Whitehead's Earnshill

“We are in a new situation here”, said Cox “and we’ll begin our time at Earnshill with no school rules at all”- The news was greeted enthusiastically by all the boys. After all we were living in a vast private house, gardens spread in all directions and fields with elms and stately oak trees stretching beyond the ha-ha down to the slender river Parret and tiny villages with names like Isle Abbotts, Muchelny, and on to larger towns like Curry Rival or Langport. War and our remote situation meant that there was no traffic on the roads and we could bicycle anywhere and everywhere in safety. There was no question of trespass and we could wander the fields at will.

Earnshill, and we were told that the local pronunciation was more like ‘Erns’ll’, was a Palladian style house, built by an Italian architect probably a hundred years earlier, reached by a long drive sloping down from the village of Hambridge, and surrounded by lawns- The house had two wings to form the shape of a ‘U’ and was built of rust brown brick with pale stone quoins and a grand double curved staircase up to the main entrance. Grape vines curled around the metal rails up the steps and four magnificent creamy flowering magnolias, Grandiflora, lined the walls at the sides of the building. Yew trees at the side of the house led through a copse to a neatly cut topiary in a lower garden.

The house, we were told, was ‘facing the wrong way’ since the large important windows to the main reception rooms were on the north side. That is because the architect was an Italian, they said, and in Italy the windows faced away from the hot sun. We scarcely dared reply that we were, after all, fighting this fiendish Italian enemy and crimes like this must be accounted for. The high entrance doors led to a main reception room with a broad staircase on each side leading to other rooms for entertainment. We were only allowed to use the stairs on the right, which had been strengthened by huge pale oak beams against the ceaseless tramp of young feet. “See I can go up the stairs quietly — and I’m over 14 stone”, said Ellis. So this was, in effect, Rule Nol in the new school. The reception led to a very large room, facing north, which must have been the Grand Drawing Room before the war. It had pale green panelling to waist level and above hung, on each side wall, two vast and gloomy allegorical paintings. With foresight the owners had covered them with fine mesh chicken wire and they survived, as far as I remember, any damage other that a few indentations as pillows flew across the dormitory. Indeed this was the main sleeping room for us Durlstonians. To the left of this room was a narrower but equally long room which formed another dormitory. It must have been the original dining room. To the right the equivalent room had been divided in two. Upstairs the smaller rooms were split between class rooms and dormitories. A bathroom there was but the day-to-day ablutions were performed mainly in tin or enamelled basins from water brought in by a Matron each morning. Slop pails prevailed though none were ever swung again. The era of the Turret Toughs was over.

Mr Harman, ‘Haymo’ to the boys, had come with us from Swanage to Earnshill. A huge man of about forty he had been in charge of the equipment of the school and keeping the place tidy. He was easy going and good humoured and spent a great deal of his time cleaning the stone floors of the long corridors of the servant’s quarters. For this he scattered sand from a bucket to lay the dust and then wielded a four foot brush, then taking the heaps of sand and dust into a dustpan.. The final stage, when Only a very thin line of dust remained on the floor by the edge of the pan, was to turn the pan at right angles and, with a flourish, sweep the remaining bits away. We boys were fascinated — there was a simple craftsmanship in this.

Indeed we learnt much in these early days of the war. Cox had told us that we must be really helpful to our mothers now that our fathers had gone to fight and there would be few if no servants in our homes to do the work. We must make our own beds. He didn’t speci’ any other helpfulnesses, and may not have been quite sure what they might be, but being ‘helpful’ was the main thing. We called the maids of at Earnshill ‘Skivvies’ but that was we feit that they had always been called. They showed us how to wash up and particularly the trick of drying two plates, on top and one bottom, and then reversing the position so that the top and bottom of each was also dried. The Still Room, windowless in the depths of the house, had a smell of singeing hot cotton that will never be forgotten.

The remaining room of our new school was the Sick Room, the Sanitorium, the ‘Sani’ where we spent perhaps a day of two of our time at Earnshill. It was cream painted, with six iron beds also cream painted and an incredible wannth about the rooms which, combined with its remoteness from the bustle and noise of downstairs, gave an atmosphere of complete peace. During darkness a flickering nightlight cast reassuring shadows to the corners of the room. One felt very safe. Recovery was always rapid though the desire to leave this haven was never strong. The remainder of the building will be described later. The west wing was occupied by Mrs Coombe the wife of the owner, her six year old son Richard and her sister Mrs Hamilton Young wives of brave men; that’s all we knew.

