The First Year, 1934-35

THE STORY OF ROUND TABLE, nationally and internationally was told by John Creasey in 1953 in Round Table, the First Twenty-five Years. In these pages is the shorter story of one of the member Tables of the movement, the National Association of Round Tables of Great Britain and Ireland. It is the story of the Round Table in Scarborough.

When in 1927, with an enthusiasm and a foresight that were to become characteristic of the movement as a whole, the first Round Table Club came into being at Norwich, the ripples extended slowly but surely throughout the country, reaching Scarborough in 1934. They had already encircled her, having earlier reached Middlesbrough, Hull, Bridlington and York in that order.

As Rotary Clubs had done and were still to do in many more cities and towns, the Rotary Club of Scarborough assumed the functions of an avuncular midwife, and the successful birth of the Scarborough Table can be attributed directly to its initial efforts. The Founder Chairman of the recently formed York Table, J. M. Gray, had been invited to speak at one of its luncheons. At that time the Rotary Club’s President was Mr. G. H. Fawcett, its Secretary was Mr. Andrew Sinclair, and among its membership were three who were distinguished by their youth, for none had reached the age of 40. They were Frank Winn, Norman King and Geoffrey Hazell.

Gray had made a good case in his presentation of the ideas and ideals underlying the Round Table movement, with which Rotary had been sympathetic in both theory and active ever since the formation of the Norwich Table. The President and Secretary of the Scarborough Rotary Club [1] called a meeting of eight under 40’s, including the club’s own trio, who were arbitrarily deemed to be potential Table members.

Such potential members had to fall within fairly well-defined categories. They had necessarily to be:
a Under the age of 40
b Of responsible executive status
c Of varied occupational classifications
d Of such character as would cause them to give of themselves for the good of their fellows.

This meeting was held at the Esplanade Cafe on Monday, 17th December 1934. Although doubts were expressed whether there would be sufficient suitable men in a town the size of Scarborough who would fulfil the broad requirements of membership, seven of the eight men present committed themselves to the formation of a Table.
Thus the seven Founder Members to emerge from that historic, informal and unminuted meeting were:
S. D. McCloy, Solicitor – Chairman
Frank Winn, Chartered Secretary – Vice-Chairman
T. S. Singer, Architect – Hon. Secretary
John C. Whitfield, Solicitor – Hon. Treasurer
Ralph K. Rowntree, Departmental Store – Council Member
Norman L. King, Dentist – do.
Geoffrey S. Hazell, Ladies’ Outfitter – do.

The first minuted meeting, held on 7th January 1935, in effect confirmed the decisions taken at the December meeting. Messrs. G. H. Fawcett and Andrew Sinclair were elected President and Vice-President respectively in graceful acknowledgment of the part Rotary had played in bringing the Table into being.

At this meeting it was resolved that Table meetings should be held fortnightly on Fridays at 1.10 p.m. and the names of 13 eligible under 40’s, among them hoteliers, motor engineeers, bankers, furnishers, police officers and estate agents, were suggested for personal approach with a view to membership.

Early Days
Much work inevitably fell on the Council – contact with the National Association of Round Tables, formulation of rules, [2] venues for meetings, speaker-finding and all forms of club activities. An overriding consideration was the quality of membership.

‘The attempt was made,’ said McCloy many years later, ‘to try to assess fully before election whether a particular candidate could contribute something to the Table. The principle was adopted that we should go slowly at the start to build a Table of members who were congenial and representative, rather on Rotary lines, of a fair cross-section of the community. We were always in the early days careful not to allow the Table to grow so fast that the new members could not be readily absorbed, thus enabling the fairly close ties of friendship to be built up.’

This is borne out by a minute of 26th March 1935, that not more than four new members be admitted per month, this being two at each meeting. One has but to look back over the years to realise the wisdom of this early policy, on which the subsequent strength of the Table was firmly based. What happened in Scarborough parallelled what happened in many other Tables throughout the country. Fellowship led to friendship and many friendships, first made in the Table, have continued throughout life.

