Malcolm Archbald Smith at Worksop College

Schooldays of

Malcolm Archbald SMITH

[Ref. S.1]

Worksop College

School House

Malcolm was allocated to School House when he arrived at Worksop. His Housemaster was W B Rigg and the Assistant Housemaster was J E Ricketts whose quarters were next door to the house studies. Mr Rigg left the school in 1957 and was succeeded by T W Atkinson who had a house in the school grounds. School house was located in the South wing of the school, and between the library and chapel. The dormitory and bathroom were on the first floor and the common rooms and studies immediately above on the second floor.

Junior boys had only the two common rooms in which to relax during free time. One was on the South side and contained a table tennis table, bats and balls. The other on the North side had a billiard table. There was also a tuck room in which tuck boxes were kept but the room was too small for other use. Until a pupil had a study, his entire world was contained in his tuck box. This would hold the things most valuable, which usually was food. His all time favourite was his mother's home-made fudge. Malcolm made a list on the back of his copy of the School List late in 1956 to request supplies from his parents. He had a study by this time so the provisions were principally for making tea and toast.

Boys were not eligible for a study until they reached the Vth form. When Malcolm reached this point, he was allocated study number 22 which he shared with D W Barraclough. Dave Barraclough was a jazz enthusiast and was constantly playing records through which Malcolm began a lifelong liking for jazz. There were a host of electrical gadgets in their study, all served from a single power socket via a rickety set of adapters. Dave had made a carbon rod cooker using the rod from an old battery immersed in a pot of salt water.

When Malcolm became a House Prefect in 1957, he moved to study 26 which was for the prefects. Here he continued to share with Dave Barraclough but was joined by I R Dugdale. By this time, Malcolm had taken up smoking and, if smoking in the study, would burn a piece of toast whilst blowing the cigarette smoke up the chimney. It is unlikely that anyone was fooled by this process.

In his last term when he was a School Prefect, Malcolm had his own study which looked out over the quadrangle. The school was in the process of being redecorated and during that term his study was on the list. He was allowed to select the colours of his choice from a chart and chose maroon and cream, consequently his study looked like a British Railways waiting room. One day in that study, he found a half-full bottle of blackcurrant drink next to the radiator behind his armchair. It had been there for most of that term. He opened the bottle and the contents whooshed out of the bottle where it had fermented. A few years later, that led him to the idea of making his own wine.

'Fagging' was a system operated at school whereby the most junior boys had to be on call to run trivial errands for the prefects. At the shout of "Fag", a boy was expected to make himself immediately. As a prefect, Malcolm was pretty lenient towards the fags and would never give one a petty task. On one occasion he did instruct a boy to prepare his cadet webbing for parade, a job that he detested himself, but the job was not done well and Malcolm found himself failing the inspection.

Caning was permissable in those days and Malcolm was obliged to cane one boy from his house who persistently refused to yield to discipline. The caning was firstly authorised then conducted in the headboy's study in the presence of a witness. A couple of years earlier, Malcolm himself had received the cane for blowing paper pellets through a glass tube, a fad that was rife for a while. In fact, he was wrongly accused in that instance but accepted the punishment bearing in mind the times he had been guilty but not been caught.

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Photos

South wing Study Malcolm House photo 1957 House photo 1958

The dormitory windows are five of the seven on the first floor in the centre of this photograph. The two on the left are the bathroom.
The studies are the six dormer windows above with the prefect study the one on the left. The House Captain's study was at the back.
The window above the library is one of the common rooms. The other common room and studies at the back looked out over the quadrangle.

	Lent 1955	Lent 1956	Lent 1957	Lent 1958
	Summer 1955	Summer 1956	Summer 1957	Summer 1958
Christmas 1954	Christmas 1955	Christmas 1956	Christmas 1957	Christmas 1958