So, the underground tunnels...

[Richard Ruck]

Hi there.
I'm really impressed and amused how fully-aged people have such great humour, and can still have a good laugh about doing those things that only young teenagers could do, but what the teachers would (profesionally and publicly, anyway) consider unacceptable!

"Fully-aged" indeed! I'm 44, and I very much hope that I still have some ageing left to do....

[tobeconfirmed]

"Fully-aged" indeed! I'm 44, and I very much hope that I still have some ageing left to do....

Sorry! But people seem to get offended when called 'middle-aged,' so what to say?! I guess I meant old blues that have not just left, in their early 20s, but left a 'while' ago, and still enjoy reminiscing these funny events!

[Simon Kerruish]

Hi there.
I'm really impressed and amused how fully-aged people have such great humour, and can still have a good laugh about doing those things that only young teenagers could do, but what the teachers would (profesionally and publicly, anyway) consider unacceptable!

"Fully-aged" indeed! I'm 44, and I very much hope that I still have some ageing left to do....

I'm 47 with 3 teenage daughters so I qualify for old aged.

[Richard Ruck]

"Fully-aged" indeed! I'm 44, and I very much hope that I still have some ageing left to do....

Sorry! But people seem to get offended when called 'middle-aged,' so what to say?! I guess I meant old blues that have not just left, in their early 20s, but left a 'while' ago, and still enjoy reminiscing these funny events!

No need to apologise! I thought the description was quite funny - sounds like a cheese or a bottle of decent booze....

Well, a sense of humour is a good thing, which most of us seem to keep with us as we get older. Our teenage years are quite formative in this - for example, my English teacher at CH, Richard 'Pinky' Palmer introduced us to the delights of Peter Cook & Dudley Moore doing their 'Derek & Clive' stuff. I can't repeat ANY of it on here, but suffice to say that it's quite indicative of the stuff we used to find funny then ( and still do now).

I suppose we might qualify as 'old farts', but, please, not 'old gits' or 'old codgers', at least not for another 15 years or so......

[Simon Kerruish]

Well, a lot of us used to use the tube for a quick smoke. A bit risky, given the visibility of the entrances in the courtyards of the houses, but handy for when time was at a premium (e.g. morning break).

Only ever got caught twice down there.

Aaah, the nostalgic smell of damp, Old Holborn smoke and, I'm afraid to say, stale urine emanating from certain side-rooms.

I also remember being given special permission to miss second prep once a week to watch "I Claudius" with a mate from Thorn. B (their TV room was in the tube). As we were both doing Latin and Ancient History A-levels, it was considered educational for us to watch Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Patrick Stewart et al camping it up in togas.

Finally, the tube was indirectly responsible for my last exposure to corporal punishment (an archaic form of legalised assault, for younger readers).

A number of us stayed at school for an extra night at the end of one term (a few of us going to France the next day, others going on a rugby tour).

Needless to say, an evening piss-up ensued down the tube. The resulting noise attracted the attention of the then Mid. B housemaster, Revd. Ian Atkinson, who, as most people present were not in his house, went running along to the headmaster.

Result - around a dozen of us getting "six of the best" each from the headmaster at around midnight AFTER term had ended.

We were all a bit merry, though, so we thought it was a bit of a laugh.

72 strokes - I imagine Dr. Newsome must have had a very sore wrist that night........

Funny to look back on a priest and a theologian being so keen on "whacking". Who would have thought it?

Was Ian Atkinson still known as 'junkie?'

Had a similar experience in 1971. I and my mate Neil decided to brew elderberry wine (yes!) in the tube below Mid A. Unbeknown to us some guys from Mid B were brewing beer in the Tube room right next to our little operation. The resulting stink of alcohol turned out to be from their dustbin full of beer with barely a cover on it and alerted the authorities. Neil and I got hauled in due to the smoking gun of his name being on a packet of sugar in the vicinity. We lucked out as the housemaster was a wine fan; he gave us a lecture and made us promise to destroy the produce. We kept half the bottles anyway and hid them in another part of the tube, but when we went to collect them after a while they were gone. Probably saved us from being poisoned and having to concoct an explanation for Doc. Hoskins.

[Great Plum]

When was the tube 'closed' for general use?

I know on my juniors we could still put cases etc down there... I guess you can't now...

[Hendrik]

as far as i know, you still can

[sejintenej]

Simon Kerruish at 47? a mere babe in arms

As for drink I did quite a trade in making and selling Ginger Beer in Col A- the only way I could get pocket money for the tuck shop.
Someone used to make a foul concoction involving rasberries and shoe polish!!!!

Cases in the Tube; yes - each house had a large room in which all trunks were stored during term time (where else would you put a 36 by 24 by 15 inch trunk let alone over 50?

Sejintenej
(dinosaur)

[pompeydunc]

I was there when the stink bomb went off...the name you mentioned was touted as the likely culprit. We were always told that this individual was a black belt and used to wander the school dressed in black at night with a master key. Apparently he used it to break into chemistry labs and steal stuff so he could make the stink bombs. Probably all nonsense but amusing anyway. What I do know is true is that he was pretty clever as he had his academic buttons for several subjects and used to get 8 or 9 prizes at prize giving each year...sod...I never got one !!!

