No hockey, jolly or otherwise

Why she didn't is unclear: neither Alastair Sim's genteel but permanently broke headmistress - Miss Umbrage - nor the youthful George Cole nor the delightful Joyce Grenfell were flattering in their depiction of hell's belles, at a school for little horrors run by big ones.

St Trinnean's lasted from 1922-46 and held its final reunion a few years ago. "It was always freezing cold and coldness seemed to be regarded as an aid to learning," recalled Helen Lillie, a former pupil. "Miss Fraser Lee was as implacable a dictator as any in Europe in the 1930s."

The school had no punishments and no personal prizes, allowed pupils to set their own homework schedules as an incentive to self-discipline and, whatever Searle's literary licence, didn't play hockey - jolly or otherwise. Lacrosse purposes prevailed.

RONALD Searle's first encounter with the girls of St Trinnean's came when the school was evacuated to Kirkcudbrightshire during the war. Though his first cartoon seemed innocent enough, save for a bit of bare faced flesh beneath the gym slips - "Owing to the international situation, the match with St Trinian's has been postponed," said the caption - others were much more scurrilous.

Searle, a former Co-op clerk who at 15 was resident cartoonist for the Cambridge Daily News, had been imprisoned by the Japanese and suffered greatly on the Burma Railway.

His more anarchic subsequent drawings, it's said, may have been a coded reaction to the violence of his captors. Hurrah for St Trinian's appeared in book form in 1947; many others followed.

Robert Graves wrote A School Hymn to St Trinian's, C Day Lewis composed A Short Dirge for St Trinian's, Flanders and Swan penned "Surly Girls" about them.

Searle became a bit heavy after that, talking of abortion nurses and lesbianism and other things which have no place in the Gadfly column.

He stopped writing of the horrors of St Trinian's in 1952. A year later he killed them off in an atomic explosion.

THE reason for this old girls' reunion is, of course, that we promised a column on old school songs and are grateful for readers' infallible and extraordinary memories.

Maidens of St Trinian's

Gird your armour on,

Grab the nearest weapon,

Never mind which one.

Last week's reference to St Trinian's Hall, a Grade II listed building built in 1706 at Easby near Richmond, also elicited a marvellous letter from Sylvia Morris, who lived there until recently.

For six years, she and her daughter-in-law also ran a B&B in one of the wings, Joyce Grenfell's nephew once among the fascinated guests.

Mrs Morris, now in Hornby, near Bedale, also encloses a 1998 interview from The Scot magazine with Jean Innes - "a douce and respectable lady" - who had been one of St Trinnean's first pupils.

(Douce is a Scottish word, meaning sedate. Ninian, of which Trinnean is a Gaelic version and Trinian an anglicisation, was a fifth century Scottish saint, though Cardiff City's football ground is named after him, too.)

"St Trinnean's ideas may have been well ahead of their time, but pupils were responsible for their own learning and conduct and some schools would do well to copy it today," said Mrs Innes.

"School days at St Trinnean's really were the happiest of my life."

ALL this snatching at school songs began several weeks ago with a reference to Broom Cottages school, near Ferryhill, where (we said) former television weatherman Jack Scott had been a pupil.

Before proceeding further, therefore, there is need to admit a mistake: Jack didn't attend Broom Cottages but East Howle, nearby, and remains very proud of the fact.

Now 79, he began in meteorology at 17, spent 15 years presenting televised forecasts and became the BBC's second best known weatherman after Bert Foord.

Back in Ferryhill, it was said, his mum wore her fur coat in his honour the first time he appeared on the box and folk blamed him when it rained.

Jack now lives in Oxfordshire, his letter still signed with a smiley sunshine. "I'm sure Broom Cottages was a good school but all the gratitude for my primary education is with East Howle," he says.

As he himself might admit, no one can be right all the time, of course. Hail fellow, well Met - and, of course, apologies.

THERE are songs from Wolsingham to Wellfield, Stanley to Southmoor Tech and East Hetton to West Hartlepool. Second and third sittings may be necessary to crowd them all into the school hall.

Most seem preposterously high-faluting, not to say over-ambitious. To the tune of Men of Harlech, Eric Smallwood recalls something much more informal - and altogether unofficial - from his days at Middlesbrough High School for Boys:

High School gravy comes in slices

Red hot plates for ice cold ices.

The second line, he insists, was true.

Ian Andrew in Lanchester, Durham, has memories of high hopes and low achievement:

School of King Edward, school by the sea

Dear to our hearts shall thy name ever be,

Each of thy sons shall bring honour to thee,

School of King Edward.

The aspiration was forlorn. "At least three of the boys who attended in my time ended up in jail."

KING Henry VIII's Grammar School in British West Hartlepool had a song which headmaster Holton - known to his young charges as The Count - urged at every opportunity upon them.

As recalled by old school friends Arthur Pickering and Dave Picken, former colleagues at Tyne Tees Television, King Henry's curious chorus ran:

Youth will needs have dalliance.

Of good or ill some pastance,

Company me thinketh the best

All thoughts and fancies to digest....

But every man hath his free will

The best ensue, the worst eschew,

My mind shall be Virtue to use,

Vice to refuse, I shall use me.

The Count, it should be added, was not necessarily nicknamed because of any noble connections. In the mind of the young bloods at West Hartlepool Grammar School, it was because his academic gown made him look like Dracula.

ONLY one song has so far appeared twice on memory's play-list, the proud anthem of Bishop Auckland Girls' Grammar School echoed down the years by both Jean Gibbon (nee Simpson) in Durham and Margery Burton in Shildon.

On a hill above a river

Where the oaks of Auckland grew,

Where the men of Durham County,

Men whom Bede admired and knew,

From the forest built the farmlands,

From the farmlands built a town,

Auckland stands; the memory lives

To seeing minds, creative hands.

Auckland stands, the torch still burns

We guard the flame and pass it on.

Gadfly, it may be recalled, began at the Boys' Grammar School across the inviolate playing field. Even with musical maestro Denis Weatherley as headmaster, however, "No more school, no more stick" may have offered lyricism's only outlet.

More from the old school songbook next week.

Published: 21/08/2002