What a fantastic Easter Reunion it was this year, with 109 in residence for the weekend, plus a few extras on the Sisman's driveway and many more visiting us just for the day, or for a specific Sidcotian Reunion. Well done to the Class of '61, Class of '63, Class of '68, Class of '71 and Class of '78 for hosting your Reunions on or off site. It is always so nice to welcome you and your families back to School for this special time of year.    

For those who were not able to attend, Headmaster Iain Kilpatrick gave a report on the School, which can be read here: Easter Presentation from the Headmaster 2023.

A presentation outlining the work and impact of The Sidcot Building Trust Fund, The Sidcot Bursary Trust, and The Sidcot Education Trust can also be read here: Update from the Sidcot Trusts Easter 2023.

Ben Evens' experience of Easter Weekend at Sidcot – 2023

For me it was a great joy, as an Old Scholar to be accompanied by my wife, Ann and all three of our daughters, Bryony, Beth and Caroline and also our granddaughter Jasmine. Their input to the musical success of the weekend was heart-warmingly appreciated. Peter Wilson’s professional handling of the amateur choir brought excellent results.

It was a pleasure to enjoy the wide-age-range of those attending, from comparative ‘oldies’ like myself down to babes-in-arms. There were long-standing reunion attenders who themselves were not ‘ex-pupils’, (but who albeit were associate members of the Old Scholars), who were grandparents. This makes for a happy occasion and it was good to see toddlers seemingly accepting their surroundings and feeling safe.

There was a sense throughout the weekend of lots of different activities taking place, so that as many people as possible could find something to suit their taste. There were many of these that I managed to avoid, instead, seeking quiet moments around the site, either to be alone for a while or to be able to chat at length with old friends.

My main detachment from the throng of activities was to walk the Seven Hills on Good Friday. I have made a habit of doing this walk every Good Friday, alternating the direction each year. Having walked this many times in the past and particularly every year from 2016 to 2019 inclusive, it was with some trepidation that I set off to walk it after a four-year Covid gap. I left the school front at 0638 and by not rushing the hills was back by 1650, having walked 22 miles in glorious weather. It was a magnificent day - enjoying fresh air, plenty of wild flowers, interesting meetings with friendly farmers, amazingly clear views. Did I really see the Malverns from the top of Blackdown?

The School Hymn resonates with me often, not least the phrase “Here love we calm of combe and toil of hillcrest”. The Seven Hills walk gave me plenty of opportunity for appreciating those lovely words. There are actually nine hills, one of which is difficult to visit, but the other eight were duly visited.

The ”Singing of the School Song” on Sidcot Hill is an ancient tradition. My remembrance from the 1960s was that we walked up to the pine trees on Sidcot Hill in the evening, in the dusk or dark, with torches. I wonder if this was in addition to the traditional singing of the School Song at the end of the Monday Evening entertainments. Can’t remember. We still do sing the song after the Sunday evening music and entertainment, but each year the organisers seems to try and honour the “singing in the dark up the hill”; by slotting it into the programme somewhere, whether it wants to be there or not. This year the slot was timed for 1800 just half an hour after the start of the evening meal. I had my arm twisted, just a little, and the time was altered to 1830.  But, it was just the four of us who walked gently up Oakridge Lane, having useful conversations and up onto the top of Sidcot Hill. We admired the splendid views and appreciated the warm/cool atmosphere after previous showers. Then we walked gently back down the lane again, complete with more conversation. Whilst on top we did actually struggle through the two verses, but it seemed, to me at least, that the singing was a mere formality, an afterthought, with no real necessity attached to it.  If there had been at least 20 of us, it might have been more meaningful. But it was a beautiful and glorious occasion, even without the singing.

Sarah gave her Presidential Address which was very warmly applauded. I felt it gave exactly the right note, with humour sandwiched in between entertaining stories and references to the deeper meanings of our shared school life.

The “Pub Quiz” had a rather more different set of questions than usual and was, as always, good fun.

The Country Dancing had good folky music and a good dance leader, with at least one dance leading to hilarious convolutions with different sets intermangled (sic).

