Memories From Staff
Colin Alves
The RE Development Centre
Those seeking a definitive history of the Centre in this its twenty-fifth year will need to look elsewhere. What follows here is no more than random reminiscence, entirely personal and largely haphazard. I have simply recorded a few memories as they have presented themselves to me, and cannot even vouch for the accuracy of all of them. Memory sometimes plays tricks!
The first picture which offers itself is of myself and two others (surely Margaret Turk was one of them) sitting on the floor of the upstairs room which was to become the main resources display area. The room was entirely empty except for a wonderful blue carpet, which stretched from wall to wall. This carpet had been a gift to the Centre and not only had the act of laying it signalled the start of the whole enterprise in 1974, but the fact that it was a gift had symbolised the co-operative nature of the whole venture. The main partners were of course St Gabriel’s College and the National Society (under Robert Holtby’s leadership), but staff from the General Synod Board of Education and from Southwark Diocese also played a major role. As I write I suddenly remember that the room was in fact not entirely empty. There were piles of books scattered around us, and we sat on the carpet sorting them into categories ready for the day when eventually there would be shelves on which to put them.
And what were those ‘categories’ into which we were sorting them? Which of the
many existing classification systems did we decide to follow? The College library, if I recall
aright, did not use Dewey – and nor did we. But neither did we use the system the College
library used! In the enthusiasm of my new role as Director of the Centre, and to the utter
frustration of my colleagues and successors, I decided to invent my own system ‘carefully
tailored to the needs of the RE world’! It was, I must confess, a strangely complex system.
I still possess the copy of The Codebreakers which Paul Turton felt moved to give
me that first Christmas – presumably as a heavy hint. Not surprisingly the system was
eventually abandoned, to be replaced by Dewey. Another system which was abandoned fairly soon
after its introduction was a pre-computer method of cross-referencing items which employed
an ingenious system of elaborately punched cards into which one inserted rods just like long,
thin knitting needles. Even if computers had not come along I’m sure we would not have
persisted with it, as it was so cumbersome.
What did survive from those early days, I’m glad to say, was the metal shelving which we had selected after a long process of comparison and elimination among the many varieties then on offer. Not only did it prove both sturdy and flexible enough to meet our requirements in Tower House, but it proved to be equally adaptable when (after the College’s merger with Goldsmiths) the Centre moved to new premises in Kensington. It even survived a second move, to the present premises in Causton Street, and is still going strong today.
But I’m running ahead of myself. My next most vivid memory is of course the official opening. As with all institutions, the Centre had been in actual use for some months by the time this ceremony took place. The Archbishop of Canterbury (as President of the National Society) had been invited to perform the task, and I can still see him in the garden of Tower House, blessing this rather quirky Victorian villa as if it had been a perfectly normal ecclesiastical building. I can also still remember him asking me after the ceremony, which had consisted of a short service, which translation of the gospels I had chosen for the reading. It was in fact Alan Dale’s version of the parable of the sower, New World being one of the volumes being proudly displayed on our shelves. But Dr Coggan had clearly never encountered it before and was, shall I say, intrigued by phrases such as ‘some seed fell on the path and the birds came and gobbled it up’.
Alan Dale was himself among our many visitors at the Centre. As its carefully chosen name implied, it was always intended to be more than just a collection of resource material (though we did try to make it as comprehensive a collection of resources as we could). As well as its use by students of the College for seminar work, it was also the scene of weekend conferences and an escalating number of working party meetings for all sorts of organisations operating in the field of RE. Overseas links were also established early on, particularly with the InterEuropean Committee for Church and School, of which more than one Director of the Centre has become President. But perhaps the most enterprising undertaking of those early days was the series of meetings which resulted in the Camberwell Papers, a ‘revisiting’ of the themes originally raised by the Durham Report.
Naming names within a short exercise in reminiscence like this is always invidious, but there are two names which must not go unrecorded. One is that of Linda Borthwick, whose work in the diocese of Southwark brought her into early contact with the Centre, a contact which has never been broken as she is now herself a member of the St Gabriel’s Trust. The other is that of Muriel Welch, whose secretarial skills and warm personality enriched first of all the Centre and then the Centre’s ‘mother house’ (i.e. the National Society’s offices in Church House, Westminster), and who still lives in Flodden Road, thus providing the only living local link with the Centre’s early history.
The subsequent history of the Centre is for others to write. Suffice it to say that its work has gone on from strength to strength under its three subsequent Directors, Paul Turton, Alan Brown and Alison Seaman. What does need to be said here, however, is that its fairly early geographical separation from St Gabriel’s has never broken its link with the continuing work of the College’s underlying foundation. The St Gabriel’s Trust has always given the Centre significant financial support, as well as supplying members of its Management Committee. One of the great joys of my later time at the National Society, and of my subsequent years of retirement, has been the opportunity my membership of the St Gabriel’s Trust has given me of continuing to be in touch with the work and the personnel of this exciting and significant enterprise.
