Newsletter - September 2019

[Rogernoble]

White Star Newsletter
 September 2019

 Dear All
We are now at 113 members (30 June- 109). In an effort to enliven matters I have added a letters to the editor / memories of Hillside. I would welcome contributions. In the meantime there have been some interesting developments recently (see below).

The Search
As 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. In the last newsletter I did say that Jack Fuller had found a lead to Hillside Reigate with Nick Ranson’s name showing up. I have recently made contact with Nick.

The Website
We are having problems with the web site and Martin Koranka is setting up a new one. We will all have to re-join but we should have a more user friendly facility. I will let you know as soon as we are live.White Star MagazinesThe link has also been a problem so Martin has replaced it with:whitestar/

LunchI am hoping to finalise the arrangements for the next lunch in June 2020. In the meantime it would help if any of the overseas members could let me know if they are planning a visit to the UK around that time so that we can try and arrange something to coincide with their visit.

Hillside Culinary delights
Fruit in the 1950s was, I think, mainly what was in season in the UK. Certainly my memories of Hillside was that fruit mainly consisted of apples from the orchard in the autumn. As I explained to my next door neighbour the other day when she caught me grabbing a couple of her wild plums, scrumped fruit always tastes better. Certainly the gooseberries I liberated from Mr Milton’s garden patch were always delicious.

Hillside Reigate
Many of us have been vaguely aware that Hillside Godalming originated from the transfer of an undertaking in Reigate but certainly that was as far as my personal knowledge went. In the last newsletter I reported that Jack Fuller had got a lead with the name of Nick Ranson in Fort Myers in Florida appearing. I finally managed to contact Nick and suddenly from knowing virtually nothing I was overwhelmed with information including the photo below:
Roger: here is the 1951 summer photo

Reigate.jpg

and here are some names. Seated, L-R as viewed; Miss Whitehouse ("White mouse" among the boys), X?, X?, Mr. Farthing (ex Ardingly I think-had a BSA Bantam 125 cc mo/bike), Butler, Mr. Templeton (French), me (DNR), FMB, Mrs. B, Whitely, Mr. Oliphant (Classics), X?, Miss Coppleston (?), Mr. Gillard (subjects?), Miss Redlich (nurse, French or Austrian?). Nick went on to relate the story of his holiday with the Bannisters in Norfolk in 1951. He fondly remembered Major Bannister’s daughter Diana (later a teacher in Godalming and now Mrs Harvey White) and her best friend Ruth Laurie (now Mrs Thompson). Harvey put me in contact with Ruth who was able to add:I am indeed that Ruth Laurie, sister of Peter and childhood best friend of Diana Bannister.I have memories of us both camping overnight in the vegetable garden of the school and climbing through a window as quietly as we could to go to the loo. Waking Mr or Mrs B or the boys would have been frowned upon. Years later before starting nursing at the young age of 16 at a children’s hospital in Sevenoaks I was a kitchen maid helping Mrs B with the preparing the boys lunches. Mrs B was a kind and very friendly mother figure to me. Mr B was more scary, he preferred boys! That holiday on the Norfolk broads! This anecdote is for Nick. It was a Census year.We were woken by a gentleman coming aboard to ask Mr B the names, sex, dates of birth etc of all on board. Mr B did not wish to cooperate and called him (to us) the “enumerator bird” and where he could he gave the wrong information!I know that he gave my name as “Hedy Lamar” a stunningly beautiful raven haired film star! Anyway the story of Reigate is beginning to emerge. Robin, who was a very young lad at the time, says his father Rolf was approached just before Christmas 1940, with a few days notice, to see if he could take things over as the Reigate building was being requisitioned and Bannister was off to war. Rolf took 18 boys (Robin thinks) to Hillside. There was also a small school in Godalming run by Hamish Campbell (David Rangeley’s uncle) which also got absorbed into Hillside . Bannister returned from the war and restarted Reigate before it was closed in circa 1959/60. Nick has given me more than twenty names and I have already made contact with Ruth’s brother Peter Laurie and Cheng Kuo. Ruth put me in contact with her brother Peter who confirmed he was at Reigate and says it was a very good school run by the Bannisters.  Peter added “It's kind of you to invite me to join, but I now live in Dorset and meetings would be quite difficult. The only member of Reigate Hillside I had any strong friendship with was Henry Lessore. In our last year we were the maths scholarship candidates. I'm glad we met up some years ago and I'm afraid to say that we had very little to say to each other. Other names that come to mind are Croydon, Chapman, Gubbins. One of the boys was the son of the Minister of Defence in Atlee's government. I had the impression that Mr B had had a 'good war' and made some friends. Not surprising because he was a very kind and lovable man. There was a master called White (ed. The famous French master?} who amused us with stories  flying Churchill through the Blitz, dodging the barrage balloons! I'm glad that something is being done to commemorate a valuable school which formed an important part of my mind. If you intend to publish a newsletter I'd be happy to subscribe”.This is not a definitive story and if you want to add anything (or correct the facts) please contact me.

