Old Boys News Latest

Archbishop Tenison’s School Sports Ground
Arthur Road, Motspur Park, New Malden KT3 6LX

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE QUIZ

Friday 16 March 2012

7.00 for 7.30 pm start (sharp)

(Bar open from 7.00 pm)

Interval refreshments

MAXIMUM OF 8 PLAYERS PER TEAM

Tickets £8.50 from Alan Baker (020 8395 9980)

 

After a record number of former pupils attended this years' School dinners, plans are already in for the next one.

Put the date in your diaries NOW!

School Dinners 2012 is on Friday April 20th.

contact:

Eddie Boyle, Old Rose House, 65 High Street. Westerham. Kent. TN16 1RE
Telephone 01959 562888 E-mail EddieBoylenlp@aol.com

 

School Dinners 2003

Golf Day 2003

Cricket Reunion 4th September at Motspur Park 2004

Cricket 2005

 

 

 

News from a another former pupil!

I put my name and dates of attending Tenisons (1948-1953) on the Friends Reunited website and the names of a few of the others are familiar. I have looked at the various school photos posted on the site but could only recognise Gordon Bell in one of the photos. He and I joined Tenisons from Oliver Goldsmith school in Peckham and I see from the photo of the honours board that he was head boy in 1955. I often wonder what he achieved later in life – we lost touch after I left.
He was keen on science. I remember his family lived in a flat in the Peckham Road, almost opposite Oliver Goldsmith school and I often used to go home with him after school to help him build Meccano models.
I have only recently found the OTA website and looking through the school photos of 1955 in part 4 of 6 there is Gordon Bell sitting on the right of a teacher, who I believe was Mr. Bates, the geography teacher.
Gordon and I won some class prizes in the first and second years – the first year prizes being presented by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Fisher.
I still have a copy of the prize-giving programmes.
Your photos of the 2009 reunion brought back memories of the school hall with those stained glass windows. I remember the organ being installed in the gallery and the music teacher, (name escapes me) giving the inaugural recital.
During my time, Mr. Robinson was the head, Mr. Butler his deputy and others I recall were Mr. Johnson (art) who used to jump off the floor when he was bringing the cane down on miscreants’ backsides. Also Mr. Giles (History), Mr. Laidlaw-Browne (English), Mr. Lewis and Miss. Despitch (French), Mr. Husband (Maths), Mr. Hazelwood (Latin) and Mr. Waddingham (P.E.& physics).
The woodwork room was on the far left side of the playground. About 1950 a new gym was built on the school roof. Showers were installed which you ran through to avoid being whipped with the class bully’s wet towel.
I still have my enamelled cap badge but no longer my Hogarth house brown peaked cap.
Sports at Motspur Park always entailed a train journey from Vauxhall to Motspur Park and a walk to the ground. If the weather was too bad or the ground unplayable, we either watched old football coaching films i.e. Stanley Matthews dribbling round poles or were often walked to the Imperial War Museum as an alternative. I played for the Old Boys football teams for a couple of seasons until National Service, after which I moved from South London to Stratford in the east.
For the past 34 years I have lived in Ingatestone, Essex.

and another....

