MADAM,

‘Algy,’ as we boys called him, or ‘Socks’ as most people know him familiarly, was an inspiration to us during our time at Monmouth School.

He seems to have appeared on the staff by the summer of 1950, as form master of 3A. By the autumn he was in the now vanished Bricknell Library, with 5A as his form.

By the summer term of 1951 he was with the Classical 5th where he stayed for some years. His knowledge of Greek and Latin was without equal. I remember being very touched as he recounted an anecdote of a former pupil coming back to see him and reciting a passage from Ovid or Vergil he had learned by heart. I failed to remember the whole passage but “nox erat et placidum carpebant fessa soporem” has stayed in my mind.

Archaeology was his other consuming passion, an interest that greatly commended him to the headmaster, the Revd CHD Cullingford who was keen to broaden our education beyond the academic curriculum. The digs on the Doward became very popular and I made drawings of his cherished potsherds, something I later recalled when drawing for a Cambridge project for the late Joyce Pullinger.

One morning he came into the form room beaming, to tell us of his recent acquisition in a general sale in the town. It was a genuine Greek vase, in terra cotta, white and black, which he held aloft to show it proudly. It appeared he was obliged to bring away a bath tin and other paraphernalia as part of the lot.

Dr Naylor Firth and I remember the next moment vividly- in slow motion!

He placed the pot carefully on the shelf behind him, a shelf I knew as a junior librarian to be unsafe. It slowly tipped forward to send the treasure crashing onto the dais, reducing it to fragments.

Poor Socks’ face was a study! Boys can be cruel on such occasions, but it must have been a measure of our respect for him, that there was utter silence and we left the room greatly subdued.

However, typically, he stayed up all night and pieced it together with supreme skill, proudly holding it aloft once more the next morning!

I shall always remember the pleasure of seeing him at meetings and outings of the Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association and again as an increasingly rare familiar face at Speech Day, along with the wonderful Stephen Bucknall.

No doubt characters of a different kind will emerge from the present generations, but it is hard to believe that there can ever be again such personalities as Mr Elstob, Mr Davenport, Taffy Philips, the Revd Joseph, Stephen Bucknall, and of course, Socks.

He will be greatly missed.

Keith Underwood

Chepstow