How splendid is this Dover Sports cap?
(Click it to see it in microscopic glory!) It was awarded to Alan Victor King while he was in the 1st XV Rugby team, and his daughter sent us this photo in order to find out more about it. Alan was in School House from 1929 to 1933 and was also a House and School Prefect.

Do you have any photos of Dover College memorabilia? Please send them to us!

Alan Victor King - 1916-1994

Funeral Information

John Turnpenny’s funeral will take place at St Mary’s Church, Cannon Street, in the precinct off Market Square, Dover. Arrangements are as follows:

• Place: St Mary’s Church, Dover
• Date: Friday 11 November 2011
• Time: 12 o’clock
• Dress: John wanted no black ties and a cheerful service.
• Refreshments will be served in the Parish Hall afterwards.

An obituary will appear in the Times and the Telegraph tomorrow and also in the East Kent Mercury and the Dover Express.The Mercury will also contain an article about John.

The Funeral Directors are Farrier and Son, Dover

Family Flowers only; donations to RNLI Dover.

[Please login to the Members site to see personal tributes to John Turnpenny]

Some press notices in Dover newspapers (large PDFs):
This is Kent
Kent Online
Dover Mercury

Through illness I flipped the competitive entry exam to Dartmouth – the normal way to a naval commission which was taken at 13 in those days. I had however already secured an Astor Scholarship to Dover, still then with a strong military tradition.  The fees were also discounted for the sons of Colonial Servants – most welcome to my father.  The plan was for me then to join the Navy by the alternative ‘Special Entry’ as it was called, post-public school.

While I was making the most of my first exposure to enemy action at my home on the Sussex coast – we were casually bombed within days of the outbreak of WW2 – the college, deemed to be too close to the front-line in the coming air-war, was making hurried evacuation plans (we gained an extra week or so’s holiday while they were cobbled together – which was why I was still at home to be bombed).

So my first contact with public-school life was on a darkened platform at Tiverton Junction where harried masters with lists and tiny torches in their hands were trying to marshal us in the blackout onto the ‘Tivvy Bumper’, the local push-pull to Tiverton Town Station.  For we were moving in on Blundells School until we could find a roof of our own.

It would be difficult to bed together two more disparate versions of the public-school ideal of 1939.  Dover College – when last I visited it 30-40 years ago? – has changed out of all recognition.  No doubt Blundells may too have suffered a radical sea-change (although somehow I doubt it) in the last 70+ years.  In common of course we shared with them the general background concept that all such foundations existed to man and uphold Britain’s place in the sun, at a time – for the last time – when a third of the countries of the world were still coloured pink in our atlases, and ‘the sun never set etc. etc.’

Blundells appeared to draw its boys largely from the more affluent members of the West Country farming community; and while we were properly in awe of its prowess at rugby, we saw its style as belonging to an earlier age and its members as uncouth and parochial.

Dover on the other hand was in its last phase as the poor man’s Wellington.  It was proud of the string of generals – even Field Marshals – it had produced, some of them not undistinguished.  Membership of the OTC was compulsory; our bugle band was famous – and practiced noisily at all times of the day and night.  We still had a large Army Sixth form – though truth to say by the time I entered it there were far more destined for careers in the Navy than the Army.  Which is why I was there myself.

Though we may have differed in style and outlook, Blundells took us in charity; and turned their school and timetables upside-down to host us.  Sharing classrooms was a cox and box scramble; we played games in the morning and had lessons far into the evening. We were billeted out: as the junior and smallest house Leamington (named from the evacuation of WW1), was billeted upon Halberton, a village a hilly 5  miles or so out of Tiverton, dependent upon our bicycles for getting in and out.  Did it really rain every day that winter ?

I do not know whether or not it was the result of any warlike activity but it was on one of those lonely wet rides from Halberton, sodden school-satchel on back, that I first encountered the hazards of air-travel, fortunately vicariously.  In archetypal West Country winter weather, low cloud-base, driven rain dead on the nose as head-down I stood on the pedals against the gale, I heard a large aeroplane slowly bumbling low overhead invisible in the murk.  To my right, bunkers and tees only discernable faintly in outline, was the Tiverton golf-course.  A smudge at the limit of visibility slowly took shape as an Imperial Airways Hannibal, the jumbo of pre-war luxurious flying, looking like an airborne egg-crate, lurching into a wind half as fast as itself.  It sat sedately down and trundled in dowager majesty down the fairway into the boundary fence where, as if in slow motion, it noiselessly fell apart.

