Nostalgia? Probably, and The Two Tone Turquoise Austin Cambridge. 

Early September and I get an apprehensive feeling, a Sunday evening in the late fifties feeling, when there was nothing on TV, hymns on the radio, and homework to be done kind of feeling. Until September 1959 when after a glorious summer spent running wild around the lanes of Warwickshire singing “Only sixteen” and “Here comes summer”, suddenly one Thursday ...

Fr. Martin Wolfe is feeding pet ravens on the lawn. A small wiry monk with short wavy hair, a lisp and a huge pipe of smoky tobacco in his hand and in his mouth. He is all smiles: “Welcome, this is my house Cantilupe, let’s leave the trunk here, Paddy will take it up to the dormitory, now let’s say goodbye to mother and father and when the bell rings off to the refectory for tea.”

There is a gulping feeling as the car pulls away down towards the town, but now there are the Alderwasley Northern contingent about the place, fresh off the steam train from Crewe. “Hello Cullen, Hi Egg…”  They’ve known each other for years, and hardly notice the few new faces quietly sloping around. The school bell rings, it is four o’clock Thursday 10th September 1959.Kraznowski, Crow, Beck and Brocklesby queue for tea past the large hand illustrated map of Herefordshire: around the edge is a zigzag formed from the names of every boy who ever went to the school. Tea is poured from huge aluminium pots, we sit at slightly sticky benches at long sticky tables, with solemn Abbots surveying the scene from their frames on the walls. Sticky food, slabs of cake with a sugary top, white bread, margarine and a dark red jam. Matron, Tess, bustles through like a real matron, all starched and behatted. “ I need your medicines dears, anyone got any medicine for me?”

And the first of the rumours: “Did you know that a boy died here last year, had appendicitis and Matron gave him an aspirin, and he died …” In front of the tall pointed wooden doors Fr. Aelred Cousins, with his hands behind his back is rocking up and down on the balls of his feet, the Kemble housemaster, a quick bouncy little man, like a ferret, with a strange lilt to his voice, a gift to a young mimic, but somehow mimicry is off the agenda for now. He reaches down and drinks tea from a bowl with his little finger waving in the air. Why are they all so small and why do they drink from bowls? Brocklesby is in Kemble. 

In the soft late afternoon sun, hands deep in pockets we mooch around the grounds: huts, outbuildings, kitchens, wooden classrooms, a water tower in the woods, wide playing fields, rows of white rugby posts newly painted with blue and maroon circles, across to the far side a wedge shaped earthwork, the range, and from the top a view to the west of the Black Mountains. Time for a reflective cigarette, a Senior Service, out of a packet of ten. This is serious.

Supper is an odd affair of new rules, bounds, warnings, penances, notes, prayer cards, minced meat and mashed potato, then there is a rush to form a queue up the stairs for the public telephone. Across the wooden floor of the old gym, windowless walls covered in lockers, to the right there is a round monk on a low stage, busily sketching, surrounded by books in a curtained corner. Brother James, the painter of the map and a friend to new lost boys. There are some other wonders too: square holes in the back walls with projector lenses poking through, rows of green metal chairs with canvas back and sides facing a large silver screen carrying an oddly distorted image of a television picture, grey roofs and the logo “Coronation Street”. A choice of direction: left past the projectors to the locker room, that’s the place to park the tuck box, or right and up into a wooden staircase area, at the top, the telephone. Beyond that, Fr. Aelred’s domain, and a staircase to the Junior dormitories and washrooms. The black bakelite handset on a black metal box with long silver buttons like columns, marked A and B in white. Brother Joe cannot help here, it’s an outside line to the real world. Dial “0” and repeat the mantra: “A reverse charge trunk call please to Knowle 3055, my number is Belmont 121…”

Jesus is at the end of the long dormitory holding onto his oddly crowned scarlet heart. The bed is a metal frame, an ideal aerial, with a sagging chain base and a thin hard mattress, there’s a new tartan blanket, and new pyjamas that smell of Selfridges, and all marked with a Cashes name tape, tiny red letters, Belmont 155, not a phone number, a laundry number. 

The monk switches off the lights and is framed in the doorway. The bells ring. It is ten o’clock thursday 10th September 1959, seven and a half hours in, and counting. Tomorrow there’s a long sleep, Brother James is taking us on tour of Bulmers Cider Factory, next week the rest of the school arrives, there’s a snuffling noise from a bed across the way, and a nagging feeling that I must have done something terribly wrong to end up here, Radio Luxembourg fades in and out on the headphones, “Each night I ask the stars up above, why must I be a teenager in love…”

Fast forward forty years or so, Belmont Abbey School has closed, my own children are finishing their O and A levels and getting ready to go to University. Out of curiosity I encourage my doubtful wife to visit Belmont Abbey. There is very little left of the school, the Old Gym went in the late seventies, the New Gym and associated new buildings have gone, the Abbey seems much smaller, the old Common rooms are now an elegant function room. Search as we do only the Bro. James Map remains as evidence that there was once a bustling school in the building. Nostalgia? Definitely!

Up to the attic, down with the old tuck box full of Belmont Magazines, school reports, snaps, diaries and onto the scanner and up to a website on some free space. The Memorabilia site is born, and starts to thrive. The word gets round the web, mostly due to the Belmont related Bulletin Board and photos, magazines, play bills, suggestions and support starts to pile in. Now a couple of years on and with fast web space provided by the Belmont Association there are about 200 megabytes with dozens of pages. Technology? Nothing too demanding, I use MS FrontPage, Epson Perfection 1640SU, Adobe Photoshop.  Nostalgia? Unashamedly!

The school has gone, but the memories remain, and there are still gaps, so if you have a couple of old photos, old playbills or the odd magazine knocking about, or maybe a school scarf, note or penance! Then do make contact and your items could be enshrined in cyberspace

Nostalgia? Yep, It’s the future, and there’s nothing wrong with that! Even if you don’t have a computer you can always pop into your nearest cyber café, order up a Latte and ask the guy to show you how to visit: www.belmontabbey.net, that’s the Association main site with a main link to the Memorabilia site.

Now I wonder what became of that Austin Cambridge, I must look out some old photo albums and see if there is a pic of me in my school cap leaning against it outside the Senior door… Oh, and the Bro. James Map? Sixty years on? We still have it!

Peace Tony Aitken, Cantilupe 1959-64