Roddy Long's Thanksgiving service will be held on Wednesday 15th November in Milford (Near Guildford) at 1.30pm. 

If you can attend, it would be much appreciated if you could RSVP to Roddy's son Charlie here chaz_and_liz@mac.com, so the family can have a rough idea of numbers.

The MacMillan Nurses cared for Roddy at the end. If you would like to make a donation to support their cause, please visit - https://www.macmillan.org.uk/donate You may also choose to sponsor Charlie as he runs the Royal Parks half marathon on their behalf, which Roddy would certainly have approved - https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/charles-long-macmillan

What a delightful day it was on September 16th, 2023! The sun was shining, the sea breeze was invigorating, and the camaraderie was heartwarming as we gathered at the beautiful Victoria Hotel in Sidmouth for our Westcountry Lunch. It was a truly wonderful occasion that brought together so many of us.

There's an old saying that goes, "Old friends are like stars; you don't always see them, but you know they're always there." And indeed, it was a day to rekindle old friendships, reminisce about school days, and make new memories together.

We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who attended the event, making it such a resounding success. Your presence added immeasurable warmth and meaning to the day. The laughter and stories shared were a testament to the enduring bonds we've formed over the years.

A special mention must go to David Richardson, who took on the monumental task of organizing this event.  Thank you!

While we eagerly await the full write-up of this memorable event in our upcoming Newsletter, we wanted to share some of the photographs from the day. 

Who in their right mind would want to miss the AGM? The annual general meeting – yes, I know it sounds dull – has in fact always been an opportunity to see who is running the club and to question them, and also to applaud them.

     The AGM is also an opportunity for a sit down! When you’ve been on your feet all day and you’re looking forward to an evening on your feet at a drinks party, it makes sense to take a seat for half an hour.

     And another pragmatic point: If you’re like me – not always punctual – then aiming for the start of the AGM guarantees not missing the start of the drinks.

     To some OHs, the annual general meeting is a mysterious rigmarole preceding the real event. For me, it’s always been a vigorous highspot among OH events, with suggestions being aired and policy discussed. You can have your say. (Keep it short though, please!)

     But this year the AGM is going to change, or so I gather. The club’s top brass apparently have in mind something less starchy, less formal. Less rhetoric and more entertainment, by the sound of it.

     I had an interesting email from our president Seb Warner, reminding me that we are lucky to still have a club. There is no longer a school to support it and he pointed out that this year Allhallows has been closed 25 years. So this year Seb wants the AGM to celebrate the club’s continued existence, he told me, adding: “It will be more of a club update, rather than a formal constitutional event.”

     Seb and his new mini-committee seem to be livening up the OH scene. I expect we’ll get more details of the new-look AGM on the website in weeks if not days. Until then, it’s a pre-drinks mystery.

     The AGM and drinks, at the Royal Automobile Club in London, will be on Thursday evening, November 16^th.

l Next website offering from monthly contributor George Hayter: 1st October.

For most of my five years at Allhallows I was discontent and sometimes I still wish I had gone to another school. 

    In my opinion the standard of teaching was low and most facilities below standard. 

    I was considered a bright pupil at prep school but by the time I left Allhallows my academic ranking had dropped. 

    Like everybody else in the 1965 intake to Venning, I was bullied, beaten, humiliated and discouraged. 

    And like Sir Francis Peek himself, I found parts of the actual location depressing, with its forbidding flint walls, its ghostly mansion and its dispiriting fog. 

    My housemaster wasn’t my type and, as an uncompetitive coward, I resented Saturday afternoons having to cheer others at play. 

    Allhallows was all boys until the first girls were introduced in my last year but oh dear I didn’t really get a look in. There were only six of them. 

    Too much of the teaching was boring and one master’s lessons were frightening, although Mr Blooman and Mr Christian were among staff who inspired me. 

    Some admirable OHs took a more positive view. They loved everything about Allhallows. Apparently they didn’t even notice the violence, the harsh conditions and the chaos. They thought the teaching was brilliant, they weren’t bullied and they didn’t even mind being beaten. They gloried in Rousdon’s isolation and they weren’t forced to watch the boring XV because they were in it. 

