Nigel, the Essex Record Office archives are listed online here: http://seax.essexcc.gov.uk/ . If you log in as a Guest and enter "Folk club" in the search box, you will see that they have a lot of material.

I suspect that your days at Brentwood would be at least slightly happier if you were there now, since the school did what would have been unthinkable back in ye olde tymes, and allowed girls in throughout. But the portraits of the formidable old headmasters still stare down in the Memorial Hall....plays are still performed in the open-air Shakespeare Garden.... the prep boys still wear their grey shorts and plum school caps....ah, this is getting to sound more like "Goodbye Mr. Chips" every minute, isn't it ? ;)

- jeanie