Gloucestershire's County Farm Institute was established in Hartpury House and Home Farm, with an initial student intake in 1949. By the late 1950s provision comprised a one-year residential course in agriculture for new entrants of both sexes, and county-wide peripatetic advisory services in poultry and bee keeping, in horticulture and in 'Rural Domestic Economy' topics.
Then the De La Warr Committee published the first part of its report on Agricultural Education Provided by Local Education Authorities. As well as major administrative changes, it urged the development, throughout rural areas, of local day-release courses for apprentices and other trainees. Funding arranged, Principal "JD" Griffiths (and Governors) appointed me for this first pioneering expansion of Hartpury's agricultural brief. According to my diary summaries, I initially moved into a spare attic room in Hartpury House to start work - and to continue with arrangements to rent a house in the village - on April Fools' Day of 1958.
I had to get my hand in with some lecturing at the Institute, but my particular brief was to find and book venues around the county while developing a comprehensive scheme of work to fulfil the deemed brief within a realistic scale of contact hours. The emphasis was to be on the 'whys and wherefores' of the practical farm work the hoped-for students would be experiencing during the rest of their week, to City and Guilds (of London Institute) syllabuses. There were also, already, some teaching links with schools and technical colleges, so fostering and expanding those fell to my lot too, as well as a few adult evening courses around the county - not to mention evening talks and film shows to Young Farmers' Clubs and Herdsmen's Guilds.
So it was a busy time, evidently going well enough to merit a re-grading and pay rise! The chief result was the establishment of four viable day-release course centres by the middle of October 1959. They were in Stroud Technical College; Thornbury, and Cirencester as well as in the Institute itself. Unfortunately (to put it mildly) Sod's Law brought an early cessation when foot-and-mouth scares caused an early cancellation of all extra-mural activities in early December, thankfully cleared sufficiently to resume for the January new term, 1960.
All this tearing round the county was achieved in my first-ever car, a venerable Austin A40 selected for us by my father-in-law. But ahead of the next season, I invested in a new Ford Anglia - the famous model with the undercut back window. Not only that, I was joined professionally by Cedric Milner, the first-ever Extra-Mural Assistant. My diary noted October 1960 day-release classes in Thornbury, Moreton-in-Marsh, Stroud Technical College, Soundwell (NE Bristol) Technical College and Lydney. That was my week: Cirencester and the Institute continued too of course, though now taught by a rota of other staff. I have eight centres in mind as the final tally, though I can't remember where the other one was. Anyway, July 1961 apparently justified another upgrading and pay rise, back-dated four months!
So by the start of the 1961 academic year there was a full ongoing programme of agricultural day-release, evening and school link courses, involving Cedric and me full time and other teaching staff part time. Any further personal progress would necessarily involve a move to some other Local Education Authority. And indeed, other LEAs were catching up by this time. An extra-mural pioneer in Cardiganshire proved impractical for a non-Welsh-speaker. But with the small West Suffolk authority I would indeed be a solo but more senior grade pioneer, with only one existing agricultural day course in the one and only Technical College. I was appointed, but that proved to be a very different story - of initial disappointments but later success lasting slightly beyond the lifetime of the West Suffolk County Council! So in Gloucestershire Derek Goodwin joined the staff to take over my duties (and my house) during an overlap month, of January 1962.
And see what that led to within a mere sixty years or so!
