During my stay at the school, the greatest collective achievement of the boys was turfing the lower field. Since the complete operation could only have been the result of some considerable opportunism, organisation, and a fair bit of 'insider trading'. I can only conclude at this time, that the inspiration for such a move must have come from interested and influential parties within the school. The only person to whom all these attributes could be readily credited would have been Captain Evans who was himself a keen sportsman.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, the lower field was a dust bowl in summer, and a mud bath in winter. Even the keenest of our players, sportsmen, and athletes were far from happy with it's surface. The concrete 'cricket pitches' in the centre of the both the junior pitch and the senior pitch were a hindrance during the winter football season. During the summer, when cricket matches were played, they were covered with a matching strip of coir matting. At best, the coir matting was a makeshift surface on which to play cricket, and at worst, with age and weathering, holes would appear, the corners would curl up, sometimes causing players to trip up over it. It involved much extra work in having to be rolled up and put away at the end of each playing day.

An early (undated) photograph of the school taken by F.Snary, of the Castle Studios, 26, Castle Street, Bristol, includes what are now the playing fields. It shows a gentle grassy slope reaching from the Lower Road right down to the Mariner's Path. A later picture postcard taken by E.H.Wright and postmarked May 8 1906, shows the same continuous slope, but with a flag staff added to the eastern end of the area.

A later, (also undated) photograph taken from below the boat house, shows the addition of the mizzen mast of the 'Formidable' to the western upper end of the playing fields. In January of 1932, a publication called 'Town and Country News' published a picture of the school taken from the Western end of the lower field. The picture is undated, and could have been taken some time before. By this time, the Lower Field is shown as levelled, and with a set of goal posts erected.

What was to become the 'Cub's Pitch' appears at this time to be in the process of being 'cut and filled' in order to level it off at about six or eight feet below the Lower Road. A stout hedge, about six foot high has been established on the Lower Road, separating it from the bank of the Cubs Pitch below. There is no sign of the two life boats which by 1938, were mounted complete with their davits, one at either end of the Terrace.

By 1938, when I arrived at the school, the Cub's Pitch was well established with goal posts, - removable in summer for the placement of practice nets for cricket. The mizzen mast area was strictly 'Out of Bounds' to all boys because the mast was unsafe to be climbed. A tennis Court for the officers had been established at the extreme western end of the Cub's Pitch level. This was frequently used on the week ends in the summer months. The area of the tennis courts was bounded by a high wire fence to keep the balls in, and the mast area by a lesser fence to keep the boys out.

By 1938, a wide concrete stairway had been built which descended from the Cub's Pitch in one flight of steps to the half way terrace which overlooked the Lower Field. From there, the wide steps continued down to the Lower Field proper, making quite a climb from the Lower field to the Terrace, as we were to discover on many occasions when we were required to report to the Terrace from the Lower Field 'AT THE DOUBLE!'

All this levelling and grading work must have been carried out over many years, long before the advent of the very mobile mechanical shovels and graders such as we have today. I have seen no evidence of when and by whom this grading work was done. I have speculated whether or not the boys would have done it over the years.

In August of 1941, we were informed that the Lower Field was going to be covered with turf in order to make a decent playing surface. The turf was to be obtained from the Portishead Golf Club which was about half a mile from the school along the Nore road. In order to effect a good drainage of the finished surface, and prior to the turf being laid, the field was to be covered with a layer of coke, which was to be brought from the same source of supply from which the school received coke for its boilers. In those days, industry and the civilian population had little use for coke, which is a by product of gas making. It could be obtained quite cheaply from most gas works.

Whilst the coke was to be transported in trucks from whichever Gas Works it came from, there was to be no such mechanised assistance with respect to the turf. The turf was to be transported from the Golf Club on the school's two gun carriages, suitably modified to carry turf, and to be pulled by the boys.

The whole operation involved quite a lot of planning, and not a little bit of luck! In the first place, it was quite adventitious (for the school) that part of the Golf Club was to be 'acquired' by the government to grow wheat for the war effort. What luck! that an area of turf, more than sufficient to cover the lower field, was to become available within such a short distance from the school. Had it been much further away, it might not have been possible for us boys to pull it to the school. The cost of lorries to transport it (even if they had been available during the war for such a non essential task) would have been considerable.

It was further providential that the school learnt of this land acquisition, and realised that the turf would be available. There was a time element involved, in that we were told that the turf had to be removed as soon as possible from the Golf Course, in order that the ground could be ploughed in readiness for its new usage.

Mr. Wellman, assisted by Mr.Pugsley was in charge of the laying and levelling of the coke, followed by a few inches of soil, and finally the turf. Pegs were driven into the ground at pre- determined intervals, the tops of which were our level markers. We soon learned just how much higher than the pegs we could lay the turf before batting it down with the back of our spades.

The level between any two pegs was then checked with a long reasonably straight plank. as long as there was no gap under the plank, it was considered level. As we progressed, the levelling pegs were either removed or hammered down until they were well below the surface, and the resultant holes filled in with a piece of turf.

