The Old Pocklingtonian Old Pocklingtonian 2017-18 | Page 16

FROM THE ARCHIVES
POCKLINGTON’S MUSICAL
HERITAGE
We were pleased to hear from OP David
Fitchett (56-63) who as a regular listener to
London’s Classical FM, has followed other listeners
reporting their musical heritage. He reminded us
that Pocklington School has a link to Mozart through
the late Sefton Cottom (51-90). He remembers
Sefton proudly telling a music class of this link and
this prompted David to find the connections. Here
are his findings, which may be of interest to other
former pupils of Sefton and generally.
(Frederick Arthur) Sefton Cottom FRCO (18
September 1928 - 21 January 2011) was an organist
and composer based in England. He was born on
18 September 1928 in York. He was a student of
Sir Edward Bairstow and his assistant organist
at York Minster. Graduated in music from Durham
University. He was a Fellow of the Royal College of
Organists and of Trinity College of Music in London.
He moved to Pocklington School in 1951 and
became Director of Music
RESTORED WWI LORRY
DELIVERS BELLS
The Pocklington Thursday Club was formed by
an eclectic group of individuals as a regular lunch
get together in the 1990s, with late staff Nigel
Billington (58-88) and Terry Hardaker (64-
95) as leading lights. It is still meeting annually, and
the 2017 gathering once again assembled at The
Feathers in December.
As part of the proceedings, the Thursday Club
throng heard from John Marshall (64-70), the
organiser of the annual lunch for the past decade,
who updated the diners on his recent trip to Ypres
in his restored Thorneycroft World War I lorry.
Sir Edward Cuthbert Bairstow (22 August 1874
- 1 May 1946) was an English organist and composer
in the Anglican church music tradition. Bairstow
was born in Trinity Street, Huddersfield in 1874.
He studied the organ with John Farmer at Balliol
College, Oxford, and while articled under Frederick
Bridge of Westminster Abbey received tuition from
Walter Alcock. He studied organ and theory at the
University of Durham, receiving the Bachelor of
Music in 1894, and the Doctor of Music in 1901.
After holding posts in London, Wigan and Leeds, he
served as organist of York Minster from 1913 to his
death, when he was succeeded by his former pupil
Francis Jackson. He was knighted in 1932.
Sir Frederick Bridge From 1863 to 1867 he
studied composition with John Goss, professor of
harmony at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1875,
he became organist and master of the choristers at
Westminster Abbey.
of the Chapel Royal, London, and. The young Goss,
however, became a pupil of Thomas Attwood,
organist of St Paul’s Cathedral. Attwood, a former
pupil of Mozart, was a musician of wide sympathies
and kind disposition.
Thomas Attwood (23 November 1765 - 24 March
1838) was an English composer and organist. In
1783 he was sent to study abroad at the expense
of the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV), who
had been favourably impressed by his skill at the
harpsichord. After two years in Naples, Attwood
proceeded to Vienna, where he became a favourite
pupil of Mozart. On his return to London in 1787 he
held for a short time an appointment as one of the
chamber musicians to the Prince of Wales. In 1796
he was chosen as the organist of St Paul’s Cathedral,
and in the same year he was made composer of the
Chapel Royal.
Sir John Goss (27 December 1800 - 10 May 1880)
was an English organist, composer and teacher.
Born to a musical family, Goss was a boy chorister
John has been restoring anything old – vehicles,
steam engines, machines or buildings – for most
of his life. His first project was while he was still a
Pocklington School pupil in the 1960s when he paid
£5 to Dr Fairweather for an old Talbot car that lay
abandoned at the back of Faircote across the road
from the school. John was first featured in the pages
of the Pocklington Post in the late 1980s when he
put the millwheel at Stamford Bridge corn mill back
into working order, and his passion for old vehicles
and machinery has continued to this day.
But it was his most recent project that captured the
interest of his Thursday Club companions. In 2016,
John discovered a partly scrapped Thorneycroft
lorry in a farmyard, and set about bringing it back to
life. The vehicle had been delivered to the War Office
in February 1915 and is thought to have been used
in France during WWI, before becoming a London
brick company delivery truck, then eventually falling
into disrepair.
John turned back the clock, found replacement
parts across a wide area and carefully restored it to
pristine condition. It is now believed to be one of
only four of the WWI lorries still in existence, and
the restoration project had added poignancy when
John was asked to make a special delivery in it. St
George’s Church in Ypres is an Anglican church built
in the 1920s as a memorial to the 500,000 British
and Commonwealth troops who fell in the nearby
battlefield. But the church never got its intended bells,
until now when a recent appeal funded an initiative
to hang new bells in the tower to commemorate
the centenary of the end of the war.
The ring of eight bells were cast at the world’s
foremost bell foundry, Taylor’s of Loughborough,
who arranged for their bells to be transported from
the Midlands via the Menin Gate memorial to the
battlefield church in Belgium in authentic style on the
back of the Thorneycroft lorry. John was gratified to
be asked to undertake the journey, commenting: “It
is simply the most honourable thing I’ve ever done.”
The Thursday Club is planning to follow in John’s
footsteps and arrange a trip to the WWI battlefields,
while John intends bringing his lorry to Pocklington
and to school in 2018 as part of the town’s centenary
commemoration of the end of WWI.
Read more here. https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/
news/great-war-lorry-saved-from-scrap-set-to-hit-
road-again-1-8027833
(Article: OP Phil Gilbank 67-74, Photo credit: Old Glory
Magazine)
OP John Marshall (64-70) with his restored Thorneycroft World War I lorry and ring of eight bells he delivered to St
George’s Church in Ypres.
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