My wife and I paid a visit to Bablake in March of 2004 there to be warmly welcomed by John Lawrence (centre) the school archivist and Jeff Vent (left) who culled the old records for anything relating to my time at the school in the early forties but particularly while I was evacuated to Lincoln. Their finds exceeded my expectations and many fading memories were rekindled, even if my school reports were less than memorable.
John and I made the climb to the top of the school tower; I with much less alacrity than I would have aged 13 but the view of Coventry Cathedral, visible through the trees only at this time of year, was worth it.
This view shows the roof of the woodwork room behind which are the railway tracks and what used to be Coundon station.
A visit to the woodwork and metalwork rooms showed me that while they were centrally heated and more modern than I remembered them the tool storage design that I had created in 1955 was still in use while the metal lathe was the same one I used and it is still operational.
A woodwork project from 1955.
The smile is uncharacteristic but while standing on holy ground I could not resist intoning in the deepest voice I could muster, "Boy, take your nose outside".
Advice issued to Bablake staff by E.A.Seaborne - Headmaster 1937 - 62.
(Undated but timeless) courtesy of John Lawrence

1. The most frequent cause in indiscipline is boredom: and the greatest prophylactic against boredom is variety - variety of what is done; how it is done; when it is done; and the level and intensity of the voice in which the lesson is taught.

2. Cultivate a chest voice. Bad disciplinarians seldom have voices in the lower register. (I passed this test with him but I wonder how the women staff of the present could qualify)

3. There are seldom more than six delinquents in a form. (If there are more, the master is almost certainly at fault). Identify these as quickly as possible and do all you can to occupy them, making a point of plying them with questions in oral work. Once you are certain of your delinquent, drop on him hard.

4. Never fail to carry out a threat, however much you may regret having made it.

5. Never pass anything that you know to be wrong. Obsta principia, resist beginnings.(Seaborne could not resist Latin tag). Once a little thing is passed over, a bigger thing will quickly follow and the situation will quickly get out of hand.

6. If a class is restive and noisy, get its nose down to written work as quickly as possible, and insist upon absolute silence. Walk about amongst the desks while this is being done. Do not stay put at the master's desk.

7. While teaching a class that you know to be potentially troublesome, turn your back on it as little as possible.(I remember one time when we all emptied our fountain pens into the back of a teacher's gown as he walked up and down the aisles.) In such cases it is a good plan to teach from the back of the class, and if anything has to be written on the board let a boy do it at your dictation.

8. Never crack a joke unless you are certain that you have a class in the hollow of your hand, and however certain you feel never crack a joke in the first six weeks. Once you have established definite control, lighten the atmosphere as often as may be.

9. Do not be deterred from punishing an offender because you know him to be one of a gang, the other members of which you have failed to catch. The essential thing is to be quite certain and then punish without qualm. Justice, however hard, is seldom or never resented.

10. Never lose your temper. Once you are known to be prone to this, a temper will be provoked as an excellent time-waster. An icy calm disappoints roisterers. On the other hand a mock temper, which makes everyone uncomfortable, is an excellent weapon. Never be afraid to lift the roof. Plenty of voice has an excellent psychological effect in itself and is loathed by the boys, as they know it may bring their faults to the H.M's notice.

11. If you are really uncertain of a form, teach with the door open. An open door introduces a note of uncertainty into the circumstances.

12. If you feel that you must send a boy out of the room, send him to the H.M.. Do not stand him outside the door. That is time wasting, which appeals to some boys. (It did to me)

13. If one boy asks to be excused during a lesson, catechise (good Seabornese) him as to why he had not the foresight to attend to his needs between lessons. If two ask, never let them out of the room at the same time. If three ask, you can be pretty certain that you are losing control of your class. Casual to-ing and fro-ing to the latrines is to be discouraged.

14. Insist on the class standing when you enter and leave a room; and make each boy stand when he answers a question. If a boy speaks when you are talking or when another boy is answering, punish him at once for bad manners. Insist that no boy speaks unless he first raises his hand and gets permission to do so. Once you allow uncontrolled interjections, you are a lost man and your fate is sealed.

15. Know exactly what ground you are going to cover before you enter a classroom, and without being boring by sticking too closely to notes make sure you cover it. If the behaviour of the class prevents your doing so, then keep them in at the end of the day up to a maximum of half an hour.

16. Every boy carries a report card on which all punishments must be entered. The punishment for bad work is to repeat it in work detention held every evening. Entries must be made in the detention book in the staff room. The usual punishment for bad behaviour is one set of the school rules. Two sets is a maximum. For more serious offences an H entry should be made. The boy will then see the H.M. the following day. For outrageous offences, such as impertinence, an H with a ring round it should be entered and the boy sent to the H.M. at once. The less a master depends on H entries, the better disciplinarian he is. Sometimes it may suffice to warn only and make a W entry. The great virtue of the report card system is that it allows a master to see if the boy is an old offender. If a boy has a clean card a warning will usually suffice. If a boy has many entries, all for the same thing, a warning will seldom suffice.

