DINING HALL LUNCHES

[Kit Bartlett]

I do not think that staff and others who dined on the dais ate the same food as that served to the rest of the school. Senior Housemasters who lunched with their house did of course do so.
The Head Master (HLOF) dined most days with his school monitors on the centre table of the dais. I remember that visiting Old Blues often dined with their Senior Housemaster on the dais. Alcohol was served.
When Doctor Tommy Scott was appointed as School Medical Officer in 1946 he sat at the Coleridge B table for a whole week eating school food to test the diet of the boys. He did not have any other nourishment elsewhere.
This was presumably to see if we were all being fed adequately.
On another topic visiting Old Blues were not allowed to enter the Masters' Common Room until
they had been left the school for five years. Is this rule still in force I wonder?
Chris Bartlett

[sejintenej]

When Doctor Tommy Scott was appointed as School Medical Officer in 1946 he sat at the Coleridge B table for a whole week eating school food to test the diet of the boys. He did not have any other nourishment elsewhere.

Dr Scott was a man with an over-abundance of commonsense as this illustrates. His awareness of practicalities came out in his first aid lessons - "just keep the blighter alive and let the doctors worry about infection and all that".
Of course 1946 was in the days of wartime rationing and before the details of rationing were publicly disclosed the scientist who devised the amounts actually walked from London to Birmingham (or beyond) making himself a human guineapig.As a result of all his exercise the draft ration quantities were rejigged slightly. Of course, the current uncivil servants would just enforce something like that without testing it themselves first.

[michael scuffil]

I've eaten lunch on the dais in two contexts. One, as a school monitor with the headmaster. The menu was the same, but it was better cooked, and it goes without saying, better served. By Rainbow and his wife, instead of some loutish junior senior who would, like as not, pour the gravy ('juice') all over you.

About 10 years after I left, my wife (a trainee teacher) came to do a project at CH for about three days. We ate at the masters' table. We had a choice!! And the food was much better than the boys got. (But even on that occasion I wasn't invited into the Common Room, which I've never seen the inside of.)

[sejintenej]

I've eaten lunch on the dais in two contexts. One, as a school monitor with the headmaster. The menu was the same, but it was better cooked, and it goes without saying, better served. By Rainbow and his wife, instead of some loutish junior senior who would, like as not, pour the gravy ('juice') all over you.

You are of course writing about Thorn B - we didn't allow them to be come thus so our coats remained safe. IF there had been such an accident then it would be the guilty party spending the odd hour or three with the Sprim getting the coat back to new-looking. There might even be the enforced meeting of hand and the gate at the end of the P O Path as well.The servers knew that and ensured that accidents occurred elsewhere

[NEILL THE NOTORIOUS]

I seem to remember that, despite wartime rationing, we ate pretty well.
It goes without saying, that at that age --- and subsequently, we were constantly hungry !

It is my belief, probably litigatious, that we did better than the general Public, being surrounded by "School Farms" -- tenants of the School !

Of course, this could not possibly have happened !!!

[Angela Pratt 56-63]

At Hertford D.R. (West -headteacher) used to have lunch with the school on the Upper table on Tuesdays I think and a group of girls from a ward joined her. Sometimes there were staff or guests and I once had lunch with BARNES WALLIS and his wife. He was lovely and chatted so much that he hadn't finished eating when everyone else had, so his wife told him off!

[postwarblue]

My late cousin's late husband Gordon Peiser who was in Mid A when the war started told me that CH food improved when rationing came in.

[DavidRawlins]

My late cousin's late husband Gordon Peiser who was in Mid A when the war started told me that CH food improved when rationing came in.

It is generally recognised that the whole nation's nutrition improved when rationing came in.Our nutrition was best in 1942 apparently.
When did Mrs Stephenson arrive?

