In early 2021 Les Grafton posted the following on the EHGS message board. It's a wonderful account, not only of his change from Pupil to Teacher, but also of the change from EHGS to Langdon.
"I attended EHGS as a pupil from 1962 to 1968 and then, like a number of others before me, returned there to teach at what had become Langdon Comprehensive School from 1973 until 1978.
The school underwent some minor changes during the mid-sixties but considering the upheavals Britain was undergoing socially, morally and politically, Joe Whiteley and his staff resisted doggedly. During my time as a pupil, some young teachers arrived who had experiences of a wider liberal education at the new Universities and FE colleges that evolved during this period. Here I am hoping this post will encourage others with better, and even different memories to add to the roll call. But my first form tutor and RE teacher Arthur Rowe, History teacher R C Bryden or English teacher C J “Crumble” Crawford were eccentric, charismatic and, for EHGS, slightly anti-establishment compared to the longstanding incumbents of the post-war generation. Some, like Ian Flack, had been pupils at the school and experienced the frisson of entering the staff room as a master rather than delivering homework to the door as a pupil.
I may be being unfair to the Elford-Gulleys’s and Ken Madgett’s of the Grammar School world to paint them with such a staid and conservative image. Maybe they were able to maintain an opaque professional façade, and were more outrageous privately than I give them credit for. Certainly, the difference between their school persona and any alternate reality was very carefully disguised. In my own career, I had to adopt a similar double identity in order to allow for some relaxation.
At school I was never able to go on field courses, exchanges or foreign trips where often the teacherly mask slips and the real man appears. The only time I really saw staff off duty was the biennial rugby trip to Ystradgynlais, but the sporting context is rather unique I think.
Two teachers in particular, in the latter part of the sixties embodied for me this new teaching generation and had a great deal of influence personally. Dave Waterhouse and Wayne Stephenson taught art and made the subject very popular and the department very influential. This status allowed me to reject the Oxbridge path into the third year Sixth and go to art school at 17, and also to take an unconventional combination of English, History and Art (usually a fourth bonus subject). An unprecedented eight students went to art school from my year in 1968, including three to the prestigious Hornsey College of Art.
Five years later, sporting a mullet, Zapata moustache and flares, Dave was kind enough to appoint me to the department (who said old boy network!). In that short period, British society had changed in so many ways as documented by the sociologists and cultural historians (just look at the arc of the Beatles). EHGS had changed also. Now renamed Langdon Comprehensive it was co-educational, took all local children without entrance exam, and covered the whole site. It must have been one of the largest single establishments in the country both geographically and numerically with well over 2,000 pupils and 200+ staff.
It was like going back to art school again as there were many young, first time teachers, straight from college. However, amongst them were some familiar faces, some still wearing their gowns from the old days. Vernon Mott, Bob Smith, Tom Eustace, Bill Bloomfield, Haydn and Taff Davies among others were manfully soldiering on, some only until retirement, others like Pete Jolly becoming a core part of the experienced staff for years to come. However, I would mention that it was revealing to see them through more adult eyes and realise that some were not the ancient fossils I had thought they were when at school. It is always tricky to judge another person’s age, especially in childhood, but Tom Eustace turned out to be positively spritely.
As a consequence of the type of people they were and how they taught, it was not difficult to switch into working alongside Dave and Wayne. At EHGS I’d also had close relationships with Bill Bloomfield and Vernon Mott as my form tutors in the sixth form. Taff had taught me history so there was some legacy already when I first arrived at Langdon. However seeing some of these teachers at coffee in the staff room, smoking and laughing, was unusual for me and initially rather curious. More bizarre was finding yourself entering the staff toilet at the same time with one of them.
The teaching at this new school wasn’t easy and must have been extremely difficult for the traditional chalk and talk Grammar staff to adapt to. Like other staff rooms I have experienced, the camaraderie of all “being in it together” overcame any hang over from my time as a pupil. The whole co-ed thing, for both pupils and staff, must have taken some getting used to, but much of the trauma had already been endured in the transitional years. Coincidentally, my next appointment, in Warwickshire in 1978, was at a school only one year into exactly the same amalgamation process. Here I was privy first hand to the massively enhanced early retirement packages given and the frantic vying for senior posts when three incumbents were eligible and the grammar staff felt any role was theirs by right and by seniority.
Equally curious for me was the ability to wander the entire Langdon Crescent site legally, and being able to enter previously forbidden Lethaby and Burges Manor buildings (now Langdon Lower School for admin purposes). The former Tower Block was used for Reception, Admin and Staff Room as well as pastorally for the Sixth Form still. It had undergone some remodelling to accommodate various offices and the old main Library had been partitioned up. The former Grammar School site was now the Upper School and the causeway between, where we had queued for lunch in all weathers, had a shanty town of temporary classrooms and offices built along its length. The dining rooms and kitchens of the previous regimes were still in use, and required an hour and quarter lunch break to get the various sittings though: great for staff to relax in, but hell if you were on duty and making for a long working day.