    These go-ahead people who shone in the examination hall and triumphed at sport are often to be heard at OH events. 

    And you might think that sceptics like me, who squandered their schooldays joking and sneering at swots and goody goodies, would be attracted to an OH gathering as they would be attracted to a minefield. 

    Yet I am an Allhallows doubter who is active in the club. And I’m not alone. Some of the most troublesome retrogrades you knew at school are these days regularly in the midst of happy chat at OH gatherings. Sports heroes and maths geniuses do not monopolise the attendance. Neither are prefects and heads of school the only ones there. There are loads of rogues like you and me. 

    The Allhallows grateful and ungrateful mix together better than the milk and powder in school custard. I should know. At school I was a cigarette-smoking wastrel who one year trampled his housemaster’s prized tomato plants, yet at OH events I have immensely enjoyed talking to the school’s former sporting and academic elite, not to mention swapping memories with former enforcers of school discipline. 

    Everybody is after a good time at club events. Come and have a good time with other old boys and girls this year, even if you’re among those of us who didn’t have much of a good time at Rousdon. 

Club events in 2023 include lunch, remembrance and drinks. 

Respectively in Sidmouth, Honiton and London. 

September 16th, October 28th and November 16th. Details: OH website. 

•  Next website offering by monthly contributor George Hayter: 1st September 

It is with great sadness that the OH club announce the passing of our esteemed former President Roddy Long on the 9^{th of} June 2023.

Roddy was not only the longest-serving President of the OH club but also a gentleman, a leader, an all-round sportsman and a good, learned friend to so many multi-generational OH's. It seems without doubt that the OH club continues today due to the singular commitment and hard work of Roddy and of course his wife Sheila and we remain indebted to them both. 

Roddy had a remarkable school career at Allhallows culminating in his Head of School appointment in September 1962. Before that he was Head of Baker House, Senior Under Officer in the CCF and of course School Prefect and House Prefect. He had many sporting colours, playing Cricket, Rugby and Hockey and he continued to play sports with and organise sporting events for OH's many years after leaving the school in 1963. Roddy was a stalwart of the OH Golf Society and a champion of the OH Cricket week and his work in organising these events over the years is appreciated by many. The OH club has received letters and emails each affirming gratitude to Roddy, a deep respect for his nature, his work, his sportsmanship and of course of how much he will be missed with a common theme that he emulated the values and ideals of his school days and applied them to his life thereafter -something of a role model to us all.

“RIP Roddy; the memory of your wonderful, trademark, smile lives on.”

"I remember so well how very kind and welcoming
they both were to me, the new boy at my first OH function. Everyone there was kind, of
course - that is the OH way - but Roddy and Sheila were even more so and Cricket Week,
a super event, was to become one that I frequented for many years afterwards". 

"It goes without saying that Roddy was a first class president and a very active golfer and organiser....Roddy you gave your all for school and club...Fantastic..You will always be a star and fine example".  

"Aside from golf, Roddy was a quite outstanding President of the OH Club and nobody
could have done more than he did not only to ensure, but to strengthen, the health and
vitality of a club that sought to continue on even after the closure of Allhallows." 

“He had a tactical brain and was a great motivator to team players.” 

“He was a serious and responsible leader at school, but enjoyed his more relaxed times, normally with a pint in hand. I will miss seeing him at our golf meetings. We have lost a great guy, kind and generous by nature, and good company on and off the course”. 

“How clever that his grandchildren called him 'Groddy'!” 

 “I liked Roddy Long even before I met the man.  

Roddy’s easy-going jollity always ensured a good atmosphere wherever he presided, and anyone who went to club events benefited from that”.

“Instead, quite to the contrary, thanks to Roddy’s hard work, much of it

behind the scenes, enthusiasm and sense of fun, the Club flourished and

arguably became more active.” 