Ditching my bicycle I raced across the squelching links to save life, arriving in time to see the white-coated steward handing out the passengers down the steps, all scatheless, amidst sang-froid murmurings in upper-class accents.

By the first Easter term of war the school authorities had found us a place of our own, Poltimore House , the erstwhile home of the Lords of the village of that name, Bampfyldes by family surname, now somewhat decrepit after various unsuccessful institutional uses (I refer to the house, not the baron, and as the house was then in 1939; for, as those that watch the Antiques Roadshow on television will see, the present peer is in fine fettle).

It stood about five miles out of Exeter, out of sight at the end of a (mile-?)long drive – a gravel track across parkland gone to pot – and was a square Regency-style stucco wedding-cake-without-frills placed snuffer-like over an earlier more modest Tudor home. Leamington, was apportioned the Tudor remains.

The estate’s derelict glory was two long parallel avenues of limes, the broader bordering the remains of ornamental gardens flanked by laurels and the occasional rhododendron, the narrower a green tunnel of limes framing Poltimore village church at the far end – half a mile away to my 14-year old eyes – beautiful beyond words in early summer.

The park was substantial and included a large wood (to be the scene of a grislier plane crash later in the war), and in front of the house itself a level area upon which rugby posts were erected – to little purpose because most of the season it was under two inches of water- while to our Leamington side of the building were tennis courts on what was reputed to have been a Tudor bowling green – graced by Sir Francis Drake we liked to imagine.

The lands marched with those of the home of  Sir Richard Acland (a pious baronet often in the religious news of the times), Killerton Park, soon to become the wartime home of Battle Abbey girls school.  Whence was it surprising how often our OTC exercises, whichever direction they took off in, would wheel about in the throes of mock-warfare to end up in the triumphant capture of the Killerton Park perimeter?

Dear Poltimore: Dover, not being  too barbarian or uncultured a school, did its best to minimise the wear and tear of educational usage, keeping it up as well as could be under wartime shortages of material and cash. It has suffered – how it has suffered! -further metamorphoses since the war and further periods of empty abandonment: now its remnants can be seen  – open to the subsequent Bristol-Exeter  motorway – sporting a hideous and incongruous Mansard roof, relic of transient medical usage.

[In connection with a BBC television programme a plan was made to try and save it in 2003(?).  Together with a party of Old Dovorians a visit was arranged.  What desolation!  The magnificent gilded and mirrored room that had been our 6th Form Common Room, one of the finest examples of a saloon of its period, it was said, setting for the surrender of Exeter in the Civil War, all stripped - everything vandalised, holes in roofs, even the swirling banisters from the main staircase looted………………………]

Back to 1940 – that spring holiday back on the South Coast – the ‘invasion coast’ – was a strange deserted time, an area forbidden to all but established residents, our outlet to the shore a couple of hundred yards away barred by barbed wire, the shingle mined.  Occasionally there would be an explosian, a wave, a straying dog, sometimes an incautious person would set off one of the mines.  I remember one day a red setter passed our front gate carrying a human hand in its mouth.

I remember also a tiny figure in a dark cloak gazing out to sea at the grey blur of horizon one wet day; he was more blue than tan in the cold, the exiled Emperor Haile Salassie of  Ethiopia – dreaming of African sun and nubile slaves perhaps.

Then with the summer holidays the weather became glorious and it was the Battle of Britain.  For a 15-year-old, to be living only a few flying minutes from one of the most famous of the fighter stations, Tangmere (with lesser emergency stations – Coolham et alall around), during that  summer was like Jorrock’s description of foxhunting  “all the glory of war with only five-and-twenty percent of the danger”.

The dog-fights often came down nearly to the rooftops, empty cartridge cases tinkling on the tiles, leavened by occasional splinters from flak shells.  We would cheer and wave if it was a Hurricane, dive into the flowerbeds for cover if a guns-blazing Messerschmidt.