The first luncheon meeting took place at the Esplanade Cafe (which was then the home of the Rotary Club) on Friday, 18th January 1935, eleven days after the inaugural meeting. The second and subsequent fortnightly luncheons were held in the Cricketers’ Room at the Grand Hotel from
1.10 to 2.25 p.m. at a cost of 2/9 ‘including a tip of 3d’.

The Council’s next step was to decide that an Attendance Register should be kept, and to set up three sub-Committees:
a Fraternity Committee: to take charge of all matters relating to hotel accommodation, menus, payment for meals, Table property and classification badges; to promote a fraternal spirit within the Table and to foster its social life by arrangement ing various activities such as dinners and dances; to arrange for the proper welcome of visitors and new members
b Speakers Committee: to prepare a syllabus of the Table programme and arrange speakers.
c Membership Committee: to deal with all matters pertaining to the invitation, election and conduct of members.

The First Table Job
In March came the Table’s first of many incursions into [3] social service. The Silver Jubilee of H.M. King George V was to be celebrated, and the Scout movement had evolved ambitious plans. Table representation on the Executive Committee of the Scarborough and District Scouts’ Association was invited.

Maurice Plows, on condition that he did not have to wear shorts, agreed to serve, and consideration was soon being given to the help that the Scouts would need in their arrangements.

Beacons were to be built round the whole of the coast of the country and lit at an appointed time. Scarborough was to be responsible for three – one on Castle Hill, another on the Racecourse and the third at Ravenscar. The Ravenscar beacon was the one on which the Table’s attention was concentrated.

‘It was quite a job, I well remember’, wrote Maurice Plows more than thirty years later. ‘We had, of course, to get fuel for the fire. I got two lorry loads of old tyres from Tesseymans delivered at the site near to the road leading down to the Hall.

‘We contacted the various people connected with the forests: I don’t think it was called the Forestry Commission then. Loads and loads of wood were taken to the site. This was to be our first big job in Community Service and naturally we wanted the best fire. As it was, the other two were poor affairs and soon burnt out.

‘I got a furniture van from Tonks via Howard Tonks Jackson, and into it we loaded all the scouts along with their tents, food, beds etc., and we set off for Ravenscar. There we directed the scouts to build the fire along with ourselves, about half a dozen members of the Table. We got the scouts to dig a deep pit in a circle round the fire and this we filled with water and kept full buckets ready for the actual fire.

‘On the big night the whole Table went to Ravenscar to get the fire going; I cannot remember if we had fireworks or not. I do remember that we all went to Raven Hall and had a dance, and then at midnight a lot of us went to the swimming pool.’

This was the first, not only of the Table’s Social Service activities, but of its efforts to help the Scout movement. [4]

‘During my office on the Scouts executive,’ recalls Maurice Plows, I found that quite a few of the scouts who were crippled or ill could not get to attend their Wednesday meeting sso we got out a list of those in R.T. and Rotary who possessed cars; not a lot of us did in those days.

‘A rota was drawn up for the scouts to be picked up and taken to their meetings. This worked very well indeed and continued until the war broke out when we lost members and petrol rationing etc. stopped activities.’

Conferences
This (1935) was the year of the Hastings Conference, at which S. D. McCloy, W. E. Hopwood and Frank Winn represented the Scarborough Table. The various proposals on the agenda were considered in some detail by the Council, and the Table’s delegates given careful instructions how to vote.

It was following this conference that the Scarborough Table, barely six months old, cheerfully agreed to invite the national body to Scarborough for its next conference but one, the 1936 venue being London. Somewhat to its surprise the Table found its invitation taken up by the National Council.
The dates were to be 27th to 29th May 1937.

The invitation was not, of course, officially given until the 1936 Conference. It was made by Frank Winn, supported at the meeting by R. K. Rowntree, H. I. Dennis, G. S. Hazell and H. D. Tesseyman, and it was accepted with alacrity and acclamation.

The curious thing about a conference is that a delegate will soon forget the business transacted but long remember quite irrelevant details. The London Conference was a case in point.

