Neville Rowland Bradshaw 1896-1975

Headmaster LCGSB 1930 - 1960

Biographical Sketches by M V Hobden

First Impressions

NRB 1936 HOSE of you who were at school in the period from 1930 to 1960 will, I am sure, carry an indelible memory of Neville Bradshaw, our founding headmaster. Each of your recollections will differ to some degree, depending on the experiences you had of him. To most of us he was simply the headmaster figure presiding over morning assembly and he did not intrude into our lives except at rare intervals when we, perhaps, were "on the carpet" or when he presided over major school functions. However remote he seemed to you, he had a major influence on your life, for he set the tone for the whole school.

On occasions he would take a class of younger boys and seemed very jovial. With older boys, especially those in the sixth form who had more contact with him, he would sometimes reveal opinions that suggested a harder streak to his character that left some feeling distinctly uneasy.

He was a headmaster whose outlook and values dated back to late Victorian times. He seemed to me to be an authority figure rather than a father figure. He inspired awe and respect but not much warmth. Given the pupil/headmaster relationship that is not entirely surprising. He probably realised that few of us shared his views. He was 40 years behind the times to us.

He seemed to have very inflexible attitudes. Debate, from his point of view, was a head-on clash between opposing opinions. The idea of changing one's opinion to accommodate elements of another did not seem part of his nature - or was it that as the authority figure his views were not negotiable? He had his own agenda and he was very much "in charge". He expected - and demanded - respect, and heaven help anyone who didn't give it.

Politically he seemed very conservative, even reactionary, at times. Religious observance and ritual seemed to be of some importance to him and he loved giving sermons at the Monday afternoon services - sometimes one felt he had more than a touch of theatrical vanity about him. But perhaps this was the attitude that headmasters of grammar schools of that era were expected to adopt and so maybe it was all part of the job. Given the role he played, it would not have been easy for his pupils to see him on level terms and few of us had much opportunity to know him when we were grown men.

He could be kind at times and undoubtedly did his very best for boys who he thought would benefit from his influence. If a boy began to show some qualities or potential that could be developed and take him on to greater things he was quick to spot the possibilities and do whatever he could to allow that potential to develop. He was very much the gardener at work in his academic hothouse bringing on the plants that showed most promise, sometimes neglecting the less gifted.

He was invariably carefully dressed, always in a pin-stripe suit, well-spoken - no trace of a regional accent - and clearly a staunch middle-class conservative professional man. He smoked a pipe frequently and was socially at ease, if a little aloof, from his staff: a strict disciplinarian but not excessively so. He rarely lost his temper but those occasions when he did - one remembers the outburst over the cinema visit to see "Henry V" - are well remembered by those who were present!

Ambitions and Motivation

His main ambition and goal, as far as we could see, was to turn what could have been a very humdrum county secondary school into one that would rival the public schools. In fact he once admitted, in an incautious moment, that he was hoping to get entry to the Headmasters' Conference list, which effectively confers public school status. He never did, of course. The dice were heavily loaded against a state-funded county grammar school making it into those circles, however good its record.

He held the values of the public schools in high regard and took a great deal of trouble to mould our school to their customs as far as was possible in a day school. We had school houses, prefects, a chapel (eventually), rugby played against other top schools, boys sent to Oxford and Cambridge, much emphasis on character building - all these he held in great esteem. Yet, curiously, from time to time he made comments that implied that in some ill-defined way our school was actually superior to many of the public schools! This puzzled me. It was as if he rated the public school ethos highly but disapproved of the public schools. Why?

Why did he persevere with LCGS for 30 years when he could easily have become the headmaster of a good public school? Did he see LCGS as a greater challenge? Did he become so attached to what was his own creation that he eventually could not bear the thought of moving on to pastures new? Did he have a covert radical or evangelical agenda where the advancement of bright boys from a less privileged background was more important to him than administering to the run-of-the-mill sons of the wealthy?

His Experiences and Development

Much of our personal character is moulded by the experiences of our early years. Our genetic inheritance may well determine our temperament and set limits to our ability but our early experiences mould our character, our attitudes and motivation. Chance and fate play their part, but in most cases they alter the circumstances of our lives but not our aim. If Neville Bradshaw had not become headmaster at LCGS then almost certainly he would have done something very similar at some other school. He seemed determined to make LCGS his life's work.

To understand him, his outlook and motivation we need to understand the environment, influences and experiences of his younger years. That is what this biographical investigation sets out to do. Hopefully it will give an extra dimension and colour to our perception of him and enable us to see him in an altogether different light than previously was possible.

Researching his Past

Finding out about his background and early life has not been easy. Our research is by no means complete and never will be. The jigsaw puzzle that was his life history is now very old and like most old jigsaw puzzles there are many missing pieces, some that will never be found.

He himself did not make it easy for us. He was very reticent about his background and rarely made any reference to it. Even members of staff who had worked many years under his direction had little idea of his origins. Neither, as it turns out, did he tell his own children and family very much about his past. His relatives have helped us a little but it has taken the collective effort of many others to discover the details of his origins and early days.

Starting Points

So what would you, an average Old Lewesian, deduce from your memories of him? From his manner and speech one might deduce that he was a product of the public school / Oxbridge system. We knew he was at Merton College, Oxford and an MA - he wore the black gown and red satin-lined hood at the weekly church services - and we presumed that he had had some teaching experience before becoming the headmaster of LCGS at the early age of 34. We guessed that he must have been in the Great War though he never said much about it.

He had been born in the last few years of Victoria's reign and his very early experiences would have been coloured by the mood of that period. The Empire was becoming a problem, the country was recovering from a long period of depression in agriculture and industry, society reflected the stagnation in the upper echelons of power, and social reform was still being resisted by the governing classes, though some progress was being made by the more enlightened. Life for the labouring masses was still grim and the class into which a child was born was the principal determinant for its future. But some signs of progress were emerging as the 20th century began - reforms that had been born of a long struggle through the Industrial Revolution were beginning to take place - not least in education, the key to social change.

Speculation on his Origins

He was actually born in 1896. So what would the first few years of his life have been like as the old Queen came to the end of her over-long reign? Presumably he was brought up in a conventional middle-class home in a leafy suburb, cushioned from the grinding poverty of the labouring classes, surrounded by whatever comforts and attention that his devoted parents could bestow?

His early schooling took place in the Edwardian period. With the change of mood in the country at large with the accession of Edward VII, his schooling would have occurred in a less constricted but still formal atmosphere. One presumes that he would have been sent to a small private school followed by prep school, then progression to public school or possibly one of the great grammar schools? His later schooling would have ended in 1914, when he was 18, just as the Great War erupted. Whatever plans he had for his career would have been swept aside. He would then probably have enlisted in the army for service in France. After some terrible experiences in the trenches he would have returned to England, and in 1919 we know he went up to Merton College, Oxford. After that there must have been some teaching experience and by 1930 he was sufficiently capable to be entrusted with the headship at Lewes.

That is the sort of thumb-nail sketch of his early life that I had built up - based on my impressions of him. But this brief sketch, based on very little hard fact, is no firm basis for understanding him. A biography needs to be founded on detailed evidence of his early years. Only when that has been done does one have some chance of understanding the man. So let us put the speculation aside and get to the facts.