This was not intended to be a ‘war reminiscence’, a series of gee-whizz anecdotes; but it may give some flavour of the times; because it brought experiences which nowadays would be called traumatic and lead to counselling and psychiatry; but from which I have never detected any after, side or hidden effects whatsoever, either in my own case or my contemporaries’.

So to return to Dover College in Devon as 1940 waned.  Schooling during wartime did have rum aspects, apart from the more obviously warlike which I shall mention in a moment.  The first impact was upon the staff, particularly on ours with so military a history and aspiration. A majority of the housemasters were retired soldiers - de riguer? – of field rank and still on the Reserve of Officers. These included my own, Major Bruce-Johnson – universally adored.  Soon most of them had been recalled to their regiments; and the school was scouring the retirement homes for replacements.

One I remember, still in keeping with our military tradition (though in his case it may have been of Boer rather than of Great War vintage) was a Major Belcher who ostensibly taught us geography but whom I remember better for becoming incandescent on hearing some wretch among my contemporaries refer to ‘golf’;  ‘goff’ – it’s ‘goff’ roared the scandalised major. Other elderly gentlemen did their best to inculcate scientific mysteries – with marked lack of success in my case I fear.

Public school matrons were a race apart in that barbaric age.  Regardless of the degree of Spartan ruthlessness – and I believe some College houses had matrons who were comparatively humane – they were universally known as Hag: Hag This or That according to their spinster name.  The Leamington Hag, short, stout and malign of mien, was well known to outdo all the Hag sisterhood in ferocity.

Any boy misguided enough to go to her complaining of any distemper whatever would be given the rough side of an abrasive tongue and an aperient of excoriating impact. No other cause or remedy was permitted entry to her cosmos.

As the winter progressed a pain under my ribs intensified.  Finally, thinking nothing could be worse than the level it had now reached, I went to her room.  Having been admonished (a suitably polite word for the paint-stripping earful I received from her along with the depth-charge to the bowels) as an impertinent malingerer, I was directed straight out onto the rugger field.  At some stage I collapsed with double pneumonia and pleurisy, to awake after a period of delirium in the make-shift school sanatorium and the surprising kindliness of its sister.

I achieved fame not usually accorded so junior a boy by having an announcement made by the headmaster at morning prayers that “a boy is seriously ill in the sanatorium so the school will keep as quiet as possible” – as if one could silence the natural riot of schoolboys however well-meaning!

With very few exceptions my contemporaries were indeed at all times well-meaning, as amiable and civilised as nature and a benign school ethos can make young males together (“There is only one School Rule. A Breach of Common Sense is a Breach of School Rules” – is that still the legend?).  By and large it was a happy enough school and unfashionably I was happy enough there.

Following Dunkirk, the Home Guard was called into being by Churchill (‘to fight them on the beaches…etc’). Originally they were the Local Defence Volunteers and wore LDV armbands over civilian clothes and were armed if they were lucky with 12-bores and even pikes – yes pikes – against the expected invading panzer blitzkrieg.  All the senior half of the College OTC, that’s to say those over 16, were converted at a stroke into the Mobile Reserve Platoon of the Bradninch Company, 3rd (Cullompton) Battalion of the Devon Home Guard; how delightfully it still rolls off the tongue in its bucolic military splendour!

That this should happen was explicable on two counts: as a school with a military tradition our OTC armoury already had more real weapons – standard army issue Lee-Enfield .303 rifles, Mills bombs, Thompson sub-machine guns of Chicago fame, even a Vickers heavy machine-gun – than the rest of the Devon HG put together; and secondly the ‘mobile’ bit meant that the masters could have petrol for their motorcars.  A true win-win situation.

As a result, Sundays, the day proclaimed by Holy Writ to be for our recuperation from a dawn-to-dark week of  work, prep and games, became a doubly exhausting as defence training exercises similarly filled out the daylight hours.

Of course we loved it.  Particularly when frequently we had mock battles with the local static HG units, the Bradninch Company or the Silverton or Broadclyst Platoons or the like, we acting as German paratroops intent on capturing their headquarters, because (oh illicit joy) all the local units’ headquarters were invariably in their ‘locals’. The local Home Guard units would charitably roll over at the end of these weekend ‘battles’. I thus acquired a good working knowledge of the better public houses north-east of Exeter.