‘The Scarborough party,’ Frank Winn remembers, ‘stayed at the Cumberland Hotel. My room-mate was Bert (H. I.) Dennis. I got up one morning to find his bed was unoccupied. The window was wide open and there was a drop of about 120 feet outside. I could see nothing unusual below, but I dashed along to tell Dennis Tesseyman the news; we were both really hot under the collar. Bert turned up later, his bright and breezy self. He had got up very early and had gone to see a relative in one of the London suburbs.’ [5]

The contingent’s main recollections appear to centre round the Conference Banquet at the Connaught Rooms. The National President rose with hospitable frequency to take wine with the delegates from the various Tables. There were sufficient Tables for the Scarborough quintet, with characteristic irreverence, to spend the meal debating the time when, instead of rising above the table, he would sink beneath it.

The cabaret that followed is remembered by more than the Scarborough delegates, and it taught all potential Conference organisers a lesson. The star turn was a popular and highly paid Cockney raconteur whose choice of material would have been admirable for a seasoned all-male smoke room audience. In a young mixed audience in their twenties and thirties he produced a profound mass-embarrassment. Red-faced Conference stewards tried to shush him from the screen that did duty for the wings, then they appeared on the platform to plead with him, and in the end to whisk him off in the middle of a word. The following year Scarborough played safe.

An innovation in the first year of the Table was the Donations Box. It was the result of a resolution of the Council at a meeting on the 2nd August 1935* that ‘a box should be passed round at all future Table meetings and that members present should contribute such sums as they choose, not exceeding 3d, and that the proceeds should be devoted to such charitable objects as the Table shall from time to time decide’. It was not until some months later that the Secretary was empowered to leave the box at the hotel office instead of taking it home with him after each meeting.

[* This was the meeting at which Ralph Rowntree reported on the cost of the lamp-standard presented to Dennis Tesseyman on the occasion of his marriage, the minute book containing the classic resolution: ‘Resolved that the presentation committee should collect 2/3 from each member (Tesseyman excluded)’ ]

In October the luncheon venue changed to the Pavilion Hotel, still at 2/9. Certain other Tables in the Area considered this a rather high figure, no doubt indicative of plutocratic tendencies on the part of Scarborough’s membership. Hull, for instance, at that time was paying 1/9 at the old White House Hotel which, incidentally, was then a temperance hostelry. [6]

Charter Night
The last major activity of the Scarborough Table’s first year was the presentation of the Table’s Charter at a dinner held at the Pavilion Hotel on 2nd November 1935. Louis Marchesi, the founder of the movement and in that year National President, accepted the Table’s invitation to come up north to present it.

Distinguished guests included the Mayor, Councillor (later Alderman) F. C. Whittaker, J.P., whose son Meredith, twelve years and a world war later, was to become Table Chairman; the Town Clerk, Mr. Sidney Jones; the Member for Scarborough, Sir Paul Latham, M.P., and the assembled company included representatives from most of the Tables in Yorkshire.

During the summer, joint outings had been arranged with the York and Hull Tables which, with Bridlington and Scarborough, comprised No. 10 Area. After the summer, additional to the fortnightly luncheons, monthly evening meetings were arranged. Then surplus energy was worked off on a Club Walk which the Council resolved ‘should not be less than ten miles’. This appears to have been reasonably successful, for other walks followed.

Hitherto the activities of the Table had been exclusively male. Signs of limited acknowledgement of the existence of wives, fiancées and girlfriends, however, appeared at the end of the year when it was decided that they should be invited to the Christmas luncheon.*

[*It took, however, a further quarter of a century for a Council resolution to be passed in 1961 that the names of wives should be included in the Directory, with the minuted content that Tom Pindar disclosed a remarkable and suspicious knowledge of most of them.]

