Reminiscences from ROSA Members

This page has been inspired by Cyril Dennis who was at Reedham from 1929 – 1940. Our Historian Derrick Smith has for many years been collecting articles, some long and some very short, about the memories from those who attended or knew of the old School. Cyril wished to publicise some of his memories and hence the launching of this page which we hope readers will find of interest.

If you have already provided your own memories to Derrick Smith and would like to see those published here, or you have any memories you would like to add here, then please email us at rosa@reedham.org.uk

CYRIL DENNIS (Years at Reedham 1929 – 1940)

REEDHAM IN THE NINETEEN THIRTIES

In Eddie Rolph’s excellent story of Reedham, The Home on the Hill, there is no mention of Mr Tregenza who succeeded H E Clarke as headmaster when he retired in 1934.  As Eddie left school around this time, this omission must have been deliberate.  In a recent edition of Rosabeam , Maureen Gibson wrote that very little is ever written about the years immediately before WW2.  (She went on to ask if anyone remembered the Gibson Girls of that period – as if anyone could possibly forget them.)  When I rejoined ROSA in 1994 after a gap of about 45 years, I wondered why so few of my generation were members.  Surely we were not all dead?  I could make a long list of the people who we don’t know what happened to.  Am I being controversial in suggesting that Reedham went through a bad patch when Clarke left, and this together with the war coming when it did may be the reason why there are so few of us.  I have been asked by Derrick Smith, the  ROSA Historian, to write some of my memories of those days; good and bad, trivial and serious.  I do this but stress that what I write is my own opinion and others might take a different view……

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ERNEST RAYNER (Years at Reedham 1962 – 1968)

LIFE AT REEDHAM 1962 – 1968

I can still picture my first day.  The bus ride from home to Kingston, then on the 725 Green Line coach to Wallington Green and finally the 234A to Old Lodge Lane.  In those days I was a bus enthusiast (something that to this day has never really left me) and this is why the journey is so clear.  That walk up the drive and then those steps!  The saddest bit when you see your mum walk out the door and know you’re on your own.  I joined at the start of the first year in Seniors (1962 when we were taught in the main building……

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WALTER BASS (Years at Reedham 1916 – 1927)

FROM A LETTER TO ROSABEAM IN 2005, WHEN WALTER WAS 92

“ … My mother was widowed by my father’s sudden death when I was a babe, 10 months of age, in November 1913.  He was a well-known comedian (according to some old bill heads I still have) and died of a cerebral haemorrhage on his way to fulfil a theatre engagement in London.  He was twenty years older than my mother and had grown-up children by his first wife.  My mother bore him three daughters and me.  Strange as it may seem, before his death he had visited Reedham to see the daughter of a family friend and he thought and said then, what a lovely school it was and how the Reedham country environment was something out of the ordinary……

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WALTER BASS (Years at Reedham 1916 – 1927)

THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

“ It was a hot summer’s afternoon. The opened windows in the old fourth form classroom invited the welcome breeze which blew across the deserted playground. Cleric held the attention of his class in his inimitable way with a lesson in literature and English pronunciation. As was his wont, he expounded on the derivation of common place names and English words and then their etymological journey through history from their Latin or Greek origin, collecting French or Teutonic interpose, eventually to anglicise for a place in our mother tongue, albeit with a pot-pouri of different County dialects (which could confuse the enemy!) With a smile he would say is it Neether or Nyther? Ask a Suffolk farmer and he would declare that “It be Naythure”. Cleric’s lessons were riveting. It must have been the case because I never dozed……

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VARIOUS CONTRIBUTORS (Extract from the ROSA WW2 Revisited booklet – copies available from our Shop Page)
WW2 – EARLY AIR RAIDS
The first indication I had that the war might be serious was the news that the British army was being evacuated from Dunkirk.  At the time it was not announced as a heroic epic and must have been really bad news for the country.  Everyone expected a German blitzkrieg and invasion to follow immediately.  Miss Shears, our class teacher, told us what had happened and spoke gravely of the possibility of attacks on the school.  We then practised taking cover under our desks as quickly as possible on her command.  I suppose there wasn’t much else that could be done but luckily the Germans did not come……

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