I also wangled myself the appointment as the unit’s Armourer Lance-Sergeant.  This was a splendid wheeze as firstly I acquired that most desirable of retreats in any such community but most particularly beloved of fighting men as I later found out in the Navy, a private caboosh. It was beneath the foot of the Tudor staircase; that is to say my armoury, packed with lethal weapons and demolition charges, grenades, sticky bombs, anti-tank projectiles, was virtually at the dead-centre of the building..  Here, sitting in inviolable seclusion on an ammunition box, I could toast bread stolen from the kitchens before a blazing grate – stamping out the occasional flying spark before it made a Guy Fawkes’s benefit of both the Poltimore seat and a minor public school.

The unlimited access it provided, secondly, to most unsuitable weaponry meant my familiars and I could supplement our scant rations – schoolboys are reputedly always hungry and wartime rations coupled with warlike exertions made them trebly so – with  a welcome rabbit spitted over an open fire in the woods.

For, as part of our field-toughening, our enlightened headmaster, Dr ‘George’ Renwick who had instantly promoted himself CO of our HG unit, encouraged us to bivouac in the grounds in strictly active service conditions, rather than sleep prosaically in our dormitories.

Many a dawn rabbit fell to a Lee-Enfield,  small-bore tubed for target practice, thanks to my guardianship of the armoury keys.

Another break from desk routine was when the local War Agricultural Committee, having had some marginal mountainside ploughed up for food, would find a precious crop rotting in the field from a surfeit of rain and a scarcity of labour; and would send the school an SOS for emergency help in lifting it.

One such appeal, larger and more urgent and further away than any of the others, resulted in all the senior half of the school being embussed before light, breakfastless, and heading for a huge potato prairie near Torrington. We were promised food on arrival, to be provided by the Womens’ Voluntary Service.

Bitter rain slashed.  We had no waterproofs but as hardened farm-hands by then, we made poke bonnets out of spare potatoe sacks; and addressed the rotting crop.  Those spuds that were not already visibly deliquescent exploded at the first touch into a nauseous stinking mush. No breakfast arrived.  The war-time fervour of patriotism began to wear thin.

When finally early in the afternoon two elderly souls, brave in their WVS green, with one small tea-urn of thin soup appeared through the downpour, whispers of disgruntlement could be heard.  By dusk when a halt to the profitless fiasco was called, we were chilled to the bone, soaking, thirsty and famished.

Our glum homeward buses took us eventually through Cullompton.  Frantically as we came into the town centre we banged on the drivers’ cabs to stop.

It must have been at the beginning of the week as we still had our ‘Saturday Shilling’ weekly pocket money – or most of it anyway.  And a shilling in those days bought two-and-a-half pints of scrumpy.

There is a pub (I really ought to try to seek it out someday, if only for nostalgic reasons) there in the centre in which I – for the first time in my life – along with the entire senior half of the school from Head Boy (a most upright citizen) downwards – poured pints of that wicked liquor onto empty juvenile stomachs and got totally smashed, plastered, legless, whistled.

I do not know if it is the same now (I suspect not) but in those days all the routine of day-to-day public school discipline was in the hands of the prefects – of which high caste I was myself by then one -  who praised, rarely, and punished (including with a cane) – less rarely. According to the code of the day; masters were at a remove, mostly living away in separate houses, and only became involved in exceptional matters.  Imagine then when all we roaring boys – we pillars of school discipline – returned to the school: one glorious anarchic night of revelry; small boys traditionally in awe or worship of their elders gazing at scenes of levity, their mentors in disarray, the staff powerless.

Next day we were heavy-headed but authority’s hand was light.

Captain Geoffrey Michael CORNISH RN (rtd) on 12^th June 2011 aged 86. Private Cremation followed by Thanksgiving Service at a later date.

Geoffrey was in Priory House from 1939 to 1942. Born in 1925, House Prefect, Hockey X1, Tennis V1, Squash Team, 2nd WW RN Eng. HMS Liverpool 47-49, Submarine Service from 1950. Sqn Engineer Officer, Third Submarine Sqn, Commander, married 1950. His wife Margaret predeceased him. They had two children Richard and Nicola.

