NO.120
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
Commoner notion for a prefect’s cane.
The idyll was soon to end. Early in
the ’60s housedons let it be known that
bathing trunks were not forbidden. Soon
much Grecian beauty, together with some
adolescent embarrassment, was covered
up. Only a hard-core minority of dons and
men continued to enjoy a naked plunge,
Rupert Brooke style.
majestic tree that overhangs the upstream
end; clothes were superfluous. Geoff
occupied a small office by the entrance,
which had the only door in the place.
One activity that was popular with
my contemporaries was Gunner’s cricket.
This was played with an old tennis ball
and a bat whose dimensions I forget,
though I don’t recall it managing to loft
the ball over the surrounding fence. The
stumps were painted on the office wall
and the wicket was the stretch of grass
between there and the water’s edge. The
objective was to get the ball into the
water, whereupon the fieldsmen would
charge in to retrieve it before too many
runs were scored. A 1930s photo shows a
figure at the same location crouching
fieldsman-style at what would have been
silly mid-on.
Like most Wykehamical institutions,
Gunner’s attracted notions. One of the
more improbable was that on Sunday
afternoons the senior boarders at St
Swithun’s would congregate on St
Catherine’s Hill with binoculars, hoping
to view the assembled talent below. I
suspect that the only male flesh visible
would have been on Sen-Sen – in the ‘50s
Gunner’s had three diving boards: Jun a
couple of feet off the ground, Sen rather
higher and Sen-Sen at a dizzy 12 to 15
feet. They were solidly built wooden
structures, green-painted and with the
walkways covered with an open-woven
fibre matting that had a
distinctive feel. Letters to
The Wykehamist in the
1870s record a succession
of requests for coconut
matting on the boards;
perhaps this was it. There
were also two springboards,
named rather
unimaginatively Big Willy
and Little Willy, Willy
being at this time also a
Meanwhile the Bursar, Ruthven Hall,
was increasingly worried by the upkeep
costs of Gunner’s. An attempt to purify
the water by filtering the input stream,
Roush, through sandbags resulted only in
more deposition of the rather comforting
mud which one felt when one touched
the bottom. And mounting concern
about the risks of water- and rat-borne
disease meant that sooner or later a
modern replacement would be needed.
So Gunner’s is no more, except that
if you look closely at a satellite view you
will still see a diagonal path just south of
New Hall which leads to a crescent of
trees, the biggest of which once watched
over Sen-Sen.
■
Win Coll and Bridge
Jonathan Davis (Coll, 67-71) shows his
cards:
The death earlier this year of RA
Priday (A, 36-41) prompts some
reflections on Win Coll’s ambivalent
attitude to what, by near-universal
consent, remains the finest and most
stimulating card game ever invented. As
well as being a gentleman in every sense
of the word, Tony was also one of the
10
finest English bridge players of his
generation and a worthy recipient of
many of the game’s highest accolades.
Nobody I know who played with or
against him during the course of his long