N O . 1 2 1 T H E T R U S T Y S E R VA N T
Peter Ellyatt Cattermole
Dr Andrew Wolters fondly remembers :
Dr Peter Cattermole was born on 14th February , 1950 in King ’ s College Hospital , London . His unique and special qualities must have already been recognised , for he was delivered by the Queen ’ s gynaecologist .
He went to Canford and then to Exeter University , where he met Ann . After university he moved straightaway into teaching , first for two years at Millfield before moving to Winchester in 1976 , where he soon became Head of Chemistry . You could not wish for a better leader than Peter . He ran the Chemistry and later the whole Science Department from the front and absolutely superbly . His teaching too was masterful and legendary . His pupils revered him . He was a truly great communicator . He was , perhaps , even more in his element with his chemistry demonstrations , which he presented with great élan and flamboyance – he well recognised that the best teaching was the right balance of education and showmanship . Peter told me that the greatest sin in teaching was to be boring . ‘ Never bore the boys ,’ he exhorted . He never did – every word was considered , beautifully delivered , gold dust . As Head of Department he cared about everything and everyone . He nurtured and protected the fabric of the building and the people in it as if it were all an extension of his very body . Our problems were his problems . And he solved them .
Did he have faults ? We are all flawed , are we not ? Peter was a seeker of perfection . Is that a fault ? If , in the search for perfection he could occasionally display a touch of irascibility , if he was not averse to a little contretemps , one thing was certain : as soon as the cause of the imperfection had been remedied then all became swiftly well once more and the smile and twinkle rapidly returned . In fact he loved to laugh and his grin positively lit his whole face .
Peter simply liked things to be right and he made sure they were right . Paradoxically , given this preference , his complexity was such that I sometimes thought he was at his happiest when things went wrong . One day he was demonstrating to a class the reaction between phosphorus and oxygen and he dropped a fairly large chunk of phosphorus , which , as luck would have it , fell down a hole in the bench which led to a waste trap and thence to the drain . The waste trap , presumably where the phosphorus now lay , was well below floor level . Peter knew that as long as the phosphorus was wet it was safe but if it dried out it would ignite . ‘ Right . Everybody out . The laboratory is closed .’ Peter himself left and reappeared ten minutes later in his boiler suit and carrying a good assortment of tools . I said ,
With the Duke of Edinburgh , May 1982
‘ Peter , is this not a job for the Maintenance Department ?’ ‘ Maintenance Department ? Absolutely not . This is a job for me .’ Up came the vinyl flooring , up came the floorboards , down went Peter into the abyss , clang went the pipes as they were merrily dismantled and I rather fancied I heard Peter singing : a man absolutely in his comfort zone . The phosphorus was duly extracted and the lab returned to normal .
The resolution of the paradox is clear . It was not perfection itself that Peter enjoyed ; it was the solving of the problems en route to perfection . And he was a solver of problems par excellence and , apart for his tireless work in the Science Department , he put this trait to particularly good use when it came to helping the boys with their university and career plans – they flocked to him and he loved sorting out the tricky minutiae associated with the dreaded UCAS or Oxbridge application forms . Needless to say , he was equally brilliant on various committees , whether academic or otherwise . He was an indefatigable Chairman of the Salaries Committee ( what a man to have on a young don ’ s side in this , let ’ s be honest , rather vital matter !).
In the late 1980s Peter oversaw the rebuilding of a large section of Science School . He played a major role in the specifications and ideally would have carried out all the work himself . That of course he could not he found at times a little irksome and certainly tiring . After its completion he took a well-deserved sabbatical . Then , after another decade of continued superb leadership , he took an even more well-deserved two-term sabbatical , during which he came to the conclusion that it would be a good time to move on to new ventures .
4