St Edward's Rhubarb - 2018

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16 ST EDWARD’S r hubarb
A R C H I V E S
contained married accommodation for the
newly married Dingwall. He doubled up
as Bursar until 1932 and in 1937 became
Headmaster of Hurstpierpoint. He was
replaced as housemaster by none other
than R. H. Barff, who had ‘rumbled on to
the scene’ in 1927, ‘”temporarily” filling a
gap left by Griffiths’ departure and reading
for his degree at the same time’; he was
married in Summertown Church in 1930,
‘with the school choir in attendance and the
reception held in the Warden’s house’. Barff
remained the only married housemaster until
1947, when Roger Northcote-Green, newly
married, took over Mac’s (from Macnamara),
where fortunately there was the married
accommodation occupied by Herbert Dalton,
headmaster from 1877 to 1883; appointed
as Headmaster of Worksop in 1952, he
was succeeded by Charles Mather who
was married with two daughters. The next
married housemaster (with a son) was Bill
Veitch, for whom married accommodation
had to be added to Segar’s in 1955 when he
took over from Jim Gauntlett.
The Warden asked Barff to open Field
House on 1 September 1939 (the day on
which Hitler invaded Poland) ‘for the benefit
of parents wishing to remove their sons
from more dangerous areas, and by the
beginning of term 25, including some of the
new boys, had assembled…The older boys in
the Corps paraded three times a week and
those “two experienced ex-officers, Major
Macnamara and Lieutenant Barff” returned
to the colours’.
After Dunkirk 90 senior boys were
enrolled in the LDV (Local Defence
Volunteers, later renamed the Home Guard).
The platoon, commanded by Sergeant Yorke
with Corporals Segar and Gauntlett, formed
part of the Summertown and Wolvercote
Company under Major Macnamara. A
patrol camped nightly at the boathouse
to keep watch for enemy parachutists on
Port Meadow, and was more than a little
disconcerted one morning to find that a
great camp had sprung up in the darkness
to shelter a large portion of the returned
Expeditionary Force. ‘I thought I heard
something’ reported Barff.
Field House, half a mile from the centre of
the school, uniquely acquired a measure of
independence and individuality which puzzled
the rest of the school. They had all their
meals in the central dining hall, whereas Field
House had breakfast and supper in the house
‘which at mealtimes preserved something of a
country house atmosphere’. In our day these
were supervised by Jean Allison, the house
nurse who left in 1959 after some 10 years.
Even in the 1950s Bim Barff and his wife
Renee, ‘attended by a uniformed maidservant,
would dine by candlelight’ in full view of the
boys, and their ‘ageing and weighty retriever’
Leo had the run of the so-called Italian garden
laid out in front of the house. Barff ‘left the
prefects and senior boys to run the house’.
Stewart Pether, married with three
children, succeeded Barff (who became
Second Master for 10 years) as housemaster
Henry Kendall orchestrating the digging out of one of the School’s air raid shelters in the summer of 1940
in 1957. The additional accommodation
necessary consisted of a dormitory for 16
boys with four studies below. It was built
by Symm and Co. Ltd., who had built the
Chapel 80 years before; their charge for
each was almost the same (£4,500).
In 1960 a property company became
interested in buying the remaining Field
House estate for development and a sale
was completed. A new Field House was
built close to K House (the original Field
House!) and occupied from 1964.
Still in the house!
Gauntlett
photos
The St Edward's
School Society
is paying for Jack
Gauntlett’s glass
frame pictures to be
digitised. Gauntlett
was a member of
staff at Teddies from
1924-1964. He
developed and fixed
the images in a home-
made concoction
due to wartime
restrictions. The
quality of the images
is astonishing. We
will be making these
images available in the
near future.
Corfe House in the
winter of 1940.