The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #75264   Message #4084452
Posted By: GUEST,Eric Hayman
21-Dec-20 - 10:40 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Floreat Totnesia (Charles Rea)
Subject: RE: Origins: Floreat Totnesia (Charles Rea)
When I attended 'Totnes Grammar' in the 1950s, I recall we sang a slightly shortened and altered first verse and two line chorus:

In Totnes town in days of old
There lived a Norman baron bold,
And by his work and by his deed,
Totnes boys learnt how to read.

In saecula - permulta
Floreat Totnesia!

I had the pleasure (?) of having Claud Digby Thornton Owen as my headmaster, Gaffer Smee (also a reverend) as my physics master, a woodwork master who always smoked a pipe (ah - the smell of the glue pot!), B B Knight as my English master - and others; a Mr Phelps comes to mind, perhaps biology or geog.   

Another memory was when there was no third of a pint 'school milk' for some reason - a foot and mouth outbreak, perhaps - and we were issued with Horlicks tablets. Yuck!

In the song, "Totnes High" was Totnes High School for Girls. And Redworth the local Secondary Modern. In those days it was realised, and accepted, that different children had different educational abilities.