Parkside School 1977-1979
The School Bus
This was a big old 1950's / 60's style bus that did the rounds every morning and evening driving from the school in Forest Lane, Horsley, up to Bookham, through Fetcham and Stoke D'Abernon on to Cobham and then back along Forest Road to the school. The bus was driven by Mr. Robin, brother of Mr. Michael. There was also a school mini bus which was a white Ford Transit and this was driven by Dommy, the very rotund chef (Dommy was unable to drive the school bus on account of the fixed driving position and his huge girth.)
One particular incident during this time was in the winter during heavy snow. One of the boys slipped over behind the bus just as it was reversing out of the parking bay. And since no one told the driver the double back wheels on one side of the bus drove straight over the boys leg, breaking it in several places.
School dinners
As mentioned Dommy was the chef, and with good reason loved his food as much as everyone else did. He was the largest man most of us had ever seen. He was Italian and lived with his family in the single storey housing which was in the school grounds between the main house and the "covered way" (which was to burn down in a spectacular fire by 1979). The school dinners really were wonderful home cooked dishes and I particularly remember the Lancashire hotpot (now seems odd for an Italian!) and the treacle sponge.
Lunch was in 2 shifts signified by the school bell. Grace was always said by a nominated pupil, and was always the same "for what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful".
Headmaster - Mr Levi
Mr. Levi was the Head and had been there a good many years, he may even have been a pupil first. He was very old but carried on as a presence in the school long after he retired and Mr Gould became Head. Mr Levi's favourite hymn was "for those in peril on the sea" and this was frequently sung at assembly which was always in the school hall in the "covered way" with Mrs Brearley, the ancient music teacher, accompanying on the piano.
When the fire destroyed the covered way and all the classrooms within it, Mr Gould, the then Head, took assembly outside in the hard surface tennis court behind Mr Michael's house. These assemblies were particularly memorable in mid winter! Of course there was also no piano accompaniment.
Mr. Levi also had a huge train set situated in a large shed all of its own. Interested boys would be invited to join him at break.
Grass tennis court
There was also a grass tennis court opposite the main house. Used in the summer this was most memorable because Miss Carr, a very attractive young blond teacher who lived in the main house, used to play inevitably in a short tennis shirt and frilly knickers. All the boys fancied Miss Carr.
The Prefect lodge
If you were lucky enough to wear the purple tie of the prefect you were entitled to spend your breaks in the prefect room which from memory was more like a whole bungalow next to the boarders block facing out onto the playing fields. The other and possibly even better perk was to be allowed to drive the lawn mower which was a huge cylinder mower with a seat on the back, a bit like a big green steamroller. To the 9 or 10 year old this was something to be very envious of.
Tuck shop
There was a very popular tuck shop opposite the grass tennis court in the main house. The most coveted and expensive purchase was a huge rectangular slab of toffee. This would quite literally take all day to consume. Another favourite was the double or 2p lolly. I remember a small boy once in front of me in the queue asking how much the 2p lollies were!
Swimming
The school was very keen on swimming and had an outside pool which in the winter had an odd inflatable bubble over it which was kept in place by hot air fans. It was actually very effective and very warm inside. Everyone was encouraged to take their swimming badges and boys proudly wore their swimming medals on the lapels of their blazers.
Gadgets
Digital watches had just been invented so these were the in thing.
Smurfs were also very popular at the time and the petrol garage down Forest Road did a roaring trade. Because of the boarders going home for the holidays new smurfs would be collected from other countries and many swapsies took place at break time.
Pocketeers were also in and these were the 1970's version of the gameboy. They were rectangular sealed ball baring games.
Parkside Memories
This is a section for Old Boys to relate their memories of their time at Parkside and the influence that it has had upon them. We encourage as many entries as possible from all decades, so that a fuller picture can be achieved. (Please submit your own thoughts via email (pussdogs@hotmail.com) so that they can be entered here).
