The Salopian no. 160 - Summer 2017

OLD SALOPIAN NEWS 95
Tony left the Foreign and Commonwealth office in 1970.
The children had grown and he had more conventional jobs
in the City and in Cornwall. In 1983 he was delighted to be
appointed Assistant Secretary General of the Order of St John
based at St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell. He was back in the sort
of work he enjoyed and did well. With the Order he was
much involved in the support of the St John Eye Hospitals
in Gaza and Israel. His involvement and understanding of
Palestine and the Palestinians led to his final job as director
of the Arab British Centre, where he was for ten years till the
year 2000. He retired at the age of 75.
Sadly Thelma died at this time and Tony moved to Aldeburgh
without her. He nevertheless went on to make a full life for
himself here. Always sociable and involved with people,
he was a regular at the golf club and at The Cross Keys.
He often gave quite lavish drinks and dinner parties to his
wide circle of friends. In recent years he bore his increasing
deafness with great fortitude.
Revd Canon David Main (Master 1952-73)
David Main was brought up in Edinburgh but subsequently
became a boarder at Wrekin College, Shropshire, leaving
as Head of School. He did his National Service in the Royal
Engineers, in which he was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant. He went on to University College, Oxford, where
he read Natural Sciences in Mods and Physics in Finals, and
he joined the staff at Shrewsbury in September 1952, just in
time to witness the visit, a month later, of Her Majesty the
Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, to
mark the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Foundation of
the School.
David joined a Physics Department which was led by two
brilliant and distinguished teachers, Bill Matthews and
Ken Chew, and it was expected that he would support his
contribution in the classroom by full participation in the extracurricular
aspects of school life – an expectation which he
richly fulfilled, as a House Tutor (and later as a Housemaster),
as a rowing coach, as a member of the Concert Choir and
as Commanding Officer of the CCF. Like many new and
inexperienced masters (then known as ‘brushers’) at a
time when examinations and syllabuses did not impose
the pressure and restrictions of later years, and the boys
had both a greater opportunity and a greater disposition to
test the disciplinary mettle of newcomers, David certainly
experienced initial problems. On one occasion, when he
was teaching in the middle of the three rooms which then
formed Top Schools, a colleague in an adjacent room heard
an almighty hubbub, above which he heard David exclaim,
‘Put it down, boy’: the hubbub intensified and when David
shouted again, his still louder protest had been significantly
modified, “Put me down, boy”, he cried!
Having first lodged at White House, Ridgebourne Road, and
subsequently in Flat C in Kingsland House, David became
a member of the New House, the bachelor colony (now
the Sanatorium), where he remained for eight years (1957-
1965) and for seven of those years Peter Gladstone was a
fellow ‘inmate’. Peter and David formed the nucleus of that
community, which was itself, in turn, a second nucleus,
which both reflected and formed the ethos of the wider
community of the School at the time. David remembered
that no-one in the New House was allowed to take himself
too seriously; life was lived to the full, both enjoyably and
conscientiously. Daily conversation was punctuated by the
recitation of Spells by Frank McEachran, (who came in for
meals), by Juggins’ lamentations about the inadequacy of the
Fourth Form’s Latin construe and by heated discussions about
the relative speed and prospects of crews on the river (four
of the five inmates were rowing coaches). Peter Gladstone’s
tame badger roamed the upstairs corridor and many a
pocket-hatched duckling cheeped and stretched its wings
(and did other things) on the dining room table. The annual
New House summer party was both the social highlight and
the supreme alcoholic challenge of the year.
Peter and David’s careers at Shrewsbury were so similar in
length and character that it is difficult to think of one of them
without the other. They had joined the School in the same
term and after their long apprenticeship in the New House
and their experience as House Tutors, they had a similar
expectation of being offered a Housemastership. Such offers,
at the time, were almost invariably based upon seniority of
appointment to the staff. But at the final Masters’ Meeting
of the Lent Term in 1961, when, unusually, Easter weekend
itself was to be spent at school, the Headmaster astonished
everyone by announcing five such appointments at once,
including a colleague who was their junior. Peter and David,
bearing the season in mind, duly considered themselves
‘passed over’ and the ‘ Passover Party’ which followed in the
New House that evening was uniquely memorable, even
in that institution’s colourful annals. However, four years
later, David became Housemaster of Ingram’s and Peter of
Ridgemount: for the next six years, while they were both in
office, there was a kind of Ingram’s - Ridgemount alliance.
Both remained bachelors while they were at Shrewsbury
and David never married. Peter left Shrewsbury in 1971
and David left in 1973. Although David could exhibit
considerable ebullience as a young man and he enjoyed
the formality and the trappings of a great occasion, the
ebullience temporarily masked what was an essentially a
quiet and thoughtful nature.
Ingram’s Housemasters established a strong military tradition.
Captain the Reverend F. Sergeant was appointed in 1900 to
inaugurate the House, provided that he also revived the Cadet
Corps, which was considered to be a necessary element in
School life at the time of the South African War. Unusually,
the House bears the name of its second Housemaster, Major
F.M. Ingram (who, indeed, was always known as ‘The
Major’). ‘Dickie’ Sale, the third Housemaster, had served in
the First World War, Colonel West, the fourth Housemaster,
had served both in the First World War and in the Second; he
had also commanded the School’s Guard of Honour during
the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1932. Mike Powell, the
fifth Housemaster, also served in the Second World War and
he, too, commanded the Guard of Honour, this time during
the visit of Her Majesty the Queen in 1952. It was highly
appropriate, then, that David Main, the sixth Housemaster,
should have been a serving soldier and should command the
School CCF in his turn. Major the Revd Canon David Main was
a fitting successor to Captain the Revd F. Sergeant!