The Seamanship classes were responsible for providing, and maintaining the gun carriages. Each gun carriage consisted of two sets of wheels, each on its own axle. One axle had been used to mount the gun, and the other to carry the ammunition for the gun. They could be linked to each other, or broken apart as for instance, on those occasions when the gun had to be manipulated into tight corners, or across streams etc. For our purposes, the guns and the ammunition containers were removed, leaving two pairs of wheels and two axles linked together. Across the top of the axles, the seamanship class lashed several stout planks giving us a platform probably three or four feet wide, and about ten feet long.

Each gun carriage had a rope attached to the front. Each rope had up to twenty loops or handles spliced along it's length. For ceremonial purposes, the ropes would have been beautifully covered in a fine, duck canvass. For our more utilitarian purposes, the canvas was dispensed with. Because there are several gradients on the road between the school and the golf course, plus of course, the very steep school drive a similar, but shorter rope was attached to the rear of each carriage. This was used as a brake, and was manned according to the steepness of the gradient being navigated.

'Turfing' became our top priority, everyone other than boys on special duty had to take a turn at it. Whilst the evenings were light, each division took turns on duty. Of the roughly fifty boys per division, so many would be assigned to the golf course, so many to laying the turf, and the larger number on the gun carriage squads. Jobs were rotated so that some boys did not do all the heavy pulling work. Boys on punishment of any kind had to work every day.

The squad at the golf course had to gather the turf at a single point, ready for when the gun carriage arrived. The turf had been cut with I suppose, a plough share, leaving it in lengths about twelve inches wide, and with three or four inches of soil underneath, the action of the plough blade half turned them over. The boys had to cut these lengths of turf into manageable lengths - about eighteen inches to two feet from memory - and bring it to a central point in readiness for loading on to the gun carriages.

The turf was carefully loaded onto the carriages - some along the length of the carriage, and some across - in order to 'tie' it together. This practice worked well, and to our credit, I can't remember any incidents involving turf falling off the carriages for any reason.
The journey back to the school was not a long one. It was 1941, and there was not much motorised traffic on the road other than the buses which ran from Bristol to the terminus at the top of Nore Road about every hour. Apart from the steep descent of the school driveway, the hardest part of the journey back was the incline which runs from the (then) Glenwood Cafe, on the corner of what is now Glenwood Rise to the main gate of the school. It is a long, continuous gradient, and required a sustained effort on the part of the boys. On reaching the school, we would go beyond the main gate, then manhandle the carriage so that the rear end of the carriage was facing down the drive. The towing rope at the front, then became the restraining rope at the rear.

Considering the steepness of the drive, and the poor surface - especially of the lower part - I think we did exceptionally well to deliver the scores of loads of turf that we did without any serious accidents or spills.

Turfing the lower field not only gave us a first class playing field, it also enlarged the area that we had hitherto been able to use. Before we began, the seaward boundary fence was a six foot high chain wire fence - necessary to prevent too many balls going on to the beach! Beyond the high wire fence, the ground owned by the school, and bounded by the railings and Mariners Path, widened as one proceeded east toward the swimming pool end of the grounds. The excess ground on the seaward side of the fence was known loosely as 'the tip'. This was a bit of a misnomer, because nothing other than garden rubbish was ever tipped there. However, it was overgrown with blackberries and various other weeds. During the summer months, clearing weeds at the tip was one of the jobs that defaulters were given as part of their punishment during leisure hours.

When the turfing operation began, lorry loads of fill materials were dumped at the tip, taking the limit of the playing field right out to the Mariners Path, and giving the school a diagonal boundary fence, and probably another fifty or so feet of useable land at the eastern end.

There are several mentions in the Punishment Book in connection with the turfing of the Lower Field. Two that I happened to notice consisted of : Page 27. 11/9/41, (offender) 'Absent from 8.10AM Turf parade, holding up parade 20 minutes' - along with other offences, this boy was disrated to 5th class. The same boy, 3/10/41, 'Leaving Golf Links and going scrumping (stealing apples)'- six strokes of the cane. Another, Page 114. 'Absent from place of duty, (Golf Links). Picking blackberries on Mariners path - 3 days extra work.' If the punishments seem excessively different, it is because of the boys' behaviour in general at the time.

The offence that really brought memories flooding back, and a smile to my face, is on Page 318. It reads: 9/9/41. 'Fostering dissension among gun carriage party. Refused to work properly. Pleaded 'Under school age'. One month's privileges stopped. Public apology.' He was made to stand in front of the whole school whilst we were on parade, and apologise to us. I doubt very much whether any of the boys saw him as a threat. Quite the contrary, I think most of us harboured a sneaking admiration him for daring to speak his mind.

It was late autumn 1941 when the field was finally finished. I left the school before it would have started to grow the next spring, but I did see it on many occasions in later years. It was certainly an excellent playing surface, and one of which the school could feel justifiably proud.