I have recently stumbled across your site, and although I never attended Kennington, as an evacuee in Reading I attended Tenisons from 1941 to 1945, the first three years I was in Soley Joel's thatched roof hunting lodge on his South Lake estate in Earley, Nr. Reading, which had been requisitioned for the purpose of housing the junior school evacuees. I started in Form 1c, and was in Hunter house [Blue], the other houses being Newton [Green], Hogarth [Brown] and Arnold [Red], the colours being on our cap peaks - do they still have them ? The Headmaster was Dr. Robinson, and his assistant Mr. Butler, two of the teachers were Mr Hipperson and Miss Kenyon-Stowe, and three of my friends were Colin Steere, Peter Blethyn, and John Denton .
In the last two years I joined the seniors, who were billeted on Reading Public School, but I have since had no contact with my classmates, because the school returned to London at the end of hostilities, and I could not rejoin them because I had nowhere to live there at the time, and as I was only in my fifth year, so I left school with no qualifications and went to work. This resulted later in some further education, which would have been more lengthy had it not been for the good grounding I'd had at Tenison's -despite my mediocre reports- but that's another story.
I did revisit South Lake some years ago, only to find it had been converted to a pub - 'The Thatchers' - on the edge of a large housing estate, and the landlord did not believe me when I told him it had once been a school! Talking to the locals I found no evidence that anyone knew we were ever there, but perhaps that's not surprising because then we were surrounded by woods patrolled by a bailiff with two Alsatians, and virtually no one visited except the caterers, and it was such a long time ago, I wonder if you have any members who remember?
Yours Aye Mick O'Regan CEng MIET, 35 Neville Road, Kingswood, Bristol BS15 1XX, Tel 0117 9609939, email mor3939@talktalk.net

and another former pupil writes....

I bet you don't get many missives from nonagenarian OTs . . . !

I was delighted to find the Tenisons site when looking to refresh my memories of the 'thirties for a different reason - and have so much enjoyed Mumblings and other news that I venture to offer browsers a glimpse into
somewhat farther away times.

One of your correspondents mentioned having been at school in the era of Dr Robinson, Joe Butler and
Miss Kenyon-Stowe. They were all there in my day. Dr Robinson's predecessor was Mr Ratcliffe, a
kindly man with an austere presence, who prowled the corridors in full cap and gown regalia. Gowns
were de rigeur for all staff. Gaston, the porter and confronter of late-comers through the front door when
the school gate clanged shut, was smartly uniformed though bent of back. Perhaps the latter was due
to his habit of sharpening knives for the kitchen staff on the front step.

I don't think I profited much from the teachings of Messrs Ratcliff (chemistry), Gill (physics) and Gibson
(German), but I must have listened attentively to Messrs Gallimore (English), Field (art) and Parrot
(printing, an after-school option). Their collective influences steered me into a career of writing and
publishing which continues today. Gallimore appointed me editor of The Mitre, the school magazine, the first student to hold the post. Then, it was the earnest chronicler of academic and sporting goings-on, with
not much light-hearted stuff; no doubt, it has changed with the years

Sport was my passion and I have many happy memories of Motspur Park: 1st X1 football; cross-
country (two firsts and a second in the senior, fourth in the junior); tennis.

The names of school mates are still clear. Many were members of the Cadet Corps, joined the
Terriers and, sadly, didn't surive Dunkirk. I played 2nd Xl football (and still have a shirt) for the OT's for three years before being called up as a Militiaman in December 1939. Serving in both the Gunners and the Sappers, I had spells in the War Office and in Nigeria.

Demobbed, I joined a weekly newspaper in Brighton, then spent a couple of years the tourism dept of the local council (writing and designing guides and ads), before becoming publicity manager of an international travel and package holiday firm.

Then I joined another chap to found the world's first weekly newspaper for the international tourism and travel industry. We had no money but believed in our idea. That was the start of an exciting a 25-year job which took me to many parts of the world by land, sea and air. I was lucky enough to be involved
in 'discovering' and promoting new holiday destinations and in inaugurating air routes to serve them.

By the time I retired as managing director and editor-in-chief the paper published separate editions for six European countries and regions and in North America and Asia. I was also a director of several publishing companies, one of which owned a string of local newspapers in Kent and Sussex

For a complete change of occupation, my wife and I bought and ran a country house hotel in Cornwall -
an interesting experience but the call of printer's ink was still strong, and we returned to Kent, started
another tourism publication and set up a public relations agency specialising in tourism projects
on both sides of the Channel. I sold the magazine but have kept beavering at such bits of the PR job which
interest me and where clients have become friends. Retirement doesn't suit me - and slowly down-sizing
is difficult.