Directly adjacent to door of my classroom was a wide staircase leading to the ground floor. It was matched by a similar staircase which arrived at the other end of the corridor. I am telling you all this as the staircases and the corridor were a constant source of what I came to think of as "cannon fodder" for the Headmaster's cane. The staircase which was adjacent to my classroom was the up-staircase whilst its mirror-imaged twin was the down-staircase. So in the morning on arrival we all assembled in the cloisters in lines defining our classes and then as the entry bell rang, the doors were opened and we all entered the building, ascended the up-staircase to retrieve our classrooms, all of which led off from this square corridor system. But the sting in the tail was that the boys were obliged to walk (never even think of running if you valued your backside at all) clockwise around the corridor. It was strictly forbidden, under pain of a whacking, to circulate in the opposite direction. And so one had the ludicrous situation that the entire school, other than my class, the door of which was directly at the arrival of the up-staircase, had to walk around practically the entire length of the corridor. And even the adjacent positions of classes 1A and 1B were subject to this rule; if a boy from 1A wanted to go to 1B, then he had to walk all the way around the corridor to get there.
As you might imagine, boys being boys, the up and down and clockwise circulation rules were frequently broken. The most common infraction was that boys (me included) would, if they thought that the coast was clear rush down the up-staircase to avoid having to walk around what seemed then like a very long corridor. I say "what seemed then like a very long corridor" as the whole place seemed huge to me as a boy; but some fifty-odd years later, when I revisited my old school for the first time since I had left it to go to university, I was struck by how small it all actually was. But coming back to what might best be called the misuse of the staircases, we miscreants usually escaped punishment as no master was on hand to catch us. But occasionally the Headmaster would sneakily station himself at a strategic time at the bottom of the two staircases, out of sight from the top of the stairs, and try to catch errant boys. I was caught only once myself, along with five other lads and I can tell you that we deeply regretted what we had done, as the Headmaster applied the cane to our backsides with his customary vigour. But in spite of the Headmaster's underhand strategy, boys still regularly broke the rules and risked a sore arse. I think that this one-way rule was one of the Headmaster's most remunerative ideas in providing him with a regular series of arses to whack
But let's get back to my first day at the grammar school. I quickly found that things were much much more regimented than they had been at my elementary church school. The first shock was that there were no female teachers. At the church school, other than the Headmaster, who was a man, all the teachers, both in the infants and upper school had been women. My form-master was a man called Mr. Allan: Mr A.G. Allan; we all wondered what his Christian names were (we could still refer to first names as Christian names in those days: the concept of political correctness and not been invented) but we never found out; along with all the other masters he always signed himself with just his initials before his surname. His nickname was Algy, as he was a slightly rotund, amiable-looking character who wore a pullover under his sports coat. Looking back on it, I think he was one of the few teachers who did not wear a three piece suite every day.
Amiable he may have looked, but appearances were deceptive, for he brooked no backchat from his pupils, had a sharp and sarcastic tongue and was not at all averse to sending any boy who crossed him to the Headmaster for a whacking. In addition to being my first form master, he taught mathematics: arithmetic, algebra and geometry, to the junior school.
That first day we were allocated our desks, all of which were formally arranged behind one another in rows: individual desks with hard wooden seats. Beneath the sloping top, which was hinged to lift up, was a capacious cavity in which we had to store our books. Each top was fitted with a hasp and clasp and we were all told to buy a padlock to ensure that no one stole any of our things. There was an inkwell and a grooved flat part for the dip-in nib pens which were then still in daily use; remember ball-points were still in the distant future and fountain pens were very expensive. I imagine these desks, all of which were ancient-looking, dated from the turn of the century or even earlier. That feeling of the past was reinforced when the various text books were issued. I can remember that the Latin Grammar and the French Primer were both dog-eared, soft, linen-bound books dating from well before the war. But remember that we were in 1945, and that the war had only just ended and everything was still in short supply.