The Sunday Evening after Meeting was an interesting innovation with music and the sketches taking turn and turn-about. A highlight was the Argentinian Dancing, with a small, orchestra and piano accompanying Peter Wilson in his usual wonderful tenor voice, blowing us all away.

For me, personally, the whole weekend found my emotions very near to the surface. The beauty of the music, the presence of my family, the nostalgic memories of all those years ago, the kindness of others and the love of everyone around me. I quote from my 2006 Presidential Address, the closing words:

“In all this I will be remembering the lasting warmth of friends, the wildness of solitude, the tenderness of passion, the ache of beauty, the yearning for days that will never return and the indefinable richness and fellowship that is Sidcot”.

Ben Evens  - 13.04.2023

Sarah’s Presidential Address - Sidcot - Easter 2023

Friends, Sidcotians, Headmaster, Old Scholars. Firstly, my sincere thanks to Jenny and Adrian Sisman for their extended Presidency. They have done sterling work since becoming vice presidents in 2019, which seems a long time ago now in the ‘Before’. The pandemic disrupted the whole world and they have held Sidcotians together through it all.  In particular, they helped organise the 150th Anniversary Dinner last May, which was hugely enjoyable.  It was terrific to meet up with so many of my contemporaries and was an unqualified success.  So, on behalf of all Sidcotians everywhere, thank you.

The success of these Easter Gatherings is also due to the continued support of the school authorities for which we thank the newish Alumni officers and the Headmaster and as he moves on we wish him well with his new and exciting endeavours.

For the first chapter of my association with Sidcot. I refer you to my mother ‘s Presidential Address of 1990, suffice to say that I was first brought to Sidcot for the Easter Reunion of 1962 in a carrycot.  And along with Guy van Blankenstein we became the first children of Old Scholars to attend an Easter reunion. (Incidentally I received my first proposal of marriage from Guy. On the steps of the San, I was three!)

Each Easter, there would be more and more children and soon there was a great gang of us including my brother, Josh, Peter, Alison, and Diana Strauss, Tim, and Rick Hall, Tessa Harris, Ellen Charman, my cousins Judy, and Nick, Jen, and Tim Morgan, and the clutter of Rutter,  Ben, Amanda ,Bo,  Simon and Vicky, Guy and Joly van Blankenstein and assorted Kertons, Pollards and Pearces. And we had a whale of a time!

Gradually, Newcombe became the accommodation for families and dogs, and was always my first sight of Sidcot as we would park up and unpack the car before walking down to school.  This is why I chose the picture of Newcomb for my Easter greetings cards.  Oh, the excitement of arriving at Newcombe!

Our parents were always busy and doing things or talking to people and we were pretty much left to our own devices here.  Playing endless games of hockey exploring everywhere and messing about.  We had access to the old gym and some years the trampoline was left out, which I loved.  And it wasn’t long before we had keys to the old swimming pool.  All of this was totally unsupervised.  As long as Josh and I checked in with our parents at mealtimes, we were pretty much free until bedtime.  And I loved it!

My parents seem to spend most of the weekend writing and rehearsing, getting sketches for the entertainment on Monday evenings with Morgan Johnson, Johnny Brookes and Jonathan Sayce et al and I was soon joining on them on the stage.  There was also plenty of singing around a guitar with my dad, Keith Marriott, Chick Fyson and Chris Charman.  My mum sang in the choir, so I went along to that from about aged eight or nine.  I used to stand between Mother and Wendy Hewitt and sing soprano.  I could hold onto the score and follow the words while concentrating on Wendy’s ringing tones for the notes.  I found Teddy Davis a bit scary, mainly because I didn’t really understand the musical vocabulary, but I learned from them all and so was introduced to singing in a choir.

Easter Mondays were always being made to go on the walk, partaking of the picnic brought to some dear spot by Tim Holding in his truck and then back to school, often in said truck for final rehearsals.  But the highlight of those picnics was always the arrival of my great uncle Hucky and his 1936, Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce and the elaborate ritual of his mixing a Longbourne Sling for selected cronies, including Freddie and Connie Gilman, Granny Esther Morgan, great uncle Frank, and great aunty Eleanor Pearce . Great Uncle Hucky was very generous towards me.  He paid for my piano lessons here, sent a piano to our home, took me to the Proms and took all us cousins out for fine dining in Axminster.  His cello playing in Music After Meeting was quite memorable. It I s so nice to have his musical connections and contributions to Sidcot recognised by a music practice room being named after him.

