I taught mathematics at Duncan Hall School for the academic year 1961/62, in what would now be called my gap year before I went up to Trinity College, Cambridge to read mathematics in 1962. Subsequently I specialised in set theory and the foundations of mathematics; for the last ten years I have been Professor of Mathematics at the University on the tropical French island of Reunion in the south Indian Ocean. I have a website in French there and in English at dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~ardm.
In the 1968 photograph, the Junior Head, at BR20FL is called (Mrs) Hilda Delf. (In my previous mail, I was worried that I might have misremembered the first letter of her surname, but I see that the report of the Junior Head on the excerpt from the Duncanian of April 1968 is signed H.D.)
Mr Cassidy at BR19FL had been in the Air Force and, I dimly remember, had a hand in running the small group of Air Force Cadets in the school. It was he who took me, riding pillion on his motorcycle, for my first ever pub crawl.
Mr Searles, at BR21, always very well dressed, encouraged the musical life of the school. As owner he kept a certain distance from his staff, but he had his feet on the ground, and I always found it helpful to talk problems over with him.
Mr O'Brien at BR22 was the Headmaster who appointed me head of Mathematics for the year. With hindsight I was probably a bit too immature for the job; I kept order in my classroom but only just! He and I didn't always see eye to eye.
I remember Eddie Firth at BR23 with pleasure. A tough disciplinarian, and very much an asset to the school.
Mr Matthews at BR24: you give his name as Dan but I knew him as Gerald. He had been a lay clerk at Chester Cathedral, and an accomplished pianist, but when his hearing deteriorated badly he had to give up music; in fact he gave me his collection of classical piano music (all inscribed "Gerald Matthews"), which I still have and use, being a keen amateur pianist; and some LPs.
I recognise Mrs O'Brien at BR16; she was pleasant to everyone but, as I remember, rather kept out of the life of the school.
Two masters from my day are not seen in the photograph: perhaps they had by then retired or moved on. One was the Senior Master, Russell Kirby; and the other was a fellow Cumbrian of Firth, the biology master Brian Goodfellow (at whose request I taught such chemistry and physics as I could remember).
David Rawnsley at BR 26: by 1961 he was already an Old Boy of the school and was in evidence part of the time as a friend and assistant of Mr Searles.
As you say it may be a vanishing system of education; more's the pity. I think Duncan Hall when I knew it did try to present serious ideas to the boys, though some of the boys were not much interested in learning as they knew they would inherit farms in due course. I remember one form to whom I struggled to teach general science; for the last lesson of the Michaelmas term, I dropped the science and instead read them some "Just So" stories and poetic fragments from the anthology called "Spells", by F. McEachran, which perhaps you know; to my astonishment the form were fascinated!
I am sure I learned more from being there than I managed to teach!
Yours sincerely,
(Professor) A. R. D. Mathias
