Newsletter - June 2019

[Rogernoble]

White Star Newsletter
June 2019

 Dear All 
We are now at 109 members (31 March - 109). In an effort to enliven matters I have added a letters to the editor / memories of Hillside. I will welcome contributions. In the meantime there have been some interesting developments recently (see below).The SearchAs I explained last quarter we are now struggling to find the remaining people on the “wanted” list so any help you can provide in finding them would be very helpful.There has however been an interesting development on Hillside at Reigate. Thanks to Jack Fuller who suggested I google “whicker hillside school Reigate hill 1938” and look at photos 4711 and 4712. As well as photos of the school there has been contact to that site from David N Ranson (Fort Myer, Florida) at Hillside from 1947-51 and J D Krainock (Reading California). I have registered an interest on the site and will see if anything else turns up.An adjacent search produced Squadron Leader Michael Savage, Croix de Guerre avec Palme. Michael went on the Kings Canterbury, and was involved on D Day but sadly was killed in action on 19 March 1945.

 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-1951-1969

White Star Magazines
For access go to:http://hillsideschool.org.uk/site/index.php?page=catalogues&type=category&id=links-home%2Fwhite-star-digitised&keep_catalogue_links_root=6 

Lunch
The lunch at the Inn on the Lake in 2018 was deemed a great success and it was agreed to have another function in two years time (ie June 2020). As I explained last quarter it is getting time to start planning for the next lunch as it is necessary to make bookings well in advance. There seems popular support for the Inn on the Lake although last years food offering needs improving. One problem is we were restricted to 45 people. Jeremy Drakesford provided the answer for how we catered for 69 people at the 1989 dinner. It was in the basement which appears to no longer be in use. Has anyone any strong views on the subject before a booking is made?  

Hillside Culinary delights
Clive Lawry tells me that a favourite was corned beef pie. I understand it was a proper pie i.e. it had pastry on the top, side and underneath. They were obviously before the horror which has appeared in pubs in recent years of a bowl of stew with a top hat of pastry.In one of the earlier newsletters I asked if anyone could produce a recipe for Mrs Milton’s culinary master piece “Friday stodge” (aka marmalade pudding). Our numbers have increased dramatically since then so can any of the more recent members help? 
Literary CornerI have, for the moment, run out of Old Hillsider books to review although Nikolai Tolstoy tells me his book on his stepfather the author Patrick Obrien is due to be published later this year. Nikolai’s book the “Victims of Yalta” seriously altered my view of history as I discovered Britain’s complicity in helping to forcibly repatriate 3 Million Russian POWs, slave labourers and white Russians to their deaths in the salt mines. Against this background I starting reading a book that my son gave to me last Christmas:“The Silk Roads – A new History of the World” – Peter FrankopanI think most of us have been brought up on the premise that Europe is where much of the human progress originated. This book seeks to challenge this. All the main religions originated in the Middle East (including Christianity) and they all seem to have co-existed in an atmosphere of mutual respect for many years. It does appear that the arrival of the Europeans, in the form of the First Crusaders in 1099, seem to have done much to endanger the delicate balance. The Sunday Times describes the book as “The breadth and ambition of this swashbuckling history should come as no surprise. A book that roves as widely as the geography it describes. A powerful corrective to parochialism”.The main argument it presents is that most of history’s conflicts revolve around the battle for resources including slaves, silks, spices, precious metals, oil and food. I have, for instance, always been puzzled by Hilter’s invasion of Russia. The book explains that in the First World War the Germans suffered from a severe lack of food. It is no coincidence that the German invasion took place two weeks before the harvest was due to be collected. Russian oil was also a target.I assure it will give you a very thought provoking interesting new perspective on world history.

Letters to the editor
On 10 May 2019 when I received this email from Angela Currie:
Good afternoon Roger, I’ve just been looking up Hillside School and following the various conversations between old pupils.I’m clearing out my parent’s home in Haywards Heath and at the back of the china cabinet came across a solid silver cup 5 inches high with the inscription - Hillside School, Junior House Relay.On the back there is a list of winners - 1936 Lions, 1937 Lions, 1938 Dragons, 1939 Unicorns, 1940 Unicorns, 1941 Eagles, 1942 Swifts.My parents have had absolutely no connection with Hillside School and I’m not sure that the dates fit with the Hillside School being discussed.Before selling the cup/trophy for scrap I’m just checking that it would not be wanted by anyone who had an association with the school. I can supply a photo if required.With best wishes, Angela CurrieI was a bit puzzled by the earlier house names but a quick referral to the font of all knowledge (aka Robin Whicker) confirmed my suspicion that they were the ones used in Reigate.I have acquired the cup but it is of little use unless it is fought over. I am suggesting that a golf team needs to be assembled PDQ and suitable opponents found so over to you Jack.