My childhood in the New Forest was filled with the company of the Pottery Lot.  Godshill Pottery was established by Chris Charman and Kate (Duthie) and their children, Ellen and Tom.  Later, Danae Harris (Charman) came back from Australia with Tessa, her daughter, so Tessa, Ellen and I were all the same age and Josh and Tom Charman, were too.  We spent hours together as village children do, with bikes and ponies, and following our mums to hockey matches and jumble sales and rehearsals for village plays and Chris building a dam in the stream for us to swim in every summer and haymaking and lots of singing with guitars.

It had never been on the cards for me to go to Sidcot.  Along came the 11+ and us three girls went in different directions.  Ellen to the local secondary modern in Fordingbridge, me to South Wilts Grammar School for Girls in Salisbury and Tessa to Sidcot.  I was very unsettled at South Wilts and never really found my feet.  Then my parents split up and suddenly I was to sit the Sidcot entrance exam.  This was followed by interviews with the Headmaster Richard Brayshaw, and Headmistress Evie Phillips.  I remember two things from that interview.  One remark by Mr Brayshaw that my maths really wasn’t up to scratch, and I would need to work very hard indeed.  And a question about what books I liked to read.  Well, by this time I was getting well into reading Agatha Christie, but in that moment, I suddenly thought it was probably an unusual and inappropriate choice for a 12-year-old and I blurted out “books on nature”! Ha!  Where did that come from?  The real answer was so much more impressive.  When I was nine and my cousin, Caroline, 12, we travelled on our own by train from London to Le Mans to visit her French grandparents and then were swept up by her extended French family to Pornichet and La Rochelle for several summer weeks.  I had finished the books I’d taken with me - Ponies Plot and Thunderbird. (Son of My Friend Flicker books 1,2 and 3 (they were Green Dragons).  I so wanted to be like my big cousin so I read what she was reading, Agatha Christie books, in French.  I don’t think I understood much but felt hugely sophisticated and grown up!  I was soon collecting them from jumble sales in English and found them a marvellous puzzle -solving read.  I’m fairly sure that that little story would impressed Mr Brayshaw and Miss Phillips much more than “books on nature” but alas they never knew.

On the interview day. Josh and I were reunited with our cousins Judy and Nicky Morgan, who are in the same boat as us -   same ages, same circumstances with our parents and all children and grandchildren of old scholars.  And so we all four came to Sidcot, September 1974.

Being pitched into the upper fourth was always going to be a bit like joining a movie part way through.  Friendship groups had already become established and my home friendship with Tessa dimmed rather after sharing a two-dorm for my first term.  Judy and I teamed up and would remain close all the way through our time at Sidcot.  The rest of the form had enjoyed Lower Fourth camp the previous summer term, which I’m sure was a very bonding experience.  They had also been in a play in Latin and conversations were spattered with quotes I didn’t understand.  Caecillius in horto est, -  I seem to remember this, even though I was never in the play and never even saw it!  These quotes were joined by the conventions of quiz, ego and cave, which all took a while to understand.  I also didn’t know any Greek and our form was split into two sets, A and Alpha.  All I knew was that I was not in A set.  Turns out that the form was divided into roughly comparable mixed ability groups, not A set and the others.  At the end of term we would have the dreaded Weighing and Measuring followed by Grade Reading.  We would be gathered together as a whole form and all our grades were read aloud.  I remember that for some reason one year we were gathered up in the TV room and Richard Brayshaw gave us our grades which was a letter for achievement A to E and a number for effort 1 to 5 as an overall grade for the term.  I can hear his theatrical delivery now, going alphabetically down the Helen Argyropoulos B+1, Judith Baker A1, Jonathan, Berg, A2 et cetera.  I was always somewhere in the middle B2 or C3 never an E, but never an A.

