Central School Document Library

I have just looked at the excellent website and can give you a few more names for the staff photo. Back row: Extreme left next to Smith is Arthur G. Dalby-Phillips (ex fighter pilot). On the right of Smith is Mr. Wootton. Middle row: Between Topliss and Ron Cook is Frank White, the school secretary. Front row: Next to Bill Grimley is the cook with who, reputedly, Frank White was having a fling! Next to Polly Wood is Mlle Helene Waggene (not sure of spelling but we called her the covered wagon. Exchange French teacher and I have it on the authority of Nutty Almond, (PE teacher and now retired Head teacher) that he did definitely have a liaison! One other I can give a first name to on the middle row next to Harold Simpson is "Joe". I will still try and look out some more material as per my other email.

I was a Central Closet cleaner between 1947 and early 53, was in the Athenians and gained a colour in athletics, though my wife refuses to believe it, going on to represent Derby in the County Games. Now well into retirement from being an Assistant Director of Education in Derbyshire. Like you rejoicing in children and grandchildren.

Further email: April 14th, 2005
… I can add two more school plays to the list though sadly I have no photographs. The first was produced in 1951 and was Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1. I remember it well as I played the part of Sir John Falstaff with the aid of some cushions. Sadly they would not be needed now! The second was "The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" in which I played the former clerical gentleman. I don't know the name of the playwright but it was researched by Ron Cook who also produced the play as he did for Henry IV. Joe Hawksby did the usual with the scenery for both and "Eric" Coates composed some additional songs and music for the Two Friars. Both plays were presented in the school in the two rooms overlooking the Rose Garden.

Robert Greene (1558-1592) was the author of romances, pamphlets, lyrics, and plays. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford, and led a remarkably irresponsible and dissolute life. The comedy Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay was probably written and produced around 1589, and was first printed in 1594. Its account of the marvellous exploits of Friar Bacon is drawn from The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon, a sixteenth-century account of the legends surrounding the Oxford Franciscan, Roger Bacon (b. 1214). The play was an important influence both on Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Ron Cook would have known this!