Dave's happy memories of boarding school days
Happy days at a long-disappeared Shropshire boarding school have been recalled by David Whitaker of Leighton, who spent two formative years there.
David got in touch after reading our story about the autobiography of Lindsay Bury, who transformed and restored Millichope Park in the Corvedale after inheriting the property, which for some years previously was leased out to be used as a school.
One of the pupils was David, who was living at the time at Botfield Road in Shifnal, and recalls that he, his sister, and his parents cycled all the way there for his interview, while everybody else was turning up in cars.
"We had the interview, and I was accepted. I was there from the ages of 14 to 16," he said, which meant he joined the school in the heart of the south Shropshire countryside in September 1953.
"My school house was More, named after Sir Thomas More. The others were Beckwith, and Pemberton, named after the Reverend Pemberton of Church Stretton.
"There were seven in my dormitory, in More house. They came from all over Shropshire. We got together and made a team – we were a very strong team and won everything. I represented the school at football, cricket, cross country, and long distance running. We won every competition we entered at Millichope.
"There were only 60 boys in the school, with 20 in each house."
Conditions at the school, he said, were good.
"They gave us work to do in the grounds. We had to get up in the morning and go on a two or three mile run, come back and tidy the dormitories and go down to breakfast. At 3.30 there were games every afternoon, and then we had tea at 5, and it was clubs in the evening. It was really quite hectic."
David says he came top in rural science and when he left he went to work for W H Slater's farm in Shifnal.
As for the uniform, he says it was grey throughout – blazer, pullover, trousers and shirt – but on Sundays they had a bright blue blazer with yellow trim. The year before he went to the school, he said, the blazer was brown.
The Millichope School, which was a secondary school for boys, had opened in April 1948. It moved to Apley Park over the summer break in 1962, the term starting at the new location between Telford and Bridgnorth in September.
