In 1963, Fr Peter Bourne, a Physics teacher at the College, led a select group of boys in making a film about St Edmund’s. It is now available to view online, having previously been for sale on DVD.

It is named Carry on St Edmund’s after the Carry On series, which was a long-running

collection of low-budget British comedy films most popular in the 1960s. The scenes are

marvellously redolent of that era. It is a gem and essential viewing not just for those who

were at the school in the 1950s and 1960s, but anyone interested in seeing life at the College at that time.

The film lasts 49 minutes and chronicles the summer term of 1963 starting with the departure of the Standon Flyer from Liverpool Street Station on the first day of May. There is cricket, and lots of time spent on athletics and swimming sports (organised by the Garvey brothers with clipboards). The CCF and the Prep School also get good coverage.

We see Fr Bertie Westbrook, the former Housemaster of Challoner, who had a glass eye, bustling in the Tuck Shop. The wash block by the swimming pool, which is now the girls’ changing rooms, looks particularly spartan. The Headmaster, Fr Denis Britt-Compton, and boys mess around with a boat on the Bath Pond, and the President, Mgr Reginald Butcher, presents the prizes.

There is a musical accompaniment and a voice commentary that was originally on a separate tape and the two do not always synchronise perfectly, but that is the way it was at the time.

The film can be viewed on the College’s YouTube channel here.