Selected Reminiscences by Mark Varvill (16 April 1927 - 29 July 2003)
Excerpts from his book Mangoes on the Roof (2003)
Wester Elchies and Gordonstoun 1930s/40s
Wester Elchies
A little later on a proper prep school was started at a lovely home called Wester Elchies overlooking the Spey. Part of the house was Victorian with a castellated roof but part was genuinely very old. We were convinced the old tower was haunted by a green lady and never went there alone but took a companion. The Headmaster and his able wife, Pat and Dolly Delap, were the best possible people to control forty active schoolboys. Their policy was to make the children behave by example and treat them politely, not exactly as equals but not too far apart in age. There was absolutely no bullying simply because we were told that to bully was cowardly. I find it very sad that when one is young, one rarely appreciates outstanding people or situations, although one assimilates things without realising it. Pat Delap was one of these outstanding people, and by the time one does appreciate them, one is either too busy or they are dead.
There was no electric light at Wester Elchies. The lights were run by acetylene gas which was produced in an extremely smelly hut in the woods, surrounded by heaps of expended carbide powder. Heating was minimal, absolutely none in the dormitories or bathrooms, but stoves or fires were installed in the classrooms. There was always a rush to sit as near to the stoves as possible and I have fond memories of Pat Delap, a smallish figure dressed in riding breeches, a check tweed jacket and brogue shoes, standing in front of the stove warming his back as he swayed slowly from side to side, teaching us French. Any further heat produced was effectively prevented from warming the rooms by a close packed circle of small, cold boys.
Gordonstoun - when evacuated to Plasdinam
All of us at school were desperately keen to learn to drive. No boys had cars and only one or two of the staff, since petrol was only allowed for those with a definite need. One such person was the Headmaster, Dr Hahn, who was much too intellectual and vague even to attempt to drive. One day in winter he needed someone to drive his Austin car to the railway station. I met him in the passage and he asked if I could drive. I did not actually lie but it was subsequently called being "economical with the truth", and replied that I had some knowledge of motorcars. This was indeed the truth, since I knew the use of the clutch, gears, brake and steering wheel. Since it was winter, the hand operated engine choke was needed until the engine was warm. The knob kept snapping back into the dashboard and the engine would falter so we proceeded with kangaroo like motion down the steep drive. Dr Hahn, realising that we had a problem, insisted on pulling out the choke having no idea what it was for. When the engine had warmed up, power was gradually lost until we were travelling at little more than walking pace. My distinguished passenger would not release the knob saying he was perfectly happy to hold it out until the end of the journey and much persuasion was needed to make him release it, whereupon the car leapt forward to a dashing forty miles per hour.
I was keen on Engineering and eventually made Head of the Engineering Department with almost no supervision. My predecessor, Jeremy Fry, was a brilliant and, subsequently, very successful engineer and made his millions manufacturing special valves for the oil industry. He became a close friend of Anthony Armstrong-Jones and therefore Princess Margaret. Jeremy Fry installed basic machine tools in the large garage area. Electric motors were impossible to obtain since they all went to war factories. To drive the machine tools he purchased for almost nothing, a stationary steam engine. This had a horizontal boiler on top of which was the cylinder and very long connecting rods driving a six foot diameter fly wheel. It took several hours to raise steam so any lathe work or serious drilling had to be planned accordingly. The engine was usually started by a boy swinging on the spokes of the flywheel, a process any factory inspector would ban immediately. Later on Dr Hahn was warned about the boiler, about which he knew nothing, and forbade its use.
