Written for the last issue ever of the Belmont Magazine 1994 by Fr. Christopher Jenkins, Headmaster.
As I have worked away in my room in the last few months, tidying up before the closure of the
school, I have obviously been doing a lot of thinking about the past, and remembering, and Belmont,
and all that sort of thing. And I have realised that for me, Belmont, in the last six years since I came
back from Cambridge to be Headmaster, is quite different from the Belmont I knew for the
twenty-one years before I went to Cambridge. In my previous time at Belmont, before coming
back as Headmaster, Belmont for me meant Kemble, Belmont for me was Kemble.
I became Kemble Housemaster in 1967 and I finished being Kemble Housemaster in 1981. So my
first fourteen years as a solemnly professed monk of Belmont, my first fourteen years as a Catholic
priest - these were Kemble. I lived Kemble, thought Kemble, worried about Kemble, laughed about
Kemble. Kemble boys were my parish, my community, my extended family. Never underestimate the
umbilical cord that binds a Housemaster to his House.
Kemble... Of course, the very building with its feel and its shape, and its texture and its smell; the
year with its rhythm of three quite different, but constantly repeated terms; the unchanging
sequence during each year of Junior League and Christmas House Party and Inter House Concert
Competition and Summer House Party; the last night of each term with its Compulsory Enjoyment;
each day with its morning prayers, and honorary servants, and wah-wah music at break, and
steaming showers after games, and telly and table tennis in the evening, and night prayers and notes
and coffee parties... Kemble. All this goes very deeply into your subconscious, and becomes
the
very stuff of your life.
But I think, in the end, it's the boys you remember most powerfully. At any rate in Kemble... I'm
not so sure about boys in other Houses. Take Cantilupe: nice, quiet, safe, polite, introverted and
rather dull boys - that's Cantilupe for you. But Kemble boys are more individual and quirky and
knobbly and idiosyncratic. They are rougher, of course, and tougher, and yobbier, and noisier, and
clumsier - somehow more hard-edged. Oh dear, a Headmaster oughtn't to be saying this sort of
thing. Remember that I left Kemble in 1981 - so this is all historical stuff- no reflection, as they
say, on present company. This, believe me, is how it was. Or how it seemed to one who was there.
So it's the boys : their gaucheries, their uncontrollable voices, their unco-ordinated, graceless
movements, their elephantine footfalls, their irrepressible giggling, their appalling prejudices, their
naiveties, their honesty, their openness: it's the boys I remember.
The House Captains, first, of course. David Whitelaw, who quelled a riot of protesting fifth formers
trying to invade the Kemble front door with those immortal words of refined leadership - 'First one
in, I'll knock his block off. Brian Day, who fell in love with a Sixth Form girl, and was so
persecuted by his misogynist Housemaster that he got a House transfer to an unnamed House called
Vaughan, and was never spoken of in Kemble again. Peter Everard, a blonde white colonial fascist,
who addressed the faithful House cleaning lady austerely by her surname - 'Morrish, clean my
shoes please' - and cheerfully, adoringly, she did. Paul Taylor who was covered in hair, literally,
covered in hair, all over, like a Hobbit. Gian Antoniazzi, who became House Captain because,
long long ago, as a Fourth Form fag, he had endeared himself to his Housemaster for ever, by
feeding him with delicious home made pate on toast, throughout a whole day spent in front of telly,
watching the Queen's Silver Jubilee.
Then there were the Baddies. Gus Guillen, who wanted to jump from the roof
of the Martin Building
in a 1960s-type student-suicide-bid, but, having ignored my desperate barked commands was
gently talked out of it and gently talked down by Fr Mark, then Housemaster of next door Cantilupe.
Brendan Woolnch, who jumped out of Senior Two window to see what it felt like and broke a
wnst and an ankle. Joe Kerr, my Baddy of all time, totally evil, who had a cold, malevolent (mutual)
hate-relationship with his Housemaster, but who, with unusual spiritual maturity, did not allow his
loathing for me as a person to stop him coming quite voluntarily to my private morning mass each
day - so clearly could this evil fifteen year old distinguish between the man (ugh) and his office
(alleluia).
And the nice blokes. Straight, gentle Johnny Reynolds, who sleep-walked (slept-walked?) in the
Fourth Form, and fast asleep, fell out of a Junior One side window. (By the way, I'm sorry there's
so much defenestration in my memories. Must be Freudian). He fell on to the stone flags in front
of the front door, two storeys below. 'Father', said a rather concerned Prefect, who glanced out
of the wmdow a little later, 'there's a dead boy outside the front door'. His whole face was
a bruise
- you couldn't see the eyes for the bruising - but he went on a year later to play in two seasons for
the 1st XV, with one slightly wobbly front tooth as the only physical souvenir of the whole
experience. Steve Palmer, a survivor of Aberfan, who didn't grow any more after the tragedy
Bede Walsh, son of Norman Walsh - now a priest, but then a small ingratiating fourth former who
was my first Housemaster's Fag in 1967, and who. when summoned to make coffee and toast for
a coffee party, would deftly serve exquisite triangles of toast, all crusts removed, with a twirl of
golden butter and a little sprig of parsley lying on each doyly-covered plate Fred Knowles very
cool and laid back, who once told me that on his first ever attendance at Church as a very small
boy, he had, after a time, to his parents' concern, started to sway, gently, backwards and forwards
side to side. He had formed the impression that this was what you had to do in Church It happened
to be Palm Sunday, when the congregation stands for fifteen minutes for the reading of the Passion
and he had seen all the little old ladies starting to sway gently, and he had thought he ought to copy'
And memorable sayings come back into your mind: Mrs West, wife of the novelist Morris West,
and mother of Paul, who brought him to Kemble for his first day as a new boy, in her chauffeur-
driven Daunler. I escorted her back to her car after the ritual ten- minute conversation in my room
and asked politely whether we should book Paul a train ticket for half-term. 'Oh no' she replied
with faint disdain, indicating the impassive chauffeur three feet away from her, listening to every
word, a person like this will collect him'.
And Trodden, dear old Trodden, who left after the Fifth Form, with not a single 0 Level In one
of his last coffee parties the conversation had turned, as it surprisingly often does to religion and
Trodden had revealed some enormous gap in his theological knowledge - he didn't know what
Easter was, or he thought Our Lady was God - some enormous howler like that And when one
of the others said, 'But didn't you ever do that in RS?' Trodden desperately replied - 'No I've
been here three years, and all I've ever done is the bloody call of Abraham. I've had three RS
Masters, three monks, a new one each year, and each one said, 'Well, boys we'll start this term
with the call of Abraham..."
Happy Days!
D. Christopher