Cathy has been
Ralph’s active support
throughout his career
but she has never
played politics and
she has always been
her own person.
At each of the schools
in which they have
lived and worked,
identifying with the
intrinsic character of
the institution was
an essential first step.
‘Cathy is the loveliest person,’ says a Housemaster’s
wife. ‘She is always smiling, interested in us and
our families, and she is intelligent. Her annual
Christmas party for the children of dons and staff
in College Hall was magical and will never be
forgotten. She is the perfect Head Man’s wife.’
Cathy Townsend gave me a tour of the School,
illuminated by the gleam of the late September sun
and her insightful and charming personal editorial. She
confided to me her view of her role as Head Man’s wife,
what she hoped had been change for good wrought
in the past eleven years, her abiding impressions of
the institution and what she will most miss. It was
striking that Cathy knew the first names of every boy
we encountered, no matter his House or age. I never
had a conversation with the Head Man of my day,
let alone with his elegant, willowy wife; had I done
so, I suspect it would have been merely to presage
some eventuality that neither I nor my long-suffering
parents would have relished! This may indicate that
Cathy, as the interview I subsequently conducted
with her seemed to confirm, is a one-off, but it is
incontrovertibly the sign of a changed environment.
It also requires sound judgement. Robert Graves
remarks in Goodbye to All That that when his future
best man the mountaineer George Mallory taught at
pre-Great War Charterhouse, his attempts to be the
friend of the boys merely, in Graves’ word, ‘offended’
them. Cathy seems to have learned how to be part of
the boys’ lives without intruding; to lend a sympathetic
ear without crossing the invisible boundary that needs
to exist to sustain the equilibrium of any school.
Cathy comes from Perth, Australia, a place I know
well. She met Ralph when they were students at the
University of Western Australia. She read Music,
he changed from Law to English after two years.
They married the moment they graduated. Ralph
subsequently completed an MA at the University
of Kent at Canterbury, where he was nurtured by
distinguished OW art historian, Stephen Bann
(Coll, 1954-59): Bann wrote to Ralph on his
appointment to Winchester saying ‘I thought this
would happen one day’. Cathy retrained as a librarian.
Following his doctoral studies at Oxford and a Junior
Research Fellowship at Lincoln College, Ralph taught
for four years at Eton before, at the age of 36, taking up
the headmastership of Sydney Grammar School, where
he carried out far-reaching reform over ten years; and
then at Oundle for six; in both places the couple clearly
developed a highly effective style of school leadership.
The Wykeham Journal 2015 21