BERNARD A. ASTLEY, OBE
Second Headmaster of the
Prince of Wales School, 1937-1944
Bernard Astley in England c. 1928
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae)
Captain B.A. Astley (centre rear), Territorial Army c.1929
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae)
Nairobi School Hockey team, March 1930.
The masters seated are Norman (“Bull”) Larby, J Twells-Gross, and Bernard Astley
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae)
Bernard Astley relaxing in attractive company at the holiday camp at Likoni, 1930
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae)
Bernard Astley (centre) with Johnny Nimmo (left) and “Bull” Larby, Niandarawa, Aberdares, 1931
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae)
Bernard Astley and Barbara Sinton on their wedding day, 23rd July 1932
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae)
Bernard and Barbara Astley in ‘The Middle Watch’, 1933
Bernard standing back row, second from right (in mess dress), Barbara seated second from right
Captain Nicholson standing front row, left. Mrs Nicholson seated second from left
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae)
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Bernard A. Astley OBE - Second Headmaster of the Prince of Wales School, 1937-1944
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Second Headmaster of the Prince of Wales School, 1937-1944 
(courtesy of Cynthia (nee Astley) and Alastair McCrae) INTRODUCTION
On 13th April 1934, the Director of Education asked me to call at his office. He told me that I had the best chance of
anyone of taking over from Capt. Nicholson as Headmaster of the Prince of Wales School.
This quotation from Bernard Astley’s Recollections offers a clue as to how his appointment and career differed from those of the other early headmasters of the Nairobi/Prince of Wales School. All of them, from Captain Nicholson to Oliver Wigmore, were appointed as headmaster from England, and returned there after their term of service. By contrast, Astley was chosen from the ranks – he had already been on the school staff for five years – and, after his headmastership terminated, he remained in Kenya in other senior posts. Moreover, unlike the other headmasters, his work encompassed service outside Nairobi and also involvement with African and Asian education. The distinguished Captain Nicholson was always going to be a hard act to follow. The Prince of Wales School had rapidly come to be regarded as the premier school in British colonial Africa; there was a reputation to be lived up to. Clearly the Director of Education, and the Governor, too, must have had great confidence in Astley’s abilities that they felt that he could take over the reins and that the usual comprehensive selection procedure at the Colonial Office was not required. In this feature, we attempt to seek out those abilities and the experience which had nurtured them. Research into Astley’s career has been greatly facilitated by the Recollections which his family had encouraged him to write. In compiling these, he frequently referred to his ‘letter-book’. This remarkable record contains a two or three line summary of every weekly letter he wrote to his mother from Kenya, from September 1929 until her death in July 1947. His widow, Barbara, has kindly made available to us his papers and photograph albums, and has also helped in identifying people in pictures from the 1930s. His daughter, Cynthia, and her Old Cambrian husband, Alastair McCrae, have helped in collating the papers, preparing the text and making digital copies of the photos. EARLY LIFE There is a Kikuyu saying ....... He that tastes of honey returns to the pot. It is perhaps not surprising to learn that Bernard Astley was born in another tropical British colony, Jamaica (on 2nd July 1902), and lived there with his parents and elder brother Harvey until he was nine. Some of his memories recounted in his Recollections are of sufficient general interest to be repeated here. My first recollection is of shocking events on 17th January 1907 when I was four-and-a-half years old. On that day my brother, my senior by about four years, and I were resting in the afternoon. Suddenly our beds started to shake violently. Mother rushed into the room, grabbed us from our beds and dragged us down the wooden staircase at the back of the house and away from the heap of rubble which moments before had been our house. In a few seconds an earthquake had destroyed Kingston and its suburbs. When Father returned from work he was an astonishing sight – dirty with dust, clothes torn and exhausted. He had escaped from his office and then worked in Kingston itself helping to rescue those people who had been trapped in the city and who were in grave danger from a fire which started either just before or just after the earthquake itself. As a family we were most fortunate to have escaped. If Mother had not instantly realised that an earthquake had begun we would all have been injured or killed by falling masonry. We lived for months in tents until houses were rebuilt. The property owners in the town itself suffered further damage by fire and in due course submitted claims to the insurance companies on the basis that the fire had started before the earthquake. This view was contested by the companies who maintained that the fire had been caused by the earthquake, an Act of God, which was an excluded risk and not covered by the policies. Law suits followed and counsel were engaged from the UK. My father immediately, and with great foresight, rented a hotel in the town where he anticipated the case would be heard. We all moved there and since Father’s forecast proved correct he was able to make a reasonable profit from the lawyers and witnesses who stayed at the hotel while the protracted hearing took place. Fortunately for Jamaica the Court’s decision was that the fire did indeed precede the earthquake. During term time Harvey attended Wolmer’s Boys’ Secondary School near Kingston and I attended a Dame’s school near home. The daily journey involved travelling by electric tram. I sat on the front seat and when nearing my destination gave a tug to the driver’s shirt as a signal to stop. Memories of lessons are vague but at any rate first steps in reading and writing were taken. Other memories stand out. Being bitten by a scorpion in the bathroom where there was a stone bath; climbing the mango tree for illicit fruit; driving a pedal car (from Wanamakers, New York) on the verandah; watching the arrival of an enormous block of ice from the ice factory, delivered by mule early each morning, for our cold store (no electric fridges then, although there was electric light), playing cricket in a friend’s garden and being hit on the head by a hard ball, an incident which prejudiced me against the game for the rest of my life! In the holidays we went to Father’s coffee plantation – Newton, in the Blue Mountains. Looking back it seems vast. In reality it was probably quite small. The journey there was always exciting. First there was the journey to Constant Spring by tram, only a few miles. There we transferred to mules, some saddled for riding, others with panniers for luggage and one for Harvey and me. He sat in a pannier on one side. The other contained a large stone, padded with a sack on which I sat. In this way the load on either side was the same. When everything was loaded, we would set off, Mother leading on her mule, then Harvey and me followed by three or four mules laden with luggage of one kind or another. The mule track – there was no road to Newton - rose steeply and we left the heat of the plains for the cooler mountain air. Read on ... |
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