Number 16 came back to me when we found my final school records for 1940-41. In Lincoln on February 14th. and March 28th.1941 my School Register page noted that I had twice reached the magic three entries on the Conduct card. The brackets could have indicated either canings or copies of the school rules as punishment. The second initial is Horace Curt, an unlikely user of the cane.
My end as a "chemical" failed to materialize although my first job was as a bank clerk at Lloyds. My father was a famous brass bandsman so that more than one hour of practice was mandatory and I ended my naval career in the Royal Navy Band in Portsmouth, six years later in 1947.
The source of "chemical" is to be found on my application for a place at Bablake in September of 1940. My father worked at Morris Motors who made the famous Bofor guns.
The application is in my mother's handwriting but my father signed the form. The empahtic NO to the question of my attending Bablake without a scholarship is definitely my mother's. She wielded her Parker fountain pen like a rapier that even Seaborne dodged.
The Lincoln records included a list of my billets from November 23rd. 1940 to the 29th. of April 1941 when I went to my fourth secondary school, Hinckley Grammar in Leicestershire where we moved to from 12, Montalt Road in Cheylesmore. The identity card number is wrong. It was 228/3.
It was at 303 Hykeham Road that I fell through the ice on the River Witham. On the back of the list it indicates that my parents asked for me to be moved from 18 St.Peters Avenue. Why I am not sure but I did ask to be near my younger brother who was in a private billet and was attending an elementary school near Hykeham Road. Billets were harder to come by towards the end.

Armed with this information I decided to go to Lincoln to jog my memory and to see what was left after 64 years. At Lincoln Cathedral a man of my age confirmed that he had roller skated, perhaps with me, on the rink at the railway crossing near High Street. Nearby was a milk bar where my brother and I drank one milk shake with two straws. From our vantage point we could see South Down where Bablake settled into the abandoned wooden school. A series of one way streets up and down the hill required the assistance of the roller skater to navigate but we eventually arrived at 129 Newark Road.

In all its "glory" it was still there as was the Emmanuel Christian Centre five doors away where my hosts had taken me to call to the congregation for my salvation as a young sinner. At the time I thought they had been in touch with Seaborne.
The first report card in the archives spanned the period from my admission in March to July 1940. My form master was B.E.C.Lewis who, not surprisingly, left shortly after presiding over 3C. Obviously not the highest academic group I wonder at the abilities of the rest of the class when my 27 C's and D's ended up with my being 8th. out of 28 with an inexplicable C+, B- and a B. Mr. Bandy, with whom I taught 15 years later, felt that my string of Cs placed me third in the class and my "chemicals" were average. Duffield who was also still on the staff in 1955 rated me as "much improved" and 6th. out of 28 in French. This information plus the knowledge that my reading was rated as D+, writing C+ and spelling D+ belied my later taking Russian and English for my degree. My "high spirits" probably resulted in the card entries in 1941. E.A.Emery with the comment "very keen" for history may have forshadowed my later interest in Bablake history. Mr.Lewis felt that I would improve only if I "settled to the collar" a quaint phrase, but I assume meaning that I should accept the yoke of study. I do not remember my time in the woodwork room but my row of C's in HT (Handicraft) from Tommy Arundel did not foreshadow my taking his place at the front of a woodwork class.
I had moved to 66 Banks Road by the end of my time at Bablake. My lack of sporting abilities are made evident in my making only the 4th. Cricket Team in Bailey House . My father came to watch me play rugger and found me kicking sheep dung at the bottom of the field. C in "Capacity of Leadership" meant that I did not become a monitor but was good enough for my later becoming a headmaster. Perhaps the B in "Orginailty and Intelligence" made up for it.
By the time I left I was in 4G with Mr.Bandy as Form Master. I suspect that the G for German was the fourth year equivilant to C in the third year. I took neither Latin nor German. My final marks were lower and I "must not fritter away" my time. It was took this report to Hinckley Grammar School.

My time as a pupil at Bablake was short and neither my academic nor my athletic achievements were spectacular yet I have an affinity for the school. Perhaps it was the blitz, the stay at Lincoln and my teaching stint but I did enjoy my visit for, with apologies to Seaborne, as an American baseball player is wont to say:

It was déjà vu all over again.
If you click on this English rugby fan on the Le Havre ferry on his way to the match against the French in Paris, you will return to the main Bablake page. He was not a Wheatleyan.