This amazing year, 2024, has been a year of anniversaries; a 450th, for the school, some 80ths both nationally and personal and a few 90th birthdays for a tranche of former Grammar School Boys including me. Like Ken Walker, I joined the school in 1944, I left in 1950 after taking the Higher School Certificate. Like so many folk, at school and afterwards, we followed differing paths and have different memories.

The current plans to make a video of the joint production of “Trial by Jury” has prompted me to find this photo of the precursor “all male” production in, I think, the 1949-50 academic year. The Usher and Judge featured not only in this production but also throughout my days at CGS.

It has prompted me also to highlight and remember the great tradition of Music and Drama the school has had as well as its academic and sporting prowess. There was a range from the concerts, both choir and orchestral, created by 'Peggy' Broad and 'Bill' Neve, through House Drama competitions and Christmas Variety shows, to the mammoth Shakespeare productions, particularly "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest", using the well-equipped stage at St Gregory's. Performances like these ensured that the school tradition of promoting and encouraging the Arts, Music and Stagecraft, both individual and corporate, was maintained throughout WW2 and the immediate post-war years.

There were individuals who excelled, some professionally and some as amateurs. You may recall the long career of the late John Ringham (CGS 1939 - 1946), the Stage and TV actor who took me under his wing in 1944 and gave me a love for all aspects of the theatre. Some budding actors and performers made it, some didn't get beyond an insatiable love for theatre. Mind you, we were not without our home grown critics. Leo Black, a great musician, “Patesian” magazine editor and contributor, didn't pull any punches. Whereas we “mechanicals”, welcomed the good notice he gave us for our “slapstick” in the “Dream”, there was a sting in the tail of his generous comments on my Trinculo in the Tempest – “If only it had been funny!”.

The one act play (just under an hour, see photo below), which was the final item in the 1947 concert, was another great performance with my friends Wally Weaving and Malcolm Pinchin to the fore. That same concert featured in its first part, amongst others, the orchestra, a brass quartet, a string quartet and I recall J Archer and the aforementioned Leo, playing a “memorable” violin piano duet! An amusing aside; on one occasion Leo remarked that he couldn't take part in a particular class activity as he had to go off and write a Fugue.

Ken Walker doubtless remembers 'Horace' Cooke for his long association with cricket at all levels. My lasting memories are filled with his love of literature and drama over an equally wide range. We had Christmas Variety shows and I have this picture of Horace's solo comedy routine. The stage was empty for an inordinately long time, this bedraggled character ambled on, eventually, and proceeded to explain that he was late because he 'had to walk all the way in his Home Guard boots”. No doubt an oblique reference to the fact that many of the ageing staff had served in the Home Guard. They included the Headmaster, Mr G Heawood who had commanded the Leckhampton Unit! He then proceeded to have his audience in fits of laughter; that is Horace not the Head!

Returning to those photographs and film clips (now converted to video) that emerge from time to time. Some on social media, some in these archives, they are great triggers for the failing memory! Relatively recently (that is within the last five years for a chap of my age) I was given some VHS material, now available as the “Pates Past” DVD, imagine my astonishment and delight to see my late first wife appear in some 1950 shots of the Pate's Girls Sixth Form common room in 1950! Then shortly afterwards the following one popped up. A Pate's Class of 1946, sadly without my first wife, but with many of the girls I would meet at the Sixth Form Club in 1948 including the late Joan Wendon, her chief bridesmaid when we married in 1955.

Other photos and clips in the archives are equally stimulating. David Aldred has put on a fairly late (possibly 1960s) photo of the entrance corridor of the High Street building. It shows a well-lit, even welcoming space, yet I remember it as a dark passage, lined in 1944 with sandbagged chicanes. That ominous door next to the notice board, behind which sat the formidable Miss Lewis, led to the gentle and generous (except when crossed) Headmaster, Mr Heawood. However, some visits to that room are best consigned to the forgotten past!

The sandbagged walls were the remains of the blast deflectors built in case the High Street became an air raid target. Surely, you may say, there was little risk of that in 1944? However, soon after D-Day, there was the fear that the dreaded V-weapons might have a range to reach the Midlands. The result was that some of the staff ('Bim' Wright, Chemistry, and Mr Jeacock, Geography, from the ACF?) thought that the Air Raid Drills should be resurrected and some of us discovered that there were few Shelters in the building, but that the cellars of the Brewery could be accessed by a small door in the boundary wall near to the Fives Court!!

There are many other memories hidden in my aging grey cells; I am sure an appropriate search on the internet would help me remember the year I opted to hear Laurie Lee at the Literature Festival instead of games one Tuesday or Thursday afternoon, but perhaps you remember? I hope also that this note and a few more of your photos might bring these currently hidden memories to the surface.

However, as we remember this year - the 80th anniversary of some of the final events of WW2 - it feels appropriate for me to recall one of the most poignant memories of my school days. I think it was close to the Remembrance Day in 1946, the day started always with a full school Assembly in the Hall. A Hymn, a few Prayers and Notices were read. This particular morning, I think we sang “O! God our Help in Ages Past” but the Notices were replaced by the Headmaster reading the names of the more than seventy former CGS boys killed in action or missing. As former pupils of the Cheltenham Grammar School, we have a great heritage of which we all can be proud.