WHERE BRIGG GRAMMAR SCHOOL OBTAINED ITS BIOLOGY SPECIMENS

Cliff Turner, 91, now living in New Zealand, continues his memories of growing up in Brigg. Today he looks at his time at Brigg Grammar School prior to joining the Royal Navy in 1941.


In the autumn of 1940 I took the examination to go into the navy as an artificer apprentice. The exam took up most of a day. I did it at school and Bert (a teacher at Brigg Grammar School) got the job of invigilator; I hope the Admiralty paid him for that extra-mural work.
Bert's replacement was another hopeless teacher and I have forgotten his name as I was exposed to him for only a few weeks before I went into the navy on 24 February 1941. 
Bert had taught us Avogadro's hypothesis and he obviously thought of it as an inspired bit of thinking. About the only thing I recall of the new man was his dismissal of the hypothesis as "a bit of a wangle".
Mathematics was the province of "Bumper" Knight who was also deputy head master. I never heard any explanation of the derivation of his nickname. He was a good teacher who had been at the school for many years but I can recall little about him except that he was mad on cricket. As with most of the teachers we had no idea of where he was born or educated.
An exception was Dickie Thumwood who taught me physics all through the school, but I only learned of his early years sometime after 1961, the year we moved to Newbury. I decided to write to him to tell him of how much I valued his influence. We lived on Pyle Hill in Newbury and I was astonished to learn, when he wrote back, that he came from Kingsclere, close to Newbury, had attended Newbury Grammar School, and that he had cycled along Pyle Hill daily to and from school.
He was a good teacher and probably the one who had more formative effect on me than any of my other teachers. I think, but do not know for sure, that he had been in the army in World War I. Perhaps as a result he became an enthusiastic supporter of the League of Nations which was set up in the aftermath of that war and was replaced by the United Nations after World War II. He might have been secretary of the local branch; when a meeting was arranged he would get me, to save postage, to deliver lots of invitations to members.
Mention of this and the fact that Mr Daughton and Mr Pratt called me Clifford rather than Turner might give the impression that I was a teachers' pet. That was far from the case; by the time I left school I am pretty sure that I had clocked up more hours of Saturday afternoon detention that anyone else in my form.
Mr Thumwood also taught biology and on a couple of occasions I went with him on the Wednesday half-day off to gather specimens for biology lessons. Once we went to Kettleby Washdyke, about two and a half miles from Brigg. The occasion was made memorable by a hatch of mayflies that climbed up our rubber boots to take to the air. Mayflies spend most of their lives in water as larvae and emerge as flying insects, living only long enough to mate and lay eggs.
I went on yet another expedition with Mr Thumwood in about 1946 when on leave from the navy. I was out on a bike in Brigg and met him as he was going once again to collect material for a biology class and so I went with him.

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