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Cyril J. Johnson
I will start with the event which first brought Alcester to my notice.My wife pointed out to me an advertisement in "The Times Educational Supplement" for a Head of Chemistry at Alcester Grammar School in Warwickshire. Up until that instant I had never heard of Alcester nor its Grammar School!
This was in April 1965. I duly sent in my application and was called for an interview at the school. I saw the "Globe Hotel", still standing at Globe corner as we headed for the Grammar School. The railway lines were still in place under the Evesham Road railway bridge when I made a short tour around the town to see what it was like. The impression it made on me was very favourable.
At the Grammar School I was interviewed by Mr Eric Davidson, the then Headmaster, and the Rector of Alcester, the Reverend Emrys Jones, who was the Chairman of Governors. The latter wore a rather natty spotted silk waistcoat I remember. I was shown around the school by Mr F. Petherbridge, the Senior Master and Head of Geography. What impressed me most as we walked down the verandah which leads to the chemistry laboratory (Old Scholars will remember it well), was the sight of cows grazing in Mr Williams' fields by Ragley Mill. I came from a school in central London with hardly a blade of grass to be seen for miles. "This is the place for me" I thought. I got the job, assisted perhaps by the fact that no other candidates turned up, and went home to London well pleased by the prospect of working in rural Warwickshire.
When I arrived in September to start work, I was surprised to see that the "Globe" had vanished and the railway lines had gone. The town was already changing. Even so, it was to some extent still back in the fifties - even on a Saturday most of the High Street shops closed for lunch, for example. In retrospect I think that this was a very civilised way of conducting business, and it was a pity when the custom passed into history. The Grammar School was a very different place then from what it is now. The Sixth form was tiny - about 20 students in all; now we have about 240. My first group of sixth form Chemistry students had 4 members in year 13 as we now call it (then known as the Upper Sixth), one of whom was our present Chairman, David Moulson. The Upper and Lower Sixth were taught together, with a syllabus which cycled every two years. This situation was quite common in smaller schools at that time.
Mr Davidson was the Headmaster as I have said, and I have mentioned Mr Petherbridge(who retired in 1984). Miss Webley was The Deputy Head. I did not realise at first that the Headmaster lived in the house attached to the school - on the south end as you see it from the Birmingham Road. He put his hat and coat on to go home at the end of each day I remember, even though it meant only going out through one door and in through another. I thought this very strange at the time, but with the wisdom which the passing years give I now see it as a sensible strategem for keeping his private life separate from his life as a Headmaster even though he lived on the premises.
On Sports Day we had the ceremony of "The Line-Out". As soon as the results of the athletic contest were known, that is which house of Wells, Newport and Spencer had won the competition, and who had achieved the status of Victor and Victrix Ludorum, the Senior Master would give one loud blast on a whistle, and the students would, without further orders, form three sides of a hollow square, with the members of each of the three houses forming each side. Across the open side a table loaded with trophies would appear as if by magic, with the Headmaster and various dignitaries arranged behind it. Then followed the ceremony of awarding the various trophies to the winning houses. It always impressed the visitors tremendously, but this slick operation was all achieved by intensive rehearsals beforehand, just like the Queen's Birthday Parade. It all meant a lot of stress for the staff, largely because the recording of the results and totalling of scores had to be done under pressure and in a great hurry, so that all would be safely over in time for the students to catch the buses at 15.35 hours. As a result, errors were made, which had to be set right next day by re-awarding the trophies to the real winners when mistakes in arithmetic by the scorers had been discovered and put right. The Sports Day line-out ceased some time in the 1970s.
Soon after arriving in the district my wife and I went to live in Inkberrow - a much smaller village than it is now. The large estates on Pepper Street and off Stonepits Lane were not built until the 1970s. The village was quite well supplied with services. There was a daily bus from Stratford to Worcester which passed through; there were several other buses to Worcester which either came from Redditch or started from the village. One bus came from Alcester to Inkberrow and then on'through the Lenches to Evesham, and was used by a number of children from the village who went to Alcester Grammar School for their secondary education. At that time children from the village school who passed the 11+ test could choose to go to either Alcester Grammar School or Redditch County High School (now Abbey High School), and this continued until 1974, when Worcestershire was "re-organised" for comprehensive education.