The Engineering Guild, as it was rather grandly named, bought a Model T Ford which a friend found in the corner of a field where it had been used for ploughing. The front was complete but the back and doors had been removed. I think it cost us £5.00 and my share of £1.00 was probably the best money I ever spent. There was no self-starter, but a starting handle at the front, with which one fought, as shown on many Charlie Chaplin films. The ignition spark was provided from four spark coils, one for each cylinder in beautifully made wooden boxes, all neatly dovetailed at the corners. One 'tuned' the coils with an insulated screwdriver on top of the boxes to produce the largest blue spark. The vehicle had a complicated gear box with several pedals to push with one's feet to change gear. The accelerator was a lever in the middle of the steering wheel, as was another lever for advancing or retarding the spark. After much work we got the engine to run, starting it on petrol, which was strictly rationed and intended for another car, and running it on paraffin when the engine was hot. If the engine stopped, which it frequently did, one had to drain the carburettor and refill it with petrol from a glass bottle and then crank or push start the engine again. I remember one 'push start' when we co-opted any visible boy to help push. There was a loud backfire, worthy of a battleship gun, and the unfortunate boy directly behind the exhaust pipe had his knees injected with carbon.
The engine was extremely low in power and we rarely got out of first gear, where the maximum speed was about 10 mph. When we reached any significant hill such as 1 in 10, we had to turn the vehicle round and drive backwards up the hill, because the reverse gear was lower ratio than first gear. Even then, one or two passengers had to leap out of the moving car and push to the top of the hill. The car only rarely went on the main roads, since not only was it not licensed or insured, a minor matter then, but it rarely went more than a mile without breaking down, and this distance was about the maximum for pushing it back to the workshop. The car finally died when, unbeknown to us, the sump drain plug came out, the oil ran out and the engine seized. Since the purchase price was only £1.00 each, this was no great financial disaster and we certainly had a small fortune's worth of experience and entertainment out of it.
At one of the dormitory houses near by the main school, four of us appropriated a large cellar under the dining room as a workshop. The most gifted amongst us, Maurice Seddon, built wireless receivers and, completely illegally in time of war, transmitters. A number of German Secret Agents were based in Britain and transmitted their information direct to Berlin, and mobile vans with detector equipment hunted them down. However, I think Maurice's transmitters were of such low power that they did not confuse the hunt.
Thermionic valves which glowed like dim electric bulbs, high and low tension batteries, variable capacity condensers and a mass of coloured wires made up these strange machines. We tested their range by placing a large tin alarm clock in front of the microphone. Then mounting our bicycles, we carried home made receivers and pedalled like mad to see how far we could go before the loud tick from the tin alarm clock was no longer audible. I am sorry to say that we made a temporary aerial for the receivers by a copper wire thrown over a convenient telephone line. Sometimes these became entangled and we could not retrieve them. I don't think we affected the hunt for German spies, because the maximum range of our transmitter was only about a mile. What the hard pressed telephone engineers thought of the wires we could only guess.
Not being deeply interested in wireless, I decided to build a boat for use on the nearby Severn River. Long strips of wood were purchased and made into a rough frame, the shape of a punt. I acquired a canvas stack cover from a local farmer and, when this was stretched round the frame and nailed in position, the boat was complete except for a pair of pram wheels which clipped on the stern. The boat was then inverted and a hook on the bow attached the whole thing to my bicycle. Many happy voyages were made. I would peddle up the river turn the boat the right way up and tie my bicycle on the bow and paddle my way down stream. There was no school rule forbidding such activity but, due to unfortunate timing, I was caught by Kurt Hahn who was crossing the bridge when I was passing underneath. He considered the boat was a safety hazard for the occupant, which perhaps it was, due to a lack of natural buoyancy and complete absence of life jackets, which we could not afford to buy. The project was therefore banned and I turned my energies to other matters.
One such project was the construction of a wind generator with a seven foot long propeller made of wood with a hole in the middle, which would eventually fit on the drive shaft of a dynamo. To test the propeller I mounted it on a large nail driven into the end of a broomstick and went out to face a reasonable wind. Knowing nothing about aerodynamics I was amazed that the propeller started to rotate faster and faster and the thrust on the broomstick increased rapidly until I could hardly stand up. My predicament was then acute because if I did the obvious thing to turn away from the wind, the propeller would have come off the nail and, turning at several hundred revolutions per minute, could have taken charge and almost decapitated me. Fortunately there was a building nearby and moving crabwise and bent forwards to counter the increasing thrust, I was able to retreat into the shelter where the whirling menace eventually came to rest.