Memory Bank

Help Fill The Memory Bank

Fr Clarkson's death earlier in the year has led to an outpouring of memories of both him and past pupils' experiences at Princethorpe.

In due course a History of Princethorpe will no doubt be compiled and it would be good to collect more memories so that these could be included.

If you have memories to share please email Old Princethorpians.

John Hindley (1969-74) recently sent us an email of his memories of Fr Bill, which seem to capture the man brilliantly:

I am sure that you have had a significant flow of comments from past pupils following Fr Clarkson’s sad passing. I hope I could add another contribution to the previous ones. As an OP I do occasionally look at the school web site so the news of Fr Bill’s passing was a shock since I was looking for news about how he was and trying to guess how old he must be at that time. When I did see the news so many memories came flooding back about the time at Princethorpe and him in particular.

Many of his qualities have already been recognised by others. One was his ability to be almost omnipresen! Just when you when you were hoping you would not bump into him or he catch you up to something perhaps not part of the regular curriculum there he was! He was a warm, generous and an incredibly fair man at all times and even when discipline was required there was never any sense of injustice on the part of the pupil afterwards!

One major aspect of his character was that he was just so full of life! With incredible energy. I can still see him laughing on the rugby pitch as we boys had a chance to tackle him with very limited success and him just running on to score an imaginary try for Ireland and all of us having fun in the process. Once on a cold Friday night, he got two other boys and myself into the kitchen to make sandwiches for a trip the following day, with him helping, and on the Saturday  taking us down to England versus the All Blacks (Jan 1973) at Twickenham, getting us our first whisky, and driving us all the way back and being up for mass the following day.

I think above all he was a deeply spiritual man whose faith was at the core of everything he did. For us who were fortunate to have him in our lives we had that opportunity to see that and take from him that example and take it out with us into the world.

We were incredibly fortunate to have his abiding influence in our lives for those years. It would have been great to have had the chance to say thank you to him personally but I am sure somehow he knows now what a great influence he sowed into so many lives and is enjoying his reward for his faithful service.

Thank you Father Bill. 

You can view more memories on the OPs page of the website. Click here to view.