No . 131
The Trusty Servant
Peter Tombling ( Coll , 46-52 ; Co Ro , 57-98 ) died on January 16 th , 2021
Henry Thompson ( Co Ro , 64-00 & 05 ) pays tribute :
Peter might have been , and could have been , a concert pianist – if only he hadn ’ t been a brilliant mathematician , an all-round sportsman , a Renaissance man with the instinct to inspire : he needed pupils and a community , and Win Coll was to be the beneficiary of his prolific talents for over 40 years . So he wasn ’ t a concert pianist – but Win Coll being Win Coll , Peter ’ s musical talents found constant scope here and form a central pillar in his friends ’ memories of him .
Peter came into College from Horris Hill in 1946 . Before the modern system of plodding up the scholastic ladder year by calendar year , promotion through the divs depended purely on academic progress ; Peter accordingly reached the pinnacle of VI Book 1 in three years , by Short Half 1949 . He became Aul . Prae . and Captain of College VI before leaving in 1952 to do his National Service , based just up the hill in the Green Jackets ’ Depot , commissioned in the King ’ s Royal Rifle Corps , at one point as its Assistant Adjutant .
His longest absence from Winchester followed , to read Maths at Cambridge as a scholar of Trinity College . From there , with a First in those days when the proportion of firsts awarded was about 5 %, he was snapped up by Sir
Desmond Lee to return to Win Coll as a don in 1957 . When I arrived in 1964 I soon became aware of Peter as one of the chief referees of Win Coll football , played in Short Half for the last time before being swapped with soccer to Common Time in the following year . He was indeed an established authority on the arcane rules of that wonderful game . Meanwhile he and Tommy Cookson went off in Short Half 1965 to teach for a year at Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven , Connecticut . A letter written when Peter was in
America refers to a sense of freedom at being somewhere other than Win Coll – but he returned to the fold in 1966 .
Following on from his National Service , Peter joined the CCF , commanded by Robin Somerset . Robin recalls him as not by nature a man of military inclinations but as a great contributor and support in the Corps , whose broad spread of activities well suited his all-round capabilities . His particular interest in map-reading led him to the then relatively new pursuit of orienteering , which he taught to me and in which I duly succeeded him as civilian-attached officer i / c . In this as in other contexts Peter ’ s advice was always worth hearing – and worth waiting for after considerable clearing of the throat - a mannerism that many of us happily remember .
Peter had returned from America to find Julian Smith occupied in setting up a choir for St Michael ’ s Church , newly acquired as the junior chapel since the boys had numerically outgrown Fromond ’ s Chantry . ‘ Do you play the organ ?’ ‘ No ,’ replied Peter . ‘ Well , you do now !’ His years which followed as Michlā organist under Julian ’ s direction provided a valuable basis for the musical lives of many Wykehamists , as the choir also engendered Nice Choir when we went to sing the Easter services on the French Riviera , and thence the Kingsgate Singers , a significant
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