Now there was time for us to examine, as schoolboys will, their teachers with a critical eye. Some had not transferred from Swanage and others had joined us in Somerset. Inevitably we would attract those too old or those too young to fight in the war with a few unable for some reason to join the conflict. Oldest of all, though his age was uncertain to us, was Mr Stanley a rather gaunt and stooping figure with gnarled, strong hands and greying wisps of hair around the sides of his shiny head. A pipe was seldom out of his mouth. He was a gentle, quiet man and taught, I think, geography. What he did best, however, and did superbly, was carpentry where lessons were given in a loose-box in the stable wing. It seems that he brought all his own tools with him; huge Box planes, crisp Jack-planes, amazingly small and neat finishing planes, spoke shaves, saws of every size from tenon and hacksaw to bow-saw, steel rules, set squares and an endless selection of spirit levels. Chisels and gouges had boxwood handles and we were encouraged to use a wooden mallet rather than a hammer to drive the chisel home. He kept all these tools immaculate and razor sharp spending hours after the class repairing the careless damage of little boys. He never remonstrated with us though perhaps hinting that we held the plane this way or used the saw that way. His claim to our admiration was the fact that he had fought in the Boer War. This really was like Waterloo. All our fathers had fought in the Great War so we knew that it had happened, but the Boer War was exotic. Better still he could show us the wounds on his bronzed but emaciated torso when we went swimming in the Parrett. Here indeed was a hero.

Youngest was Mr Warlow who was probably about seventeen, fit and athletic, good looking with a mop of flaxen hair over his eyes. He prowled the grounds of the house with a 22 rifle looking for squirrels with a trail of admiring little boys behind him. We all felt that we would like to grow up to be that sort of man. By far the most extraordinary teacher was Miss Howard. She must have been in her late twenties and had suffered some kind of malfunction in her metabolic system so that she was inordinately fat. This for a woman well below average height made, one would have thought, for a figure of fun for the boys of Durlston Court. Never a thought of that. She had one of the most commanding personalities I have ever encountered and her quiet firm voice brooked no hint of disobedience — ever. She taught Latin as we had never been taught before and English to a superior standard that left usable to spell for the rest of our lives. Dorothy Sayers was one of her favourites and The Man born to be King, just recently published, was read to us. There was always a faint air of mystery about Miss Howard, or as we nicknamed her ‘Vale’ (pronounced ‘waal-ai’ after the greetings that she insisted we give her at the start and finish of Latin lessons; Salve upon entering the classroom and Vale on leaving), and we realised that we knew nothing of her background or past. She was good friends with Mr Warlow and they went for long walks together; she, we were told, being taught German by Mr Warlow who spoke it fluently. When he let slip that she had learned German fantastically rapidly we came to only one conclusion. She knew the language already. She was in fact an extremely dangerous German spy and had to cover for an occasional slip of the tongue. The matter never progressed further but we kept a watchful eye on the situation.

Singing and music lessons were given by Miss de St Croix. She would have been in her twenties, dark with curly hair and a splendid bosom under a light cotton blouse. ‘Singing’, she told us, ‘must come from here, the diaphram, not the throat or the tummy. Stand behind me and put your arms round my chest’ she commanded me. I held on for dear life, my cheeks crimson, as her ribcage swelled and fell beneath my clammy little hands. The first time is always the best.

We learned to sing many songs of a patriotic nature; ‘Fight for freedom everyone —join the line and man the gun’, Jerusalem and Rule Britannia. We learned what Negro Spirituals were about when we sang ‘Darkies lead a happy life — playing on the old banjo — ya-e-aha, ya-e-oho — playing on the old banjo’. Sounded idyllic. Cox and Ellis took it further with a catchy tune to the words ‘never seen the like since I was born as a big black Nigger with a blue dress on — when Johnny comes down to Hilo — poor, old, man’. A song consigned to history’s choral dustbin long ago.

Miss de St Croix also taught piano and put together a school band which played Mozart’s Toy Symphony. This was a splendid opportunity for the lesser musical mortals to blow into a miniature water-whistle to produce real ‘nightingale’ noises, to rattle bells and tambourines and, if judged to have a better sense of timing, to strike a triangle after so many bars. She played the piano with gusto and more or less kept the whole thing in recognisable shape.

Central to the management of the school was Miss Dawson. Tall with a mass of dark hair and an energetic manner, she formed the third point of the Cox/Ellis triumverate that made Durlston what it was. Whilst the two men got on with the teaching and sporting side of the school Miss Dawson was working at the ‘coal face’ to make sure that the organisation really ran smoothly. She brought a happy optimism to the place, difficult in wartime, and coped with many near disasters. Her huge yellow bicycle, with net at the back wheel to protect the skirt, was called The Yellow Peril. Miss Dawson, mounted high and pedalling furiously down the drive to Hambridge, was a formidable sight to us.


