Richard Hayter - Corners 65-71: " Having just seen the date at the foot of the photograph, February 1970, I will have been sitting at the side on the gym benches. I think this is the East Anglian Schools championships. The six boys are contesting the final, the rest of us having been eliminated. The tall boy between Chris and Nick, was called Lilley. He wasn’t a Woolverstone boy and was very talented having won all his bouts en route to the final. We all remembered him because he had an incredibly deep voice. For some strange reason we walked around the gymnasium seeing if we could sound as deep voiced as him when he registered. He was favourite to win mostly because he was very tall, compared to the rest of us, and of course his deep voice. But was pipped in the end by Chris and Nick.

Looks like Chris Redpath (2nd from left) and Nick Lovell (4th from left). Don’t remember the other boys. Fencing at Woolverstone was under the tutelage of Henry John Ramsay, physics teacher at the school and a very senior committee member of the Amateur Fencing Association. Quite a few boys enjoyed learning to fence. Most used foil, but there were some enthusiastic and talented fencers who progressed to epee and sabre. One hard slap on the thigh from a sabre, was enough to send you rushing to the changing room so no one could see you crying with the intense pain. Sometime in the late 60’s, Chris and Nick went to Zocca in Northern Italy, to represent Britain in the Schools Fencing Championships."