Speakers
From the beginning considerable attention was given to speakers and their subjects. The Speakers’ Committee had to bear in mind a Council directive that all aspects of the Round Table movement should receive proper representation and, in particular, that ample opportunity should be given for discussion of business matters concerning both R.T.B.I. and the Scarborough Table. This was all very well, but enough is as good as a feast. The Committee wisely widened its own terms of reference. [7]

Current topics were discussed and debated. Speakers were found who spoke authoritatively on Scarborough itself, on local government, on unemployment and other social problems of the day, and on matters of wide general interest. Quite early, for example, the Table debated two topics that today, after more than thirty years, are still remarkably up to date:
1 That the extensive practice of selling goods on the hire purchase is to be deplored.
2 Is the present tendency of exaggerated advertising effective?

The Table’s own membership threw up speakers on the various aspects of their own jobs. Such vocational talks not only had a continuing interest to the listener, but in some cases gave a novice his first audience, a sympathetic and friendly (but not necessarily uncritical) audience within the fellowship of the Table.

This was not peculiar to Scarborough. In Tables all over the country there was a membership varying in age between the early twenties and the late thirties, a hand-picked membership selected not for what it could get from, but for what it could give to the Table and the community. But in giving, it gained.

This duty, for it was and is a Table duty, of having to get up and say something, whether to make an announcement, to give a talk, to propose a vote of thanks, to give a toast or even to say Grace, is but one of many things that have helped a shy and diffident youngster to gain poise, to overcome butterflies and often to emerge with a quiet confidence into wider spheres.

Finally, what were members to call themselves? This problem had been in existence far longer than the Scarborough Table had. The practice had grown up in many Tables, and perpetuated in the magazine, News & Views, of referring to them as Tablers.

A letter from a member of the Hull Table to News & Views in which, amongst other things, this word was referred to as an incorrectly derived etymological abortion, sparked off a controversy that continued for some time. It eventually died, probably because even worse misuses of the English language were, in spite of A. P. Herbert, constantly burrowing their way into current usage. [8]

Hull dropped the word; it could not very well do anything else with a militant purist in its ranks. The word Member was used instead. So it was in the Scarborough Table, which had purists of its own, and within four months of its foundation a recommendation was being sent to the National Council that the use of the objectionable word be discouraged. As a matter of interest it does not appear in the Minute Book until 1948, and then but fleetingly. It creeps in again in 1954, occurring with increasing frequency in and after 1957. [9]

IT IS NOW MORE THAN thirty years since the Scarborough Round Table was founded. The Table feels that whilst many of its earlier members and their memories are still available, some account of its own formation, development and work should be recorded.

A true record must be not merely an impersonally factual history, nor yet a nostalgically romantic story, but as far as possible a human account of the essentially human activities of a club in which fellowship and service are inextricably blended.

With an upper age-limit of 40 it is obvious that the active association of even the oldest of its present members extends only to the early fifties, some 15 years (including the war years) later than the founding of the Table.

Fortunately many of the founder and early members, long ago superannuated from the Table at the youthful age of 41, are now passing the succeeding decades of middle age in the less chronometric atmosphere of the Scarborough 41 Club. To many of them I am indebted not only for considerable sympathetic encouragement but for personal recollections of the Table of their day and for clarification of obscure points in such records as are available.

My own contacts with the Scarborough Table in those distant days were within the framework of the Area. If a personal word may be permitted (or, indeed, if not), it has given me a great deal of nostalgic pleasure to renew memories of those days.

The main skeleton of the story, is of course, the Minute Book, but it is a skeleton only, with none of the flesh that gives a human interest to bare bones. It has fallen to the lot of the present membership of the Table to cover the bones of later years.

This story of the Table inevitably stops at the point in time when the last word is being written. What has happened [vii] in the 34 years up to that point will be, I hope, tolerably clear to the reader. What will happen in the years to come is still clothed in the darkness of uncreated things. It will the duty of another generation to continue the story.

M.H.

Scarborough 1968-9

And I, according to my copy, have set it down in print …..
humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies, with all other estates of what state or degree they be of, that shall see and read in this present book and work, that they take the good and honest acts in their remembrance, and follow the same. Wherein they shall find many joyous and pleasant histories, and the noble and renowned acts of humanity,
gentleness and chivalry.