	Plane Spotting

A master, seemingly in retrospect to have come out of the pages of Evelyn Waugh, was Mr Hawke-Genn. He was ‘an RAF type’ of a man with crinkly fair hair, moustache with points and a beak-like nose who taught, I think rather unlikely, history. At all events he knew a great deal about fighting planes and became the Local Representative of the Spotters Club, a nationwide organisation to ensure that as many people as possible could recognise friend and foe in the air over their towns and villages. We took up the challenge and were given packs of cards with black and white illustrations of the Focke-Wulf FW 200k Kurrier, Messerschmitt ME 109G. Heinkel HE 177 and others as seen from below, the side and, Heaven forbid coming straight at us. in no time the school was totally proficient—we passed all the tests. Hawke-Genn was given to a prowl every evening up the drive to the Hambridge pub, the Lion and Lamb. We all giggled the next day and decided that he had gone in like a ‘lamb’ and emerged as a ‘lion’.

At variance with the other teachers as Mr Shelley. Not for him the macho image or the intellectual mien. He was an artist. Dressed in baggy maroon corduroys, open necked checked shirt, sandals and a mane of hair flopping over his face he ran the Art Room at the back of the school. We painted as freely as he, himself, painted. Big sheets of paper, plenty of bright poster paints and huge brushes. We had to do it bold. After a year or so he got his call-up and said that he would not be returning the next term. As a farewell he painted a beautiful signboard saying ‘Art School’ and nailed it up over the door. It was elegant and carefully painted. ‘This will be here when I return from the war’ he said with pride. Schoolboys are cruel creatures. It survived a week before being torn down

He was replaced by a stern lady of unmemorable name who had us painting posters for a ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. Carrots and garden forks were never more boring. She also taught us English and made us try our hands a writing a poem. Hancock, a Navy enthusiast, came out with ‘Forty days and forty nights the winking Stars saw battle lights’ which we thought was rather good. Douglas, a dour little Scot, entitled his poem, The Factory. ‘The wheels go round and they make such a sound, and just then I saw a man on a mound, and just then he said, I’m making a bed, out of old lead, which is found in that shed ..‘ Whilst we giggled the teacher praised it for its descriptive powers. She was right.

There were two matrons. A senior and trained ex-hospital Matron called Miss Latimer, or in our terms ‘Lattie’, who was small and neat and very strict. After lights Out we were sure to be in our beds if she was on duty. Being ill was a serious business and one didn’t go lightly to Miss Latimer without good cause. Miss Price, ‘Pricky’, was of a softer nature and we relaxed when she was on duty. She was slim, perhaps a little gangling, with glasses and a runaway chin below an uncertain mouth. We didn’t think anyone had ever kissed her.

Both matrons had all the school queuing each evening before bedtime for a spoonful of ‘malt’ to supplement our fairly meagre diet. We had our favourites which we were allowed to bring from home. Radio Malt was a top number whilst Virol was deemed the lowest; partly because the advertisements stated that Virol was good for ‘anaemic girls’. We didn’t want that. Mumps, Measles and Chicken Pox were fairly standard epidemics and struck once a year. No one had colds or ‘flu. The ‘Sani’, pleasantly warm and cosy, was empty most of the time.

Were there other teachers and staff at the school? It is hard to recollect. A Mister Hacker came and went. A lady from Lithuania, presumably a refugee, with fair wavy hair tied in a bun at the back, came and acted as an under matron for a term. She called iodine ‘Joadine’ which mystified us and seemed to live in the airless Still Room where she ironed away at our pajamas and hankies. Cooks there must have been but who they were and what names they went by we never knew.

Durlston Court was a close community, a country within a country, with its own rules and laws, its traditions and a landscape surrounding it that, we felt, belonged to us. Sundays we went to church at Curry Rival, a distance of about eight miles, and this was the limit of the territory. The Reverend Maude Roxby presented a service in the best Anglican tradition, Hymns Ancient and Modern, Cranmers Prayer Book with prayers and collects therein and the Authorised Version of the Bible. We each put a penny in the collection bag as it passed down the pew and listened to sermons about winning the war or the plight of our soldiers, sailors and airmen. Daily prayers at Earnshill took place in a stone flagged room on the ground floor which served as a class room and a library at other times. By then we knew all the favourite hymns by heart and sang them with gusto. ‘For all the Saints’ was a great hit and when we came to the verse ‘the golden evening brightens in the West’ I used to peer Out of the window at the setting sun and the clouds like molten lead against the elms with the rooks returning and feel that Heaven was very close.