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 Another lovely piece from Simon Hocombe - Hillside School  1943 to 1949 Some Recollections
I went to Hillside as a dayboy for the Autumn term of 1943, became a boarder in autumn 1944 and left at the end of the Summer term 1949, going on to Tonbridge.War and PeaceFor my dayboy year I lived with my grandparents in their large house on Tuesley Lane (in an area since ‘redeveloped’ like Crownpits House). Wandering round the garden one morning in summer 1943 before school I heard a peculiar aircraft noise, then saw it was coming from a low-flying V1 ‘doodlebug’. Abreast of our garden the engine cut out. There was then what seemed a very long silence as the flying bomb glided out of sight over the trees beyond, followed by a huge explosion and a swish as the blast wave reached back to our garden. It had landed at the top of Holloway Hill, where it blew the front out of one house and defoliated all the surrounding trees. With hindsight, coming as it did from the southeast, a minor deviation to the right could have put the V1 right onto Hillside.By spring 1944 D-Day preparations were underway in much of southern England. Around Godalming Canadian troops were being assembled. Although we boys saw little of them, Robin tells me that as a Special Constable RHRW was kept busy dealing with their nightly roistering!When D-Day came we and the masters sat round a portable radio that was put on the dining table beside the terrace windows, and listened in silent concentration as the BBC relayed progress reports on the invasion.When Hitler surrendered in May 1945 I was quartered in the dormitory beside the drawing room (Dolphin?? I forget). Sometime after lights out RHRW put his head round the door to see if anyone was still awake. I was the only one, and he told me that the war had ended. He followed this with the rather perplexing request to ‘be tactful’. I guessed this to mean that I shouldn’t wake everyone else by shouting the news, so I got back into bed in silence!For the VE Day celebrations the front of Hillside was floodlit to mark the end of years of blackout. Tiger Redman rigged up the floodlights by mounting powerful lightbulbs in the bases of shiny biscuit tins, which served as reflectors. As a celebration we were all taken to Dr Fox’s Woods (now the Winkworth Arboretum) in the back of trucks and treated by Dr Fox to a magnificent supper. The succulent taste of the cold partridge we ate that night remains with me to this day!
Food, Glorious Food!It was a huge challenge for the Whickers to feed a gang of growing boys during wartime and the post-war rationing period. Their achievements were outstanding. True, there were a few legendary glitches in the wartime supply chain: the maggots that turned out to have been making their homes in the rice (or porridge oats if you believe others). Meat cuts were rather haphazardly butchered, resulting in casseroles being cruelly christened by the boys as ‘stewed dog’. Nonetheless Tolly professes not to have felt particularly hungry, which is tribute to the Whickers' achievements. The fact that some of us may have lost weight over the term was attributed to the benefits of taking healthy exercise instead of slouching about during the holidays!In my case I do recollect quests for supplementary food. Our sweet rations were kept in tins in a locked cupboard in the ground floor bathroom beside the staff stairs. (Ed. Still there in the 1960s although we were not so resourceful or not so hungry!) The staff unlocked the cupboard once a day (after lunch?) to issue sweets. With some mechanical ingenuity I managed to manoeuvre the catch so that it could be opened without the key, and along with co-conspirators could satisfy our cravings for sweetness. After a while I repositioned the catch, whether for fear of discovery or because our sweets had run out I cannot remember! I also remember foraging in the kitchen when no one was around, and once feasting on a batch of cupcakes which had somehow gone wrong and were set to be thrown away. Chestnut time yielded further bounties — we ate the chestnuts either raw or boiled in tin cans over fires we lit illegally in the ‘bomb crater’ (borrow pit on the edge of the bottom field). We somehow managed to fry up wild mushrooms too. It was on the annual school river picnic that bananas appeared for the first time since the war. Though a bit blackish due to their long journey from the Caribbean, this was another unforgettable gastronomic moment. And lest I be labelled the only hungry one, my grandmother always recalled Robin as the boy who would ask ‘could I have some bread and marge please’ when he came to play during the holidays!Some other MemoriesI wonder how many others remember the night someone slammed the downstairs bathroom door violently — and half the ceiling fell down onto those of us who were in the bath? Breaking bounds was another sort of drama. Sneaking down to Godalming High Street was easy; but once a group of us took the bus to Guildford, puffing on fag-ends we picked up in the bus and along the way. There were also break-outs into the wood below the bottom field to do battle with the local ‘village kids’, mainly by throwing stones at each other. Then there was the competition to climb the tallest conifers: the acme of success was to break off and bring down the apical bud — a horrific act of silvicultural vandalism which must have permanently distorted the future growth of each tree.Discoveries Later in LifeUN work led me to Rome in my late 30s, where I lived for the next 30-odd years. On first visiting St Peter’s I did a sudden double-take — for there, over the high altar, was the picture from the mantelpiece in the Hillside dining room: the Bernini baldochino. Having sat in the front pew at Busbridge Church so often reading of EMMA SVSAN RAMSDEN of Newton Kyme, Yorkshire, who died after MVCH SVFFERING bourne with CVRAGE AND RESIGNATION, it was alsoextraordinary to see, on walls of the church of San Clemente in Rome, memorials to various other Yorkshire Ramsdens. They seem to have got about a bit, these Ramsdens, and not been to choosey about the denominations under which they worshipped! Finally, I must record eternal gratefulness to Michael White for his French teaching. At Tonbridge my French on arrival was far better than after three years of mediocre teaching up to O Level; when using it years later as a working language it was still there. I was proud on Michael White’s behalf to have francophone colleagues praise my grammatical correctness.
Simon Hocombe 23.1 18

Pal’s corner
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?We have also accounted for nine of the 1960 football team. Can anyone help on Tim Gibbs and P Sutton?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