In July last year, I contacted the school and requested that I be allowed to visit and photograph two old friends of mine. Rachel arranged it for me and the day before Grand Day, I visited the school and was reunited with those old friends: the Barnstaple and Colonel Poyntz Bugles.    

I was at the school from September 1960 to July 1967.  My first two years were in Wolseley which was a junior house at that time.  Upon arrival, we were asked if we had any preferences for a musical instrument as learning to play one was compulsory. I had an older brother who was a bugler in the Fleet Air Arm and wishing to emulate him, I opted for the bugle.  In those days there was not only a band, but a Corps of Drums as well.  If you were in the “Drums”, you went to the Drummers’ Hall (behind the swimming pool) under the watchful eye of an ancient CSM named Ernest Halsey better known as “F Co”.  He had earned this soubriquet because in times past, he had served as the housemaster of “F Company” as one of the houses was known in those days.     

In the sixties, we had Band and Drums lessons built into the timetable so two or three times a week we would have formal lessons with F Co learning to play and to read music. At lunchtimes, the Band or Drums played, to march the houses up to the dining hall.   On Sunday church parades, the Corps of Drums alternated with the Band and we would march up and down in slow as well as quick time and play more sedate pieces during the inspection.  Occasionally, we would be required to play fanfares on cavalry trumpets which were valveless like bugles but were longer and in the key of F so lower than the Bb bugle.    

In my middle school years, when I had moved to Wolfe, my senior house, there was a major reorganisation of the Band and The Corps of Drums with the arrival of a Royal Marines bandmaster, Captain Ernest Smith-Ough.  Capt. Ough amalgamated the Band and Drums and we gave up playing our flutes.     

In 1965, my fifth year, I was awarded the “Adjutant’s Bugle” aka The Barnstaple Bugle, the highest award for lower years and in 1966 I became the school’s senior bugler, known then as “The Headmaster’s Bugler” and was awarded the Colonel Poyntz Bugle. My memory of the honour which accompanied these achievements still gives me huge pleasure: playing The Last Post and Reveille at various Dover churches on Remembrance Sunday (sometimes alone), being chosen by Capt. Ough to accompany him to The Fairfield Halls Croydon where he was an invited conductor to The School Bands of America who were on tour in the UK at the time.  I remember that eight of us played his own composition, “Bugler Brown” on that occasion. Another prestigious event was playing in The Royal Tournament, an annual showcase for the Armed Forces held at Earl’s Court.  Annually, we put on a “Beating The Retreat” display at Crabble Athletic Ground in Dover. I loved playing “Sunset” at that event.    

Jay Nicholson (1960 - 67, Wolseley & Wolfe)