Celebrating Stowmarket High's centenary

The school's crest

ONE hundred years ago an ancient grammar school closed at Needham Market and switched to Stowmarket, giving girls as well as boys an opportunity for higher education.

Now Stowmarket High, the school begins centenary on Tuesday and DON BLACK, a pupil in 1938, assembles his own and others' memories of people and places that influenced thousands of lives.

STOWMARKET High School survived danger and setbacks in its previous in previous incarnation as grammar schools as Needham Market and Stowmarket. For all that, its teaching has continued without a break through war and peace since 1632.

Bombs that a low-flying aircraft released directly above the school, with its 300 boys and girls and their teachers, fell at an angle into the town centre.

Stowmarket High School

Pupils' homes ranged from Felixstowe and the Shotley peninsula to north Suffolk and beyond the then West Suffolk county boundary into Woolpit, Elmswel, Hithcam and Rattlesden.

The vagaries of county administration created a melting pot of faith and lifestyle in the geographical centre of Suffolk. Staff from elsewhere had to understand accents that, real or exaggerated, might reflect Norfolk or Essex variations

Stowmarket High School is a comprehensive that inherits the traditions of two grammar schools in an unbroken line. They helped to make the neighbour towns an industrial chub that played a role in the development of Ipswich factories and port.

Theobald's Grammar School at Needham Market accepted boys only. After the Education Act of 1902, East Suffolk County Counci decided to build a completely new secondary school at Stowmarket for girls as well. Before then, nationally the odds against an elementary school child going on to secondary education were 279 to one.

Uniformed spectators at one of the grammar school's annual athletics days

Theobald's headmaster took over as head at Stowmarket. The new school opened in the autumn of 1909 with 106 boys and girls aged from eight to 15

But the set of classrooms in Violet Hill Road looked no different from any of the other medium-sized schools built by county councils with not quite enough money. In this case it totalled £4,835 10s, plus architect's fees of £260.

The school was built to accommodate 125 pupils. East Suffolk Education Authority admitted: that “in assessing the plans the committee attaches more importance to inside convenience than outside ornament.” There seems to have been failure on both counts.

If Theobald's Grammar replacement wasn't inspiring to look at from the outside, its interior arrangement was no better. They deteriorated still further as the roll of pupils doubled and trebled.

Choir and soloists in a school produciton of Merrie England in 1956. Seated left to right: Alan Green, Gwendoleen Kerry, Dorothy Taylor, Kathleen Wilden, Janet Mayhew and Donald Rednall

The headmaster's study was so tiny that the outspoken vicar of Needham Market, the Rev W G Hargrave Thomas, described it at a county council meeting as “no larger than a hen coop” .A wooden shed where all the boys changed for sports was not much bigger.

Art teacher Miss May Robinson had to work in what school records describe as “appalling conditions” in the modest hall. She contended with poor lighting and constant interruptions because the hall was used simultaneously for sixth form classes and as a passage to and from all the ordinary classrooms in the school

Music lessons took place in the chilly “Room Six” on the other side of a partition that wasn't soundproof. Musicians and their teacher, Dorothy Taylor, drew what little warmth remained in radiators at the very end of the school heating system.

She kept healthy with hockey, formed a choir and orchestra and left to marry a farmer.

The school itself saw (and maybe still sees) many of its pupils marrying each other in the course of time. In that respect it surpassed even the county's young farmers' clubs. . .

There was little romantic about wars that dominated 10 years of the school century. Its greatest danger came on January 31, 1941, when eye witnesses saw a German bomber, a Heinkel 111, drop a stick of six bombs directly over the school.

Its air-raid shelters were too waterlogged to be used. Pupils dived under their desks as the bombs exploded.

The aircraft was heading at 1,000 ft towards factories strung out along the Ipswich-Norwich railway. Its pilot expected that forward momentum would scatter his payload among them. His bombs fell short of their target and wrecked the Congregational church and nearby houses, killing one woman.

Individual tragedies also affected the school through world wars and even in peacetime when old boys serving as pilots died in flying accidents. Frederick Eldridge, the formidable headmaster from 1927, suffered a personal loss.

We remember him conducting an assembly soon after hearing that his son David, an army second lieutenant, had been killed. He was a stern, uncompromising man, no condoner of laziness, yet considerate and even kind when we behaved and paid attention,

The same was true of Thomas Staynes, chemistry master for 24 years despite suffering the effects of poison gas while serving in the trenches on the Western Front.