Literary Corner.
The Story of Dr Wilfred Fox and Winkworth Arboretum-By Peter Herring
Wilfred Fox was born in 1875 and qualified as a doctor. After a spell at the Dreadnought Seaman’s Hospital as director of the Venereal Diseases Clinic he became one of the country’s leading dermatologist. In the First World War he converted his car to an ambulance and went to a France as a captain in the RAMC.In 1918 he bought a country house Winkworth Farm in Hascombe. He clearly was becoming more and more interested in the arboretum concept. He was a leading light in the Road Beautifying Association which, with a number of other distinguished people. The purpose was to use planting to make all the new roads more attractive.Over the following years Wilfred Fox gradually acquired further land and built up what is now Winkworth Arboretum. This book follows the story of its creation. One would have expected this labour of love to be guarded against intrusion from the local children. Nothing seems further from the reality. A local lad Tony Barrs recalls everyone being welcome at “Dr Fox’s woods” and he and his friends ran wild exploring, playing cricket, climbing trees and swimming in the lake. They often ran into Dr Fox and Tony remembers how kind he was to them, even inviting them to tea at his house.The book is a fascinating story of a very interesting man and his scheme to create the Arboretum. I am certainly hoping to visit it the next time I am in the area.As you can see from the letters below there was a strong connection with Hillside School. Des Adeley is Dr Fox’s grandson and Peter Herring one of the boys who loved playing in Dr Fox’s wood.

Letters to the editor
Simon Hocombe’s letter in the last newsletter has produced some feedback:Dear Roger,Thanks for the June Newsletter. I am particularly intrigued to read Simon Hocombe’s account of the VE day celebrations.I have just privately published The Story of Dr Wilfrid Fox and Winkworth Arboretum. I was greatly assisted by Des Adeley (Dr Fox’s grandson). He and I were both Hillsiders in the mid to late 1940s and he told me of the celebrations. In my booklet it appears as “That same year Dr Fox’s grandson, Desmond Adeley, was at Hillside prep school in Godalming. On VE day Dr Fox and his daughter Eileen went over to the school, he in his pickup truck and she in her Austin 8. They took all the boys off to a meal at Winkworth Farm and then on to a celebratory bonfire at Haswell House in Hascombe.” He didn’t mention the cold partridge!The booklet is 40 pages, with colour illustrations and is a history of Dr Fox and the arboretum. It is available from me at £3 a copy, if any other Hillsiders are interested (contact me on pjherring1@tiscali.co.uk or 01428-683281). It is not available at the arboretum, for reasons known only to NT!Peter Herring.

Dear Roger
And from Des AdeleySimon Holcombe article brings back memories. I would second his opinion that Michael White was a brilliant French teacher and taught us far more than I ever learnt at Marlborough, where I passed the oral but failed the written O level exam.I remember my oral, because we had all been told to mug up on something, possibly a future career. So when the invigilator asked me what I wanted to do in life, I replied in my best French, Michael White accent, that I wanted to be a professional motorcyclist.The rest of the interview was conducted in English and I had a mega bollicking about wasting my parents’ money to send me to that school. I suspect he did not know the French for carburettor or overhead camshaft, so I passed that bit of the exam.Des AdeleyEditor’s note – Michael White’s reputation as a French teacher seems to be a recurring theme. I wish he had been there in my time.

And from Ian PilcherRoger
Thank you - what a super read. Thought provoking with fun.I have a few strange memories: Slow bicycle races, chocolate frogspawn and my Mother assisting Mrs W with darning of socks.I also recall the drama of the doodlebug (over our house near Holloway Hill, before I was old enough to be at Hillside) which broke our dining room windows. Keith (Ian’s brother) would have been at Hillside at this time, being four years older than me.
Ian Pilcher

And from Tony Gomis
Hello Roger. Thank you for putting together the latest bulletin. It makes for very enjoyable reading and brings back random memories, which were stored somewhere amongst my few remaining cerebral neurones, of routine events at Hillside. Here are some of them.  RHW’s only way of trying to persuade me to memorise my Latin or Greek verbs, or a text from Shakespeare, was to threaten to drop me from the following Saturday’s football or hockey XI. I made only token attempts to do so in the somewhat arrogant belief that I was far too valuable a team member to be dropped ....or, more likely, that I was the only goalkeeper available and hence was indispensable....Each year we had to present ourselves to be weighed and measured. This took place in a small office in what, from memory, was in an attic, up a narrow staircase: I’m sure other Hillsiders will remember the layout better than me. Anyway, we had to line up, stark naked, to be measured by, I think, RHW, whilst Mrs W recorded our vital statistics. All rather humiliating, especially as puberty approached.These were the heady days before Health ‘n Safety and Risk Assessments had taken over. We all wondered around with sheaf-knives on our belts: nobody got stabbed. Those with a head for heights would climb to the tops of the tall pines in the garden...and sometimes fall off. We packed into rowing boats on the annual River Wey outing with no lifejackets: I can’t recall anyone drowning.We were crammed into the back of RHW’s Standard Vanguard estate car when going to away matches, as many as could be squeezed in.Accidents occasionally happened, and we learned from them. Parents, who had lived through the war, accepted that life had risks.  So did we. Happy days! What a contrast to today’s risk-averse and litigious climate! As memories come back to me, I’ll send them on. Best wishes.
Tony G

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?We have been hunting for Johny Gordon. I have located a possible in Fleet. He is a civil engineer. Can anyone confirm this last fact?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.

Deforestation (with a particular thought for Harvey’s canine pal Sonny).

Roger Noble