To the Manor born for young schoolboy Keyth (From Basingstoke Gazette)

To the Manor born for young schoolboy Keyth

10:14am Wednesday 23rd June 2010 in

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MEMORIES of schooldays spent at Steventon Manor came flooding back to Keyth Vassmusson after he saw a photograph published in a recent Memories on Monday about the wartime use of the country pile.

Keyth, 75, remembers going to the manor, part of which was taken over on a lease by Hilsea College, as an 11-year-old back in 1946.

It came as quite a shock to the young scholar as, until then, he had been educated at home in Sherfield-on-Loddon, where he still lives today.

“My grandmother paid for my schooling so I’d get a good education,” said Keyth. “But about a month after starting in the autumn of 1946, I caught scarlet fever and was ill for three months. I wasn’t allowed to attend school because it was very contagious.”

Returning to the school in 1947, Keyth said he has happy memories of his time at Hilsea College, where he stayed until he was 17.

Originally, it was a Portsmouth-based boarding college for naval officer’s children. It relocated from Hilsea in 1940, moving to Oakley Hall to avoid air raids over Portsmouth during the Second World War.

After the war, Hilsea College also leased the carriage house and servants’ quarters of nearby Steventon Manor.

These were Victorian buildings and survive today. But the mock Elizabethan manor house, having fallen into disrepair, was demolished in 1970. Its rubble is believed to have been used as ballast in embankments along the M3.

Recalling his long journey to school, Keyth said: “A bus ran from Winton Square, in Basingstoke, and picked up boarders at Oakley Hall and then on to Steventon Manor.

“The driver would sometimes sound his horn while passing through the long road tunnel under the railway line at Steventon.”

Remembering lunch being served in a large room in the mansion, Keyth said: “We sat on wooden benches, but staff occupied a long table on a raised platform.

“Brother Hugh, a Franciscan friar, always said Grace. He took divinity – he was a very learned man and he was a terrific teacher.” Keyth recalls the teachers were very strict.

“Mr Higgins took us for history and English. He was a good teacher, but we were petrified of him.

When he used to come into the classroom, there was absolutely no sound. You did as you were told and when he said you will learn this poem, you learned it.

“The headmaster J Ellis Jones was a fair man – he was an English gentleman and we were very fond of him.

“But if you were naughty you were sent to stand underneath a large long case clock. It had been presented to him on May 22, 1935, for his birthday, which happened to be the day I was born.”

It was not just the teachers who were strict.

“I was once awarded 100 lines by Prefect Orde for running between the classroom and dinning hall,” remembered Keyth.

“He was one of the seniors – he must have been about 18 – but when you are 11 that seems like 60.

He used to walk along with Brother Hugh – he was a very tall and a rather studious type and you treated him with a great deal of respect.

“After about 18 months or so, the school returned to Oakley Hall, where I spent the rest of my school days.

“It was a very international school – we had pupils from all over the world, including Persia, China, The Gold Coast and the Middle East.”