School Memories by Brian Lendon Berry

ABGS 1940–1947

Recently I asked Google if there was anything about Aberdare in his pages. (I am treated with contempt by my computer, so I asked very politely). He said, “Yes, of course there is”, and introduced me to all the material about the School, which I am finding most exciting.

In my days, School was still by the Park gates, and it was interesting to see that the clock tower is still there. We lived in Tudor Terrace, down which everyone went to reach the playing field in Robertstown. We had a virtual monopoly of the road - we lived in number 5; my mother had grown up in number 9, where my uncle and aunt still lived; we had some of my grandmother’s descendants in number 11, and my future sister-in-law lived in number 32. Reading the website it transpires that Bryn Reynolds, a terrifying headmaster through much of my time, had lived in Tudor Terrace as well.

Bryn was my mother’s cousin, and had been in the cohort containing my parents and a couple of other of our teachers, in the days it was a mixed school. He was a brilliant reader of boys’ minds, and if one of us created a misdemeanour, Bryn always seemed to be able to send for the villain to come to his room - he knew all our modus operandi. (I enjoyed Latin for a year, but I’m sure that is incorrect.) Having Bryn as a close relative meant that neither I nor my brothers were considered for prefects’ badges because Bryn felt he might be accused of nepotism.

A happy memory of Bryn comes from my days in the first year sixth. There were about a dozen of us taking Chemistry, and I, plus several of the others, did not like the master, who returned the sentiment in full. One winter’s day word went round the school that the pond in the park was frozen over. We had a free third period in the morning, followed by Chemistry; with the whole afternoon also being Chemistry.

Heading over the wall at the top end of the playground, out of sight of authority, and up to the park, most of the chemistry class spent a happy time sliding on the ice. Towards the time when we had to go back into school Dewi Morgans went through the ice, up to mid-thigh level. He climbed out, saying that as he was wet and cold he was going home to change.

I had this brilliant idea, and sloped round one of the plantations to disappear from the others without being seen. Living in number 5 Tudor Terrace we were only about three hundred yards from the school gates. Thus, I and my younger brother were always late in! I went in to the Chemistry lab, a surprisingly quiet place that afternoon, and apologised to Mr Williams, telling him that Dewi and I had fallen through the ice, and had gone home to change.

Mr Williams told me that the registers had already gone down to the Headmaster’s office, so I needed to go down and get my entry amended. I gave Bryn my story about the ice, and after a very long pause, Bryn said, “Brian, I find it quite amazing that out of a class of a dozen boys, ten of you fell through that hole in the ice!” (I promise you, that is a true story).

Dewi Morgans, it was, who was responsible in form four for the nickname which stayed with me until I finally moved away from Aberdare. I became known as “Boozy Berry”. It is a long story, which had nothing at all to do with alcohol [1].

Another day I walked up to school with my younger brother David, and thence over the wall and down to play snooker in the church club. When I got home for my lunch, my mother asked me if I was feeling better now. Bryn, seeing me marked absent, had walked into David’s class to ask where I was. Having left me inside the gates no more that half an hour earlier, David dithered long enough for Bryn to disbelieve his hurriedly concocted story about my having been kept in bed because I wasn’t well. Bryn walked down the three hundred yards, to have a cup of tea and a chat with Mum, and to land me in at the very deepest end!

On another such day, I sloped off down to the church club, having been marked in first! As I came out through the door Mr Williams, (from whose class I had played hooky), was just walking past. He said, "Good morning, Berry", just as though nothing untoward had happened.

I had a permanent running battle going on with most of the masters who taught me, because my older brother, Tony, had gone through school four years before I did. He was always smart, polite, loved schoolwork, sat at the front and would always be the first to answer questions correctly, turned his homework in on time, loved sitting exams, which he always passed with flying colours, and was inevitably the teachers’ pet!

