London - Bermondsey in 1944

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St. Olave’s School was in the environs of Southwark, in the district called Bermondsey, on the south side of the Thames opposite The Tower of London and the City of London. The nearest church was Southwark Cathedral in which took place an annual thanksgiving service. The school was so close to Tower Bridge that from the chemistry lecture room on the top floor you could see the occasional rising and lowering of the bascules of the bridge as the equally occasional boats passed through to the Pool of London. The name of the school descends from the name of St. Olaf. St. Olaf was one of the ‘Vikings’ – a Danish invader! Since he was the first destroyer of London Bridge in 1009, it always seemed to me a bit much to commemorate him. The school itself was at the eastern end of Tooley Street – the name ‘Tooley’ is also derived from St. Olaf.

Bermondsey in 1944 retained the industry of the pre-war days. It had industries more akin to those of a country town and a country port than a modern city, though the port was even then one of the largest ports in the World. Bermondsey had tanneries and a vinegar brewery. A substantial part of the transport about the port and the industry was by carts drawn by horses (no doubt partly in consequence of the fuel shortage during the war). Electric trams travelled along Tooley Street, the power being provided in a central rail buried in the road. Alleys to the North led towards the river. These were bordered by the tall warehouses which housed the cargoes from the ships which docked in the Pool beyond. The air carried the pungent odours of the tannery and the vinegar brewery. A chocolate factory, which manufactured cocoa, added its perfume. I never pondered on how they obtained cocoa beans at that time – other foods – bananas, oranges did not exist.

These industries needed transport. Lorries and carts occasionally carried the sweaty heaving wet hides from or to, a tannery. Oak bark from the countryside was delivered to the tanneries. Raw hides from cows were soaked in open pits and mixed with the tannin from the bark. The vinegar brewery needed birch twigs carried from the countryside. The process included the brewing in the first place of an alcohol from malt which could have progressed to the making of whiskey, but it was interrupted and the brew was filtered down through tall casks filled with birch twigs. Out at the bottom came malt vinegar. This in turn needed to be transported away. Then whatever entered the port had to be transported. There was, I recall, meat from South America. All this activity went on whilst German u-boats attacked our shipping, and convoys of merchant ships were guarded by the Navy. The German bombing of London concentrated on the City and the docks and relatively little of the inner or outer suburbs were too much affected, except for the south eastern district when the Germans bombed the main arterial roads. The doodle bugs and V2 rockets in the last years of the war were more frightening.

There were some small trees along the pavements of Tooley Street. As evening fell and the boys hurried along the street to London Bridge station, to catch their trains for home in the suburbs, large flocks of sparrows cackled in the trees as the birds settled to roost. They would have fed themselves on the oat grains fallen from the nose bags of the horses. In the daylight hours some of the boys, including me, amused themselves dragging magnets tied to strings in the roadside gutters. When lifted they were covered in iron filings, worn from the wheels of the trams and the shoes of the horses. When the evening came, and so it did by 3.30 in the winter, it was dark. There were no lights. The wartime blackout still was there.

And there were the frequent fogs. Fogs so dense that sometimes you could not see fifteen yards ahead. The trains on the railway crawled. On occasions the fog made the sky yellow. Frequently the air had an acrid smell from the many coal fires in household hearths.

The school itself carried the scars of war. The playground was host to two large emergency water tanks. These circular tanks were about five feet high and many yards in diameter. There were there to supply water to the Fire Service to put out the fires caused by air-raids. In winter they froze over thickly and we used to slide bits of wood across the ice. The five foot high walls made the idea of sliding on the ice but a dream.

Most of the railings which in pre-war times had surround the school had been removed and used to supply iron to munitions factories, but with some foresight, the headmaster had contrived to arrange the removal of the huge and highly ornamental gates and had stacked them in the derelict ‘fives’ courts behind the high wall which bounded onto Tower Bridge Road.

St Olave's School 1945- 1951 Part IV

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The Teaching Staff – a list of those remembered – all I suppose now lost to the living.

I do not suppose that the teachers at St. Olave’s were any better or any worse than any others. Some were extremely bad, some were extremely good.

Soon after the beginning of peace in 1945 a sea change occurred. For then a younger breed of teachers arrived.

Mr. Newmarch.  

