vvvvv	WEB-PAGE STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION APRIL 2020 INFORMATION ABOUT THIS SCHOOL IS IN VERY SHORT SUPPLY. IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS, MEMORIES OR MATERIAL TO CONTRIBUTE  PLEASE CONTACT: Alcuin-House@chaseside.org.uk ALCUIN HOUSE PREPARATORY SCHOOL FOR BOYS 1927-1962 87 OLD CHURCH LANE STANMORE MIDDLESEX Click here to go to the main Alcuin House page The following memoir was received from former Alcuin House pupil  Ivor Ellis and is reproduced here with his kind permission: Alcuin House Preparatory School - a Very Long Time Ago By Ivor Ellis (1939 -1946) At around 9 o'clock one morning, a little boy walked hand in hand with his big brother along Lansdowne Road, Stanmore.  From No. 36 to the junction with Old Church Lane was perhaps 150 yards.  They didn't have to cross any roads.  They reached the corner and went through the school gates.  The younger boy had already started to cry but nothing his brother could do would pacify him.  When the crying developed into screaming, the elder boy turned round and went back to No. 36, delivering the wretched infant to their mother. I don't really remember what happened next but I do know that my mother marched me right back again.  She handed me over to Miss Dalgleish.  It was September 1939 and I was 4.  A bit early for school life, of course, but my mother was recovering from an operation and it had been decided that I should have to go off to school.  I have no memories of that particular teacher or of what she taught me during the next two years.  There were just three classes – hers and those of Miss Keast and of Mr. Yeo himself.   In September 1941 I started in Form 2.  Now I didn't like Miss Keast and my two years with her were not great.  Under her, learning was divided into subjects, two of which I confess I didn't like a bit.  Any pupil knows that, if he or she were bad at a subject, then the relationship with the teacher would always be a strained one.  As I never could 'do' History and Scripture – I was for ever bad at remembering those sorts of facts – Miss Keast didn't like me either.  And as for Drawing, the less said the better;  she got us all to do a drawing one weekend of the dying Lady of Shalott and my parents, whose illustrative skills were no better than mine, were driven mad trying to help.  On the other hand, I was in my element with Spelling and Languages.  I was eight when I first began studying Latin;  I loved it and it opens up so many doors later on. In 1946 I gained a scholarship to Brentwood School in Essex, to time in with the family's move from Stanmore.  My brother Derek, six years my senior, had won a scholarship to Merchant Taylors', later to become a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries;  in due course I became a Fellow of  the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.  So the standard of early teaching was clearly excellent. There is only one other boy I remember at the school – my closest friend Donald Shepherd, who lived at No. 8 Lansdowne Road.  Although the school was advertised as being for boys only, Lynda Martin, who lived opposite the school, attended. The only formal games I recall playing were Rugby matches which Mr Yeo, clearly a devotee, refereed.  One memorable afternoon, playing scrum half (as I always did), I scored two tries.  I can still hear, from the bottom of a pile of boys, Mr. Yeo calling out “TRYYYYY” for one of them. Of Stanmore Village I remember nothing except a tea shop run by a lady called Ena Newton;  my mother used to treat me to a visit there on the last day of school holidays.  We had two Polish officers billeted with us at different times of the war – the first an army man, and the second John Glod (a name never forgotten) who was stationed at the RAF base at Bentley Priory. At some stage of the war a Morrison shelter was built into one of our reception rooms in which I slept.  I have just two memories of the war itself;  the first is remembering the general euphoria on the morning after the Dambusters' raid, and the second is watching from the garden a Doodlebug (V1 flying bomb) chugging along westwards over the allotments to the back of us.  I can still 'hear' the chug stop, which meant then listening out for the explosion, which in this case was very audible. My father, who had served in the first war, worked throughout the second war in the City, and I sometimes used to cycle to Canons Park Station to meet him off the train. At that time, on emerging from any underground station, one had to read the notice indicating whether there was an air raid in progress.   My grandfather lived with us for a time and, as Methodists, we went every Sunday morning to Edgware Methodist Church;  he was organist there and he gave me piano lessons from when I was 4.  Sunday evenings at home were spent listening to the wireless and singing Methodist hymns around the piano. Of Alcuin House building I can remember nothing. Boys were given bottles of milk at morning break (⅓ pint) which we drank in the playground. I don't remember having any school lunches so I suppose that I went home in the middle of the day.   This was all a very long time ago and, at 85, my memory is not quite what it was, but I hope that the above will be of some general interest to historians of Stanmore and past school life there. Ivor Ellis Click here to go to the main Alcuin House page Email:Alcuin-House@chaseside.org.uk	vvvvv