When Mowden boys talk about their five years at our boarding prep-school in Northumberland, we tend to do it through dormitories.
That’s the structure we remember. Our first dorm, and our last and everything in between. Not years, not classes—dorms. One leading to another, each with its own shape, its own beds and mattresses and its own atmosphere – its own hierarchy, its own tone.
For me it began with Hedgehope, then Beamish, then two others whose names I can’t now recall, Tweed perhaps, and from time to time, ‘sick dorm’ and finally for me Coquet. Tyne was the top dorm but I never got there. I was made a Dormitory Captain before then and sent back to a Junior Dorm. Eventually I ended up as DC in Coquet.
Even now, it’s not the lessons I remember first. It’s those spaces. The metal beds. The thickness of the mattress. Who slept where.
Beamish stays with me most clearly.
It was a large square, high-roofed, with something of an industrial feel—as if it had once been used for work rather than sleep. I imagined it as a laundry in its previous life. Steam, rollers, women working at tubs. Now replaced by sixteen boys and a Dormitory Captain, arranged around the edges like a system that had been dropped in and expected to function.
At night, Matron would come through and turn the lights off at the same time each evening. That was the moment of transition. After that, authority withdrew.
Not completely—there were prefects – your DC—but the adults were gone. For the most part, we were unsupervised.
And the dorm came alive.
There was no immediate silence. Whispered conversations travelled across the dark. Someone wheezed, regularly and reliably. Beds creaked. A late voice would ask to go to the toilet. Slippers would be thrown—hard, accurately—at anyone who started snoring too soon.
And then the inevitable:
“Story.”
The DC would oblige. The green mist. The Monkey’s Paw. Always the same, always requested. One of my DCs got out a guitar and sang – until guitars, like radios and biros were banned as having the wrong influence.
We washed communally, used the same soap, wore much the same things. Sometimes our ablutions were reduced to a foot-bath with a splash of Detol in it.
Pyjamas—usually striped, sometimes plain, never childish. Dressing gowns, formal in their way, tied with a twisted cord belt. Slippers—leather, like soft shoes if you were lucky. Better slippers mattered. They flew straighter.
Everything was prescribed. Parents were given a list: what to purchase, what type, all labelled. Identity was managed from the outside, even as we tried to invent it from within.
The dressing gown cords became weapons. Flicked out in defence, or attack. Slippers served both purposes equally.
Above us, the roof in Beamish was thin—boards stretched over a frame. In one place there was a hole. We made a game of it: throwing slippers up, trying to get one through. If it went in, someone had to climb up—quietly, carefully—pull themselves over the fragile structure and retrieve it. It felt risky, though I don’t think we ever fully understood how risky.
In my first term I slept opposite a boy who sleepwalked.
He never spoke. Never made a sound. Just got up and moved.
We found it spooky, but also funny. That balance held it in place. Someone had said that if you woke a sleepwalker, they might die. So we didn’t wake him.
We handled it ourselves.
No one taught us. We made it up. A hand on the arm, a turn of the shoulders, guiding him back across the dorm under torchlight. He was completely compliant, as if he trusted us without knowing we were there. Once, we pushed it further—opened the door and redirected him out onto the landing towards the washrooms. Nothing happened. Which, at eleven, confirmed that nothing ever would.
In the second term I slept next to a friend. Some nights we held hands before going to sleep. I don’t know who started it. It felt natural, like we were walking somewhere together. Comfort, and something like alliance. It didn’t last. It didn’t need to.
By the third term I was in a top bunk in the corner, with two friends below and beside me. That was when we decided to form a gang.
There were three of us. The Three Pigs.
We didn’t like Piggies, so we changed it. Became a family instead. A dad, a mum, and two children. Which meant we needed a fourth. Naming ourselves became the point. Reversing names. Trying things out. Francis became Sicknarf. Someone refused Sue, so became Eus. I became Nonrev, briefly. It didn’t stick.
Names mattered. They let you be someone else. They were identifiers, but also codes—our own language.
Then a fifth boy wanted to join.
It diluted things. Not badly, but noticeably. We hadn’t meant to exclude anyone, but the shape changed. The naming system collapsed. The gang remained, but looser. What we were really after was belonging, and that could stretch.
There were no rival gangs. No factions. Just shifting alignments.
The real structure was elsewhere.
Bundles, for instance. You learned them from older boys. Jumper and shirt off together, laid flat. Then vest, shorts, underpants, socks. Rolled tight, tied with sleeves. Left ready by the bed.
The fire alarm was unmistakable. A wailing, haunting sound—like something out of a war film. It cut through everything and made it serious, even when it wasn’t.
There was always a drill early in term. Around 10:45. You’d be woken, told to dress, to move, to carry your bundle. It was exciting. A break in routine. Laughter when someone was still asleep as the rest of us lined up. We assembled in the dining hall. In a real fire we’d have gone outside regardless of the cold.
We all enjoyed it. The disruption.
Sometimes, boys tested a different boundary.
They ran.
Not during the day—you’d be noticed too quickly—but at night. I can think of four occasions. My cousin, Vernon Ma, walked home. They lived only four miles away. He didn’t return. I didn’t blame him.
With him gone, my older brother became Vernon Ma, and I was promoted to Vernon Mi. When he left, I became just Vernon.
First names were rarely used. Not by staff, and not much by us either.
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