This young teacher was there throughout the war and he was the first teacher I met at the new school.  There must have been some good reason why he was not in the services. He was a teacher of Latin. This was the first new subject to me. Mr. Newmarch was approachable and charming. The text books in Latin were brand new and to me fascinating. The school was aware that if any boys were to enter Oxford or Cambridge, then it was necessary that they had some qualification in Latin! I found little difficulty with it, though I little realised why it was necessary to learn it. I remember little, but the foundation in understanding the structure of language has been very important. Apart from that it later eased my way into Oxford.

Dr R.C. Carrington

I first saw the Head Master Dr. R.C. Carrington over a year into my school life. He arrived with the main school on its return from evacuation to Torquay in Devon in 1945. He was a Classics Scholar and in the book ‘Who’s Who’ was described as onetime ‘Student of Archaeology at Rome’. He was a man smaller than his presence suggested. He had a broad high forehead and always looked well washed. Rumour had it that he was repeatedly looking for another position as Head of a far more important school. Today I consider that he was a wise man. He took it upon himself to teach some ‘general studies’ to the VIth form. He covered many subjects, with learning; The History of the United States; The History of Architecture; The Departments of the United Nations. He caused the school to receive monthly digest of United Nations reports which we VIth formers had to read and make resumés.

He even glossed on the basics of Geology, which he averred should be the a study for all students, and introduced the study of Italian. He was not a likeable man; one’s impression is that he was not liked by the staff, but I believe he had admirable ideals. His ideal seemed to me to develop in us the new ‘Renaissance Man’.

Mr. Joseph

History was taught by Mr. Joseph. His exposition of the development of 19th Britain left me somewhat bored. That which moved me most was his undoubted anger at the return of a Labour government in 1945. “That Churchill who has done so much for this country, and routed our enemies, should be ousted by those who owe him so much is a disgrace.” (They at least were his sentiments, if not his words.) Joseph was an aging man with a small moustache and greying hair. But he was a full bodied person with a dominant will.

Sikey Sinclair

He was the bête noire of the pre-peace days. He taught mathematics, looked after the silver badges for the schoolboy’s caps and was constantly angry and crushing. Sometime in my fourth year I found favour with him. A geometry homework was set and all our exercise books were marked by him. At the next maths lesson he arrived and standing by his desk, his black gown wrapped about his middle he began to disclaim to the class. “You have failed. Your work is dismal. Cave! Cave! Come out here!” I shrank and quavered and rose and slowly went to the desk. He threw in groups the exercise books to the floor and said to me –“Cave stamp on them! Stamp!” I reluctantly stepped on a few. “You Cave are the only boy to have got it right!” One did not cross with Sikey if possible.

Mr. Charlwood

He was an empty headed waste of space. He taught geography. He was inept. He was not a tall man and was thin. He had a habit of sitting on top his desk in the Gandhi position, cross legged. One such occasion was interrupted by the headmaster who entered to declaim that each boy would be issued with a ‘dip’ pen. Such pens were to used in conjunction with the ink wells, lodged in the top right corner of every desk. Fountain pens were abolished and any boy seen to use one was to have it confiscated. This ploy had the aim of improving our handwriting.

Dr. Stockwell

He was the senior teacher of French, and I hated his guts. He had the air of boredom. The most used phrase in his lexicon was “You’d better go into detention laddie.” How little he understood me or anyone. Let me recall some anecdotes. My mother had given me a wrist watch. It was my very first watch and I was proud of it. On the back was written ‘Fond acier inoxydable’. I had no idea what it meant. I took it to show Dr. Stockwell. He just brushed me aside and said ‘It is stainless steel’. I wanted to know why it meant that. Moreover I was proud of it. Could he not have spent a little more time saying how nice it was, who gave it to me, that acier means steel- inoxydable means not oxidising and that fond means base or bottom? He had no time for any boy, no patience, no love. He had no talent to be a teacher. His black gown was torn and aged beyond repair. It was so old that the black cloth was turning green in places.

My final despair of French came during one summer holiday. With some semblance of how to be a teacher he gave out small books of the Tales of Maupassant. “Read these during the holidays!” I dutifully began and I genuinely found the first tale interesting. Unfortunately a little way in I discovered that a chunk of the pages had been lost. I threw the book aside and disgusted, resolved never to bother with French again.

Now I live in France. C’est la vie.

To be continued