Looking west from the corner of Christ Church Cathedral Choir School playing fields in the 1940s:

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Mr Vincent was headmaster in the late 1940s. Known to the boys as ‘Pa V’ (pronounced ‘Par' (meaning father) ‘Vee’ (short for Vincent). And the sports masters in those days were Jimmy Humphries, for football, and Mr Hart, for other sports. Jimmy Humphries came to school on a James motorbike. Probably they both had been demobbed from the forces a few years earlier, though nothng was said about this, and the war was not in any way a background aspect of life in this peaceful academic backwater. We schoolboys knew that it was half-a-mile round Dead Man’s Walk (of which about half can be seen in this photo), but a full mile around the larger part of the Christ Church Meadows, including a part alongside the Cherwell with the wire-operated ferry-boat to the Iffley Road side of the river. We were required to run these distances from time to time. Not too demanding, as I recollect it. (01.6.2016).

qaa© Philip B Archer 2014