As in Telegraph Announcements

Marjory Wright (wife of Leo Wright, Housemaster in Priory and Head of Modern Languages) has died aged 96. The funeral will be held on Friday April 1^st at 11.30am at St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church, Temple Ewell, near Dover.

More information for those that need it from Marjory’s daughter Kathy_Warrender@hotmail.com or Patrick_dudgeon@hotmail.com

ECCLESHALL – MARGARET, Beloved wife of George and aunt of Victoria and Sally.  After a short illness, on 21st February aged 93.

Private family Cremation followed by Thanksgiving Service at St. Matthews Chuch, Surbiton on 17th March at 2 p.m.

Donations, if desired, to RNLI c/o Alan Greenwood & Sons, 259 Ewell Road, Surbiton KT6 7AA.  Tel. 0208 399 4455.

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Lt Col GPT [Pat] Carpenter MBE late KEO Gurkha Rifles died on 12th December after a brief illness.

Pat was at Dover College from 1940 to 1944, was Head of School and played in XV, XI and 2nd hockey. He also won the Evans Classic prize.

He leaves behind his children Mark, Jacqeline and Tricia.

Obituary for Philip Bycroft Saul (Dover College – School House 1946-51)
Born Rochford, Essex 19.02.33
Died London Bridge Hospital 15.11.10

1946: front row, 6th from left - click to enlarge

Philip Saul was the third child (younger son) of John and Juliana Saul. His father was a solicitor in Lincolnshire but the family was originally of farming stock. Aged seven, he was sent to board at Hurst Court preparatory school in Hastings, but was soon evacuated to Wrekin College, where his older brother was a pupil. After his Father’s premature death from an illness suffered since the trenches, Philip’s Mother went cap in hand to Dover College to beseech them to take her promising young son. He was awarded a scholarship and excelled academically. Accelerated to take the Higher School certificate a year early, Philip then became head boy and achieved the extraordinary feat of passing A levels as well, in the first year of their existence!

1947: front row, 6th from left - click to enlarge

1948: 4th row back, on left - click to enlarge

Following school, where he had served in the CCF, Philip joined the Royal Engineers (a family tradition) for his two years National Service and then, typically, displaying the sense of responsibility and duty which informed his whole life, he joined the Territorial Army. He served as a volunteer for at least ten years achieving the rank of Captain.

In 1953 Philip went up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford to read law. During this time, he consolidated his already considerable prowess in sailing and shooting, picking up a half blue in each. His academic results were very creditable, as he was awarded a second class honours degree in 1956. Apocryphally whilst skating on the frozen Port Meadow in January 1954 he also met Jane May who was to become his bride, mother of his five children and life-long companion. They married on 31st July 1956 and Jane predeceased him by almost four years, after fifty years of marriage.

1949: 3rd row back, 2nd from left - click to enlarge

After graduating, Philip was articled to a small firm of Solicitors in Lincolns Inn and on qualifying took a conveyancing job in Southend. He was admitted to the Roll on 1st October 1959. His career was varied and interesting and he moved from Southend to London in the mid 1960s to take up a position as Company Secretary to the Triumph Investment Trust. The 1970s were a turbulent time in the Stock Market and the company folded as a result of significant investment losses. Philip, typically sanguine, joined the Mayfair firm of Eric Levine and co and started practising commercial law. During this time, he met Geoff Stringer and they agreed to leave and start their own firm.

Stringer Saul opened for business in 1978 and soon grew into a very successful and well-respected practice under Philip’s watchful eye. Despite an attempted merger, which was then demerged, the firm thrived. Sadly Philip suffered several bouts of ill health in the 1980s and 90s, forcing his early retirement, although he remained a partner until 1998.

1949: 1st row of sergeants, on left - click to enlarge

During his life, Philip achieved outstanding success in Match rifle, including competing for the Chancellors Challenge Plate at Bisley as an undergraduate in 1955, then winning the Queen’s cup in 1963 and the 1200 Club Salver, the Stamford Young trophy and the Dram Cup in 1986. A member of the English Eight and the Stickledown club, he was a keen competitor who in later years, took to making his own ammunition to achieve the results he sought! He shot for England on eleven separate occasions between 1963 and 1992. He served as Treasurer to the National Rifle Association from 1990 to 2001 under the Chairmanship of John de Havilland.

