Wartime schooldays feature in exhibition (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Wartime schooldays feature in exhibition

11:35am Tuesday 22nd March 2011 in Memories

A NOTE home from a boarding school boy saying: “Beazley had two caterpillars in his spinach yesterday,” must have amused or horrified his mother.

The boys school was based at The Vyne, in Sherborne St John, and the letter was sent by Patrick Murray. He was a boarder at Tormore School, which had been evacuated from Deal, on the Kent coast, during the Second World War to the safety of a small Hampshire village.

Patrick became a lifelong friend of Nigel Beazley, who today is a valued volunteer at The Vyne where he is a room warden. And today that note home is on show in an exhibition at the historic National Trust property called Slugs, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails… Nigel arrived at the school as an eight-year-old, in the autumn term of 1940, while his father, who was based in Plymouth, served with the Royal Marines, and he stayed there until the end of the war.

The 79-year-old, who now lives in Hartley Wintney, has plenty of memories of his time at the school.

“The lasting memories I have are of the general feeling of happiness and comradeship, and the freedom which the school and its grounds gave.”

The nearby woods, which had an ammunition dump, complete with a small railway, proved to be a place of great fun and japes.

As a boarder, Nigel stayed at the school during term times, where the Stone Gallery in the west wing of the Tudor mansion was divided up into four classrooms, and around 50 to 60 boys had their lessons.

No doubt the boys were told to be respectful to the house and its treasures, but Nigel remembers some of the statues and busts in the Stone Gallery acquiring moustaches, drawn in pencil by errant boys Other lessons and activities which Nigel participated in, such as singing and boxing, took place at the mansion’s Brewhouse.

Some former pupils recall the school, run by the headmaster F G Turner, whose nickname was FidGeT, as being very strict on discipline, but Nigel feels it was no more so than was the norm in those days.

“Personally, I remember Mr Turner as a teaser,” said Nigel. Other masters at the school also left an impression with Nigel. “The deputy head was an older man, who was a wonderful teacher, but had a furious temper. He taught history and, for me, he made history a lifetime of love.”

There were some younger men who also taught at the school and who may have been casualties of war – some of whom may have had none or very limited teacher training.

“We had one, John Martlew, who had been injured in the Black Watch,” said Nigel, who remembers an incident where it was thought he “went over the top.”

Nigel explained: “A boy was writing up his diary during a lesson and he confiscated it and threw it into the stove.”

Some memories are not so happy for Nigel.

“Mr Turner decided that one of the ways the school could contribute to the war effort was using logs taken from the woods as fuel.

“We used to go out into the woods and carry those logs in. I hated every log that we carried.”

The Slug, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails…exhibition, about when The Vyne was the home of Tormore School, is on show in the Stone Gallery until Thursday, March 31