Less flamboyant CH teachers

[AndrewH]

Mr Matthews - (I don’t know his first name) Non Oxbridge graduate. Chain smoker with much stained fingers. Taught chemistry and sen housemaster of Peele B. He seemed ineffectual and has torticollis (head permanently bent sideways). Was a war time appointment who stayed on long after the war’s end. Nickname Fal (for phallic, but why is unknown, to me at least). Married.

Retired about 1975?
I was always told that phallic was because you never saw him without a cigarette in his mouth (at least outside of actual teaching)

Norman Fryer -Taught maths to junior forms, sen housemaster, with a pronounced Welsh accent, married a former Infirmary nurse, was a Welsh trialist scrum half. Cambridge graduate and nicknamed , Man. Committed suicide.

Taught Maths to A-level by 1976. Was quite good at this most of the time, although there was one occasion when none of us had understood what we had just been taught so got Mr O'Meara have another go (we had three masters for A-Level).

[AndrewH]

Here are some more facts

Ivor R Maconnell
A quiet maths teacher (Cambridge graduate) who taught grecians (and others), son of a vicar. For a time he taught divinity too. An oboe player of (near?) professional ability. When stricken with a fatal cancer, in spite of strong suggestions to quit as head of the maths dept/RMS, he refused to leave CH until the end of the scholarship season, in order not disrupt the teaching of his senior boys. Bachelor for a long time and senior housemaster of BaB. Thereafter married.

I think he stopped teaching at Christmas 1974 - I certainly was taught by him for the first term of my O-Level year, but seem to remember not after that. I think that he died fairly soon after.

[Mid A 15]

Bogey Fryer had a dreadful temper. I remember him nearly throttling someone with his own scarf in one math class. Truly alarming. Beats Tom Keeley bashing someone in the front row over the head with a Lewis & Short.

N.T. Fryer was my housemaster during my entire time in Coleridge B. Everyone knew he had a short fuse, but I only ever saw it expressed once when he was refereeing a rugby match and thought that one of the team wasn't 'trying hard enough'.

Talking of NT Fryer I came across these photos from his Harlequins rugby days when looking for something else.

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/new ... d637478188

and

http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-rugby- ... 18200.html

It appears from this that he represented Newport too

http://www.historyofnewport.co.uk/games ... ?id=002362

[J.R.]

I knew he had been with Harlequins. He certainly made his point of view well known when supervising rugby games.

[Richard]

The best known teachers of the 40s and 50s have been mentioned in this thread. Below are some others who are much lesser known (except one).

Phillip Dore, nicknamed Pip, a small, rotund man, who was an excellent organist.
Mr A Eagle, a Prep housemaster, who later married Mrs Morrison, a widowed mother of a small boy in the Upper.
ACW Edwards, former housemaster with distinguished CH career. After retirement as a teacher he became school librarian. Nicknamed Teddy or Ted Ed.
Marjorie Eller, a female teacher enaged during and remaining after WW2. She stayed at CH until she married, teaching English and History to the third and other junior forms.
Mr Farrar, Ma B(?) junior housemaster, who taught maths, was an excellent shot and responsible for the Sat evening films.
Mr LP Gerrish, a visiting teacher of piano, who married Miss Eller.
Mr BS Gregory, a Prep housemaster
Mr Jones, sen housemaster Prep A, nicknamed Jonah
Mr MB Jones, a married Oxford graduate who taught maths, with nickname, Dangle (allegedly because of a speech defect, so when saying ‘The angle,’ said, ‘Dangle.)
Alastair Mackerras, an Australian and Cambridge & Sydney graduate, who taught maths, was a brother of the famous conductor Sir Charles, a Catholic and jun housemaster of BaA.
Mr Myers, a South African, jun housemaster of Mid A, taught geography and had nickname Punk.
George Newbery, head of geography, nicknamed Pip
Mr GW Pink, nicknamed Pinker, bachelor and sen housemaster of Prep B.
Kenneth Senior, jun housemaster of Ma A?, taught maths and was responsible for Sat evening films.
Christopher Southwood, a visiting teacher of violin and Cambridge graduate
Ian Sutherland, a Cambridge graduate, cricketer who taught classics and left CH for Harrow, where he was a cricket coach.
JD Swale, Cambridge graduate and organist
Mr Taylor, another visiting piano teacher

[postwarblue]

Pinker had a small rubber dog's bone that he would shy at the inattentive. Because of its peculiar shape the ricochets were totally unpredictable, causing collateral damage to the innocent.

His Geography lessons stay in the mind as he taught us for all time how to read an OS map, how to draw an elevation diagram from a line drawn across contour lines etc. My problem was having to sit on the left of a left hander leading to inevitable collisions making my normally appalling handwriting even worse. Neither of us had the mother wit to swap round.

