Born: 1965 Age: 47
When were you at Princethorpe - years from and to?
From September 1977 to June 1984. I was a day pupil for the first six years and a weekly boarder for my last year in Upper Sixth.
Originally I am from Leamington Spa although my parents, who are both still alive, retired to South Devon in the late 1990’s. I now live in Rome.
After leaving Princethorpe I turned down university offers to study French and Philosophy at St Andrews, Dundee or Sheffield and instead accepted an accelerated Management Training Contract with what was then Midland Bank (now HSBC) and worked in various branches in Coventry, Warwick University and Daventry while also studying for professional banking qualifications. In late 1986 and after a couple of years of searching and discerning I left banking and moved to Ireland to begin formation for Priesthood and Religious Life with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), the order of Priests and Brothers who ran Princethorpe College.
After seven years of studies and formation (taking degrees in Philosophy and Theology in Ireland) I was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in Princethorpe College Chapel in July 1993, with music provided by the College Choir led by Sue Francis. I immediately commenced my first ministry appointment in the MSC parish in Tamworth, Staffordshire. In 1998 I went to Boston, USA to do a two year full-time Masters (M.Ed) in adult education and pastoral theology and then spent the next five years working across England, Ireland, Venezuela and South Africa supporting the formation of lay ministers in the Catholic Church. During those years I was based in the MSC Community at Princethorpe and also began what would be a very happy and fulfilling 10-year term serving as a Governor and Trustee of the Princethorpe Foundation.
From 2005 to 2011 I led an international MSC project in inner city Birmingham in a very poor, deprived and predominantly Muslim neighbourhood, working in the areas of inter-faith dialogue, support of refugees and asylum-seekers and cross community ministry. In September 2011 I was elected to our MSC Congregational Leadership Team based in Rome. I now spend most of my time travelling to visit our MSC priests and brothers who are working in 55 countries across all five continents. In the last 12 months alone I have been in India, the Pacific Islands (Fiji, Samoa, Kiribati, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands), Australia, Senegal, Cameroun and most of Europe. While I miss the type of direct ministry I was doing in Birmingham, this new role is opening my eyes to a much larger reality and allowing me to be part of leading and shaping our MSC mission for the years ahead. It is great to see the next generation of young and enthusiastic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart passing on the charism and vision of the Order (“to be on earth the Heart of God”) much as it was shared with me at Princethorpe. In the developing world where education is not universally available we are still beginning new schools (though much less grand than Princethorpe), but are also involved in social ministry, justice and peace work, communication and media, parish ministry, third level education, hospital and university chaplaincy and retreat/spirituality work.
What was the school like in your day?
When I started at Princethorpe it was a much smaller school population than it is today (about half the number of pupils), and it was boys-only. Each year there was a two-form entry into the First Year classes of A1 and A2. I can’t remember which year we first had girls in the Sixth Form, but there were only a couple of them!
The College seemed immense and the smell of wood polish, school dinners and sulphur from the Chemistry Lab hung in the air. We all fitted in the Chapel for Assembly or Mass. What is now the Theatre was our gym (before the Sports Hall was built, about mid-way during my time at the College), and what is now the Library was the Study Hall for after-school study and exams. The place could be creepy at night and the boarders regularly told ghost stories of the headless nun! We had a very modern “Language Lab” in what is now the Chaplaincy Room, with individual sound-proofed booths and reel-to-reel tape recorders for speaking and listening exercises in French with Mme Crosby and Mme Jones. I was a member of the photographic society and we had a studio and darkroom in the Tower. I remember when computers first arrived in the School and we had one “Computer Lab” with about a dozen BBC Micro computers. Sadly I was already in the senior school at that stage and so missed out on the new optional subject of computer science for the Third Years taught by Colin Morgan. I was one of the first, however, to begin the new subject of “Woodwork” with Frank McGreevy (in the days before Technology and Resistant Materials!) – although I can’t say that I ever succeeded in making anything remotely useful or beautiful! I remember paying a large amount of money for a fine piece of mahogany for very little to come of it!!
