Robin Whicker.Standing L to R – Roger Noble, Simon Hocombe, George Birch and Nikolai Tolstoy.

 The Website
For you all a reminder of the website access:http://hillsideschool.org.uk/site/index.php?page=news&type=view&id=andrewhs-blog%2Fhistory-1951-1969Martin has put an enormous effort into creating the web site so I would urge you to support him by signing on if you have not already done so. For all you struggling recycled teenagers like myself who want to add something the process is: Having registered and logged inGo to near to the top right hand corner of the opening page and you will see a little figure. Click on that.Then click on “my profile”.Then click on my “blog post”, fill in the title and your wording and then click the post button.The number of blogs continues to grow.

 White Star Magazines.
Martin who has successfully digitised them and they can be accessed through:http://hillsideschool.org.uk/site/index.php?page=catalogues&type=category&id=links-home%2Fwhite-star-digitised&keep_catalogue_links_root=6Martin is to be congratulated on what has been an enormous and sometimes frustrating project. It all makes fascinating reading after all these years.

 Where is all this going in the future?
The lunch at the Inn on the Lake was deemed a great success and it was agreed to have another function in two year’s time. Jack Fuller is also talking of getting a golf team together. A few people have suggested an informal lunch somewhere in London say every six months. If you are interested in the idea please let me know. A suggested venue would also be useful. 

Hillside Culinary delightsI took the opportunity at the lunch on 21 November to try and get some more copy for the magazine. I was chatting to Simon Hocombe and George Birch when the subject of bananas came up. Both of their eyes glazed over as they as they remembered, with unbridled delight, Mrs Whicker arriving at the annual picnic with the first bananas they had seen since before the war. Oh how we used to get such pleasure from such simple things!

 Literary Corner.
Richard Compton-Hall MBEOne of the earlier students was Richard Compton-Hall who went on to be a prominent submariner and the first man to command a submarine going under the Artic ice. Richard was a prolific author on all things submarine but I been unable to find what would have been a very interesting book i.e. a biography of his life. I understand from the submarine museum that his son Mark was contemplating such a book but I cannot find any evidence that it has been completed yet. I am therefore reprinting the article that Richard wrote for the White Star in volume 12 of the White Star. 

Pictures.
Thanks go to Charles Ainsworth and Clive Lawry for some pictures but further contributions would be gratefully received.

Pal’s corner.
I am delighted to say that we have traced Jon Botting who dominated Hiilside sporting achievement for some years.Jack Fuller has now located ten of the 1963 hockey team, but he is still anxious to locate Jonathan (?) Weale to get the full team. Can anyone help?This is a regular feature for those looking for old friends so please let me know if there is anyone you would particularly like to trace.

Roger Noble