18
‘Five boys on the field’
the Junior and Senior Chemistry Prizes. Christopher Raven had been in Sillem for all but his final year at Ascham. Two or three years earlier his parents had been the Mayor and Mayoress of Eastbourne but now they were travelling abroad for much of Chris’ final year at the school. So he was a boarder in Ascham House. Years later when I married the Granville House matron, Barbara Beach, Chris was our best man. Peter Gray’s home was in Seaford, the other four of us in the photo all lived in Eastbourne itself, and normally he came each day by the Southdown bus number 12 which ran between Brighton and Eastbourne. He was a few months younger than the others apart from myself and this may be one reason why, when Booth, Raven, Andrews and Gascoigne- Pees all left at the end of the Summer Term, he stayed on at Ascham for the Michaelmas Term. He then became Head of Sillem. I also was in Sillem and was younger still, in fact young enough to stay right through the school year and take the College Scholarship Exam again the following summer. John Andrews was the Head of School and Head of Trouncer House, the other dayboy house. His birthday was on the eighth of September and he had started at Ascham just a couple of weeks after his seventh birthday. Most boys were much closer to their eighth birthday when they entered the school. It meant that John was at Ascham for seven full years which surely must have been the record, probably never equalled. On the previous Saturday he had won the 100 yards and the 220 yards in the Sports. Gray had been third in the 100 and I had been third in the 220. The photo has made me reflect on how much it mattered which house one was in both at prep school and public school. At Ascham I didn’t really know John Andrews, certainly nothing like as well as my fellow three members of Sillem. But at the College I saw far less of Mike Booth and Peter Gray, who were both in Powell, and Chris Raven and John Andrews, who like me were in Reeves, became much closer friends. Peter Gray in his ‘extra’ term at Ascham was Captain of the Soccer XI. He himself played centre-half and he and two other boys were without question the stars of the side. The rest of us did our best at a lesser level. I was one of the two full backs. My strong point was being able to kick the ball quite a bit further than anyone else. So while in those days it was quite usual for the full backs to take the goal kicks with the goalkeeper staying in his goal, unusually I took the kicks on both sides of the goal. After losing the first game of the term away from home we won seven and drew the other three of the remaining matches, two of the latter being against St Andrews which home and away both ended one goal apiece. I remember the following from the match on the St Andrew’s pitch. The St Andrew’s inside right was of about
When I saw myself in this photo in last year’s OA NEWS my immediate thoughts were that I had never seen it before and that I did not remember it being taken. Gordon Price (Ascham 1953–59) writes:
Ascham boys 1958
I t was obvious the five of us were on the Ascham Field but why had we been there and who had been the photographer? As I put names to the others, from left to right: M J Booth (1952–58), P S Gray (1953–58), C A Raven (1952 –58), myself and J L Andrews (1951–58), it crossed my mind that we were all dayboys although this was actually not quite correct. The fact that in the background some younger boys were playing cricket shows that it was a summer term. Then I noticed that we were wearing white shirts. The normal daily wear was grey shirts. We would have worn white shirts for the School and House photos on the morning of Sports Day, generally the last Saturday in May. However, it turns out that this photo was taken two days later by the Headmaster Guy Hepburn. He had taken a number of photos on Sports Day itself and, possibly to finish the film, had taken this photo and the photo of the cub parade which was also in last year’s OA NEWS. In those days scouts and cubs were on Monday afternoons, although a significant minority did not join and had an extra afternoon of games instead. It was 1958 and that term the five of us all sat the Scholarship Entrance exam for Eastbourne College. The latter consisted of six compulsory papers: two in maths, one each in Latin, French and English and a General Paper. The latter may possibly have included some geography and history but definitely no science. The exam took place down at the College in Big School, then with its copy of the Bayeux tapestry right round the gallery. In previous years there had been two papers on each of three consecutive mornings from Tuesday to Thursday but for some reason that year it started on the Monday. We were
taken down from Ascham together in some large car or other vehicle and then collected afterwards to be brought back in time for lunch. There was therefore no contact with candidates from other schools, some of whom must have boarded at the College for three nights. In addition, candidates could offer one voluntary exam paper, sitting either Greek or German. This I believe must have been held on the Monday afternoon as it provides an explanation of why the five of us were together on the Ascham field, clearly in the middle of the afternoon as the direction of our shadows show. There was in fact a sixth who sat the Scholarship exam that year: Robert Gascogne-Pees (1952 –58), who was a boarder in Granville House. Now it certainly must have been a sizeable vehicle to carry the six of us to and fro and, if it or whoever drove us, was based at Granville. Gascoigne-Pees would on its return naturally have stayed in Granville while the other five of us made our way together across to the Ascham building. Thus when Mr Hepburn came across us there was only the five of us and not all six. We were all in the top form known as IIIA(S). Class sizes at Ascham were otherwise between 15 and 18, but IIIA(S) only had 12 with each boy normally having between three and six terms there depending on his pace of movement from form to form up the school. Michael Booth was the Head of Sillem House, one of the two dayboy houses. It was his fourth term in IIIA(S); the other five of us was each in his third. Mike had a particular interest in science and was one who would have benefited if science had then been part of the prep school curriculum and of the Scholarship exam. At the College he won both
Made with FlippingBook Online document maker