I have fond memories of maths with Fr Dan O’Connor and Alan O’Grady (with his weekly cryptic quizzes, his missing finger, and who always stood smoking at his preferred window on the quad at break times), art and pottery with Lou and Barbara Skiffington, chemistry with Harold Crosby and John Miller, physics with wild but wonderful John Hopwood, biology with Bernie Moroney, English with Barbara Carpenter, John Harwood and Pat and Moira Weir (from whom I developed a life-long love of T S Eliot), geography with Mick Kitterick, history with Fr McManus, Pat Weir and Peter Rex, and our great, small Economics Sixth Form group with Peter Griffin (who is the only one still going strong at Princethorpe!!). Marie Lawless was the College Matron and kindly nursed me though a knee injury in my first year and a back injury in the fourth year. In the Lower Sixth I was the Librarian Prefect (alongside Mrs DeVries) in the small library at the back of the College Chapel.
There was quite a large community of MSC priests in the school (Frs Bill Clarkson, Jim Mannix, Seamus McManus, Michael O’Leary, P C Horgan, Tom Hewitt, Teddy O’Brien, Tony Horgan, and Alan Whelan all had a significant influence on my life). Often there would be MSC brothers with us for a few months or a year as part of their training. There was also a community of Sisters of St Paul from Selly Park in Birmingham who resided in the College. Sr Helen taught RE and Sr Julian worked in the Bursar’s Office. I also have very fond memories of Srs Marguerite and Mary Jo. About half the pupils were boarders. Fr Bill Clarkson was Headmaster when I began and Fr Dan O’Connor was Head when I finished. In later years both of them became cherished confrères within the MSC Congregation. Bill died in 2009 but Dan is still well and is the Superior of one of our communities in Cork, Ireland. Fr Seamus McManus, a wonderful embodiment of the essence of Princethorpe and a Formula One racing fanatic, sadly died in 1999 and is buried in the MSC grave at Princethorpe behind the College Chapel. Fr Alan Whelan, who went on to become Headmaster, is now Deputy Provincial Leader of the MSC Irish Province but is still involved in the Chaplaincy at Princethorpe and Fr Teddy O’Brien is the Parish Priest of the local Parish.
I thoroughly enjoyed all of my years at Princethorpe and always felt part of a very special community. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to board during my last year at school where there was a really good community of us up on the VI Form Boarding wing. I remember making hot chocolate to accompany late night conversations and recording the Top 40 on BBC Radio 1 each week on our cassette players so that we could then make compilation tapes. The privileges of being a VIth Form boarder and Prefect were modest, but much appreciated.
There was a real kindness and humanity about the place, which had a deep and lasting impression on my life. It is also true that there was a certain make-shift character to the College (nothing that a bit of hardboard, a few six inch nails and a lick of paint couldn’t solve) and quite a bit of muddling through! The members of the maintenance department (Gerry, Max, Donie, etc.) were absolute legends! Gerry Lovely has only retired in the last few years. So too were our “Dinner Ladies” - I could never forget the kindness and sense of humour of Betty Waddups.
All of this laid the foundation for a significant lasting relationship with the College, with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, and with many people associated with Princethorpe whom I have had the pleasure to know over many years.
How did Princethorpe affect the person you are today?
Princethorpe has had an enormous influence on my life, and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be where I am today if my parents hadn’t opted to send me to the College in the first place. It is very much in my blood. I came from a non-practising Church of England family and had been attending the local state primary school in Whitnash, Leamington.
My parents were not at all sure about sending me to a Catholic school. It was only because of the strong recommendation of good friends of theirs whose sons had both gone through the College in the early 1970’s, and because of a very positive meeting with the Headmaster, Fr Bill Clarkson, and his assurances that I wouldn’t be “indoctrinated”, that they opted for Princethorpe.