As well as quite good transport services, Inkberrow was well provided with shopping facilities, much better than we have now. A travelling butcher (a Mr Bonehill) called twice each week, and Mr Toombs (an Old Scholar of Alcester Grammar School as it happened) ran a travelling greengrocery. There were two village shops (only one of which remains in 1994), a post office (still going but in different premises) and a garage. This was Brooklyn Motors, which moved away to Redditch in the 1970s, but the garage carried on under different management and is still going today. The village had its own baker (Mr Ray Savage) and delicious bread was baked in the village bakery. Mr Wilkes was the village dairyman but since his retirement milk comes out from Redditch. Mr Rimell delivered the daily and weekend newspapers in 1966, and still does so today. Our village doctor was Dr. Jenkinson (retired in 1978) and we had a village policeman and a village police station as well. Inkberrow had a further connection with Alcester. This was the excellent "order for delivery service" provided by Messrs Bunting. It worked like this. You sent in an order card (supplied by Buntings) in good time, or telephoned if you missed the post, and your order was made up in the shop and delivered by van. Our deliveries came on a Thursday I seem to remember, and the man who delivered them was called "Jack" but we never learned his surname. He died after a few years and the service was never re-started. By now Redditch was growing and many of the village residents worked in the town and shopped at the big supermarkets, so they had no need of grocery deliveries.
Alcester was similarly better off for transport in the mid 1960s with fairly frequent buses to Stratford, Redditch and Evesham and surrounding villages. The railway in Stratford had more connections than now. There was a daily service from Stratford to Worcester with a return journey possible. It went via Honeybourne junction and Evesham to Worcester Shrub Hill and on to Foregate Street. There was also a service of trains to the South from Stratford via Honeybourne and Cheltenham. Early in 1966 the Globe corner development got under way, and the new fire station, library and magistrates' court were soon built. Unfortunately I had no interest in local history then I remember one day in the gentlemen's staffroom (the ladies had a staffroom of their own right at the other end of the school)
Mr Douglas Oldham, Head of Modern Languages (later High Bailiff and now as then a well known figure in the town) came in and announced that "They were pulling down the Birch Abbey School today". I did not then know that this was Newport's Free School, and the original site of Alcester Grammar School, so I did not dash out with the camera at the ready to take numerous photographs as I would have done a few years later; the building was demolished and passed into history, unrecorded like so much else.
The older members of the staff at the Grammar School (I was the youngest teacher at the school for a number of years) had some fascinating stories of former times. Most of these I have forgotten, I am ashamed to say., But I do remember being told that at one time (possibly until the late 1950s) there had been a fence right down the middle of the playground to keep the boys as separate as possible from the girls. And then there was the annual Speech Day, when the school trouped down the High Street to the old Corn Exchange, which by this time had been converted into the Alcester cinema. Once when there was some kind of technical hitch the cinema organist helped out by playing popular tunes to pass the time. Unfortunately nobody told him that the procession of dignitaries was on its way down the main aisle and they processed in and took their seats to the strains of "Pistol Packing Mama". As one of the ladies wore (according to my informant) a huge hat with an enormous brim like a stetson or even a sombrero, the melody was not perhaps altogether inappropriate.
The topography of Alcester was very different in the middle 1960s. Maltmill Lane was a rather tatty looking street open to two way motor traffic and had yet to be redeveloped. The High Street was devoid of boutiques, and I do not think that there was a single Building Society office. The Turk's Head was still a pub in business and so were the Rose and Crown in Evesham Street and the Red Horse in Henley Street. The derelict corn exchange/cinema was still in place - yet to be replaced by the string of shops which stand there today. Mr Grummett still had his fish shop in the High Street, and Alcester Builders Yard awaited unknowingly the arrival of the Gateway Supermarket. I well remember the opening of the branch of Barclay's Bank in 1966 - I was one of its first customers. Now the bank has half moved away to Redditch and only basic services are on offer at the Alcester premises.
What changes can we foresee for the next 30 years? Who can say? Whatever we predict will turn out to be wrong, but perhaps these reminiscences will prove of interest to the members of the Society in AD 2024. If everyone keeps careful notes of events from now on, we will have plenty of material for a similar write-in exercise.