Wood Norton Hall Welfare and Club Guide
Alec Bray
Here is the club guide that we were issued with on TO 16:
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Peter Cook, John Howell
TO16; that would have been 1963? [Ed: Yes]. TO15 ran from 18th March 1963 to 24th May 1963. I note with interest that (on page 15) the Warden was plain ‘Mr’ Oldman. He must have been promoted to Major before TO 18?
Jim Kinally
He was the Major on PTO 7 1960.
Accommodation D Block
Mike Jordan
About the only part of Wood Norton Hall remaining in BBC ownership is the Phoenix (the TV studio).
I have just looked at my lighting course video (the first thing I ever edited electronically from proper tape as a mere Communications Engineer) and found a couple of memorable things.
Have a look here:- https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bxpbbxbixqxvz1m/AAAC0FzhM6JdwDtjxxfUfFyia?dl=0
Also a few photos from various sources!
Geoff Fletcher
(Click on the pictures below to see a larger or clearer version of the picture:
Click the “X” button (top right) to close the larger picture)
Evesham! On the left, the posh block for C Course gentry – on the right, D Block for us erks in 1964 (TO19).
The rooms Block D were very small and sparsely furnished. Two beds,two chairs, one wardrobe(?), a radiator under the single window, a wall light above the head of each bed, and a single overhead room light. Remember the BBC towels? The attached photo was taken from the top of the wardrobe in order to get the widest angle possible with my cheapo camera. My room mate Mike Fenner insisted on doing a Daz advert. Mike left BBC Tech Ops around 1966 to pursue a successful career in an entirely different field.
This is the only other interior shot of Block D I could find in my files. Bill Marsh was recovering his bed from the toilets at the end of the internal central corridor after some practical joker had placed it there while we were all down at the Club in Evesham one evening. I don’t know what happened to Bill – I think he was from BBC Manchester. I well remember the “Do Not Jump’ notices above each set of three or four steps that punctuated the corridor to allow for Block D being built on a hillside. Did anybody ever bang their bonce I wonder?
Dick Blencowe
I had forgotten how tatty D Block was. It was also possibly our first exposure to asbestos at the BBC!
Roger Bunce
A 8mm film featuring the interior of D-Block, the rooms, etc., in 1965…
Peter Neill
Of course, D Block is long gone, but here is picture looking down the same pathway in July 2014, also the boarded-up entrance to A Block.
(Click on the pictures below to see larger versions of the pictures:
Click the “X” button (top right) to close the larger picture)
Robin Sutherland, Chris Booth, Tony Crake,
Wasn’t there a lurid tale of someone being killed riding a motorbike down the D Block corridor, hitting his head on the stepped roof? It happened sometime shortly after TA ( Induction Course) 15 (Sept-Nov 1962) and It apparently happened prior to September 1963 when TA17 arrived –it seemed to have been quite a recent event.
Clive Doig
The story that a guy died when he drove his motorbike down the corridor and down the steps.
The date must have been well before 1964, as we heard the same story when JPTO 1 was there in 1959!
Unless someone can verify it did happen, I think this tale is apocryphal, and was only told to stop others doing the same.
Anyone really know its origination?
Does anyone remember Brenda “Knees”? …and what happened to my boat that sank on the way to Fladbury?
(Oh for the Droitwich motorbike sales, and the nurses’ quarters in Worcester!!)
Mike Jordan
I can add the Mini in the D Block washrooms, someone turning off the main breaker halfway down the staircase corridor – and blacking out the sick bay which was in one wing on the west side, the ring main problems (always broken) in the “rest room”, someone putting a herd of sheep in Harry Crossley’s room, the trick of putting the beds across the top of the wardrobes just inside the room so it looked as if they had been stolen, I think someone tried their own audio distribution system with it fed over the heating pipes as a cable (bit like tapping on the pipes in Prisoner of war blocks or prisons?), collecting all the “local” phone codes between WN and London to make cheap calls home from the payphone in D Block by dialling repeated local codes – but although the dialling worked, the speech was too low to hear – apparently Gippie-Joe got across this scam and threatened BBC with an investigation – etc etc etc…
We won’t go to the “Le Mans” start up the drive on Friday evenings to beat the jams on Evesham’s Workman Bridge heading back to “the smoke”.
Bill Jenkin
Ah yes, ‘Radio Conrad’ we called that radiator pipes and electric conduit audio distribution system.
Alasdair Lawrance
I was on TO 20 (1965?) and someone made a tape loop saying something rude about Mr. Skilton. This was put on to a (valve) Ferrograph whose output was patched in to the PA system. Tape machine switched on, and by the time it had warmed up and made a slow, elegant fade up to full volume, the perpetrators were well away. No names, no pack drill…..When we left, the room numbers were swapped from side to side in the corridors, and the key tags swapped at random. Must’ve taken ages to sort out.
Geoff Fletcher
Our course also indulged in loads of pranks, one of my favourites being carrying Eric’s (one of the sound radio tech ops) bubble car into the bogs at the bottom end of D block through the double doors to the exterior and leaving it there for him to find. It was a perfect fit, and a sod to get out again. Other jollies were putting supposedly subliminal captions into our prog saying “What’s under the front lawn?” and other ruder comments (they weren’t!); competitions to see how many blokes we could cram into Dick Greening’s mini with him still being able to drive it to the Club (sadly, our sound radio tech op girls wouldn’t join in with this one); timed races in various cars on the Woodnorton circuit – off the road through the main gates and up the drive, past the hall etc., then down the winding drive to the road and back to the main gates again; sabotaging the Hullabaloo and Custard themed BBC Raft at the river carnival so it slowly sank; illegal cocoa raves late at night in the sound girls’ strictly entrance forbidden Dorm X; attempting to coast down Fish Hill in our cars without touching the brakes; the aforementioned radiator comms early warning circuit causing much frustration to CreepingJesus as he attempted a raid to catch us doing something we allegedly shouldn’t; stripping arch practical joker Hugh Thomas’ side of his shared room completely – even down to his curtain – and distributing everything throughout D Block as sweet revenge from his victims; and on and on. All the courses will have their “Tales of old Evesham” and most will ring bells I guess. I always thought of it as a cross between Stalag Luft 3 ( complete with cries of “Goons in the block!” on occasions) and boarding school! Great days.
Chris Booth
http://www.vtoldboys.com/etd/etd.htm has an awful lot of Evesham stuff.
Jeff Booth
I too cut my BBC teeth in Stalag ‘D’. My first stay was in 1977 so I am feeling very young indeed! I was on A41. Happy days indeed!
Albert Barber
What about what happened after studio bashes when certain people were banned from restaurants.
Tony Crake
Lots of Evesham Pix on flikr <https://www.flickr.com/photos/russell_w_b/3948913002/in/set-72157622441573530/>
Pat Heigham
The Evesham Club was a house in the town – remember?
One night, someone said – there’s a film tonight in the studio. This was “Dr. No” off 16mm Bell & Howell – we raced back to watch. I had no inkling that later, I would be working on a couple of the later Bonds (“Golden Gun” in the Far East, and “Spy” in Sardinia, studio stuff being at Pinewood).
I got the jobs thanks to a brilliant training by the BBC! So I have a lot to thank the Corp for, and am devastated at the callous way that the studios have been destroyed.
Link to Destruction at Television Centre
