Geoff Jackson was at Ardingly College from 1944-49. He joined the Junior House, moving up to G Dormitory (Warren House) in the Senior School in 1945.
Why Ardingly?
“The reason I came to Ardingly: we lived in South London, really nearer Epsom, and I was at school – I got a scholarship to a grammar school called Rutlish, which was in Merton. And we were a bit worried because doodlebugs were starting and so on. I turned up at school one day to find that school wasn’t there, it had completely disappeared! So my father thought, ‘This is not a good place to be at the moment’, so he sent my mother and younger sister up to Derbyshire where my uncle was sales manager of Denby, if you know Denby pottery, so they went up to live there, and he enrolled me at Ardingly, which is nice and safe.”
First journey to Ardingly
“The thing that I remember first of all – of course, you’re very acute to everything in a new environment like that, and getting the train at Victoria, with lots of other boys, and ending up in Haywards Heath and changing trains to the branch line, getting off at Ardingly, and then that walk up from the station. It was September, and dark, and I remember looking up and seeing the school all lit up, and thought how lovely it looked. That’s probably my first impression of Ardingly.”
Signs of war
(Interviewer: How aware of the war were you?)
“Not a lot, really. Because we didn’t really get much news, you know, radios weren’t so much in evidence in those days, so not a lot.”
“A chap that joined the same year as me, he was a couple of years younger, actually, but his parents and my parents met up with each other on a leave Sunday and they were good friends, but he – after he had been there for three months – got in touch with his parents and said ‘Bring me home, doodlebugs are landing all around us.’ And I don’t think I saw more than a couple of them flying over, actually.”
The Land Army
“Oh yes, I was in the Land Army, because I was diagnosed with short-sight just about the time I came to Ardingly so I couldn’t play soccer – so going into the Land Army was brilliant. We ploughed up the Nine Acre and we actually provided all the vegetables and potatoes for the school throughout the war. There is in one of the history books a picture of me driving a Fergie tractor.”
(Interviewer: Is there? How wonderful!)
“Yes!”
(Interviewer: Who was in charge of the Land Army?)
“Miller.”
(Interviewer: And what was Miller like?)
“He was very agricultural. I mean, he would have made a damn good farmer!”