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A Tribute by Evelyn Nicholson

On the flyleaf of The Centenary History of Ayton School some words of John Drinkwater's are offered as a starting point for reflection:

When you deliberate the page
Of Alexander's pilgrimage,
Or prudently to judgment come
Of Antony or Absalom,
And think how duly are designed
Case and instruction for the mind,
Remember then that also we
In a moon's course, are history.

Many moons have run since George Alston Watson took stock of the school's first hundred years, and its first four Headmasters in 1941. John Reader is the sixth Headmaster, and he, and we who are, or have been, its members are part of its subsequent history. As pupils we play a different part and for a shorter time. The Head sees the thing as a whole and tries to nurture its spirit and guide its direction. And how well John Reader has done that is a thing that most members of the school will realise only slowly as his influence upon them falls into perspective in the future. I, who worked with him as Headmistress until 1967, have already had time to reflect and to appreciate the part he has played in making Ayton a better school, - good as it was before, for he, too, built on history.

As a boy John Reader went to a school not unlike Ayton, the Friends' School, Saffron Walden in Essex. Then, as sometimes happened in those days, he did a year's hard labour as a Student Master at Penketh Friends' School before going on to Manchester University. His friends of those days talk of his boundless energy, his wit, his absent-mindedness, his enthusiasm for games, and his interest in the Student Christian Movement. It was during this time that he joined the Society of Friends. He distinguished himself in various sports and played cricket for the University. His chief academic interests were History and Economics in which he graduated in 1937.

After a year's training for teaching at Woodbrooke, he came to Ayton as an Assistant Master, - the year before war broke out. The school was very different in those days, much smaller, more compact, chiefly made up of boarders, and with many more resident staff. John Reader was one of four or five unmarried masters, resident within the school, who crammed a great deal of life and fun into the very brief periods of spare time that a boarding school leaves its staff. The war seemed to heighten both one's sense of obligation and one's desire for life, and during this time, John Reader put a tremendous amount of energy into everything he did, - games, drama, looking after B. Dorm, in air-raids, driving the trailer pump for the School Fire Brigade which was affiliated to the National Fire Service, teaching Scripture in such a way that boys and girls positively enjoyed it, performing in Pops despite the fact that he was tone-deaf, and arranging school journeys in the holidays. Everything was in short supply in those days, and great ingenuity was needed if anything at all was to be done. J.R.R's skill and inventiveness meant that all sorts of activities from full-length drama produced in the school dining room, to games for which he somehow procured the equipment were possible, when many schools led a much poorer life for lack of such effort. It was in this period that Mary Hodge joined the staff, and the whole school was delighted when in July 1945 they were married.

The next year, when the war was over, there was a great movement of staff, and John and Mary Reader and many of their friends left Ayton. He spent five years at Hove County Grammar School and a short period as a Lecturer at Dudley Training College for Teachers before coming back to Ayton as Headmaster in January 1953.

Of the last seven or eight years of his period as Headmaster, present scholars will have a far more intimate picture than I have, but in the fifteen years before that, he and I in a way that I think is perhaps unique to Friends' Schools. His return to Ayton was marked by the same vision and energy, the same practical ability that we had known before. No building had been allowed during the war, and during the period of most stringent shortages, money spent on maintenance was curtailed by law to £100 per annum. The result was that buildings were shabby and inadequate, especially as the school had grown in size during the war period, and John Reader saw it as a first priority to bring the buildings up to date. The period 1954-61 saw the school's greatest expansion since the years of its foundation, and after a brief respite, the major effort of planning and raising money for Leven Hall, crowned all this effort. Perhaps present scholars do not know that £120,000 was raised in gifts so that Leven Hall might come into being, and that one single donation of £30,000 was due entirely to John Reader's power of inspiring people with his vision of the Ayton of the future.

But this is a side of Headmastership known primarily to staff, Committee, parents, and Old Scholars. Present scholars will think of other characteristics and activities : Social Studies in Millfield House, stimulating lessons, a talk in Evening Meeting or on Open Day, the thrust and parry of discussion with a mind more informed and more alert than one's own, the understanding when one was in trouble - or even disgrace. Some must have gone on midnight walks with him over the moors to Kirbymoorside, and gone to Meeting there on Sunday morning in that strange unity of mind and spirit which such an activity seems to breed. Some, who will enjoy rock-climbing until they are in their sixties, will owe their initiation into this sport to John Reader.

We shall certainly miss him, as he will miss all of us, but no energy so expended is ever lost. He will always be part of the school, as it is part of him, and because he has influenced the school he has a part in all who have passed through it in his time. Thus is the history of individuals and institutions built up. 

Evelyn Nicholson

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