The morning routine, which was very important, was that we all arrived in the cloisters for the start of the school-day at 8:15, at which time the entry bell rang and we all trooped up the "up-staircase" to our form-room for roll-call. Algy called the register and ticked off the presence of each boy who answered. He then wrote out on a printed chit with the number of boys present, and the names of boys absent. And then came the sting in the tail, for if you were not present when your name was called out and crept late into the class-room, then your name as a late arrival was noted. I did not realise at first but each time any boy arrived late, as I, for my sins, did, he received what we would today call a demerit. One of us was then required to deposit this chit in a letter box outside the school secretary's office where they were assiduously recorded and analysed by Miss Priston and led later to some painful meetings with the Headmaster. But we live and learn- sometimes the hard way!
Following roll-call, we all then trooped into the central gymnasium/ assembly hall were we stood in serried ranks, the youngest of us to the front and the sixth formers to the rear and awaited the arrival of the staff and the Headmaster. Next to the main entry door was a slightly raised dais on which stood a tall wooden teacher's desk on which the Headmaster deposited his papers. The teaching staff, all fully gowned, arranged themselves along the wall to each side of this dais, to the left of which, in the corner, was an upright piano. When we were all assembled, the Headmaster made his entry, always a somewhat dramatic affair, as he was a larger than life individual who totally dominated everyone, boys and masters included. My first assembly was on the Tuesday, my second day at school, as the first day we had all arrived later in the morning after the assembly had been completed.
For my non-English readers, the daily assembly was a ritual in all English schools and had a more or less standard format. We sang a hymn, heard a lesson read from the Bible and said a prayer. England was then still essentially inhabited only by English people and there was no need to make any allowance for any other religions. The only deviation as that Catholics were allowed to miss the religious bit of the assembly, which was based on the teachings of the Church of England and could come in when the Headmaster came to his announcements of the day. But as I remember it, there were no catholic boys at all. One master was a catholic and always came in after the religious ceremony was over.
But to come back to "Basher": Mr. B. A. S. Barton, the Headmaster; as I said, his entry was always somewhat dramatic, for he wore not only a voluminous back gown but also a mortarboard complete with tassel. He also wore a monocle, a three-piece suit and a white shirt with a stiff high wing collar, complemented by a very sober tie. His shoes, always black Oxfords, were always very highly polished. In short Mr. Barton was an anachronism, for he looked more or less like a late Victorian or Edwardian gentleman; post-war England in 1945 was anything but modern, but Mr. Barton looked truly antique. He seemed very old to me on first sight, but I guess that he must have been in his late fifties as I saw an announcement in the local newspaper that he had retired, aged sixty-five, just a few years after I had left the school and was at university.
A gentleman he may have looked, but there was nothing at all gentle about Mr. Barton, for he ruled the school with a rod of iron, or rather with a selection of painful rattan canes and the occasional birch, which he had not the slightest hesitation in applying to the backsides of the boys throughout my entire school career. All punishment was always applied to a lad's backside and never to his hands. As the notes we had received had said, Bishop Edmund's was a school where "corporal chastisement was used when merited". Well let me tell you they were not kidding, for you did not have to do much wrong to merit a visit to the Headmaster's study. There can never have been a greater believer in the beneficial effects of the cane on a boy's bottom than Mr. Barton. He used the cane regularly; not a week went by without several lads getting their arses whacked; the cane was used liberally for no one was exempt from his percussive ministrations: from the first form right through to the final year boys aged eighteen in the upper sixth, Mr. Barton had no hesitation in thrashing backsides vigorously, for he never ever held back with the force with which he applied the rod to the unfortunate miscreant's arse. For the most part, boys were whacked with their trousers on; but even so, Mr. Barton was such an expert with the cane that he could take any miscreant to hell and back even fully clothed. Rumour had it - and it turned out to be true - that occasionally lads were required to present their naked backside to him and I can tell you that we all shuddered at the thought of what that might be like.
