Albatross133

Tavistock

Tavistock Comprehensive School Badge

Origins

     Funny how life is. I was born in Tavistock while my parents were living on a farm near Brentor on Dartmoor before moving on to do other things in other places around South Devon, places such as Broadclyst and Budleigh Salterton. During this time I went to a Roman Catholic convent boarding school in Dorset before, at the age of 11, moving up to London and secondary school. In all that time it never occurred to me that I would go back to Tavistock in 1974 to finish my schooling, and why should it? Tavistock was nothing to me; I was happily enjoying life in London and God knows where and how I would have finished up had my mother decided to go back down to Devon to take up the position as manager in a fishing club on the River Tamar, but more on that later.

I spent my last two school years, my 6th form years, at Tavistock Comprehensive School, where I wasn't exactly what you would call the brightest "light bulb" in the class, which probably explained the headmaster of the time, Mr Sleep's lack of enthusiasm at welcoming me to the school. No, I was just your common or garden "could do better" student, but that didn't stop Tavistock (or Tavvie to the initiated) from having an influence on me.

And why was it such an influence on me? Probably because I was 17/18 years old at the time, and life seemed like one long endless summer holiday!Even if I did have to walk a couple of miles, in all kinds of weather, to go from my home at the time, Endsleigh House, to the nearest bus stop some 2 miles away at Milton Abbot to catch the bus to go to school in Tavistock.
Up hill, down dale! Endsleigh House is down near the river Tamar. Ah!! That lovely winding and climbing road up to Milton Abbot... no, not even that seemed to put a damper on things, not when you did it with the mates... or occasionally in the company of a certain Liz from the farm down the road.

As mentioned above, I came to Tavistock because my mother, having decided she had to get away from London, had taken the position of hotel manager Endsleigh House Fishing Club, the old estate of the Dukes of Bedford. As I was still of schooling age, or still needed educating, I can't decide, my Mother enrolled me in Tavistock school to pass what were then to be two very interesting and eventful years, but not necessarily from an academic point of view.

Tavvie School
(Click on photos to enlarge)

     At this point, It is important for me to explain that both of my older brothers went to Tavistock School before me. But when I spoke to them both years later, it was my oldest brother that I would talk to about my time at Tavvie when I was seventeen, sharing stories about what happened in the meadows or at "Goose Fair" during that time. My middle brother must have felt excluded because he was a little younger when he was at Tavistock, even though he frequently had to travel from Endsleigh to pick me up when my The Yamaha 80cc * broke down, ran out of fuel, or kept "inexplicably" colliding with hedges.

* I had never forgotten that motorbike. It really opened up horizons, and imagine: no more pedalling up the road from Endsleigh to Milton Abbot. On the other hand, I also remember merrily riding back after celebrating passing my "O-Level" exams... but that's another story.

The Bedford

     Although Tavistock is around twenty miles away from Plymouth via the A386, but not having any means of (personal) transport at the time, trips to Plymouth were an expedition. We were essentially cut off from the outside world, and as such, Tavistock was our centre of gravity.

Map of South Devon

Centre of Gravity

For readers who may not know, I need to explain why Tavistock was the centre of gravity to us, as it has been for multiple generations before. To put it into its geographical and historical context, Tavistock, as many know, was/is an isolated cattle market and old stannery (tin mining) town, situated on the edge of the moors (see map above). The train line had been abandoned years before, and the bus service was – I'm talking about the 1970s – regular but limited, with no buses after approximately 8PM. This left us with little choice but to generate our own social life and nightlife, and while we did go visiting the surrounding region for a change of scenery, going to Plymouth, much less Exeter, did not figure on the list of "must" things to do. For my part I preferred to go up to London, when I could, to see old friends, but those visits were rare and eventually petered out until later on when I was at Plymouth Catering College.

Evenings, parties and other gatherings were deliberately spontaneous – yes, I know, a real oxymoron. How can something be deliberately spontaneous? So when I wasn't working at Endsleigh, I came into Tavistock and met with the friends. The starting point of the evening was invariably the Bedford Hotel, or rather the bar next to it (since closed, transformed but definitely still haunted by the spirits of Saturday evenings past). From there we either went to another pub, someone's house or, depending on what was happening, the local dance hall, near the bus station. But what really was our favourite destination, weather allowing, was the meadows beside the River Tavy or, transport allowing, further out of Tavistock. Occasionally, we would also pile into cars and drive up to Postbridge or some other forsaken place in the middle of nowhere for a party. This wasn't always the case, and we could occasionally be seen roaming around West Street and King Street dressed up in some disguise or other on the way to someone's place for a party..

Lower 6th form 1973
(Click to see the big picture)

Revisited and Reunion

I went back to Tavistock in 1998 and sat down one Saturday evening in the square in front of the Town Hall, across from the church. There was more traffic than I remembered, but otherwise everything appeared to be the same, but then I took a second look. Firstly, the traffic seemed to be driving through Tavistock, not stopping. Secondly, my favourite watering hole from before, the Bedford bar, was now a conference room, but the Bedford itself still had that same sedate, provincial, staid look about it. And then it occurred to me that the preferred watering hole of Tavistock Comprehensive's 6th form had certainly been transferred elsewhere; after all, Tavistock didn't lack pubs. But the fact was I wasn't back in Tavistock to go in search of bygone times but simply to recall, in the space of a holiday, that period of 1974/1976 before moving on.

In retrospect, the increase in traffic I'd noticed was life's way of telling me that things had moved on, that times had changed and that Tavistock Comprehensive's 6th form's centre of gravity had very probably moved somewhere else, for example, twenty miles down the road, to Plymouth..

In 2002, I accessed the now defunct website, "Friends Reunited" and joined the Tavistock school's old students' page. I was surprised by the number of old school contemporaries registered, something like 60 from my year, as well as from the old Upper 6th and as many from the 5th year I used to know. What I did notice, however, was that my "friends" from that time, the Phil Janes, the Simon Faulkner-Halls or the Theresa Cooks, weren't registered or not directly in the list but could be contacted through someone registered. This didn't surprise me.I recall there being a sort of schism, with nerds and so on to one side and the Bedford crew to the other. I occasionally checked the website, now closed, in the hope that some of my old friends were there, in vain. I hope they are living their lives and that life has been sparing, if not good, to them.

*NB. I had, since then, exchanged messages with one or two of them who remembered me and learnt that there are/were periodically old school class reunions that seem to come off quite well, but as I'm living abroad, I'm out of touch or simply happy with my life and don't see the need to reminisce yet about times gone by.