Author: Michael Vooght

I enjoyed three very happy years at Winbury, my parents having moved to Maidenhead from North London in 1949.

The contrast from my prep school in London was huge, and mainly due to the kindness and gentleness of John Spicer. I loved the relaxed atmosphere of the set-up, so typified by the boys being allowed to have their own garden plots. The smell of 'the greens' stewing through the mornings was another matter, but equally memorable!

Like several other boys, I went on to Magdalen College School in 1952, aged nearly 14, where I spent 5 happy years, largely due to its emphasis on music, and its initiating me into rowing, a confidence booster for someone who never excelled at ball games.

No University but Oxford seemed appropriate for my next stage, and I was very fortunate to go to St Peter's Hall, just before it became 'College'. I read Theology, having already declared a desire to become ordained in the Anglican Church.

After graduating, I went to Theological College at Chichester for 2 years' preparation to become a deacon in 1963, and a priest a year later. My first 'job' in South East London was a bit of a shock after the glories of Oxford and Chichester. After that, the whole of my active ministry was spent in the Diocese of Gloucester, firstly in building a new district church in the mushrooming housing estates of Cheltenham. It was during my 6 years there that I met a most attractive student from Cheltenham Teacher Training College. Elizabeth and I got married soon after she began her first teaching job nearby. Our only son, Tom, was born a year later.

Having told her that I thought I was cut out for either school or hospital chaplaincy, she found herself as 'The Rector's Wife', aged only 25, in Minchinhampton on the Cotswolds. 13 years later we moved to Thornbury, a market town with extensive housing estates, 12 miles north of Bristol. When retirement loomed up in 2002, there seemed to be no other logical place for us to become 'first buyers'- after 39 years in Church property - than Thornbury, where we still live, and where I am very happy to take a back seat in parish life, apart from taking Sunday services about once a month.

Otherwise retirement is spent in amateur music [piano playing in a music workshop, and singing in a choral society], growing fruit and veg on our allotment, and 'mentoring' a number of clergy who come to review where they are 'up to' in their lives, in total confidence.

I have been delighted to catch up with Winbury very recently, thanks to the huge energy and enthusiasm of Mike Chapman, whom I have been happy to meet again at a Taunton based reunion for a group of us who had attended both Winbury and Magdalen College School. It was very good to spend time together with Michael Clark [with whom I used to cycle to Winbury every day, and who I have seen, with his wife Lesley, in the last couple of years], David Harrold and Mark Randle, as well as Mike Chapman.

Michael Vooght - 30/04/2013