[sejintenej]

. My problem was having to sit on the left of a left hander leading to inevitable collisions

Very typical and the reason why in earlier days left handers were not allowed because they couldn't work in offices because of that same problem. I was a natural left hander but repeated application of the edge of a ruler to knuckles in primary school changed me for life. There are some things I still do ambidextrously but writing is not one of them

[michael scuffil]

The least flamboyant master I can remember was RW Crosland, who taught physics. He would come to chapel on Sunday evenings, with his wife, who wore strange hats (or maybe, a strange hat -- I can only remember one). He ran the Scout Troop, it was joked he did it because no one was less scout-like than he. He also ran the (very small) Astronomical Section of the NHS, in which capacity his greatest coup was to get Patrick Moore to speak. PM spoke at ten times the volume of anyone else who ever spoke in the Lecture Theatre, to the extent that it was a little embarrassing at first. He spoke about the moon, expounding his erroneous theory that the craters were volcanic, not meteoric, in origin. (He later admitted his error.) To illustrate the thesis, he showed us a slide of what looked like the lunar surface, but turned out to be his breakfast porridge on the boil. The porridge craters were, of course, 'volcanic' rather than meteoric. QED.

[LongGone]

The least flamboyant master I can remember was RW Crosland, who taught physics. He would come to chapel on Sunday evenings, with his wife, who wore strange hats (or maybe, a strange hat -- I can only remember one). He ran the Scout Troop, it was joked he did it because no one was less scout-like than he. He also ran the (very small) Astronomical Section of the NHS, in which capacity his greatest coup was to get Patrick Moore to speak. PM spoke at ten times the volume of anyone else who ever spoke in the Lecture Theatre, to the extent that it was a little embarrassing at first. He spoke about the moon, expounding his erroneous theory that the craters were volcanic, not meteoric, in origin. (He later admitted his error.) To illustrate the thesis, he showed us a slide of what looked like the lunar surface, but turned out to be his breakfast porridge on the boil. The porridge craters were, of course, 'volcanic' rather than meteoric. QED.

He also invited the Astronomy club to visit the Royal Observatory at Herstmonceux. This impressed my mother more than anything else I did until years later a friend married Gerry Durrel and (unrelated) I had tea with the Director of Kew Gardens and brought back mulberries from his private garden.

[Martin]

Ronald Crosland was very bright, too (a technical comment in another thread at

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4376&p=131272&hilit=spiral#p131272

confirms this in my opinion). More about him – he played the cello in school orchestra concerts and also ran the Railway Society housed in the Manual School. For a time (until in his late 40s or 50s, when he married Miss Nightingale, who was of a similar age also supplementing the school orchestra during concerts with her viola playing) he was senior housemaster of Mid B. The marriage occurred soon after his mother’s death. Overall he was a very pleasant, easygoing, mild and inoffensive chap. (One stupid and untrue joke about him concerned the Common Room drinks accounts

Buckie - £107, for ……..
Dickers – 6d, for one orange squash. I don’t think he was a teetotaller, he just gave that impression.)

Incidentally at one meeting of the Astronomical Society, long before Patrick Moore’s visit, a lecture given by M Berry of Mid B, a very keen amateur astronomer and later distinguished teacher of chemistry, convincingly demonstrated the meteoric origin of lunar craters. Onto tray of fine gray powder (cement? and perhaps a couple of inches deep) he dropped objects (a spoonful of powder, I think). Lo and behold, low craters, proportioned just like the moon’s were created. (I know the error inherent in that demonstration.)

[michael scuffil]

he was senior housemaster of Mid B

I hadn't known that. Mid B seems to have had an attraction for the non-flamboyant. No one could accuse Harry Spurrier of being flamboyant either.

[Kit Bartlett]

Ronald Crosland was known as Dickers De Cros which makes me wonder if his name was actually Richard.
The story goes that on one occasion he was conducting a parade in the CCF, I think it would have been the A.T.C. section, he needed to halt his squad somewhat quickly and and called out in somewhat of a panic, "My squad stop".

[Kit Bartlett]

Ian Sutherland played one match for Cambridge University in 1949 and is another name to add to the list of C H staff who were first class cricketers beside that of H.S. Goodwin and E.C. Wright. Are there any others ?
The spelling of the Music master's name was W.C.B. Southward. Did he also teach music at Lancing College ?

[michael scuffil]

There was an art teacher called Vaux (rhymes with forks) and a science teacher called Marchbanks (known as Marsh-gas) who were so unflamboyant that I remember nothing else about them. Neither was on the staff for very long. There was another art teacher who had reddish curly hair, but I can't even remember his name.

[Kit Bartlett]

I have often considered that there is a definite need for a directory or Who's Who of C.H. staff over the Horsham years .
I know that there are certain restrictions on publishing such information less than 100 years after death. Perhaps a list of biographical details would suffice.