He was also a brilliant physicist and mathematician and could defeat a dozen opponents simultaneously at chess.

Among his many successful students was Dr Alexander Sherlock, who as a sixth-former would enjoy a social drink with TAS in the Pot of Flowers inn. He went on to be a popular Felixstowe GP, a town and county councillor and Essex MEP.

Alex, as we knew him, never minced his words in the European Parliament. He did not believe that the cream always came to the top. The scum, he said, rose there as well and he may have been thinking of some politicians.

In the field of mechanics a high--achieving old boy was probably Brian Walker, of Stowupland. An engineer officer in the Royal Navy, he arrived in Copenhagen on its liberation in May 1945, married a Danish girl and learned her difficult language.

Settling there as a civilian, he advanced to be principal engineer of shipping company DFDS and ultimately to head the operation, which extended to Harwich and Felixstowe, probably the first Englishman to be chief executive of a major Scandinavian group.

Numerous talented old boys and girls on the arts side included Keith Herrington, good at theatricals and as a candidate in mock general election in 1945. He made his name in American television before illness cut short his life.

Mr Eldridge retired in 1944 and was succeeded by William Naylor, a Leeds man with first class honours in chemistry. He encouraged us to work harder by pointing out that we would be competing with dedicated northern lads.

One innovation of his was sex education. Mr Naylor gave that up on realising that in this subject most pupils, especially those from a farming environment, knew as much if not more than the teachers. It was better left to the primary schools.

His successors lead active lives in retirement. Dr Robert Montgomery, whose Norman ancestor came over with the Conqueror, is the author of books on the history of examinations, plays competitive tennis and writes poetry about Suffolk. Dr Montgomery and his wife, who was Patricia Graham the school deputy head, enjoy long-distance walking.

David Oliver, busy in local activities, greeted the Queen on her golden jubilee visit to Stowmarket and presented townspeople to her. He continues to be “national challenge” adviser to Suffolk County Council.

Keith Penn, the present head, is son of a Yorkshire miner. He was an electronic engineer with Marconi at Chelmsford before he began his teaching career.

There was also Sheila Hargreaves, who left to head a forces' school in Germany. The feofees of Theobald's school could not have foreseen that their exclusively male foundation would ever have a woman head.

The present main school was built in 1955/6. It went comprehensive in 1971.



NICKNAMES bestowed on head teachers make a study in themselves. “Spider” Webb was the obvious choice for the last headmaster of Theobald's Grammar School and the first head of Stowmarket Grammar School.

The second, “Freddie” Eldridge, was perhaps too informal for a man who lived up to the power of his full forename, Frederick. He would look round sternly if he heard a pupil using the more affectionate diminutive. Fortunately, it was not a caning offence.

“Tintacks” Naylor was logical for the third headmaster. There was a mystery, however, as to why it changed to “Rastus” in later years

Vertically challenged, “Stumpy” Davies, taught botany and geography and had a great sense of humour. He exclaimed “missed” when he evaded a misdirected paper missile, and wrote “Woman is a fickle creature” in autograph books. But the recipient had to translate it from Latin.

Bill Chivers, Latin and history master, was “Jammy” for another obvious reason. Douglas Chivers, the middle one of his three sons, is chairman of the school governors and a mine of information on the school's history.



Fact File

Stowmarket High School, October 2009

Number of students (13-18): 1,050. Sixth form: 230

New £1.7 million skills centre opened September 2009, specifically for construction, engineering and health studies.

Stowmarket High School is part of the Gipping Valley Partnership that includes Stowupland High, Stowmarket, Combs, Bacton and Needham Market middle Schools and local primary schools.

Suffolk County Schools Review envisages the school serving the 11-18 age group again, but no date has been fixed.

Stowmarket Development Plan identifies a site further along Onehouse Road for new school buildings.

Recent landmarks: Sixth form visit to Poland, student exchanges with Japan, staging of Ben Elton's musical We Will Rock You.”

Site of the 1909 school is occupied by residential Old School Court.

STOWMARKET High School's centenary celebration service takes place on Tuesday, November 3, at 2.30p, to be addressed by the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, the Rt Rev Nigel Stock.

Events planned for 2010 include a concert in the United Reform Church, Stowmarket, on April 29 and a talk by Prof Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History at Oxford University, and an old boy of the school. His father was the Rev Nigel MacCulloch, Rector of Wetherden and Haughley.