Written by Christopher Hugh Bohling (left East Horsley in 1945)
I was encouraged in March 2009 by Graham Burgess at the Old Boy's Dinner to write a few recollections of my time at Parkside. The predominant memory is of the excellence of both Mr. Davis, the headmaster, and Mr. Clements. Looking at book prizes they awarded, I see that one is for Summer Term 1940 (Form 2, 1st in term and exams) and another for Christmas Term 1942 (Form 4, 1st in term's marks and 1st in examinations). I feel sure that they laid the foundations for my becoming a Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a Chartered Insurer, and a Marine Underwriter at Lloyd's of London in later life. So now follows many of my Parkside experiences that may refresh the memories of some, or raise eyebrows in other quarters.
In about 1940, the old wooden gymnasium, which was reached by a long covered outside corridor from near the library in the main building, housed forms 1,2 and 3 in partitioned off areas, and in an annexe, the changing room and toilets as well.
In form 2 we used to have a French lady who taught us the elements of that language. She was not generally popular. One day a young Austrian jewish boy arrived with a terrible cold, constantly sniffing. Soon the French mistress said sharply to him "blow your nose, you dirty German". After a while we began to take reprisals against her. One such action was to bring in a handful of cabbage white caterpillars (which were big, green, and juicy) and put them on her chair just before she came in. Down she sat on them, and we later could see the green stains on her skirt, finding it very hard to stop exploding into all round laughter.
The changing room was not of the best, sometimes with dried cakes of mud on the floor, from the large playing fields. The usual embarrassments took place in there. Gottlieb, another jewish refugee boy was found to have silk underwear. The general chant, which continually rang out, was "Gottlieb's got pants with frills on", repeatedly, all over the school.
The changing room had its usual unpleasant aroma, but led to the toilets, which were even worse. The No.1s department was a smelly wall, with an encrusted drain below. The usual contests of highest up the wall took place, even to the window. The No.2s department was not much better, although I recall, compared with St. John's. Leatherhead, it was at least under cover. They all froze up in the winter. When my sons much later were due to start at a school, the first thing I always looked at were the toilets. Thank goodness things had moved on since the early 40s.
Some of the panelling from the old gym has been preserved at The Manor, bearing the names of old boys, especially those who rose in our ranks, and excelled. Around the old gym were lockers along the walls on each side, which had hinged lids. We used to sit on these for "reading hour", after lunch, with a book, in enforced silence. A prefect would be in charge, and would rush across to any poor victim who as much as moved or looked up, grab him by the hair, and bash the back of his head several times against the panel boards behind.
Later, matters mellowed, and an old grand piano was there. As part of an improved regime one prefect named Bristowe used to stage a piano introduction to Boogie-Woogie (which I never got out of my system!) and play light classics such as the Popular Song from Façade. Years later, alas the military aircraft he was piloting blew up over Scotland.
Our introduction to Latin was by the Shorter Latin Primer. Often boys would change the lettering on the cover of their copy to "The Shorter Way Of Eating Prime Rats".
Standing away from but parallel to the gym was a brick building, which housed the 4th, 5th and 6th forms. In the 4th form I began to form friendships, which lasted for long afterwards. Some were model train or Dinky Toy related - Hornby or Meccano products. In the early 40s these were virtually unobtainable new, as they were metal. There was a firm called Wilson Lorries, which produced card and wood kits for scale miniature commercial vehicles. Gordon Whitworth, with whom I shared a desk, had been attracted to these as well, and from then a lifelong friendship started. He later was my Best Man and godfather to my eldest son. He was a godfather to a son of Ian Macpherson as well. Only fairly recently did he leave us all.
In the 5th I sat next to Basil Ede, who became a well-known artist of wild birds. He used to draw (in class !) weird fruits and way out machines such that you could hardly suppress bursting out with laughter. Mr. Clements called him the boy who spelt his name both ways, and some of Basil's pictures we still display in our second house in France.
An end-of-term treat to which we always looked forward after the exams was for Mr. Clements to read a particular book to us in class. This was "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats", by T.S. Elliot. The star turn was always Macavity, and when the verse ended "Macavity's not there" we recited the words all together. Little did we know how famous it all would be, when ultimately "CATS" became the world's best loved musical.
By the 6th form time, the pranks were getting more sinister. Lumps of carbide (used for cycle gas lamps) would be put into nearby ink wells such that they frothed up vigorously. Pencil shavings from a sharpening machine would be rolled into cigarette papers in an effort to smoke. Having burned my lips a little it was enough to put me off smoking for life, and it did!