“His sense of humour was ever present….we seemed, at those cricket

weeks, to play card games, designed to reduce one’s bank balance, until the dawn or more

likely, mist rose over the Rousdon landscape. I am not sure who, on one of those weeks, left

Derek Crawshaw’s car minus its wheels on the hard tennis court but Roddy seemed to have

an excess of oil on his hands the next morning”. 

“Roddy liked to claim, rather than admit, that the only examination he ever

passed first time was his Driving Test! His success and popularity in everything else stemmed from his unconcern about his lack of academic achievements and other things that he could not control.” 

“I found Roddy a brilliant leader. Explain a complex difficulty to him by email and he would email back with a simple few-word solution that would have you wondering why you ever thought you had a problem to start with.” 

The spirit and memory of Roddy Long will live on in the OH club: "He was, quite simply and in modern parlance, a legend".  

Addendum: The OH club sincerely thank the many individuals who contacted us regarding Roddy Long and the significant number of contributions from OH’s and friends that have gone into this final piece. Quoted directly above are John Pagliero, Dudley Hopkins, Nigel French, RF Sherwood, George Hayter, John ‘Sid’ Harper, Giles Blomfield, David Shaw and indirectly many, many others! 

To download this obituary along with all the photographs click here.

Unfortunately, I was put in Venning, which was a luxurious building only about a year old. 

    My Venning contemporaries and I were envied by classmates housed in the main building, who had to put up with squalid basement baths and toilets, whereas we basked in gleaming new baths, showers and changing rooms. 

    But boys in other houses were wrong to envy us. Despite our modern surroundings, all of us in the 1965 Venning intake would have given anything not to be in Venning. We spent our first year paralysed in fear. Due to one or two chilling individuals, we were bullied more cruelly than boys in other houses. 

    But, looking back in the last year or so, I have realised that we were lucky in one way. We had wonderful prefects. 

    In those days prefects’ duties included administering corporal punishment to 13 and 14-year-olds with a hairbrush. A prefect would order the miscreant to bend over before delivering typically two or three strokes with the approximately nine-inch brush. 

    It was a difficult role for a prefect of any sensitivity, administering what these days would be considered criminal assault. Many OHs of that period thoroughly approve of Allhallows 1960s discipline but most concede that prefects tended to abuse their power, by beating boys for trumped-up reasons. OH author Sir John Lister-Kaye, head of school in 1964, has described the abuse he suffered as a junior: “Catching us juniors talking after lights-out was more about asserting power and providing sport for newly-appointed house prefects than it was a justified corrective.” 

    Our three Venning prefects in 1965-66 were not like that. They beat us only when rules required, and they did it as a duty, with distaste. 

    My research suggests that the three must have found it particularly unpleasant to beat their fellow students. 

    For example, the oldest prefect was really too old to be at school. He was 19 for most of his year as prefect. He had not joined Allhallows until he was 15 which suggests that, although he was expected to beat boys, he had joined the school too late to have ever been beaten by a boy himself. If true, what a difficult situation! 

    The next oldest also had not joined the school until age 15 and had to beat me and my contemporaries, despite probably never having been beaten by a pupil himself. 

    The youngest of the three was also in an uncomfortable position, being little older than his charges. He was appointed prefect aged just 16 years and five months. 

    All three prefects seemed studious types and my research, using the book Allhallows School Register and Record, shows that none of them were very sporty. 

    Thanks guys! All three of you were fair and decent but I didn’t appreciate that at the time. 

l Next website offering due from monthly contributor George Hayter:  1st August 

I had a wonderful time meeting the OHs who participated in the South West Golfing Week tournament at Lyme Regis Golf Course yesterday (28/06/23).

Special thanks to John Pagliero for organizing the event. It was a real honour for me to present the prizes at the end of the day. We captured some fantastic OH videos for our Youtube channel, which will be available in due course.

Congratulations to all the players! Here is a quick shot I took to at the end of the afternoon.

A leading OH made a splash when he wrote to the letters page of a national newspaper. 