I was fairly sporty but not as good as my brother and definitely not as good as my mum, but I could make up the numbers and was generally part of teams except hockey. (Yeuch!)  Judith and I were tennis partners for a bit, probably third couple, and mixed doubles with Josh.  I became captain of the netball team, enjoyed diving and was a good swimmer.  I could swim two lengths of the old swimming pool underwater and a whole length in The Plunge.  We usually had separate swimming sessions, girls and boys, but when Jean Snitch hurt her back, AD Sisman took us for swimming and taught us the backstroke.  We had to do lengths and lengths singing God Save the Queen to keep us in time.  We must have made an awful racket!

We had prep for two hours in the Upper Fourth and Lower Fifth, and then three hours for the Upper Fifth.  The double rooms in the classroom block would be laid out in single desks and we sat in alphabetical order in silence for the duration with our homework.  A member of staff would sit at the front with piles of marking and forbidding looks.  We just got on with it whilst also perfecting the art of note passing without being clocked.  The note should be rather banal, and I’m sure not  really worth the penalties if caught.  Things like, “Do you think Sophie fancies Chris Mossman? “(Yes, she did).” Is it prehaps or perhaps ?” (Perhaps, Judy).  My place was directly behind William Marriage (Pete’s brother) and he wasn’t very happy or subtle when passing notes.  I did have to kick his chair several times for ages before he joined in the chain.  This was our equivalent of WhatsApp but with more jeopardy!

On Mondays I could skip an hour of prep by going to choir.  This was great and was held here in a meeting house and included members of staff with such stalwarts as Dick and Joyce Hinton, David Lindley Hinton, Elvina Trinder and Jean Plant.  In the Lower Fifth we took up the opportunity to join all the other Friends Schools for a performance of Verdi ‘s Requiem in York Minster.  It was amazing to become part of a massed choir, with a full orchestra and professional soloists.  The boys stayed at Bootham and us girls and female staff were hosted by the Mount, where, yes, I made Mrs. Plant an apple pie bed. Taking part in that performance was fantastic and a few years ago Judy and I went to a Proms performance of it and remembered it well. There was a terrific after-show party in York, where we could all let off steam dancing away to the very impressive Bootham Big Band – magic.

Four long-standing members of staff retired during my time (some of whom had taught my mum).  Evelyn Phillips, at the end of my Upper Fourth, Dick and Joyce Hinton at the end of my Lower Fifth, and Grace and Bob Hopes in the sixth form.  For the Hintons, we organised a picnic tea in their garden!  For the Hopes, we stretched to a meal out in a restaurant, in Weston, I think, as they both had been our form teachers, but I like to think that being our form teachers was not the cause of them retiring, but that they wanted to end on a high!

However, it was Richard Brayshaw’ s retirement celebrations in the summer of 1977 that brought me into the limelight.  Gilbert and Sullivan ‘s Trial by Jury was selected as Nab’s swansong.  It was to be produced by Chris and Jen Latham, he head of music, she a matron, and our house parents at Newcomb, a new experiment of having a male house-parent in a girls house.  One night, just after lights out, I was asked briskly by Jen Latham to get up, put my dressing gown and slippers on and come downstairs.  Well, what calamity was this?  Chris and Jen settled me down in their sitting room asked me if I would play Angelina to Mr Brayshaw’ s Judge.  Well, I said yes, and then a little bit tentatively they said that before I agreed I should know that I would be required, for a short time in the show, to sit on the Headmaster’s knee, behind a newspaper.  Would that be alright?  Now, sometime previously I’d been called out of prep and sent to Mr Brayshaw’ s office.  He told me that Josh had been at gym club, and, when learning long-fly over the horse, had flung himself backwards so enthusiastically, he’d bashed the back of his head on the wooden side of the horse and slithered down in a concussed heap.  Well, ambulance! Hospital! Drama! I must’ve gone white as a sheet and started to shake and Mr Brayshaw sat me down on his knee, reassured me that everything would be fine and sent me back to prep.  So having already sat on his knee once I had no worries about doing it on the stage.  In those days in the old dining room, or what we called the dining room there was still Top Table where Mr and Mrs Brayshaw, Evie Phillips, and later Jean Plant, would have breakfast and lunch. The morning after being asked to play Angelina, I was beckoned over by Nab to Top Table at breakfast.  He said that he understood I was to play Angelina.  I confirmed this and he nodded and gave me a very deliberate wink!  It rather made me blush.  There is a tape recording of one of the performances, and when it came to the saucy sitting on the knee part you can hear on the tape Granny going (gasp!) and Grandpa (throaty chuckle).  Thus began my joy of performing Gilbert and Sullivan and I have been fortunate enough to have completed my “set “with all 13 of them. Yes, even The Grand Duke, with Southampton Operatic Society in Southampton and at the Buxton International Festival, well supported by lovely northern Old Scholars 

