With the approach of a new decade, the 1947 purchase of the former cottage hospital, renamed Holbache House, gave Oswestry School a little scope for expansion. The first intake of 16 boys in 1947, some of whom are pictured above on a recent visit to School, brought new faces and fresh talent to the school, and within a few years the capacity of boys at the house was reached with numbers totalling 40.

In recent conversations, these early pioneers explained what life was like at school, and Holbache House in particular, as the country slowly adjusted to post-war conditions. Headmaster R Williamson was married to the sister of the Rev R Worral, OO, and in 1947 he appointed Bob Worral, and his wife Olga, who had both returned from wartime service in the Royal Navy, as the first Housemaster and mistress at Holbache House. Bob and Olga, were well liked by the first intake of 16 boys, and a bond grew between them which lasted until his departure several years later when, for a spell, Bob then became prison Chaplain at Stafford Jail (drawing presumably on his experience dealing with boys at Holbache House!)

There was just one bath in the house, and throughout the first term there was no hot water. Robin Parker, one of the original intake, told me that faced with nothing but cold water for cleanliness, some boys chose the easier option of not washing at all. For some time, thereafter, cold water was the norm, and 'new bugs', as new arrivals were known, were forced to undergo the ritual of cold baths. The breakage of twenty windows in the Recreation Hut behind Holbache House was vandalism by one of the original sixteen to show new boys how to challenge authority, and thereafter breakages of one kind or another became common. I am told by those who lived at Holbache that they took full advantage of the Reverend Worral's easy going nature, as he was always reluctant to hand out punishments, often pranking him, particularly during wintertime when they would jack up his car in the snow, rendering it unusable.

New boys were often encouraged, perhaps by old hands under the influence of two books of prisoner-of-war derring-do, namely The Wooden Horse and The Colditz Story, to prove themselves by running away, or escaping. This challenge peaked with a mass break-out one October Sunday evening when Rev Bob, cycling back from Chapel, found ten empty places at Divinity Prep. The escapees were captured cowering in the grounds just before cocoa time.

The first intake of new boys at Holbache were regularly subjected to bullying by their School House counterparts, until the arrival of Brian Ashworth in 1949, who immediately declared that he would sort them out. True to his word he set about the bullies with a vengeance, and it soon stopped, earning Brian the nickname of 'Basher' Ashworth, which followed him long after he left school.

The building of the open air pool got underway in 1896.

In the grounds of School House, just beyond the farm building, the open air swimming pool, built in 1896, had fallen badly into disrepair during the war years, resembling a slime-filled dumping ground, and on several days per week Bob Worrall took it upon himself to organise working parties of boys for its repair, and it was soon back in use. This onerous task was later taken on by Stoker Lewis at the start of each summer, and during my eight years at Oswestry, it was the only time I witnessed anything given a coat of paint.

The pool, pictured from the poolside in the mid 1950s.

My brother Bernard, right, and myself stroll through the Dingle before Sunday Chapel.

Very shortly after the war a semblance of normality began to return at school, and life as a boarder continued much as it had always done subject to continuing shortages. Blackout conditions were a thing of the past, and by now boys were used to the lack of meat, eggs, butter and cheese etc, in the diet and just learned to accept it.

The traditional seasonal crazes came and went, and new ones appeared out of the blue. Quad football and cricket flourished all year round, and in the early fifties, feeling flush from victory over Hitler and his gang of Nazis, we were still going around, as boys from my era will testify,  gleefully singing the satirical song about how the Germans were hopeless at cricket, and how Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbles in particular, had no stomach for the fight, with lots of references to no balls and such!

Terry Stewart, left, with his friend Charles Teece.

In 1948, 12 year-old Terry Stewart, pictured left in the photo above with friend Charles Teece,  returned to school five years after having been hospitalised with Polio which he caught at school in 1943. Feeling much better, but still disabled by a partially lifeless right arm, he was able to resume life at school whilst making the most of his disability. Terry told me recently that he used to enjoy roller skating down the slope between the lower paddock and tuck shop which lead onto the playground. Playing fives was another favourite pastime, and most of all he lived for quad cricket. One popular activity of the time was that of making methanol-fuelled model aeroplane engines which were either attached to blocks of wood, or guide-line planes, which were flown around the playground in circles.

R Sale, chatting to General Sir Oliver Leese on Speech Day, 1962/3.

He also recalled Dai Lewis' early attempts to introduce rugby football into the school curriculum by organising primitive matches on the Maes-y-Llan, but this would not happen until years later in 1962 with the arrival of R Sale as Headmaster. Apparently, Ian Gregory, OO, one of the newly appointed Masters, and ex army, was keen to form an army cadet corps, and from time to time he would entertain boys on the lower paddock behind the science building with military use explosives in a dust bin. Terry left Oswestry in the summer of 1952 just before my arrival later the same year.

Along with the revival of The Old Oswestrian Society by Mr Williamson and other OOs in the immediate post war years, came the establishment of a fund to raise money for a Memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of OO lives lost during the conflict. The main commemoration would be a Memorial Hall/gymnasium, but there would also be a plaque in the Chapel containing the names of the twenty two OOs who had died. Construction of the building began in the early 1950s, with much of the material and equipment being stored on the lower paddock, and the Memorial Hall, as seen below, was finally opened in 1954. 

The Memorial Building is in the background, as viewed from the lower paddock. The fives court and tuck shop are to the right.

Renowned for his careful approach to spending money on anything at school, Headmaster Williamson was instrumental in making one of the most important purchases of his 38-year rule as Headmaster, when in 1950 he and the school management committee bought the freehold of the Maes-y-Llan which had previously been held on a long lease. This decision would enable the school to expand greatly in years to come.

View of the Maes-y-Llan, taken in 1900.

A transformation by 1957 from the same viewpoint.

As time moved on in the 1940s, the stresses and strains of wartime life gradually abated in Britain and Oswestry School as the country became accustomed to shortages and privations of everyday existence, and it became apparent that out of the ashes of war some positivity had emerged. The somewhat unpalatable, restricted diet had actually been a bonus in hindsight, producing a healthier population with far fewer cases of diabetes and dental decay. Rationing, whilst unpopular, had ensured that the nation as a whole had enough to eat, and nobody went without. War had created a desire for social and economic change, and the creation of the NHS and a generous Welfare State by a newly elected Labour government in1945, benefited one and all, and living standards began to improve beyond pre-war conditions. The big downside was that Britain came out of the war virtually bankrupt.

Nevertheless, wartime conditions had engendered a sense of camaraderie and togetherness in the nation as a whole, and the feeling was onwards and upwards from now on. This sense of solidarity was still present at school in the late 1950s and early sixties, as was demonstrated, albeit perhaps misguidedly, during a difficult time in Oswestry School's long history, when in the summer of 1961 School House rebels organised a mutiny against an increasingly unpopular authority, which resulted in the departure of the Headmaster of the time.

School House rebels pictured in July of 1961.

From my distant viewpoint it is apparent that Oswestry School is a very happy place today, full of vibrancy and achievement, with everyone pulling in the same direction. Well done everybody!