This is a only a rough draft, rushed online to avoid making the better the enemy of the good. (Like much of the rest of this website.)

(1) FECKENHAM HOUSE. At the Fayre/Reunion, I spoke to a former Challoner pupil who told me that he had bought the front doors of Feckenham House from the demolition men, and still has them at home. Would this gentleman kindly make himself known; it would be lovely to be able to upload a few images of the doors that opened for so many of us onto our first experience of life away from home. (Email me from link on navigation bar and/or make a posting in our own Yahoo! Group.)

(2) BEING KEPT IN. In the FCHS Ofsted report currently online, there is mention of parental discontent regarding collective detention. The rights and wrongs are neither here nor there for us, but reading that passage did put me in mind of the occasion during school year 1954/5 when Canon Parsons imposed detention on ALL forms of ALL three schools . . . AND ALL TEACHERS!!!

Someone had (allegedly) torn down a notice that the Canon had put up on the board at the back of the Chapel. On account of the nature of the content of the notice, the Canon detected a whiff of mutiny - as opposed to random hooliganism - and, the alleged gesture of contempt having taken place on consecrated ground, he declared the incident a matter of sacrilege. Unless the culprit owned up, everyone - "boys and masters" - was to be punished collectively. (Female teachers counted, perhaps, as honorary masters.)

I cannot remember what the notice was about, if indeed I really took it in at that age, but it must have been ideologically controversial indeed for the Canon to regard boys and staff as equally suspect. Does anyone else remember being kept in that afternoon? (4 till 4.30) Can anyone remember what the notice was about? (Email me from link on navigation bar, and/or make a posting in our own Yahoo! Group.)

(3) PRIESTS. There is much on the FriendsReunited.co.uk website about the Canon, Father Ward and Father Dent - rightly so. But why, I wonder, is there no mention (as yet) of Father Moore, or Father Straub?

Father Moore, an English priest, was in charge of the Grammar School boarders at least between 1955 and 1957, and sometimes said Sunday Mass in Chapel. He was a youngish priest, who spoke Italian, which leads me to believe that he may well have attended the Beda at some point.

Father Straub was a Dutch priest, who used to appear intermittently at the Prep, and made a speech one year at Prize-Giving. He also sometimes said Sunday Mass in Chapel, where you occasionally saw his mother and sister.

Anyone know what happened to either of them, or where they are now? (Email me from link on navigation bar, and/or make a posting in our own Yahoo! Group.)

P.S. There was also a Father Tollemache. I do not remeber him teaching. Does anyone else remember him?