William Caxton,
Prologue to Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, 1485 [viii]

How to use the Index

It was originally intended that this Index should be helpful, if not instructive, to the ordinary reader as well as to the crossword expert. To gain the maximum benefit from it, however, it is necessary for both types of reader to observe the following simple rules:

Page 78 in the Index really means page 79. Page 79 in the Index really means page 81. Page 80 in the Index really means page 82. This is fairly clear, but what will fox all readers is that when the Index says page 81 it can mean any page from 83 onwards.

Digital addition to help referencing

Chapter 1: The First Year 1934-35 pp 1-9
Chapter 2: From National Conference 1937, to International Conflict 1939 pp 10-17
Chapter 3: The Ladies, 1937-39 pp 18-20
Chapter 4: The Difficult Years, 1946-52 pp 21-25
Chapter 5: The Developing Years, 1953-56 pp 26-32
Chapter 6: The Second Scarborough Conference, 1956 pp 33-39
Chapter 7: Projects, 1957-61 pp 40-45
Chapter 8: The Third Scarborough Conference, 1962 pp 46-50
Chapter 9: Further Projects, 1963-68 pp 51-60
Chapter 10: International, the Three 88s pp 61-65
Chapter 11: Roundabout pp 66-71
Chapter 12: What Now? pp 72-76
Appendix I: Officers of the Scarborough Table
Appendix II: Members of the Scarborough Table holding National Office
Appendix III: Community Service
Appendix IV: The Area
Index

The young business and professional men of this country must get together round the table, adopt methods that have proved so sound in the past, adapt them to the changing needs of the times and, whenever possible, improve them.

Edward, Prince of Wales, 1927

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.

Alfonso X of Castile, 1226-84

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1 The First Year, 1934-5
2 From National Conference, 1937, to International Conflict, 1939
3 The Ladies, 1937-39
4 The Difficult Years, 1946-52
5 The Developing Years, 1953-56
6 The Second Scarborough Conference, 1956
7 Projects, 1957-61
8 The Third Scarborough Conference, 1962
9 Further Projects, 1963-68
10 International, the Three 88
11 ‘Roundabout
12 What Now?

APPENDICES
I Officers of the Scarborough Table
II Table Members holding National Office
III Community Service, Major Projects and Disbursements, 1953-68
IV The Area
Index

ILLUSTRATIONS
A Letter from the Founder
1 Charter Night, 2nd November 1935
2 Social Evening, circa 1938
3 The Carol Singers in Action, December 1952
4 The Table, 23rd December 1954
5 The Conference Committee in Session, 1956
6 The Dragon Slayers, August Bank Holiday, 1960 .. facing page 49
7 The Table, A.G.M., 1964
8 The Table, A.G.M., 1968
9 The Wishing Well, 1968

With acknowledgments to Walkers Studios Ltd., The Mercury, The Scarborough Evening News, Raymond Ellis, Colin Sedgwick and Uncle Tom Cobley.

Officers of the Scarborough Table

[77]

Projects, 1957-61

IT IS, AS IT SHOULD BE, difficult to disentangle Community Service from Fellowship. A glance at Appendix III will remind us, if we need reminding, that no one can say where one begins and the other ends, and vice versa, or even side ways. They merge, and each assumes characteristics of the other.

Such an appendix can be at the best but a guide. It is incomplete in that it deals only with money. There are no statistics for inspiration, compassion, aching muscles in digging gardens, decorating old peoples’ homes, building greenhouses, repairing toys and chopping logs, patience in running garden parties, taking children to pantomimes and picnics, and transporting and entertaining old and handicapped people. No figures of man-hours can be given for the money-raising projects that became progressively more ambitious as the years went on.

Out of the Fellowship of the Table came all these things, which we loosely call Community Service, but out of Community Service came a still stronger fellowship, forging links that have endured.

In this field the 50’s may well be looked upon as preparation for the 60’s. In these years the idea of doing something for others, not merely contributing to a charity box, became firmly fixed in the Table mind.