Without the need for any indoctrination, my Christian faith came alive at the College during a retreat in the Fourth Form (now year 10) and grew with the gentle but encouraging support of a couple of MSC priests and some Catholic staff during the next three years of Fifth and Sixth Form. I became a Catholic in the College Chapel the day after my 18th birthday, a celebration attended by several of my classmates and teachers, and I began to get very involved in the life of my local parish in Leamington. The school modelled to me a very human, caring, kind, compassionate, good-humoured and down-to-earth face of Catholic Christianity, and I found in the MSC priests and Catholic staff at the school great warmth and friendship as I entered adulthood. These were all seeds of my vocation to Religious Life and Priesthood, and first experiences of the charism and spirituality of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, shared not only by MSCs, but by members of the lay teaching staff as well.
I was not at all sporty at school, but thoroughly enjoyed English, drama, theatre, languages, photography and art. I have fantastic memories of many school theatrical productions; plays, musicals, reviews and pantomimes led by a great team of creative, enthusiastic and generous teachers. I particularly remember productions of Cinderella, The Three Musketeers and a Sixth Form outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed on the lawn next to the West Door (now part of the site of the new Sixth Form Centre) with the woods as a backdrop. These were magical times of late night rehearsing, painting sets, putting up lighting, sleeping over at College, building friendships across year groups and sometimes being snowed in during winter pantomime preparation. It was also a time for testing adult relationships with members of staff outside the more formal classroom situation, and of being treated as adults by them. Having a key to the “Costume Cupboard” gave the added advantage of access to a kettle, and tea and coffee at any time of the day! The acting, writing and even a bit of directing certainly helped build my confidence and equip me for public speaking and preaching in later life.
I also really enjoyed French at school, which I studied to A Level. Through the encouragement and organisation of the French department I spent almost every summer from 12 years of age to 17 on a three or four-week exchange with a French family in various parts of France. I was also involved with the Anglo-French Club in Leamington (run by Alliance Française), which was attended by quite a group of us in the Fifth and Sixth Form at Princethorpe (probably more so for the social life and discos with the girls from Kings High and Kingsley than for the French!) By the time I left Princethorpe I was fluent in French. This has also had a major effect on my life. While still only a young student for the Priesthood I was regularly asked to provide simultaneous translation at international MSC Conferences. This opened me up to a much larger world and many international opportunities that most of my confrères never had. I now speak English, French, Spanish and Italian and regularly switch between all four languages in my work throughout the world.
After I left Princethorpe and began work for the Bank, I kept returning a couple of times a week to help run the Photographic Society with several other Old Princethorpians including Alex Darkes. I also got involved with more OPs in running a charity providing holidays for underprivileged kids from East-End London. We provided a week’s holiday in the College during the summer vacation with a whole range of different activities and trips. For most of them it was a first experience of the countryside, and of sheep and cows. For most of us it was a first experience of inner city, tough kids!!
Returning to live at Princethorpe in 2001 and become a Governor and Trustee for 10 years was like coming full circle and being offered a chance to give something back for all I had received. Now that I live in Rome I am happy to keep up to date with events and progress at the Foundation through the regular electronic bulletins, The Tower, The Pinnacle and the Old Princethorpians page, as well as getting some news first hand from Ed Hester (the current Headmaster) and other contacts still at the College. Princethorpe remains in my blood and I will continue to do all I can to support it.
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
Don’t take yourself too seriously and enjoy the gift of the present moment – it passes all too quickly!
Are you in touch with any other Old Princethorpians, if so whom?
Sadly, I am not in regular contact with many. The friend I have most contact with is Adam Hollier. He was a few years below me and I got to know him though Photo Club. I married him and his wife, Sam, a few years ago and we have now been very good friends for nearly 30 years. I still have occasional contact with Richard Hill, Sean Webb, Marlon Naiken, Michael Simmonds and Grant Pegg from my year group and of course Alex Darkes, Sean Philpott, Peter Griffin, Alan Whelan and Eddie Tolcher who all still work at the College.
Is there anyone you would like to track down?
Over the last 20 years or so I have lost contact with good friends Tim Hunt, Nick Essex, John Beauchamp, Ian Lucas and Andrew Wadland and sadly didn’t have any further contact with Peter Carson or Felix D’Souza after they left Princethorpe. Jeremy Masding and Paul McGrath were fellow prefects and my neighbours on the VIth Form Boarding Wing. It would be great to catch up with any of them again some time.
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