While all this Trial by Jury malarkey was going on I was in the midst of my ‘O’ levels.  I had come a long way in maths since my interview, thanks to Di Hillage and Phil Jeavons and I had taken that and English language the previous November and passed them both, but all the involvement in Trial really didn’t lend itself to concentrated revision.  Also, other members of the form were up to their own shenanigans.  Judith Herring was hand-rearing a family of ducklings in our form room.  She had incubated them in the linen room at Newcombe and they now followed her about.  Jenni Morris had a bicycle in slow stages of construction in the form room, the boys came over for endless games of gin rummy and cheat, long discussions on what to put on the record player - Supertramp or Genesis, Bridge Over Troubled Water or Hunky Dory, Patti Smith or Donovan.  Ben Reeves also decided that now, just as he was about to emigrate to Canada and not come back for the sixth form, would be the ideal time to start going out with Judy!

What with everything, my results were mediocre, but enough to stay on for ‘A’ levels.  At the end of the Upper Fifth, many of my form moved on to other places for the sixth form and we had an influx of new students and the arrival of the new Headmaster, Thomas Leimdorfer.  So, the sixth form became a different country.  For one thing we didn’t have to wear school uniform anymore.  Also, we could call the staff by their first names which was just weird.  We had studies as opposed to form rooms and a common room and a kitchen!

Just a word about the flexibility of Sidcot at that time.  Two examples; we each had to visit Mrs plant to discuss our A-level choices, and I pointed out that I didn’t know what to do, as my preferred choices were set against each other in the timetable.  My choices were English literature, French and Sociology.  So, they changed the entire school timetable just to accommodate me.  The other headache I caused was in the Upper Sixth.  I had attended Junior Yearly Meeting at Sibford and had been asked to deliver the report to Meeting for Sufferings at Friends House.  This was a great honour for the school, particularly as Peter Austin from the form above me had been selected the previous year.  Two in a row, Go Sidcot!  I prepared my report and Dottie Powell was kind enough to listen to me practice it in here and give me a few tips (slow down, Sarah !)  It then transpired that my jaunt to London was due to be on the same day as my French A-level oral exam.  Consternation! Drama! Phone calls to the Cambridge examination board!  And so it was organised that Sally Farley and Matt Berry (my only two fellow A levellers) would take the oral on the appointed day and the external Examiner would return a week later for me.  As all this was going on, Penny Stirling had cottoned on to the fact that, despite all my piano lessons I had no formal grades.  She madly crammed me for my grade 5 theory paper, also an oversight, and I passed that so that I could prepare for my grade 7 piano exam.  Alas, the French oral rearranged date fell on the same day so I never did take any piano exams, but I’ve got grade 5 theory and I passed my French A-level !

At the end of the lower sixth, Mrs Plant steered me into the common room to ask, quite matter-of-factly, if I would be deputy head girl the next year.  Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather!  The thought had never entered my head.  In a daze, I went back to our Mars Bar study, and told Judy and Jane.  Well, blow me down, Jane Crowther been asked to be the other deputy, and Judy, the Head Girl! Apart from anything else, that meant she would be the only pupil in the whole school to have room to themselves, and her own bathroom! She took the job very seriously and did good work, being diligent and reliable.  I was so pleased for her, and she totally earned her own room!

In the Upper Sixth, Richard and Kay Brayshaw died within five days of each other.  Us officeholders were to attend the double cremation to represent the school students.  Even though it was my first experience of any kind of funeral or cremation, the thing that stands out most in my memory is that after the service in Weston-Super-Mare.  Martin Bell took us to afternoon tea at the Grand Atlantic Hotel on the front.  There we sat in sombre, respectful mode in our formal clothes watching Mr. Bell tackling an enormous cream scone.  There was jam and cream everywhere.  Cheered us up no end.