The sheer size of the place made the break between lessons pretty chaotic as staff and pupils had to move vast distances. There was an inadequate five minute movement period, but considering the potential for mayhem, it is indicative of more orderly times that there was still a prevailing sense of order. For myself, on occasions, I had to move from the far end of the site (Lethaby, if I recall) to upstairs the A corridor, the old EHGS art rooms Fine if you were dismissing a second form at one end to arrive for a Sixth Form group at the other. It was Russian Roulette going the other way, literally fighting your way through large numbers of staff and pupils doing the same thing. A rush fom the EHGS building, Causeway, Admin Block, Burges Manor site finally into Lethaby, having plunged from sunlight outside into the gloom of the lower corridors. Then sprinting up the stairs, I was invariably late, hoping the class was lined up outside the (always) locked classroom in some composure. It always took a while to both recover your breath, and sort the group after they’d had 7 or 8 minutes unsupervised. This journey took place in all weathers so often one was adding or removing a coat and certainly carrying a bag with registers and personal stationery.
The school pupils no longer had a uniform; there were “colours” which were recommended but not enforced. There was no dress code for staff either, though there were occasional quiet words about appropriateness, and, typically for the times, more often to female colleagues. As I said, there were still some old grammar staff defiantly wearing their gowns to maintain that air of authority. Most older colleagues wore suits and ties, as did some aspirant younger ones, but with whatever bizarre 70’s twist that was current such as loon style trousers, or huge lapels. The dress arc during my time there was similar to my 60’s fashion journey, but this time from Bay City Rollers to proto-Punk and Mod-revival.
There were also pupils in the upper reaches of the school hanging on to remnants of their previous incarnation, like veterans proudly displaying their uniforms as survivors of a recent war. In the fracas to get from one site to another you often glimpsed a brown Burges Manor blazer or a Grammar school tie defiantly worn in the sea of Slade t-shirts and bomber jackets. Some of the Upper Sixth may have been first years when I was at EHGS, but of course those old hierachies meant that they were only ever detention fodder.
My original reason for writing this memory was to give insight as to how the school had evolved, what changes had occurred from the Grammar School days and what it was like to teach alongside former members of EHGS staff. I cannot imagine how it was for them when I rocked up. Many had dealt with such a situation before, as it was not uncommon for former pupils to teach back at EHGS. However that had been when they were on safe and familiar ground; this was a whole new ball game, observing their discomfiture (in some cases) at dealing with mixed ability teaching, new subjects and a two tier GCE and CSE exam system. Classes were streamed and the “O level” sets were much sought after but in the minority. Besides the enforced movement for many the timetable meant single lessons were too short, double lessons too long. I deduce that, for some, the complexities of teaching girls was a never ending source of embarrassment and some girls willingly played on this. Navigating the gender politics of the staff room in the Gloria Steinem era was an equally steep learning curve for these waterless fish. Although there had been occasional female staff at EHGS they were either in a support role or were “Language Assistants”. Who recalls those excruciating 15 minutes, closeted in a stock cupboard with some poor mademoiselle, struggling for the past participle of “pleurer”?
Physically the school had not changed much. Room numbers were still the same in the Grammar School site, but with some additions as offices and workshops were repurposed. As with the assessing the age of one’s former teachers through a more experienced lens, the size of corridors and classrooms had distorted to a smaller scale. There was still evidence of EHGS badging and signage around if you looked carefully. Most obviously the rolls of honour on the staircase walls were still as “intact” as they had ever been. Perversely, I had once been given the job, by Joe, of replacing some of the missing names and letters from the display, with my fellow EHGS art student, Colin Watson. It was some sort of misplaced community service though more likely a punishment/detention. We spent numerous lunchtimes up a stepladder gluing cork letters to the wall, following the lists from former speech day programmes. Unfortunately, some vowels were in short supply, and initially we tried to construct them from bits of other letters. Later, disrespectfully, we just filled up all the spaces with whatever letters we could, in order to pass a cursory inspection, but making complete gibberish of the names, results and Universities. Mea Culpa to all old boys, including myself.
So I hope, particularly to David Taylor and John Mason who prompted this item, that these remembrances of an educational poacher turned gamekeeper during the post selective era have been insightful. Apologies if it is lacking in names and detail, but as John Bell* said here …. “oh dear, getting old!”.
*Bizarrely John and I ended up as near neighbours in Leamington Spa. I babysat for him and then taught his sons, all in ignorance of our mutual East Ham/EHGS roots! I think it was this site that made the connection for us."Added March 2021.