They loved him, and when I arrived, scruffy and anti-authority, sitting in the back corner from where I could orchestrate any trouble, it was very quickly obvious that I was not a Tony Berry clone, so I suffered! "Why can’t you be like your brother? He always got at least 75% in these exams", was regularly said to me. Some years later I was having a pint with my younger brother, and I grumbled to him about having to suffer like that. David, who, like me was more interested in athletics and rugger than academe, said that he had always been criticised because he was not nearly as industrious and well-behaved as Tony and Brian had been!

Probably the only villainy for which I was not caught was in first year sixth, when I found a master key that fitted most of the classroom doors. It was sheer bliss to go along locking doors while lessons were going on inside the rooms. When I left, I passed the key on to a fifth form up-and-coming villain so that the tradition could be carried on!

School itself? We learned Latin and English from Louis Thomas, and History from Mr Roberts, both of whom had taught my parents. Tommy could read a page of Julius Caesar, (You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things, knew you not Caesar?), or one of the epic poems without any intonation in his voice! I still loved English, though.

I can remember, in the first form, down in the kitchen, helping the cooks by peeling potatoes. I can remember Bobby coming in to the classroom early, to find my pet adder wriggling across his table. He was so horrified that his false teeth came flying out. In the Biology lab, at the top end of the playground, I had quite an empathy with Jimmy James, who was an excellent teacher. He, in my first year, was very friendly to my adder; and in my sixth form, he took great pleasure in saying that all berries are drupes!

My great crony throughout school and onward, until his death some years ago, was Duncan Evans, (also from Tudor Terrace!), who joined in most of my villainy but seemed to get away with it, leaving me to carry the can. Duncan used to attend all the Old Boys Reunions and always wanted me to come down for them. I never did, because somehow, School had no happy memories for me. I had always been hellish towards most of the masters, and Duncan said I would have the opportunity to apologise to them, but I felt that they had been just as hellish to me, so no apologies would be necessary! Perhaps I could have apologised to Jones the school caretaker, who took off quite a few locks to oil them and try to find out why they locked when the doors were slammed.

In hindsight I have wondered why I didn’t get expelled. I’ve no doubt that I deserved it, but I suspect that Bryn was far more understanding and sympathetic than I realised, and must have protected me against some of the more militant anti-Brian masters.

 

These three photographs were all taken when Brian was in the Territorial Army in the mid 1950s.

On the Sligachan Bridge in front of the start of Cuillin Ridge, on Skye in 1956	Brian is on the right with John Latham who was later to become his best man. They were on their way to parachute into Denmark on a NATO exercise in 1955, hence the sickly expressions.
A photo taken in Cornwall on the top of the cliffs at Sennen Cove in 1954. A group was detached during Summer Camp to the Royal Marines Cliff Assault Team, to be taught to scale cliffs. Brian is on the left, in the middle is John Oakes, the RM instructor who had just brought the group up the cliff, and on the right is Kip Gilpin, a close friend of Brian from Wrexham.
Finally, a contemporary shot, showing Brian in one of his more active moments.

 

Brian is a great grandson of Joseph Lendon Berry, the well-known Aberdare photographer. Joseph was born in Bideford in 1833, and like many others from the West Country came to south Wales to find work. His studios were at 1 Market St. He died in Aberdare on 20 May 1916. A large number of his photographs can be seen in the RCT online photographic archive. JLB’s son Richard Lewis Berry, Brian’s grandfather, was also a photographer at 47 Commercial St in Aberdare. Brian sent in his memories from his home in Surrey.

1. Having read the comment above, I felt compelled to ask Brian what the origin of the nickname was. Apparently the story is as follows: “In Form 4, I sat next to Dewi Morgans and we spent a lot of time together. In fact, his younger sister married my younger brother. There was a comedian on the wireless at the time called Gillie Potter [d. 2004]. He had a regular slot, and used it to report the happenings at his supposed home village of Great Boozey. On the mornings after his slot, Dewi and I would discuss it, and he took to greeting me with a shout of “Great Boozey”. People thought he was calling me that, and very soon the Great was dropped, while the Boozey stayed on!”