Butterflies and moths occupied much of our free time, or at least the free time of many of us. We had nets, collecting boxes, setting boards of several sizes, entomological pins in black or silver (depending on the colour of the thorax of the specimen — we were particular about that), home-made glass fronted cages for our caterpillars with holes in the floor for the feeding plant to sit in a small glass jar and keep fresh, and, most important of all, we each had a Killing Jar. This latter was a wide mouthed glass jar with a broad cork bung and a mixture of Plaster of Paris and Cyanide poured and fixed at the bottom. Above was cotton wool so that the creature could not damage its delicate wings in its death struggles. This was all taken in a matter of fact sort of way. Little fingers were inserted to pull the specimen Out from the cotton wool and there is but no doubt that much cyanide was ingested in the course of a summer. We survived and are probably immune to cyanide poisoning to this day.

In the l940’s lepidoptera were plentiful. One stood in the hot hayfields, the grass reaching to the shoulders aid peered at a miasma, a myriad of playful brown and white butterflies fluttering above the grasses and flowers. There seemed no end. We selected only the most perfect specimens with no damage to their wings from birds or the wear and tear of the summer season. Better we bred and hatched them from the caterpillars we found on the leaves and grasses. With amazement we watched as a Peacock butterfly burst out of its chrysalis, wings small and ill-formed as yet, to become minutes later a miracle of brightness and colour. We spent hours examining the hawthorn branches for the ‘stick caterpillars’ which we knew to be there but were so realistic that, as often as not, we overlooked them for a twig.

Butterfly expeditions took us to the edge of the Kings Sedgemoor and a view over that broad expanse of lowland with the Isle of Athelny, a pimple on the horizon. We lay in the grass looking up at the blue sky and watching the Six Spot Burnets hatching from their pale cocoons along the stalks — green-black wings with carmine spots. So neat, so perfect. None of us must have given a thought to the war that was waging in North Africa and in the Atlantic.

Other expeditions took us along the lanes and fields to pick blackberries in the autumn. There were mushrooms, too. Wherever we went there was peace and quiet. Indeed we used to slip out of the dormitory window on warm, dusky September evenings and wander the lawn in front of the house, jump the haha and walk amongst the great oaks of the park, barefoot and excited at our daring. Cox probably knew about this but in his wise way realised that there was no point in making rules about harmless pursuits that would, anyway, be broken. After bicycling our favourite wheeled sport was roller skating. In the stable yard had been erected a huge wooden house, a low roofed, smooth floored, space of about fifteen feet wide and more than thirty feet long. Down the one side were windows with chicken wire. It was, in fact, an enormous hen house which in its day had contained a thousand or so fowls and now found use as the perfect roller skating rink. Summer and winter, wet and cold, dry and hot, we charged in a circle round and round the hen house practicing turns and stops, elegant loops and backward figures of eight. The wooden floor made for considerable noise but soft landings. There was once a winter of ice and our prowess at roller skating came in handy.

The huts and ‘foliage’ of Swanage days developed a new sophistication at Earnshill. The huge and stately elms in the park were climbed and houses or just look-outs built high up amongst the branches. Groups of boys secured a special tree for themselves. No one was afraid of the height or danger of slipping. In the front of the house, beyond the haha we discovered that many of the oaks, through age, were, in fact, hollow. Trees began to be appropriated here also. The finest was a very large girthed oak with a very small entrance and an even smaller ‘window’ at the side. A small boy of eleven could squeeze halfway through with his chest taking up the curve of the hole before turning about so that his backside could be accommodated by the same curving line, It required great courage to drop three feet into the dark, shaggy space in the bowels of the tree for the first time. My brother and I, together with Cooke-Hurle, whom we called ‘Coke’, finally established the Hollow Tree House, HTH, as a retreat from the cares of life and spent happy afternoons in the cramped interior brewing cocoa and heating baked beans over a candle. We found some glass for the tiny window and felt very snug. Smoking was not an essential feature of school life but we felt it imperative to try Out the dry, dun coloured coatings of the walls of our house. Wood that had rotted to tinder over a hundred generations. We choked mightily and our eyes smarted but it seemed infinitely worth the while.

