A Short History of Quintin Kynaston School (Page 19)
The Great Dispersal (1939)
Appointed Headmaster on Percy Abbott's retirement in 1934, Frederick Wilkinson sought to humanise what he saw as an "examination machine" and restore the religious life of the school. Distinguished visitors were invited, including author and diplomat Sir Harold Nicolson and liberal academic Sir William Beveridge whose 1942 Report laid the foundation for the Welfare State. Developing the arts side, Wilkinson produced Vaughan Williams' masque based on Dickens' Christmas Carol at the request of the composer. But he found the cramped conditions impossible - the Polytechnic building at 309 Regent Street was shared with the ever expanding adult Institute. "We need more freedom, more tranquillity ...more opportunity to be ourselves", he wrote. After three years, he left to become Headmaster of Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith.
Bernard Worsnop had graduated from King's College, London (KCL) in 1913 with a First class degree in Physics, served in the Royal Engineers and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1928. Dr Worsnop He was appointed Head of Maths and Physics at the Polytechnic Institute in 1932 after a spell as Senior Lecturer at KCL. Five years later he became the most highly qualified Headmaster the Polytechnic Secondary School had ever had. Coming after the aloof Abbott and the idealistic Wilkinson, he was quite unlike either. But, almost before Dr Worsnop had a chance to settle in, the "baffling problems" (as Wilkinson had described the lack of a playground) were solved but in a way no one would have wanted.
Assistant Master C.E. Eckersley wrote:
On Friday morning, September 1st [1939], there came an event in the life of the school that none of us who took part in it, boys or staff, will ever forget. We all assembled in the familiar Hall, sang, as we had done so often before, O God our help in ages past and heard the voice of the Padre leading us in prayer. We listened, deeply moved, to the quiet kindly words of Sir Kynaston... "You are going away; it may be only for a few days, it may be for a few months; it may be even longer. No one can tell. The Polytechnic will seem very strange without you, but wherever you are, our wishes, our thoughts, our prayers, will be with you...Good-bye."
In fact, the school was never to return to Regent Street and seventeen years were to pass before it again had a permanent home. One of the boys gave this account of what happened next on that fateful Friday:
At about 10.30 we had the order to get ready; then...the order to GO. ... We marched out of that so familiar building ... two police constables stopped the traffic for us to cross over Regent Street and proceed to Oxford Circus Station. Here we re-assembled on the platform... The train pulled in and we sped off to Ealing Broadway. Here the job of re-assembling took place again. All along the line, prefects were heard calling the roll...[After some delay,] we started off (on a Great Western train)...It was not until we were ten miles out that the Guard came to tell use that our destination was Cheddar.
When they arrived at tiny Cheddar Station, only four of the 21 coaches were alongside the platform. But the boys greatly enjoyed jumping down to the track-side and walking along it to the station. Expecting a girls' school, the reception committee were more than a little surprised when 400 boys disembarked accompanied by an all-male staff. Nevertheless, "Kind hearted villagers handed out jugs of cool, clear water, and apples. Everyone was parched." Then the boys boarded coaches for their final destinations - Weare, Blackford, Theale and Wedmore - and billets found. But the situation was most unsatisfactory, with boys scattered far and wide in hamlets and tiny villages. Crucially, there was nowhere to run a school. Few pupils complained but Dr Worsnop would be making other arrangements...
Sir Kynaston Studd was President of the Polytechnic and chaired its Board of Governors (which also ran the school). He had been Lord Mayor of London and President of the Marylebone Cricket Club (M.C.C.) He died in 1944 and his son Bernard became President.