Staff Gallery

Author: Graham Johnson, with invaluable input from a number of contributors.

Here we have a selection of photographs of some of the members of staff taken across the years. They have been divided up into decades to better allow scope for any commentary felt appropriate, to better allow multiple photos of the same member of staff across the years, and also to make it easier to feature group shots.

Please contact the website with suggestions for inclusion or contributions. There are really only two criteria for inclusion of photos:

The photo needs to be big and clear enough for the staff to be recognisable (exceptions are made for old group photos). The individual photos below are 100x120 pixels and the strips are 120 pixels high and it would be nice to be able to be consistent.
Staff featured individually should have attained a reasonably high profile in the school through length of service, seniority or sheer force of personality. In other words it would be good if they would have been known to everyone at the school over a reasonable period of years.

Naturally it would be good to know who the photo is of, or in the case of group photos to have each person identified. However it wont do any harm to have the odd mystery photo to identify.

1930s

["As others see us." - July 1935 Chronicle]

No useful photos from the 1930s have been contributed yet but the July 1935 school magazine includes the above group caricature.

If anyone can identify any of those featured it would be great.

1940s

[Staff group photo from 1946-1947.]

Back row: Mr Buckle, Mr Leeming, Jack Long, Mr Bruyneels, Mr Bradley, Noel Wilkinson
Middle Row: Doris Staples, Joan Harding, Miss Cooke, Miss Horrex, Mr Akhurst, Edward Doubleday, Audrey Booth, Philippa Smith, Rosemary Graves, Sam Elengorn
Front: Miss Hadler, Miss Emery, Miss Fothergill, Miss Capewell, Mr Champion, Mr Quartermaine ("Q"), Solly Galin, Gus Locke, Mr Mason.

The photo above dates from 1946–1947 and is presumably scanned from the school magazine. Thanks go to Steve Cantor (1944–1949) for responding to a request to identify the staff. He notes the absence of Joan Henderson from the picture. Joan Harding later became Joan Boyes and Miss Hadler became Mrs Copsey. Miss Horrex was the school secretary.

Steve initially identified the lady next to Sam Elengorn as Miss Nix but he corrected himself and suggested it was in fact her successor as gym mistress, her name being something like Graves or Gates. He suggested she wasn't there long and that she was replaced by Miss Dendy.

Beryl has come to the rescue here and clarified things somewhat. Margaret Nix was the Sports Mistress for the school years 1941–1945 and it was Christine Dendy, a Canadian, who replaced her and who only stayed for the one term. The name Steve was searching for was Rosemary Graves but she was with the school from January 1946 to Easter 1948. Just to complete the sequence, Jean Marshall was the Sports Mistress for the school years 1948–1951.

1950s

[Miss Fothergill c. 1950] [Jack Long c. 1950] [Mavis Emery c. 1951] [Solly Galin c. 1951]

The above four photos of Miss Fothergill, Jack Long, Mavis Emery and Solly Galin seemed a pretty meagre collection given the number of photos from the 1950s on the site. However Maurice Crewe has scanned the 1950 panoramic photo at sufficiently high resolution for all the staff photos to be extracted and he and his wife Pat have also worked through the photo identifying all the staff.

Maurice and Pat have identified the staff as Miss Young, Miss Hill, Miss Marshall, Miss Horrex and Miss Haswell with a query over Miss Smith. There does seem to be a resemblence to Phillipa Smith who is featured in the earlier group photo and David Day confirms it is indeed 'Paddy' Smith, also giving Jean Haswell her full name. Valerie Harte suggests that it is actually Ms Quinton and not Miss Marshall, however the photo is dated September 1950 and as mentioned earlier Jean Marshall was apparently the sports mistress for that year.

The female staff are completed by Miss Henderson, Miss Hadler, Miss Staples, Miss Emery and Miss Fothergill.

The headmaster Mr Champion is followed by Mr Quartermaine, Dr Galin, Mr Leeming and Mr Akhurst.

Here we have Mr Elengorn, Mr Long, Mr Wilkinson, Mr Bradley, Mr Buckle and Mr Doubleday.

The male staff are completed by Mr Lowe, Mr Woodward, Mr Clarke and Mr Cleverdon. The last figure is apparently actually Brian Swanton the head boy (!).

As well as the main group of seated staff, three older gentlemen can be seen on the right hand edge of the photo. Maurice confirms that the first two are the caretaker and groundsman and the third is Mr Bruyneels the PT teacher.

1960s

["Harry" Hudson 1960s]

The first photo is of R.L. "Harry" Hudson, who was headmaster from the 1950s to his death in 1974. Not the best of photos but he does seem to look the same in all of them. This photo is cropped from one placed on Friends Reunited by Geoff Lawrence and this also yielded the two groups of photos below which Geoff had conveniently identified.

[Male staff in the 1960s.]

This photo shows Frank Lowe, Edward Doubleday, Noel Wilkinson, Jack Long, Mr Akhurst and Sam Elengorn.

[Female staff in the 1960s.]

Here we have Doris Staples, Miss Owers, Dr Bentley, Miss Holt and Miss Scott. Geoff identified the last teacher as Mrs Joan Henderson but Mike Toomey has written in to say it is Mrs Morgan, who taught Maths, and that Joan Henderson had left the school by the time of this photo.

[Mr Povey 1963 (then at Rowantree)] [Mr Clark c. 1969 (??).]

Mr Povey is something of a legend to those at the Lower School in the 1970s. He was one of the staff who was previously with Rowantree Secondary Modern and he is pictured in 1963. One of the longer serving members of staff was Peter Clark who joined the school as a Geography teacher in 1968 and retired in 2003. He was well known for his beard, pipe and clogs. The photo above was lifted from Friends Reunited where it was said to be 'Mr Gregory' but a number of Old Scholars agreed that it certainly wasn't the only Mr Gregory known to them. It is suggested that it is Peter Clark before he grew a beard (there is a hint of a beard in the photo but that is probably caused by compression artifacts in the cropped photo).

1970s

[Ted McLeay 1970] [Len Sharp 1970] [Mrs James 1975] [Alan Gething 1975]

The Lower School staff were largely drawn from Rowantree and prominent among them were Ted McLeay the headmaster, Len Sharp his number two who was also the Dean of Boys (that perhaps wasn't the actual title) and taught History, Mrs James who was his equivalent for the girls and taught Art, and the immensely popular Alan Gething who taught Maths and eventually retired in 1991.

1980s

[Peter Clark 1981] [Bob Dunlop 1984] [Peter Davies 1984] [John Hulley 1984] [Huw Prosser 1985]

This modest collection of staff pictured in the 1980s features a more recognisable Peter Clark along with Bob Dunlop, Paul Davies, John Hulley and Huw Prosser.