On one such afternoon the heavy atmosphere drove a very large spider to lower itself in the middle of us. We exited the Hollow Tree House in seconds. The Cadet Corps continued as did Cox’s patriotic speeches. His ‘jingoism’ was infectious. We were convinced that a German Parachutist had landed and reports were made of uniformed men with badges and buttons of a suspiciously alien genre. The old Local Defence Volunteers hut was now named the ARP Hut and the masters would discus ‘tactics’ though one suspects that a glass of beer was also at hand. A full blown General came down to inspect the corps, judge our marching and our skills at arms drill. He made a Montgomery type speech and gave us a half holiday which was standard practice. Walking down the line during his inspection as we stood at ‘open order’ he questioned the boys on their interests and ambitions. “What, young man, do you want to be when you grow up?“ he barked to a sallow youth. “I want to be a solicitor” replied Cheyne. We groaned. What a prig “and you, Trefry ?“ he asked. We groaned again. Trefry was Comish and would have pronounced his name ‘Tre-frye’ and here was this idiot saying ‘Treffry’ — was there no end to the ignorance of this man with gold braid all over him?

The end of the winter term brought much excitement. We cut strips of coloured paper and made chains to hang in the classrooms. We sang carols, we hoped for snow. The final envoi was an evening of songs and the fine baritone voices of Cox and Ellis were giving us, yet again, the favourites of the first world war. The school song began with the verse ‘In nineteen hundred nought and three Edward was King oe’r land and sea’ and at some stage we all sang the refrain ‘Erectus non Elatus-O’. Cox was insistent that we knew the meaning of the Latin which ran something like ‘upright but not too proud’. Fixing us with his pale blue eyes he said “it is Chest not Tummy” — and that’s as good as one can get. The finale of the concert was a song called Vive La Compagnie. A line of verses in couplets bringing in the names and amusing attributes of each boy in the school. The song began with the youngest and most junior boy and ended with the Head Boy. We were all agog for weeks wondering what might be said about us. The text was printed each year in the Durlstonian magazine.

Looking back one could see an extraordinary amount of psychology, or at least very careflul thought behind the running of the school. We learned to take responsibility, help manage the school and each, in his own way, to recognise that, while different from each other, we had attributes that were valuable. As an example an elaborate ‘Court’ was set up each year where a series of responsibilities were give amusing names. The Keeper of the Green Cloth made sure that the billiard table was kept clean and the balls and cues in place. The Town Crier would call out the birthday of a boy at breakfast in a sing-song voice and we would all chant back ‘Many happy returns Cadoux-Hudson’ or who ever. A Keeper of the King’s Books acted as Librarian and tried to maintain order along the book shelves. The Keeper of the Queen’s Music’ had the obvious task of packing away the sheets and books of music and making sure that the piano was not used for continuous ‘chopsticks’. There were many more. The boys felt flattered and appreciated by this.

Cox seldom beat boys. If he did, he did it fairly softly and it was the shame of the event that remained. I believe that Ellis also beat and that his beatings were rather more severe. There was a prefectorial system with a head boy but punishments were minimal. Mostly the school ran its course smoothly. There was a time when minor misdemeanours were automatically put down to ‘Cooke-Hurle and the Whiteheads’ but we weathered the storm quite well. The topiary beyond the spinney was one day found to contain a yew looking remarkably like Cooke-Hurle’s grandmother, so he said. We three hurled ourselves into it, bouncig back from the springy branches. We left the topiary looking bedraggled and the phrase ‘Grandma bashing’ came into popularity.

Soon the years were up. We were going to public school. We promised to keep up with each other wherever we might be, rather like passengers of an ocean liner. Some, like Cheyne, were destined to be what we could patently see they would be. Dunne was a cipher. Kipping would go into the Navy, he talked little else all day. Smithwick was deaf in one ear and could not be accepted for Pangboume — he was crestfallen. Alas, we heard that he had died shortly afterwards. Goodison chaired the London Stock Exchange. Cooper would go into his father’s business and go on to financial fame and fortune. But many shadowy figures remain.

Whatever happened to Jolly ? During the war we spent our time playing with gunpowder, cordite and live ammunition which we found in abundance around us. At the start of one term Cox called us all together to announce that Jolly would be coming back two weeks late because he had met with an accident at home. He had been scraping our the cordite from a shell with a kitchen knife and the thing has exploded in his face. He had lost a thumb and part of two fingers of his left hand. Needless to say, when Jolly appeared with bandaged stumps, he was the most popular boy in the school. Cox’s admonition was mild and he left us to draw our own conclusions, which we readily did. Poor Jolly, we learnt many years later, had died climbing a cliff face when he had slipped and fallen several hundred feet. Sad ending. He was only 18 years old.

Rowland Whitehead
24th June 2003

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