Peter Greenhalgh
School 1965-70
Pete was born at home in Great Baddow, near Chelmsford, in Essex. He had an older sister and brother who both saw it as their job to instruct him about life. His parents sent him to a boys’ preparatory school in Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, before he went to The Leys.
That’s where Pete and I got to know each other in 1968, and we became good friends. He was 16 then and people called him Smiley. We used to hang out together. School work was not the most important thing in Pete’s life. We spent time together in class, and lots of time out of class.
I remember Easter 1969, when four of us from The Leys rented a boat on the Norfolk Broads. This was an early experience of independence from our parents, and I’m still amazed that we were able to rent a motorboat at the age of 16. The trip was a bit of a rite of passage, going to pubs for the first time and driving a boat without due care and attention!
Pete was always keen on engineering. He struck up a relationship with Mack who ran the School’s maintenance workshop, next to the Science Block. Originally, Pete was content with fixing his bike there, adding fancy cow horn handlebars. Then he moved on to making radio-controlled boats before getting into rebuilding motorcycle and car engines.
When he passed his driving test, still at school, Pete bought a 1950s Ford Popular. This was not strictly regular as far as The Leys was concerned and we tried not to be recognised while driving it around Cambridge. Pete kept it at a friend’s house in Trumpington. I remember a holiday we had at Pete’s sister’s house in Teesside. By then Pete was on his second car, another Ford Pop. One of the passenger doors was damaged and had to be roped shut. It was pretty hairy on the A1. On the way back to Cambridge we picked up my sister who was staying with her boyfriend in Newark. I don’t think she will ever forget that journey; I certainly won’t.
While at school Pete and I used to go to a Church youth group at weekends to meet nice girls and that’s where Pete and Annette first met. I already knew Annette through my sisters because they were all at The Perse School with Annette and her sisters. Then a group of us did a sponsored Oxfam walk to Bedford and back, and Pete and Annette seemed to bond very well. After that Pete used to cycle seven miles out to Great Shelford on a Sunday for high tea at Annette’s parents’ house. His school friends later admitted they were envious that he had a friend on the outside!
I went away to university in 1971 and soon wrote off my first car, a Morris Minor, in a serious accident. Pete made a special trip to Bristol to sort out the damage, and helped himself to the engine.
I remember a holiday in 1973 when Pete did up an old M G Magnette which we drove to Greece via Yugoslavia, and back through Italy, visiting his father who was working at a NATO base there. The first day of our trip, on the way to Dover, when we got off the M2 motorway, we heard a loud knocking sound, and it was clear the ‘big ends’ had failed. That didn’t worry Pete at all, and we returned to Cambridge so Pete could fix the car before setting off again a few days later. I remember we stopped in Belgrade and met some people in a square who shared a joint with us. At that time Yugoslavia was a restrictive socialist country, so maybe smoking joints in a public place was a bit unwise!
Between leaving school and starting a teacher training course, Pete re-took his Physics A level twice, did various jobs, including being an electrician’s mate on a building site. Training to be a Maths teacher in Wimbledon came out of the blue, and the ratio of girls to boys at Southlands College was 4 to 1, which was a great improvement on an all-boys boarding school.
He found the course very illuminating, but didn’t end up as a teacher – on teaching practice, he said the children gave him nightmares! Recently, in 2017, he was awarded a degree by the University of Roehampton, as the university awarded degrees to all the students who had completed their three-year teaching certificates.
After that, Pete and Annette moved to Cambridge where they helped me set up my first business, Raffles, Cambridge’s first hamburger restaurant. They got married and had a daughter, Sarah, then Andrew came along a couple of years later. Pete did a City & Guilds bricklaying course at Cambridge Tech, realising a dream! At school, when asked by the careers master what he wanted to do, he said bricklaying, which didn’t go down very well at the time! I will always have very happy memories of Pete.
Following 12 years in Cambridge, they moved to Shropshire because of the lovely countryside (a builder friend had also moved up here) and Pete carried on working as a general builder. They had two more lovely children, Chris and Rachael. From around 2001, Pete was reunited with friends who all shared a dormitory in School House from the age of 13, and they met up yearly in each other’s homes.
During all this time, Pete had lots of hobbies. When he was young, he made model boats, cars and aeroplanes. This developed into a strong interest in model steam engines. He joined Oswestry and North Shropshire Model Engineering Society where he found kindred spirits who all loved talking about metal, coal and water! As well as the steam engines, the model flying still carried on and Pete also joined The Shropshire Model Flying Club based at Forton Airfield. He always enjoyed flying his model glider, especially from Corndon Hill.
During the last four years, he was very determined and brave. When he was first told about the operation required to remove the tumour, he wasn’t keen but he went ahead and received very good treatment from the QE hospital in Birmingham and also the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. He was determined not to give up and completed a lot of his on-going projects, even starting new ones, such as installing underfloor heating in four rooms in the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse where the family lived.
The family were very well supported by the GPs and medical services and this meant that Pete was able to spend the remainder of his life at home. The other major group of support has been all Pete and Annette’s friends and family, visiting, thinking of him and praying for him. He was very appreciative of all the messages and prayers during his illness.
Chris Poulton, East 1966-70 and Annette Greenhalgh