What was to become an annual event, Carol Singing, started in 1952. Two years later came Higgs’s Bazaar, the first of the annual Jumble Sales. In 17 years the former has raised nearly £900, and the latter over £1,100. Apart from these, the 50’s saw few original ideas beyond dances and fashion-parades. In 1958 the York Table introduced the [40] Scarborough Table to large-scale raffles, for in that year the former enlisted the latter’s help in running a moped competition (How long would the infernal thing tick over on a pint of petrol?).

Scarborough netted £25 of the proceeds and the following year, under the chairmanship of Fred Coopland, the Community Service Committee proceeded to run its own moped competition. Known as Fred’s Folly and organised by Basil Young throughout five weeks of the high season, this raised £91.*

*For those of an enquiring turn of mind, the time was 1hr 24 min. 5.8 sec., and three people tied with 1hr. 24 min 10 sec. How one measures the dying splutters of a petrol engine to a fraction of a second comes under the Official Secrets Act.

The following year it was decided to do the same thing again, but the previous year’s selling site (next to the Lifeboat House on the Foreshore) was no longer available. The aim was to raise some £400 to buy a van for the W.V.S. for their Meals on Wheels service, and it was obvious that a great deal of work was going to be necessary. The project was the largest yet undertaken and was to involve every member of the Table. Tony Squire has vivid recollections of it:

‘We organised a raffle,’ he writes, ‘with the likely first prize of a refrigerator and a week’s holiday in Scarborough for two people. Our sale site was a garage forecourt at the Floral Hall end of North Marine Road and it was manned, through the combined efforts of the Community Service and Entertainment Committees, from 6 p.m. to 8.30 or 9 p.m.
throughout July and August.

‘One of the hazards involved was manhandling the refrigerator, mounted on a dexion display stand, out of the garage on to the forecourt and back again. Though many feet were squashed in the process, it never actually did run down the hill.

‘Steve Lee sticks in my mind as the person who always sold not less than a full book of 5 tickets to any purchaser, his turnover per session being almost double that of any of the other barkers. As a sideline, hotel receptionists were inveigled into selling tickets at 6d commission on cash book sold. In addition to manning the stand, every member of [41] the Table sold £5 worth of tickets, and eventually the first prize was won by a Scarborough couple living in Hatterboard Drive.

‘The project, although using prodigious quantities of man-hours, did achieve success, and a mini-van was duly presented to the W.V.S. at County Garage by Tom Pindar, then Table Chairman.

In all, £369.3.2 was raised. The van and insurance cost £415.15.3. The gap was bridged by an anonymous donation of £40.

The Night of the Dragon
Should this book fall into the hands of any reader not familiar with Scarborough manners and customs, it should be mentioned that for a number of years the town has organised a festival week with continental overtones at the beginning of the season. For many of those years Holland and Scarborough worked together to produce the Dutch Festivals which many visitors still remember with pleasure. One of the highlights was a procession of floats designed to bring the town’s traffic to a standstill on the Wednesday afternoon of the Festival.

In the 1959 and 1960 processions the Table had entered a magnificent 45 foot dragon, thereby winning a silver cup and bringing the whole procession to a halt on the Foreshore.
As these were the years of the moped and the refrigerator, it will be appreciated that the Table had not a great deal of spare time on its hands.

After the 1960 procession it was not unreasonably felt that for display purposes the dragon had had its day, and the problem was what to do with the beast. It took up a lot of room. No other Table wanted to buy it, but it was far too attractive to consign to the knacker’s yard.

Loch Ness was at this time receiving some of its periodical publicity. Arch-schemer Arthur Holmes saw no reason why a North Sea monster should not appear in the bay on August Bank Holiday. What followed is best described by Eric Rushforth:

‘A committee was co-opted and flotation trials were carried out in Scalby Beck with one middle section 16 feet long by 4 feet in diameter, and a plan of action was put into [42] operation at 0200 hours on Bank Holiday Sunday at Burniston Road car park.