And so our days at Sidcot drew to a close with a round of 18th Birthday parties in various parts of the country. I shared mine with Sophie Cremieu-Alcan (whose mother was Jean Morland),.  It was held at her farmhouse home near Street, and Bernard, Sophie ‘s dad came and collected loads of us from school in their horsebox.

Gradually, over that summer of 1979, we drifted in different directions, nurses training in various teaching hospitals, straight to university, resits, gap years, summer jobs, travel and charity work.  The very first morning I woke up at Sidcot as a pupil, I thought, “Now I’m eligible to be an Old Scholar!”  How I hugged that knowledge to myself!  Ironically, the first time I was able to attend the Old Scholars Reunion at Easter in my own right as an Old Scholar was the first one I missed in my whole life!  My gap year took me to Australia, and I recall being in autumnal Melbourne miserably wondering what Michael van Blankenstein would be saying in his Presidential Address.  I haven’t missed any since and had it not been for the pandemic, I would have passed 60 reunions by now.  There must be something in it.

I wasn’t always happy during my school days but that was mostly due to my parents’ split with my father moving to America and remarrying without us; and the usual trials of being a teenager.  I gave my mother at home, and the staff here, quite a hard time.  I was moody and rude and sullen and resentful and uncooperative.  (Do I detect nods of rememberings from around the room?)  For this I do apologise.  But you all stuck by me and we made it through.  Jonathan and I chose to hold our Meeting for Worship for the Celebration of Marriage here.  Well, to be fair I chose it and Jonathan, wise man agreed!  And, extra specially nice was that Grace Hopes who, as Senior Mistress and Head of English had seen many of my ups and downs, was our Registrar!

The Easter gatherings at Sidcot have been wonderful, shared experiences all my life.  Whether with close family, extended family, Old Scholar peers, members of staff and  the growing extended families of faithful O.S.  Each year is a snapshot of where we all are.  The familiar, well-loved rituals of the Easter programme, combined with the vagaries of the Spring weather (I have both tobogganed and played outdoor tennis at Easter here) makes each reunion a little bit the same and a little bit different. Each year brings its own flavour and incident.  The year the  fire alarm went off in the middle of the night, the year the German lad cracked his head open on the diving board, the year my shoes literally fell apart and dear Pat Smith cobbled them back together, the year that the lights in the Meeting House failed to work and we finished the Easter Lecture in the dark.  These all weave together with my school day escapades alongside the friendships forged by living adolescence side-by-side.

Each of us have our own paths to Sidcot, through family or education or both.  Rich in memory and strong in friendship, I am deeply, deeply grateful to have had all these experiences in my life.  Thankyou.

Greetings Sent at Easter by those who were unable to attend 

• David Gardner

• Roger Jarvis 

• Keith and BobbyAnn Kerton ( nee Humphries)

• Di Kendra ( Evans )

• Alison Johnson ( Reynolds )

• Gillian Armitage ( Crew)

• Gillian Pugsley

• Kurt Strauss

• Richard and Sheena Bell

Death Notifications read out by Steve Martin 

• Alison Reed
• Anthony Wetherall (Died in Dec 2021) but we were not informed until after Easter 2022 
• Hilda Sturge (nee - Ecroyd) 
• Robert Little 
• Dafydd Edwards
• Donald Southall 
• Daphne Maw 
• Jennifer Hughes 
• Alexander (Sandy) Fraser passed away on 13th June 2022 age 85
• Evie Wilson
• Joyce Matheson 
• Mary McElroy (nee Woolley) 
• Danae Harris (nee Charman)
• Francis (Frank) Lever 
• Deborah Merrick (nee Brayshaw)
• Anthea McNeill 
• Seth Roberts 

Sidcotians who have died Jan - Easter 2023

• Katherine Charman (nee Duthie) 
• Dorothy Thompson (nee Wooley) 
• Johnny Brookes 
• Ian Trott 
• Marlo Brett (nee Kern) 
• Carole Holding (nee Catchpool) 

Talk by Judith Baker (S:1972 1977)

Judith Baker Easter Talk - Click this link to read