On the way up to the playing fields from the class buildings, past the stinging nettle beds, was a type of high dried up ditch that was known as The Fort. This was used to drag off members of rival teams down to the bottom. The membership of each team was determined by whether you were a "roundhead" or a "cavalier" by prior observation in the toilets, changing room or dormitories.
Because of severe food shortages, lunch could include boiled stinging nettles. The headmistress, Mrs. Davis, would fiercely hover over you to urge you to eat them. The taste was better than the thought of it, just about. Nevertheless, consideration was given as to how we could sabotage the nettle beds. One experiment was to make out of Quink bottles a form of grenade. Water would be put in, then carbide pieces, and the cap screwed down quickly. A few of these were thrown into some undergrowth, but we lost our nerve in the end, before anyone was hurt.
Before we began to get really naughty, we became aware of certain "mysteries" which no senior boy would explain. One of these was "Cushman's Box". Cushman lived further down Forest Road in a partly flint house, and was a school hero. No one would tell us what this box was, or what was in it. It was a closely kept secret. Very slowly it became known as something to do with cricket, but we never really found out for a long time.
Then there was the Grey Lady. She was the school ghost, who was said to walk the upstairs rear corridor in the main house, and go right through the padded door at the end without actually opening it. On one occasion boarders had put a large laundry basket, like a hamper, across the passage. It was not the Grey Lady who fell over it in the dark – it was a younger member of the house staff, yelling "Holy Dinah!" as she hit the floor.
As a day boy for most of my time at Parkside, there were often great difficulties with transport. Earlier there was no through bus from Bookham, and the connection would be missed at Effingham. Sometimes my mother and I cycled, with the RAF overhead intercepting the Luftwaffe, dog fights over Effingham Common. In the end it was train to Effingham Junction, and walking from there behind the Southern Electric's carriage sheds along the cinder path, and then up Forest Road (the Cobham Road) to school.
Sometimes I would go to tea on the way home with Julius Kovanda, whose family had fled from Czechoslovakia. His father had made him a wonderful layout of American Lionel trains. When I spoke to him in the Isle of Man more recently, he mostly remembered his goat and said that he was originally born in Belgium.
The Common Entrance Exams, sat in the library in May 1944 coincided with the first attacks of the V1 (flying bombs). They started the night before. With the general panic and anxiety, some could not get there due to disruption of transport, but things were better next day. Concessions had to be made in the circumstance.
Towards the end of my time at Parkside I became a weekly boarder. We had an old wind-up gramophone in the small dormitory, and a record with a crack in it of Glen Miller's "Tuxedo Junction". Even with modern recordings I still hear the click of that old 78 going round, even though such a defect is no longer present.
Wherever I am in the world, and I hear a cricket chirping at dusk, I am reminded of the one that lived in the kitchen at Parkside - it sang only at night. In the kitchen was the old servant's bell indicator box from the time when the building was just a large country house. "Mrs. May's bedroom" on the box referred to the Mays of Bryant and May, the safety match manufacturers, I was told.
In the larger dormitory some of us, both ringleaders and hangers on, got up at dawn one morning and clambered down out of the first floor window using bed-sheets secured to a radiator. The object of this commando exercise was to find the scouts' hangout in the woods towards Effingham Junction on the other side of the railway line. We all carefully stepped over the live electric rails. On the way back coins were put on the running tracks so that the early morning goods train, steaming down from Horsley, would run over them. I still have my old penny, squashed to the shape of an orange by the locomotive, one of Bullied's ugly austerity designs.
In order to celebrate V-E Day, many went home. A school friend came with me by train as far as West Croydon. His name was Higgs, who later went on to Dulwich College, where sadly he was to lose his life on the Rugby field.
On the afternoon of V-E Day my parents took me to London, where we were amongst the many thousands who cheered the King and Queen on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, and I ran alongside Winston Churchill in his open car in Birdcage Walk. He was broadly grinning. Perhaps he was wondering what the "Pussdog" was on my blazer!
Christopher Hugh Bohling
August 2009