January 2011 offcuts_Jan Offcuts 2010.qxd.qxd - The OKS Association

Never mind, Luxmoore rejoiced in its
rugged individuality and sporting prowess.
Besides, they saw more of real life, not to
mention Simon Langton girls. House food,
which included lunch, was usually thought
to be better than the main school kitchens
provided. Catering was the responsibility
of the matron; in our era Pat Lander, an
eccentric Australian, then for a year the
glamorous Jacqueline Colledge whom we
met years later in Suffolk as the wife of a
friend, David Watson. She had become a
gifted artist. Most happily Lena Campbell
then took the post, “Campbelina” to our
small sons. Her combination of
motherliness, firm good sense, and humour
with efficiency, was unique.
There were other important figures on the
domestic side like Mrs Egerton who ran
the Sewing Room and Mr Ring the
gardener, who had seen at least three
housemasters come and go, and continued
well after my time. I wish we could
remember the name of our splendid daily
“help”, who, despite having only one arm,
coped as well with any household task as
she did cradling a baby. The cooks, who
lived in the basement of 75, were more
transitory.
One of the inducements to move from
Galpin’s put forward by the Headmaster,
when I became engaged to be married,
was: “more room for a family, old man.” In
fact our accommodation consisted of two
bedrooms, a bathroom and a good-sized
sitting room, all opening onto a public
landing. Our movements to and from the
bathroom were not screened from the
study and dormitory opposite. As a major
new concession a tiny kitchen was created
out of a WC opposite the boys’ back
staircase. My wife could just squeeze in to
cook, or to wash nappies, with increasing
difficulty when pregnant.
Bearing in mind that my 20 year-old bride,
Wendy, was not many months senior to
the Head of House, Graham Pritchard,
these domestic arrangements were
somewhat of a challenge after just seven
weeks of marriage. But we are still
married. My official study was downstairs.
Later, as the family grew, a new study was
built for me as a kind of hutch over the
front stairwell, enabling us to take over the
room opposite our “flat” as our bedroom,
greatly increasing privacy. We never
discovered the wiring of the alarm buzzer
under the landing floor, which, I am now
told, had been ingeniously installed to
signal the approach of authority after
“Lights Out” or during ‘prep’.
The legend of this warning system was just
one of many lively reminiscences
exchanged with a cheerful company of
some twenty 1960s inmates who gathered
at the “new” Luxmoore and for lunch in the
St. Augustine’s Refectory on October 10th
last. Several made solicitous enquiries
about the three “babies” who arrived in
’61,’64, and just before our last term
there, in ’67. The mutual realisation that
the eldest of the trio would be 50 next
year was a sobering thought, and a shock to
some.
It was an enormous pleasure for us to meet
them again, many for the first time for
over 40 years, and to find that, despite this
long interval, their features and, above all,
personalities, were very familiar. The
presence of former house tutors, Bob,
Chris and George, alias Bee, Millar and
Robertson, was a great bonus. Altogether
it was a heart-warming experience for this
very former housemaster and his everyouthful
wife. Our sincere thanks are also
due to the present generation of
Luxmoorians who were much admired by
their seniors.
Richard Roberts (Common Room
1956-67, Luxmoore 1960 - 67)
Luxmoore in the 1990s
The past truly is another country; our time
in Luxmoore began in 1991 – almost 20
years ago now, and it was in many ways a
simpler world. The building was by then 10
years old and thought relatively new, so
there was none of the re-furbishment that
is part of a new Housemaster’s lot
nowadays. Our aim was simple, low-cost
eradication of the boy-world, removing the
outsize aeroplane mural in the Common
Room, for instance, naming the studies
after women who had achieved distinction
in their field, and painting the doors a
different colour for each year, so that
juniors could easily find a sympathetic
senior. Gradually, the boys’ photos moved
to the back corridor, to be replaced by the
girls’ ones; colourful theatre posters spread
over the acres of grey concrete walls,
trendy when it had been built but already
by ’91 redolent of a communist prison. I
carved out a herbaceous border in the
front garden, which Linacre still claimed as
theirs, and planted Albertine roses all along
the curved wall.
Looking back at early photographs, the
skirts now seem very long and the girls
remarkably smart. Waistcoats were still
common, and I think they were still proud
of the new uniform we had devised for
them. There were, of course, no mobile
phones, so the two pay- phones were very
important. Getting hold of the right
change, timing the length of calls to ensure
fairness, and emptying the full coin boxes
were all regular features of House life;
when they broke down, it was a matter of
general despair; phone-queues at 9.15 p.m.
became a social event, with girls lying on
the floor, feet up the walls, with cups of tea
or snacks, waiting their turn in chattering
groups. My fax machine was regarded as
extremely modern, and MJT’s love of the
computer positively space-age! He devised
a House database long before that was a
common idea, and foresaw its possibilities.
Of course, girls generally did not have
bank or credit cards, so the House bank
opened in my study three times a day; it
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OKS Offcuts • Jan 2011 • Issue 31
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