38
OPUS • Issue 4 • Spring 2011
Portsmouth Grammar School • www.pgs.org.uk
Ask the archivist
David Lenton
Introducing a new feature in Opus where OPs are encouraged to ask school archivist John Sadden all those burning questions about their PGS school days that they never knew the answer to... until now!
David Lenton, ‘a traditional Classics beak of the best kind… who had the distinction – rare among schoolmasters – of never talking nonsense’
?
Please submit your questions for future issues to John at the contact address shown on page 2.
John Sa
dden
What is the history of the PGS lion? Since the 19th century, the school has used a variety of coats of arms, but it was not until the Senior Science Master, H. T. Lilley discovered the arms of the Founder, William Smith, that the sitting lion first appeared in association with the school. Lilley came across the arms while doing some research for the Boer War Memorial window in St Thomas’s Church (now Cathedral), which was unveiled in 1904. The lion appears on a metal cap badge dating from this time. William Smith was a man very conscious of status. He bought an honorary degree of doctor of medicine from the University of Oxford, purchased one of the best houses in the High Street (Buckingham House) and bought a coat of arms from the Garter King of Arms which featured the now familiar golden lion upon a red and black shield. Up until the 1950s the lion was proudly used by the school, but without authority from the College of Arms. Neither rampant nor dormant but couchant (lying down with raised head) he is alert but not aggressive. He appeared in various shapes and sizes but, perhaps, like the rest of the population, looked his worst during the Second World War when, at a time of “make do and mend, he appeared crudely embroidered on items of uniform and was barely recognisable as the noble king of the jungle. With victory came restored majesty and, in 1957, the School was officially granted its arms, with William Smith’s lion, head held high, sitting above two choughs (from the arms of Christ Church College) and the Portsmouth badge of a star and crescent moon, symbolising the close association between the School, the College and the City.
Why is the Yellow Book called the Yellow Book? The first “Yellow Book” in the archive dates from the Autumn term of 1957 and is, in fact, a cheerless buff. As many Old Portmuthians will remember, most of its pages were devoted to class lists, with the calendar of the term’s events only occupying a few pages. In the 1970s the buff began to change, with a hint, then another hint, of yellow, until, in 1974, the first truly yellow Yellow Book appeared, albeit in a subdued, matt hue. The dawn of the 1990s brought an excessive, over-indulgent, saturated yellowness that was destined to burn out, which it duly did in 1999. The new millennium brought the white Yellow Book, appealing, perhaps, to a cool, post-modern generation of pupil accustomed to irony. To prevent any confusion, the words “Yellow Book” appear in black on the white cover. One can only speculate, adding irony to irony, as to whether, in a future post-post-modern world, archive copies of the white Yellow Book will yellow with age.
?
Generations from the fifties and early sixties will recognise this description of Frederick David Lenton, Head of Classics at PGS, sports coach and Scoutmaster extraordinaire. It appeared in the Common Room obituary notices of The Ampleforth Journal in Spring 1991, following his death just before Christmas in 1990 at the early age of 66. David Lenton, or ‘Egg’ as he was affectionately known in these parts, had left PGS in the Summer of 1963 for Rome where, as a convert to Catholicism, he was to train for the priesthood. A year or two later he was back at the chalkface as Senior Classics Master at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Wakefield; and in September 1968 he moved to Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire as an assistant master, teaching Latin, Greek and Ancient History until his retirement in 1984. It was in keeping with the man - no slave to ambition and seniority – that he should take a step down professionally in midcareer to pursue the now twin callings of schoolmastering and pastoral care.
Ampleforth, a well-known Catholic boarding school located in beautiful countryside a dozen miles north of York, is attached to the Benedictine Ampleforth Abbey and was thus the ideal place for David to pursue the dual aspects of his future ‘ministry’.
Figure 1 - Apurimac River, Peru, August 1969
A bizarre coincidence in 1979 had prompted me to renew contact with someone who had made such a mark on his Portmuthian charges, especially on the tiny and thus highly privileged groups of the Classical Sixth. One day, working as a publisher for the Macmillan Press, I popped into the office of a colleague who was on the phone. While he continued his call, I noticed a batch of 30-40 large photographs on top of a bookcase. By sheer chance, the top picture was unmistakably Egg Lenton in Y-fronts, (see Fig 1) ‘rafting’ a tractor across a river (Fig 2), attended by several other individuals in various states of undress. Barely containing my impatience as the phone call dragged on, I eventually established that this was Father Bede in August 1969, bringing a tractor across the Apurimac River in Southern Peru, from Pichari village to ‘the Mission’. My colleague Charles Fry recalled that he’d been on a VSO gap year, working at a mission in Cusco State, where Father Bede had made a tremendous impression on him, and not just as a master-boatman. Presumably, David was taking his first summer ‘holiday’ from Ampleforth, combining work in the classroom with service to less fortunate communities of adults – a mix that was to form the basis of much of his later life’s work.
Figure 2 - At the wheel, Peru, August 1969
Armed with this image and another where Father Bede struggled with the pedals to disembark the tractor, and having learned where he was now teaching, I resolved to visit him there at the first opportunity. Preoccupied, though, with career and family, I let a dozen years slip by before, on a business trip to the North East and with an afternoon free, I called unannounced at Ampleforth in October 1991 to enquire as to David’s whereabouts. Though in retirement for six years and removed from his cottage in Helmsley to Ketton in Rutland, a few miles outside Stamford in his native Lincolnshire, David had kept in touch with Ampleforth through cricket festivals and visits to ex-colleagues and neighbours who remembered him with great affection. He had also maintained links with PGS Second Master, John Thorp, in whose Havant garden he is here seen (Figure 3) in the 1980s. Whitcombe House had been fortunate indeed to have been led by Messrs Thorp and Lenton – ‘Big John’s’ junior by some nine years – in the fifties and sixties.
Figure 3 - FDL in the Thorps’ Havant garden, c.1985
continued...
39