I am writing in response to the request for stories and reminiscences regarding West Downs. I attended the school from 1975 to 1980, during which I enjoyed a fairly successful “career”, playing for all the first teams, being a Patrol Leader and most importantly passing the Common Entrance examination. My impressions are therefore clouded with a rose-tinted hue, and even this short time has faded most unpleasant memories, of which I’m sure I must have had some. However, I will try to give my impressions and reminiscences of those five years, which played an important role in shaping my life.
Firstly I shall just write down reminiscences and then try and assess the importance of West Downs on myself and contemporaries.
Jerry Cornes is an obvious starting point – bushy white eyebrows, nicotine stained fingers, devout Christianity, and an eccentricity that seemed to pervade the whole school; Mrs. Cornes (I still can’t remember her Christian name), and her steel eyes that made lying nearly impossible; chapel day in, day out, with the special school prayers; Mr. Davies the organist with his Stilton cheese breath; the sense of calm on Sunday evenings whilst reading in Shakespeare, followed by evening service and “Abide with me”; swimming with the Instructor; the Saturday night film and the cartoon run backwards; the ritual end of term dormitory raids with the use of “sockballs” and assorted armaments; the Easter term Gilbert and Sullivan operetta and form plays; my last night there, when the entire school ran out onto the cricket pitches and dug up Mr. Severn’s cricket wicket, supposedly the flattest cricket ground in Hampshire; playing Bridge and drinking port late at night in the dormitory; “roof-ragging” and the night Freddie Browning never completed the “Field to West” trip, and tore most of his right leg off after falling through a glass roof; Mr. FitzGerald’s “Gym sessions” and the utter dread of having to “wrestle” fellow schoolboys and friends until either they or you were made to cry through severe winding by the opponent’s knee or near strangulation in a neck lock; never having the courage to tell anyone that this so-called “wrestling” took place, and spending the only really unhappy times at West Downs watching defenceless boys being hit in the name of sport by an older boy twice their size; the joy of playing sport, especially hockey and tennis, against other prep schools. The list could go on for pages, but the reminiscences I have given seem to be particularly memorable.
I think West Downs gave its pupils a sense of individuality that other Prep Schools lacked, which was always noticeable when visiting other schools. All the boys that I went on to Public School with, 12 in all, retained a sense of individuality that definitely helped in adjusting to the rather larger and stranger world of Public School life. The teaching was excellent, as the Common Entrance results show, and the standard of sporting achievement was high. My last year, West Downs won or drew all 1st XI football matches and reached the final at the Hampshire Schools cricket competition. Yet the school had an air of nonconformity about it that came from Jerry Cornes and infiltrated each and every boy there, and is still in those boys whom I see now. His eccentricity, coupled with strong spiritual beliefs showed that it was possible to retain individuality and not conform, and still hold certain ideas and beliefs that would harness self-expression into something positive, rather than the negativity that sometimes results from nonconformity. West Downs gave a firm base on which to build self confidence and was a vital first step on the journey of life for many of the boys who spent their formative years there. The aim to try to be the best I can was formulated at West Downs, although this knowledge was only discovered a few years ago!
It is sad that the uniqueness that was West Downs can no longer be discovered, and it is a shame that only a few children in the country ever experienced it.
I hope these reminiscences and impressions may be of some use and I look forward to reading the book after publication.
Yours sincerely, Patrick Forwood
JFC writes:-
I do not wish to make comparisons between the Headmasters of West Downs, because I’m sure, deservedly, I would come out worst, but I do wish to take some credit for what he says about the individuality of the West Downs boys and girls who left the school with him in 1980 and indeed before that. (12 boys, of whom he was one, went to Eton in September 1980 but for some reason there was a vast crop of those going on to their next Independent School in July 1980 – 32 in all). What he means, I think, is that West Downs [pupils] were not intimidated as a result of going to a much larger and older community. Though they were Fags, they stood tall. They could stand up for themselves and were prepared to take their own line, not necessarily conforming to the next School’s code of conduct. Eton beaks of the era 1954 to 1980 have written and spoken to me about the same thing. It was what distinguished WD boys from boys who had been to other prep schools.
JFC