That bl00dy thing went off in front me, gees it stunk! Very impressive indeed, and congratulations go out to the culprit! Did we get made to continue singing through it, or were we evacuated? I can't remember.

Dunc (1st post on here, been good to read some of the stories here)
90 - 97

[FrogBoxed]

I was there when the stink bomb went off...

That bl00dy thing went off in front me, gees it stunk! Very impressive indeed, and congratulations go out to the culprit! Did we get made to continue singing through it, or were we evacuated? I can't remember.

I think we carried on with Mr Allwood wafting the stench away with his black robe looking more like a demented bat than usual... it was our turn on the balcony, so luckily the smell didn't reach us, but the smoke looked very impressive!

[menace]

Personally I remember having to use the tunnels to get into Hall in really bad weather. They were preferable in some ways to the more mundane march in. They were actually very practical from that point of view, and what the hell did anyone know about asbestos back then? Dank and smelly and usually wet floors.

BTW the school has a long tradition of chemical jokes. In my day the science crowd would mix up some elixir that would explode when put on hot radiators after a short delay. Scared the bejeezus (originally typed something else there) out of whoever was walking past at the time.

[Simon Kerruish]

Personally I remember having to use the tunnels to get into Hall in really bad weather. They were preferable in some ways to the more mundane march in. They were actually very practical from that point of view, and what the hell did anyone know about asbestos back then? Dank and smelly and usually wet floors.

BTW the school has a long tradition of chemical jokes. In my day the science crowd would mix up some elixir that would explode when put on hot radiators after a short delay. Scared the bejeezus (originally typed something else there) out of whoever was walking past at the time.

Hello Southern California - bet your weather is better than the East Coast; here in Virginia it's snowing up a storm at the moment. School canceled - never seemed to happen at CH.

We used the tube/tunnels for the same purpose and as you say asbestos was no more than a question on a test paper at the time. Maybe my tube exploring accounts for my gout attacks - they are caused by asbestos and not by port, right?

[Jolyon]

The tube was a nightmare to explore, and has more urban myths than the Big Cats living on Dartmoor.

Mid-90's there were fire doors between house sections, and doors at the base of the house stairs leading into the tubes. Most of these were never locked, and all of them could be opened, using a bank card, in about 5 seconds.

As for the fabled "Master Key" there were a number of them floating about. But there was more than one key needed anyway. I think there were about 9 keys that you needed to have full access to every where in the school, what with the refits and the different ages of the buildings. I managed to have 4 at one point, mainly due to my resourceful elder brother (he was Flid from Maine B/A 82-89), who gifted me 2.

Thing about CH was that in the warmer weater the security went to hell in a hand cart as so many windows and doors were not locked.

The one thing that made all exploring difficult was the night watchman. Why didnt he just slack off and drink cocoa somewhere and give us all a break!

[menace]

Personally I remember having to use the tunnels to get into Hall in really bad weather. They were preferable in some ways to the more mundane march in. They were actually very practical from that point of view, and what the hell did anyone know about asbestos back then? Dank and smelly and usually wet floors.

BTW the school has a long tradition of chemical jokes. In my day the science crowd would mix up some elixir that would explode when put on hot radiators after a short delay. Scared the bejeezus (originally typed something else there) out of whoever was walking past at the time.

Hello Southern California - bet your weather is better than the East Coast; here in Virginia it's snowing up a storm at the moment. School canceled - never seemed to happen at CH.

We used the tube/tunnels for the same purpose and as you say asbestos was no more than a question on a test paper at the time. Maybe my tube exploring accounts for my gout attacks - they are caused by asbestos and not by port, right?

Hello East Coast - today is beautiful, sunny, blue skies etc. But we have just had as much rain in a month as the UK gets in a year. This after 5 years of drought. What does a financial genius do? I'm not one, but spend all my time deciding how much money companies should be loaned.
Tubes were always a magnet for the most nefarious operators and made a great conduit for clandestine movement. They are right about the night watchman, who could always spring a surprise on the careless.

[Great Plum]

The tube was a nightmare to explore, and has more urban myths than the Big Cats living on Dartmoor.

Mid-90's there were fire doors between house sections, and doors at the base of the house stairs leading into the tubes. Most of these were never locked, and all of them could be opened, using a bank card, in about 5 seconds.

As for the fabled "Master Key" there were a number of them floating about. But there was more than one key needed anyway. I think there were about 9 keys that you needed to have full access to every where in the school, what with the refits and the different ages of the buildings. I managed to have 4 at one point, mainly due to my resourceful elder brother (he was Flid from Maine B/A 82-89), who gifted me 2.

Thing about CH was that in the warmer weater the security went to hell in a hand cart as so many windows and doors were not locked.

The one thing that made all exploring difficult was the night watchman. Why didnt he just slack off and drink cocoa somewhere and give us all a break!

One of the myths was that there is more than one level of tube - is this true?