Hewitt's History Files

When he and his classmates moved into Lancing College at the end of the war when the Royal Navy moved out, they were a tough, self-sufficient, independent unit.

"The windows were protected by blast walls, brick walls ten feet high", he recalls. "House by house we spent many many hours knocking those walls down with a sledgehammer.

"Health and safety would have had a fit. I used to walk along the top of the walls with a sledgehammer knocking the bricks out from under my feet!"

It was an unusual start to his schooling in West Sussex at an unusual time all-round. It was the first time he'd seen the school he'd been attending in name.