[Kit Bartlett]

It was Miss not Mrs. Stevenson. I believe that she was Irish and was generally known by the boys as Ma Stive. There was a song used by the boys to the tune of a hymn. "Let us with a Gladstone
Bag praise |Ma Stive for she's a h.g "
She was certainly there in 1942 as I remember her giving my father and I a lift in her car into Horsham once.
She held the post of Lady Superintendent and was in charge of the school Wardrobe and the Dining Hall catering . Quite a responsible job I imagine. What was the job title of Rainbow does any one know? He presumably ran the Masters' Common Room catering . Did he report to the
Lady Superintendent? His predecessor was a man named Scallysbrigg or something similar.
He retired about 1945-46.
Chris B.

[Kit Bartlett]

Were the lunches supplied on the Dais the same as those served to the boys?
I cannot see Housey Stew being offered to the privileged few . I remember the Coleridge A House captain complaining once that on a particular day when presumably he was not lunching there with the Head Master he noticed one of the Masters' wives eating a delicious Russian Salad.
Chris B.

[sejintenej]

Were the lunches supplied on the Dais the same as those served to the boys?
I cannot see Housey Stew being offered to the privileged few . I remember the Coleridge A House captain complaining once that on a particular day when presumably he was not lunching there with the Head Master he noticed one of the Masters' wives eating a delicious Russian Salad.
Chris B.

ISTR that Kit Aitken's lunches were served up on a plate which was collected from the dais. I never bothered to look but I didn't notice anything wildly exciting in front of him.passing us to get food. However, being so close to the dais I never noticed representatives of the other 15 houses so that might have just been Kit. I' m sure he never had crug & flab but that might have been his choice. The fact that Dr Scott chose to have pupils' rations (as opposed to food from the dais) suggests that dais food was not an abnormal practice.

[eucsgmrc]

ISTR that Kit Aitken's lunches were served up on a plate which was collected from the dais. I never bothered to look but I didn't notice anything wildly exciting in front of him.

I remember very much the same. I think the food was often nominally the same as ours, but much tastier: solid pieces of lean meat, and richer gravy, for instance. Sometimes he would get something completely different from what we were eating.

Sometimes he would pass on to us what he didn't fancy. Once this was an exceedingly ripe bit of soft cheese that arrived instead of a dessert. I ate it. In the middle of the following night, I woke up, threw up spectacularly, and promptly went back to sleep. I felt fine the next morning, and I still eat smelly cheese without a qualm.

Now and then, Kit would get an orange instead of dessert. He was not a man of whom one expected elegant accomplishments, but he could peel and eat those oranges very delicately using a knife and fork without ever touching fruit or peel with his fingers. I imagined that this was a skill he had learned in his army career, where handling fruit in the officers' mess was probably social death.

One evening (according to his own account) Kit arrived rather late for dinner, probably delayed by an extra Little Bricky or two. By the time he had finished his main course, everybody else had left, and there remained on the table a bowl of strawberries and a bowl of cream. Naturally, with nobody to observe his gluttony, he helped himself lavishly and piled on the cream - before adding another spoonful of cream, and then another. At this point, his narrative would dwell at length on the anticipation as he took the first spoonful of luscious cream-drenched fruit from his bowl and raised it to his lips ... and then he would deliver his two-word punchline "bl**dy mayonnaise!"

[sejintenej]

One evening (according to his own account) Kit arrived rather late for dinner, probably delayed by an extra Little Bricky or two. By the time he had finished his main course, everybody else had left, and there remained on the table a bowl of strawberries and a bowl of cream. Naturally, with nobody to observe his gluttony, he helped himself lavishly and piled on the cream - before adding another spoonful of cream, and then another. At this point, his narrative would dwell at length on the anticipation as he took the first spoonful of luscious cream-drenched fruit from his bowl and raised it to his lips ... and then he would deliver his two-word punchline "bl**dy mayonnaise!"

LOL! Yes, Kit did have a way with words though I hadn't heard that one. There was one from his English classes: "Call a spade and not a bl***dy shovel". I still use that occasionally

[J.R.]

With Coleridge B table right next to the dais, I'm pretty sure that our masters ate exactly what we got.

I certainly don't remember any plates travelling down from the dais to NTF !

[NEILL THE NOTORIOUS]

I know, for a fact, that LM Carey, was eating what we were, when I was senior enough to see.
AND it was delivered by a "Trade"

(Of course it was Wartime --- it may have become more sophisticated later !)