Living conditions at the school, even in the 1950’s and early 60’s, sound alarmingly primitive by today’s standards, with a robust daily fitness regime that you might think would have daunted all but the heartiest. Graham Gibbs recalls his arrival in Long Dorm in 1957.

‘My first morning started, at 6am, with “get up you fat mummies’ boys!” We were soon scrambling into shorts, shirts and shoes. This was the dreaded early morning run, orchestrated by Captain Flood. Since we were all sluggish after a summer with Mum’s cooking, we were let off lightly. This first run was a mere three miles up the school drive to the moors, and back down a trail through the woods. I practically had cardiac arrest after half a mile…’ The young Gibbs was equally shocked to encounter the statutory ice-cold shower on his return.

At much the same time, David Watson was also a resident of Long Dorm. Thirty-odd boys slept in this former pheasant-rearing building, in two rows of army-style metal bunk beds. Watson recalls that a favourite game was racing from one end of the dorm to the other along the top bunks, without touching the ground. Errant pupils were regularly issued with pliers and wire and instructed to repair the ensuing damage to their beds.

Most pupils recall being cold. ‘What about the heating?’ writes John Woolley, a boarder from 1945 to 50. ‘You may well ask. The handyman in those days had thirty fires to light, starting at six o’clock in the morning. He was a man called Hunter, who could usually be found in the Boiler House, shovelling coke into the boiler which heated the main building. The hut in the Stackyard, left behind by the army, was heated by the outside boiler – also fed by coke – and its temperature was largely regulated by the direction of the wind. Whenever the wind was propitious the water pipes overheated and flowed dramatically into the two classrooms in the hut, an event demanding instant exodus of the classes!’

The only reliably warm place in the school during winter was the Barn. ‘The enormous open fireplace had a broad open bench surrounding it, and there was a definite pecking order about who could claim a place. The pecking order was based not on age, nor class position, but on how long one had been at the school. It was jealously preserved. The only time it broke down was at Half Term, when there were always about thirty of us left. Then we would all sit round frightening ourselves with ghost stories.’

Some weather conditions, however, were beyond even the most strenuous efforts of Mr Hunter, and his mighty coke pile. ‘The winter term of 1961 would become known as “The Term of the Big Freeze”’ writes Graham Gibbs. ‘During February, England was brought to a virtual standstill. Temperatures were more than ten degrees below. After two days, most of the pipes in the school froze. To stay warm we had to keep the log-burning stoves in the classrooms and dormitories burning continuously, day and night. Somehow the kitchen water supply remained functional, but all toilets and washing facilities were inoperative. For reasons which I shall never quite understand the horse-trough in the field behind the senior boys’ house had running water. A strategy was announced at breakfast: the girls would wash in the kitchen and the boys would wash in the horse-trough. The lack of functioning toilets was solved by making the top woods out-of-bounds to the girls, and the bottom woods out-of-bounds to the boys. The ramifications of this strategy, I will leave to the imagination of the reader…’

The electricity supply was equally erratic. As John Woolley recalls: ‘Whenever the generator broke down, which happened about twice a week, all the lights went out and we would joyfully stream out of Prep, torches flashing in every direction. On Saturday nights, however, the Dining Room was used for showing films. If the generator broke down then it was serious – but Mrs Bradley could have a singsong by lamplight. We didn’t need to see the words because we knew them by heart.’

Although many of the staff from this period are remembered with admiration and affection – Austen Davies for his gifted teaching and unerring aim with a piece of chalk, Daisy Hardy for her drama productions, Arthur ‘Popgun’ Jones for his unpredictable experiments – one rather less lovable figure dominates most recollections of the era: the extraordinary and eccentric Captain Flood.

‘Captain Flood was rather round with a balding head,’ recalls Graham Gibbs. ‘He had a moustache and, almost continuously except in class, smoked a foul-smelling pipe. He spoke with a strong Scottish dialect and, on Sundays and special occasions wore a kilt – which, at a boarding school, was cause for much joking. He had been in a Scottish regiment and treated us boys as if we were army cadets.’

Flood was a notoriously fierce disciplinarian, free with beatings and withering sarcasm alike. ‘He would take us into the woods and subject us to “boot camp” activity, using the natural environment. A balancing beam, for example, would be a felled tree. There were also climbing ropes, and ropes secured between two trees, some fifteen feet from the ground.’ Gibbs’ near-contemporary David Watson who went on to become a PE teacher himself remembers this ropewalk as ‘absolutely frightening, like the worst army assault course. You wouldn’t put anyone up there now.’

A graduate, so he said, of the University of Salamanca, Flood seems to have embellished, if not actually invented, much of his personal history, claiming a variety of distinguished decorations at different times. As well as being boys’ Housemaster, he taught French (with a reportedly near-impenetrable Scottish brogue), history (with a marked Scottish-Catholic bias) and coached rugby, swimming, rowing and boxing – in which he freely invented his own fighting categories, such as ‘Mosquito Weight’. He also fancied himself a writer. He founded, edited and supplied much of the copy for a new school magazine, The Archer. His prose style is distinctive, to say the least.

‘Hat in hand, with obsequious smirk and sidling gait, your Editor makes his bow, and presents his first number of the “Archer”... It will be your Editor’s policy to produce a magazine neither vainglorious, venal, vapid, voluptuous, valetudinarian, vacillating, vacuous, varicose, venial, ventral, viscous nor vulgar. He will seek rather virtue, virility, validity, variety, vendibility and a few more volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary.’

Clearly not a chap to use one word when twenty would do, he would also pen instant, detailed and frequently damning critiques of every school rugby match and pin them up for public consumption.

In Flood’s day, Rugby was not confined to the boys, however. Girls occasionally played, too – and with the boys, what’s more. As John Woolley recalls: ‘I found myself scrumming down against well-proportioned young ladies twice my size in the front row. Because the girls habitually played hockey against boys and members of staff, they had a fearsome reputation among all the girls’ schools in the area. It was not uncommon for them to come home having won 9 or 10-nil, and Captain Flood would grind his teeth because his fledgling rugby team had lost 30-nil against some much bigger school.’

In spite of Flood’s ferocity, however – and the primitive plumbing, biting cold and strenuous regime – the children, remarkably, seem to have been very happy. David Watson is not the only former pupil to describe his days at Fyling Hall in the 1950’s as amongst the best in his life. What’s more, it is clear that no teeth-grinding or cane-brandishing from the likes of Captain Flood could quell the inventive talent for mischief of such a lively bunch.

To close, an incident recalled by Graham Gibbs from his time at the school. ‘The seniors decided it would be fun to carry the little car belonging to Mr Pearson, the French teacher, down to the lower garden terrace. While the teachers were all in the staff room, the seniors went to the garage, with us juniors keeping watch, wheeled out the car and pushed it on to the top terrace. Carefully they eased it down the bank. The car was positioned right in the middle of the lawn, near the fountain. In addition, all the gates around the school were turned upside down and most of the classroom doors jammed shut by one means or another.

‘Somehow, the prank was not noticed until the next morning. At breakfast, Captain Flood was fit to burst. Mr Pearson, however, having checked that his car was not damaged, thought it was a great joke. The entire school was given thirty minutes to correct all of the pranks, including returning the car to the garage. If we succeeded, no more would be said about the incident. However, if we did not… Somehow, with only two minutes to spare, we succeeded. It had been a close call.’

Some of this material has previously appeared in Fyling Tales