1950: 2nd row back, 3rd from right - click to enlarge

1951: 2nd row back, 5th from left (Head Boy)

He was also a keen sailor in his youth and then became a competent and fearless skier. He enjoyed music, singing in the South West London Choral Society, and serving as Treasurer of the Wagner Society for many years. Never one to shirk responsibility, following retirement Philip continued to act as the Secretary or Treasurer of a number of organisations always supplying his shrewd legal advice and meticulous attention to detail to any problem that arose, uncomplainingly, free of charge and with charm and wit.

Philip’s sense of humour was witty, dry and also tinged with the nonsense of the Goons, Edward Lear, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the Two Ronnies, and Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. Philip deplored poor use of the English language and kept his own vocabulary sharpened by completing the Times crossword puzzles. He also relished really difficult Sudoku puzzles! These characteristics all influenced his five children enormously and his ambition and determination have been passed on through them to the nine grandchildren! He will be sorely missed by friends, family and colleagues alike.
Dorothy Pooley – 18.12.2010

John Turnpenny made Freeman of Dover (click for larger image)

Mr John Turnpenny, formerly of Crescent House (1937-1941), was recently granted the honour of  Freeman of Dover by Dover Town Council. He and the two other recipients were the first towns people to receive this award for over 40 years.

John Turnpenny, an Old Dovorian (1937 to 1941), has lived in Dover for the majority of his life. He has been a Governor of the College, a local businessman (the London Road funiture firm Turnpenny Brothers Ltd), a Justice of the Peace and has a long standing commitment to many societies and local interest groups such as the Gateway Residents’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce.

Whenever possible he attends and supports the OD golf matches, and all the College concerts held in the refectory. John is the regional organiser for the Dover Group.

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As both The Priory House and The School House were the first houses of Dover College, it was required that they be referred to as THE. The HM and The Priory House master, A D F Dale were insistant upon this. It has always been thus as far as the intake to The Priory House of 1948 are concerned. Long may it so remain.

Progress from Fag to Prefect was steep. Once the period of Fagging was complerted, usually one year, one became a Prep Room Boy. This brought freedom from Fagging, but not sweeping, dusting or waiting at table. Prefects ran a disciplined,orderly and harmonious(!!!!!!!!!) house, and were trusted to so do. There was a prefect to each deck, a prefect i/c waiting and dining room, a prefect i/c changing rooms, boot room and yard, etcetera. Rotas were aranged to ensure this cleanliness was maintained. Between Mr and Mrs Dale, Matron, Miss White, the House and School Prefects, peace ruled. The yard and cycle sheds were swept, the trophies polished, and so forth , and order reigned.

There was the annual house clean, when every moveable item was moved, every windiw was cleaned with water and newspapers. The yard and cycle shed were tidied, and the loose rod in the iron fence was widened just that little bit more to allow even the largest boy to sneak out if possible. Cleanliness, neatness and tidiness were essential.

1st bell was rung at 7.am, when the duty prefect would walk the decks ringing the bell. Again at 7.30 and finally at 10 mins to 8am when all would assemble for roll call and inspection in the Prep Room. Notices would be given out, then we would proceed into breakfast.  Prior to this, all fagging and house duties had to be carried out, prefects of School Level were exempt. We would all stand at our appointed places in the dining-room until Mr and Mrs Dale, Miss White and our appointed House Tutor entered via the private quarters, grace would be said and the meal commence.

Dress was important, “Boys are citizens of Dover, and will respect such,” was the rule of George Renwick, our HM. Navy blue suits, clean white (separate) shirt collars, shining shoes  clean and pressed trousers and school caps were to be worn. The middle button of our jackets were to be always buttoned. House ties had to be worn: Priory a blue stripe, School a red stripe, Leamington a mauve and Martins a Yellow stripe. Those entitled to wear boater hats were house and school prefects. House prefects wore plain straw, School prefects had theirs painted black, with the school ribbon and crest around both. School prefects carried a cane.  No one, other than staff, School Prefects or first sports Colours were permitted to walk on the close. School colours? ah, that leads me the next chapter……….