Pat Cox Memories

I thought old Durlstonians who remembered my father would like to be 'filled in' on a little more of his early life and the memories I have of Durlston in its three homes.

Pat was a Devonian born, and bred. His father, schooled at Blandford Grammar School and Cambridge went into the Church. His first 'living' was Georgeham in north Devon and from there he went to Lynton. Pat was the 6th of 7 sons, with a sister the youngest of all.

He was educated firstly at Magdalen Choir School at Oxford with his elder brother, Stephen. Two others went as Choral Scholars to Kings, Cambridge. From Oxford he went on to Bradfield, where, of course, he got his colours for cricket, fives and soccer. He was in one Greek play when he was fairly junior, but even in the last years of his life could perform his one speech with great feeling, and then tell us he never knew what it meant!

He went straight into the Army to a commission in the Durham Light Infantry and straightaway into active service. Twice wounded he was transferred to the Grenadier Guards - again in action and became a Prisoner-of-War at a camp in what was then called the Polish Corridor. The end of the war brought him home at not more than 5 stone.

Pat's father was by that time Parson of Dartington. My mother's family had retired from Liverpool to Totnes. Helen and Pat married in 1920. At the time Pat was delighted to get a job as a clerk in his father-in-law's Shipping Broker's office in Liverpool (Broderick, Leach & Kendall). He said the only useful accomplishment he learnt in his short-lived business life was doing accounts! He certainly managed without a secretary the whole of career as a headmaster!

My brother was born while they were in Liverpool, but Pat then got his wish to go to Cambridge where he got a degree in history and law. I was born while he was up at Jesus and was baptised in the Chapel. He was a member of the Hawkes Club and the footlights where he acted with Jack and Claire Hulbert. I think it must have been there that he had his voice trained by a well-known singer called Plunket-Green. He had been a fellow choirboy at Oxford with Ivor Novello.

From Cambridge he went as an Assistant Master to a prep school at Eastbourne called St Cyprian's. From stories he told us, we gathered the school was then run by the formidable Mrs. Wilkes, rather than he husband. Their son went on to be Warden of Radley, years later.

It was there he met up with Jack Ellis with also a good voice and a love of Gilbert & Sullivan.

Pat joined G.T. Atkinson as a Partner I think in 1922. We lived in a house halfway up Park Hill, almost next door to St. Aldhems Church. It was there that my sister was born in 1926. By that time Jack Ellis had joined the staff and when G.T.A. retired Pat asked Jack to be a partner and also Leslie Fawcus with whom Pat had played cricket at Cambridge. Both Ellis and Fawcus became Headmasters of their own prep schools. Jack Ellis at Orley Farm and Leslie Fawcus at Bilton Grange.

My memories go back to my sister’s birth when I would have been 3½. We must have moved into the school building when I was about 5½ because we had a Governess called Pearly Slade for a short time before I was allowed to go into the Junior House playing cricket and football in the junior playground. At some time before that I remember having my tonsils and adenoids out on the kitchen table in the school sanatorium!!

But at the age of 9 I was banished to Sentry Fields just opposite - a small girls boarding school run by 2 spinster sisters. The girls shared Sunday services with the boys at St. Aldenhams. After 2 years at Sentry Fields I went off to St. Mary’s Caine where I stayed until 1940.

What are my memories of Swanage? As I get older they seem to get more vivid? A lifelike Guy Fawkes being marched up on a sort of tumbrel to the Lower Field followed by the whole school. Roller-skating in the playgrounds. The boys tree huts in the Lower Field. Match teas sitting watching cricket on the Upper Field with a delicious strawberry and cream sponge cake from the Rose House Tea Rooms, served for tea.

The lovely walk up the rough pathway through pine trees to the Belle View café near the lighthouse. School picnics at Studland riding in a charabanc. Standing out in the dark street in January watching the Junior House in flames 3 days before the start of term. The fire was started by mattresses and blankets being aired before an open fire! Sneaking ‘left-over’ food up the wooden backstairs to the Prefects at the end of term! My sister and I playing mixed doubles with John Shelley and Malcolm Stewart.

Then the move to Earnshill in July 1940. I missed the last two weeks of my last term at St. Mary’s because my mother suddenly telephoned the Headmistress saying that she wanted me home to help with the move.

What a wonderful home Earnshill was for Durlston, and so well described by Rowland Whitehead. The stables became the changing room; the landings, form rooms. The beautiful main rooms - dormitories. The huge pictures in the latter had been well covered with safety covering. Alas not the family portraits on the stairways. It was discovered after the first term that some small boy could not resist poking a pencil up some poor Combe or Colthurst’s nostril!

Outside the wonderful topiary made and nurtured by Shaunagh Combe’s father-in-law. The Orchid house contents had been removed elsewhere. Not the peacocks who strutted about on the front lawn — however, they only lasted a few weeks of the first term.

My son David was born in Taunton and as I was homeless we spent the first three months of 1945 at Earnshill. I had got to know Shaunagh Combe well by then and she kindly put me up in one of her spare rooms and she became one of David’s godparents. Geographically it wasn’t easy. I found myself carrying pails full of nappies up the Private Stairs, across a form room of grinning little boys and down into my parents private rooms! My wedding banns were called in Isle Brewers Church, but I never heard them as I was serving in the WAAF.

1945 was the year of ‘moving. David and I were with my in-laws in Whyteleaf when my father-in-law moved to take up his final living in Newbold Verdon in Leicestershire. I remember hearing that the war was over on the veranda outside the Vicarage drawing room. David and I stayed with them until August when I returned to Earnshill for the move to Furze Close. Marjorie Dawson and I were the last out of Earnshill - just as my mother and1were the last from Durlston at Swanage!

The only thing I remember vividly in those first 2 or 3 weeks at Barton was a team of teachers and myself scraping the sticky tape off all of the windows. It was Nelson-Wright’s first term as Chaplain, soon to be known as Smelly Nelly!! - poor man but he was a good teacher and I believe he took the scholarship boys off to Forde Abbey after the fire so that they would not miss any teaching.

I was in New Zealand when the fire took place, and years after I was told by a member of Durlston staff that it was my mother’s courage that - supported Pat to go on he felt that Durlston was finished. In 1952 I became a ‘parent’.

Of course I was down often after Pat retired. My mother died in 1970 and after that I would come down to look after my father when Doreen went on holiday. She had started in the kitchen at Earnshill, with Miss Bates, the cook, at the age of 17 and remained at Durlston with my parents until they both died - a wonderful record. I heard from Peter Yurburgh that she died at the beginning of 2004.

Hilary Bolton (nee Cox) December 2004.

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