‘Transport was ably provided as usual by the vans of Tony Squire and Jack Knowles, and the loading of the eight large sections completed in darkness and transported to the Golden Ball slipway, where the construction party of Peter Dean, Eric Rushforth, John Priestley, Derek Towle, etc. started to secure three car inner tubes into, and a two-gallon can full of sand as ballast under, each section.

The 7 foot dragon’s head had a 10 foot pole centred up the neck, and each body section was then secured by rope along the whole body. The effect was fantastic as the 45 foot dragon, riding high in the sea, was towed as dawn was breaking by motor launch (thanks to Arthur Slater) to a point in the middle of the South Bay and anchored at 0600 hours.

‘The gentle waves caused the whole green and gold creature to undulate, and from the shore it appeared to be alive, much to the amazement of the visitors who, half an hour later, were beginning to appear in numbers along the Foreshore.

‘As the Harbour Master was reporting an unidentified floating object to the police, the tired, wet and dirty working party were consuming bacon and eggs in an early-morning cafe. Ken Dix had a very profitable day as his reports and photographs appeared next day in every national newspaper – a total of 67 single column inches – and Ken was paid for every word.

‘The sequel at 8 p.m. on that glorious Sunday was when a party of brave dragon-killers ably led by Stuart Leslie, armed with rifles, set sail and towed the dragon three miles out to sea. There she was suitably despatched to Davy Jones’s Locker, a memorable ending to an entertaining dragon.’

The First Wykeham Garden Party
The last project to be undertaken prior to the 1962 Conference was a Garden Party and Barbecue held at Wykeham Abbey, the seat of Lord and Lady Downe.

We are indebted to Tom Pindar for his graphic recollections of this party, held in 1961, which turned out to be the [43] largest project so far undertaken:

Quite where the idea came from I have forgotten, but it was a good one. Two of us were deputed to visit web to approach Lord Downe and discuss arrangements. We were received in the Brown Drawing Room and had an an amusing time listening to the Peter Sellers record of ‘Balham – Gateway to the South’ and ‘The Family Retainer’ at which his Lordship rocked in his chair with laughter, with John Ellender a good second.

This beginning made us feel much more at home, and since then many people have come to have a greater affection and respect for Wykeham Abbey and those to whom it is home.

It was eventually decided to have a Garden Party in the afternoon with a monster Chicken Barbecue in the evening. The whole Table was involved in preparation and gradually we realised just how much work was necessary. Dennis Hart’s reputation as an intrepid driver of coal lorries grew apace as he ferried chairs and tables, side-shows, cooking gear and much more. I recall Peter Dean demonstrating a fine nautical vocabulary after narrowly escaping death at Dennis’s wheels.

Bit by bit the place was prepared and Lady Downe’s memories of a pre-war Red Cross Garden Party and the siting of stands were invaluable. Barbecues were already growing in popularity, but we had little experience of cooking for them and could only guess at probable numbers. So a decision was taken: 500 chickens would be cooked, providing, I think, half a bird to each person. Brian Gooch, who was the assistant manager of the gas works, produced yards of pipe, concocted a large area of gas burners over which dixies of soup and the chickens were to be heated.

A marquee was erected for dancing, and other members erected a hitherto unparallelled network of notices and posters. Wives arranged teas in the coachyard, and miles of wire went up for lighting and public address systems. Gradually one realised what an ideal place we had for the job: there were even strategically placed toilets.

Memory of the actual day remains something of a blur. We were involved in doing our jobs, and as the evening wore on it seemed there would never be an end to serving [44] chickens. Too soon, however, they were finished, and suspicions were confirmed that certain citizens had come back for second helpings.

There was a lot of clearing up to do, and then came the inquest. The lesson learned was simple. In order to make full use of the day we had staged what amounted to two events, of which the Barbecue needed most work, caused most worry and made only a minimal surplus. But it was a first-class bit of experience, and we raised a goodly sum for the Y.M.C.A.

The net sum raised was £448.3.8, and £450 went to the Y.M.C.A. This was not the only benefit, for the experience was to prove invaluable in 1964 and again in 1967, the years of the second and third Wykeham Abbey Garden Parties. [45]