OLD SUTTONIAN FEATURES
Meeting the Families of Two SVS Stalwarts John McCormick (Staff 1964-2005)
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n the last year or so I have enjoyed a series of catch-ups with families with long-standing involvements at SVS - their respective families’ connections to the School cover much of the first half of the twentieth century and they both remain deeply fond of the School. About three years ago, Michael Beaman (1952 W, Staff 1963-1992) told me that Bill Bentley OBE (1950 W), having learned that I was now a relatively near neighbour in north-west England, was anxious to get together again. Our last meeting had been at an Old Suttonian Dinner in London many years before when Bill had enviously inquired why so many 20-something year old young ladies were greeting me with such obvious affection! “They are all my former pupils, Bill!” was my reply. There were no girls at SVS in Bill’s day!!
Sir Martin Holdgate CB
William Holdgate (HM 1910 - 1932)
Bill’s late father, Norman Bentley (Staff 1921-1964), known to many generations of Suttonians as ‘Pub’ or ‘Publius’ because of his admiration for Scipio Africanus, was my predecessor as Head of Classics at the School. I still remember being interviewed by him in the drawing room of Wells Cottage, where Norman and his wife, Nell, lived for many years. As well as his teaching role at the School, Norman was also the Senior Master from 1953 until 1964, the Housemaster of the junior boarding house (which was known as Bentley’s from 1935 until 1949) and the Housemaster of Westminster from 1949 until 1958.
she did for over 30 years and her Syke House Herd became nationally famous, at its peak numbering over 200. She pioneered the keeping of the animals in UK specifically for their fleeces and was a founder member of the British Alpaca Society and is a former chairman. Her herd was dispersed in 2014.
Eventually contact was made with Bill and we have enjoyed several lunch meetings in Ravenstonedale, Cumbria together with my wife Vivien and Bill’s wife, Pat. Vivien herself taught at SVS as a parttime teacher of Physical Education and Games in the Summer Term of 1972 and later became a housemistress and deputy head at Cranbrook, . These meetings have seen much detailed and wideranging reminiscence of our respective times at SVS.
Attending a lecture given by Sir Martin on ‘The Future of the Countryside’ at Lancaster Royal Grammar School (by a fine coincidence the school where Norman Bentley was a boy), I was asked to propose the vote of thanks, as I had links with him - albeit only slight. Sir Martin had been guest of honour at Sutton Valence School Speech Day in 1995 and on that occasion I had enjoyed a chat with him, as I remembered the then merely Dr Holdgate as a tutor at University College, Durham where I was studying.
After Pat and Bill retired to the Cumbrian Pennine countryside, Pat fulfilled a long-held ambition to keep and breed alpacas, which
As well as the Bentleys, I was also delighted to be able to meet with Sir Martin Holdgate CB, the grandson of William Wyatt Holdgate (Headmaster 1910 – 1932), after whom Holdgate House was named, probably after it ceased to be called Bentley’s.
Brought up in Blackpool, where his father, Francis Wyatt Holdgate (1919 W) was a headmaster at the Arnold School, Sir Martin is an internationally-known zoologist and environmental scientist, whose outstanding career took him to many parts of the world and led to many influential posts: he was chief biologist for the British Antarctic Survey, research director for the Nature Conservancy Council and for 18 years, chief scientist and head of research at the Department of the Environment. After his retirement to Cumbria, with which he has a lifelong connection, Sir Martin has served as chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Forestry, president of the Zoological Society and been a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Clearly still very active at the age of 87, he told me that he remembers very clearly as a very young boy, holidays in Sutton Valence at “grandfather Holdgate’s”.
Norman and Nell Bentley on an SVS trip to the Lake District in 1952
Page 6 - The OLD Suttonian 2018
Learning of this meeting, Bill Bentley added yet another delightful coincidental connection. As it happens, Sir Martin’s grandfather had christened Bill (end of 1932 or early 1933) in the then relatively new School Chapel. The belief being that it was the first such occasion after the Chapel had been consecrated in 1929.