After a record 38 years at Princethorpe Bernie Moroney, our much loved Head of Senior School and Head of Biology retired at the end of last term.
At the end of term buffet for staff Bernie was presented with many presents from his colleagues, including a beautiful new bicycle. In an emotional speech he recollected some of his finest and fondest moments at Princethorpe.
It has been a long road for me, with 38 years of being associated with the College and what changes! Having worked with seven headmasters at Princethorpe, I have appreciated their own personal styles and idiosyncrasies in establishing the school into the great community for education of young people it is today. Sure, there have been many good times for the school and me personally, but there have also been difficult periods in its short history.
Good times with staff camaraderie exemplified with the years of ‘Piranha’ cricket in the Cotswolds, staff and boys joining together to play Rugby against mixed teams of doctors and police! Field trips, Rugby tours and incredible ski trips and socials where we sang and danced and laughed until we cried! What about the teaching you may say? Well there were lots of young staff arriving at the same time, much like in the last three years, and it made for a great staff room. There were sad times which you would expect over such a long period, but they were few thank goodness!
Underlying all that has been my own extraordinary association with the MSCs, which when you talk about fate, seems to have been the case with them and me. I arrived at St.Bedes in Leamington as a very young boy. Fr. O’Leary was there, who I believe had been the first Headmaster. However, Fr.Fleming was my Head and he was the man who eventually brought the boys over to Princethorpe College in 1966. Also there was my favourite teacher, a certain Fr Clarkson, who taught me Chemistry, but was my favourite because he use to join us in the football on the playground. When I left St.Bedes to go to Ullathorne where the Vincentians were in charge, I never thought that I would have any association with the MSCs again!
I joined Princethorpe College as a ‘Temporary Head of Physical Education’ in September 1973 employed by the Headmaster, the Rev. Fr. Bill Clarkson! The following spring of 1974, Gwil Price finally took up his post as Head of PE and we got on brilliantly for well over 30 years, and my itchy feet for California subsided, ever pleased that I had made the right decision to stay at Princethorpe.
I’ve watched the school evolve from infancy and change so much, that it has been like being in four different schools. An all boys boarding and day school run almost totally by priests. A priest as Headmaster with mainly lay staff. A totally co-educational school. Lay Headmasters and a Day school.
When I arrived there were about 350 boys of whom about 200 were boarders and 100 day students. There were about 15 priests holding the key positions on the staff and other priests and ‘brothers’ involved in among other things maintenance and the bursary. The school was self-sufficient in vegetables and the kitchen staff came from the village. The atmosphere was laid back and many facilities very basic. An example of that was the Games Department. The present theatre was the gymnasium and it extended back where the stage is now. Our office and changing room was where Sue Francis, the Director of Music resides today. There was a ‘Horse’ and ‘Box’ in the gyms which are the very ones that are still being used at present! The back of the Biology lab (G8a) was an area affectionately called Crystal Palace, and it had in it several very long steel baths where we lingered after games sessions because there were no staff showers then!
There were many siblings in those days sometimes associated with ‘The Forces’. Larger than life characters who I’ll never forget with two, three or even four brothers; Evans, Cox, Marot, Glynne, Peacock, Nagaur and so on, along with some from overseas. It was a colourful, unforgettable time.
We ate in the dining room as today but the staff always sat against the top wall away from the main body of students. Nearly all the staff ate together in those days, probably because we didn’t pay for the food. I always tried to sit next to Mrs Defries who was Head of Geography. She was a little woman who seemed about 70 and she didn’t eat very much. We got served at the table with large slabs of the meat of the day. She always asked me if I wanted hers and so it was a great arrangement until one Friday when she shook a bottle of Ketchup all over me. After I gave her a good thumping she never did it again!!
The bell went at about 3.10pm for the end of the day. Gwil and myself were invited into the priests dining room which was all new where G11/12 are now. Mrs Morse who had a lad (Greg) in the Sixth Form and was to introduce her daughter as the first girl into the school, made wonderful apple pies which we had with a cup of tea. The priests were very good to us, maybe because they liked sport and we were doing plenty of it after school. An example of the Head’s generosity (Bill Clarkson) was after I had taken a Field Trip to North Wales. We arrived back on Saturday lunchtime and he happened to be around. You delivered the course yourself in those days, but even so I was taken aback when he put his hand in his top pocket and gave me £20 as an appreciation for using my own time. More Heaven, I was single and had just had a great week in Conway!!
I’ve worked with fantastically devoted staff at Princethorpe, and could never have wished for a more satisfying environment where there is always someone there to lend support or say kind things. My greatest memories are of the staff, but also of travelling with very many of them on some crazy trips abroad. There were so many, because as a younger member of staff I was always eager to travel. Mike Taylor and myself in Blois France, on a Rugby tour with no fixtures, and when we phoned Gwil back in England he told us to try Paris! On a coach that was on fire near Klosters Switzerland, when on a ski trip with Neil and Chris, just me and the driver, sheer drop one side and rock the other, but we were rescued by the Swiss fire brigade who turned out to be one man in a mini van and a torch. He wasn’t too amused when I asked him where his hose was!! Then there was desperate Des the depressed driver who had just returned from a job in Austria, only to find that his wife had left him. He wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to take us on a Rugby tour to Dublin, which we realized when he asked us the way to Holyhead at the bottom of the drive!! On the return ferry, the air bags on our coach blew up in the bowels of the ship. Des tried to drive the coach off the ferry in Holyhead against our advice, snow falling heavily, the coach ended up stuck on the ramp over the sea, half on ship and half on land with diesel spilling out. Zappy Draganov our representative in communist Bulgaria on the ski trip 1977 that ended up with us landing back in England at the wrong airport and being escorted from the tarmac by a guy with a machine gun!
There is surely a book that could be written on school trips that don’t quite work out as you expected and believe me this is just a snapshot of situations I will never forget! My abiding memories of all these trips are the ways in which our students were always brilliant and the staff acted ‘above and beyond’ the line of duty often staying up all night if children were ill.
Although retiring from full-time teaching, Bernie is still a regular around college, continuing to help out with his passion for games this year. We wish him and his wife Kate, a very happy retirement!
