No doubt Principal Venables WOULD have had ample scope for making some choice comments about us, although by this time it was not seen as such an heinous offence to be "…..seen walking with a female on the road," nor to be,"…..given to smoking," nor even to be caught, "……reading novels on a Sunday," as had been the case a hundred years earlier!

In my time Francis Venables was Principal of the College: he was the first to hold that appointment and not be in Holy Orders – although he did become a Reverend in retirement. The whole ethos of the college stemmed from him: Culham expected a sense of discipline and order, and there was an insistence on standards which doubtlessly would have caused riots in a later era! However, at the time we cheerfully accepted the college’s system and its rules. For instance, being informed that one must ‘sign in’ each night and was only permitted to go home at half and full term was’no big deal’ (in modern parlance). Many of us had just spent two years under military discipline and perhaps some of that time in very distant places, with no hope of returning home for months on end - if at all. Some, who had experienced the dangers of a volatile Cyprus or the Suez Canal Zone, the barren wastes of Aden, chasing bandits in Malaya, or the atomic testing zone of Christmas Island – would have wondered what all the fuss was about!

I quickly discovered that I had become a part of an intensely loyal community: pride was taken in the ways College presented itself to the outside world, in how well we performed on teaching practices, the positive comments from the schools, and how good were our performances in sports and other activities. Bishop Wilberforce, in his speech at the laying of the foundation stone of Culham, left people in no doubt that,"…..the office of the training of Christian children is a high office," and thus was set the benchmark for generations of students.

Muscular Christianity had been a feature of Culham life ever since the days of ‘Soapy Sam’ and we had much to be proud of. Cricket was the first organised sport to be played, right from the opening of the college in 1853. It’s interesting to read the account of an early match played against Steventon, a local village: "There was an air of gaiety about this game. A (college) drum and fife band played on the ground and greatly enlivened the proceedings. When a batsman made a few runs the band marched round the field playing a martial tune; when a man was bowled, a mournful air was played!" According to one student of the time, "It was equal to another good bowler on our side." So you see, the Dax town band which follows the French rugby team around and the ad hoc bands which are now a feature of some of today’s soccer grounds have a long tradition behind them!

The most famous of all Culham’s cricketers must surely be John Snow, the England fast bowler, who was a student there in the early1960s.

The first Association Football match of which there is any record at all was played in 1866. As the Football Association had only been formed three years earlier, it’s possible that the College football club was one of the oldest in the country – and certainly older than most of today’s league clubs. It’s interesting to note that, at that first match, "…..the participants were collected (together) and had the rules read to them from a small book." One wonders if that idea ought to be adopted as standard procedure before matches in this present era – and that the officials and commentators should be likewise informed!!

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the College won the Oxfordshire County Cup on a number of occasions and included in its fixture list some teams such as Swindon Town and Headington (later Oxford) United, which went on to gain Football League status. The college was always renowned for the quality of its soccer teams.

One item of local interest: an Old Culhamite, Tom Midgley, of 1875 vintage was a founder member and the first captain of Burnley F.C.

Other sports were regularly added to the list and included rowing, cross country running (called ‘harriers’ at the time), tennis, Rugby football, hockey, athletics, badminton and basketball. The efforts of some of us, not brought up on rowing as youngsters, are perhaps best summed up in the following lines:

The willows wave and whisper up above,

The fleecy clouds up in the heavens float high;

The sun shines down with a caress of love,

The lazy river gently brushes by.

But peace, alas, is doomed to reign no more:

‘Tis rudely shattered by a careless oar.

C.B.E.

The RFU was founded in 1871 but it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that Rugby Union began to be played – albeit on an irregular basis. It was 1922 before there was a regular fixture list – no doubt due to the record numbers of Welsh students then being admitted.! The pinnacles of success on the Rugby field were reached in the 1950s: the team of the centenary year won 24 out of 26 matches and averaged more than 20 points per game. They also had the satisfaction of beating a Harlequins side containing three internationals in the Oxfordshire Seven-a-Sides. The team of 1957-58 likewise lost only two matches; they had a player selected for Ireland and in the Sevens had a battle royal with Wasps The highlight of this was a flying Culham tackle on the then-current England winger, Ted Woodward, which dumped him far back amongst the touchline spectators. I’m proud to say that in my first season we did even better by losing only one match, although we didn’t do so well in the Sevens – a grim- faced Rosslyn Park ensuring that yet another of the first-class clubs wasn’t going to be embarrassed.

In my second season, Methodism’s Westminster College appeared on the fixture list, having relocated from London to the edge of Oxford. Although we didn’t know it at the time, that was my first meeting with Gordon Little of Longton Methodist Church, who is a Local Preacher and a former teaching colleague at Tulketh High School. Most of our opponents we would play only once in a season, but we played Westminster twice – and gave them a bit of a beating each time as a sort of ‘Welcome to Oxford’ gesture, I guess!

Roy Smith

(to be continued)