    John Armstrong, landlord of a pub just off the M3, created headlines in the Daily Mail by warning of fears that Britain risks being left with no decent pubs. 

    The paper made John’s wake-up call into a page lead, complete with a picture and a three-deck headline urging readers: 

      ‘Don’t let it be 

       last orders for 

       your local pub’. 

    The letter blames the rising cost of living for leaving his customers at John’s White Horse in Ampfield with insufficient money for a pie and a pint. 

    Sociable John has spent 51 years in the hospitality business. He is frequently at OH Club events, as well as organising dinners for former Allhallows classmates at his 16th-century Hampshire inn, just south of Winchester. 

    In the Daily Mail letter, published on June 5^th, he wrote: “My pub is in an affluent area, not far from where the Prime Minister was brought up, but even the seemingly rich are struggling to pay bills and are not going out.” 

    John reckons lifestyle changes have also hit business. “People working from home don’t drive past the pub at the end of the working day, so the traditional six o’clock trade is dead. Expense account lunches are long gone.” 

    At Allhallows 1962-67, John was made head of Baker and head of the CCF. 

    His letter to the Mail concludes: “There are fears that we risk losing the Great British pub, but I’m determined we will survive.” 

David Shaw writes about a celebratory lunch on the brief return of a ‘prodigal son’:

As Andy Moore (Venning 53-58 and Head of School), has reported in the past, 'Irregular OH Lunches' take place in a West Country pub occasionally and are well organised by him and aimed at the over 80s. One or two much younger OHs (in their late 70s) have inveigled themselves in to the parties partly in reverence but also through genuine concern for their elders because the pub and the car park are separated by a busy road and there is no warning sign like the one  outside care homes showing an elderly couple with walking sticks  to warn motorists to slow down!  

Back to this one, which David Shaw organised because Andy was away but also as it was in honour of a once famous OH, Trevor Shoppee, who was in UK on a rare visit from his home in the Philippines. Trevor (Middy 59-64) was Head of School and Captain of Rugby and Athletics in 1964 as well as being SUO of the CCF, was hoping to see Tom Lang who beat him to the Victor Ludorum trophy in our final year but Tom (Venning 60-64) and Head of House, sadly was ill and could not make it.  Roddy Long (Baker 58-63), Head of School in 1963 and Captain of Cricket and Hockey was another old friend but who was also ill and unable to travel. Roger Wheeler (Stanton 55-61) was Head of School in 1960 and 61 and was having a long-awaited operation so we were able to remember him, in his absence, being captain of everything. 

Other friends of Trevor's who were present were Alec Crawford (Stanton 55-60), Richard Le Fleming (Middy 59-64), Nigel French (Chudleigh 55-60), Tim Clunie (Middy 59-63) who had come from Kent, Toby Martin (Shallow 59-63) who had come from Plymouth, John Lister-Kaye (Stanton 59-65) and Head of School, who had come down from Inverness and David Shaw (Baker and Venning (59-64). Lunch began with a toast to absent friends and especially to Roddy, Tom and Roger who were indisposed, and some seriously; a respectful pause gave way to a lovely reunion, a nostalgic journey revisited fondly and a pretty good lunch. Some of us had not seen others since the last day of term in 1964, almost 60 years ago. In the presence of such illustrious alumni, David Shaw was able to tell his friends that his memoirs are entitled 'Captain of the 2nd XI''.

Addendum. Since then, Tom Lang has generously reminded Trevor that they shared the Victor Ludorum in 1964, a compromise as Trevor was ‘Field Sports’ and Tom was ‘Track’. Roddy Long died on 9^th June, as reported elsewhere, but not before he was able to receive this report about a few of his many friends in the OH community. DCNS

We are super excited to announce that the first of our OH 25 Anniversary videos is now live! In this special interview, we had the pleasure of chatting with OH Simon Gibbons ('79 - '83), who shares some fabulous memories that we can all relate to. Watch the video here.

We want to extend a huge thank you to Simon for his valuable contribution to this project.

If you haven't already, make sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more fantastic videos to come. Click here to subscribe.