Anton Bantock - Bedminster Down School Years
The move to Wells and taking up the teaching appointment at Bedminster Down
School in 1960 proved to be a significant landmark in Anton's life.
After almost 3-decades of teaching at Bedminster Down Anton has touched the
lives and imaginations of many pupils. As a history teacher, he was liked
and admired by all the classes that had the fortune to be taught by him,
although it is suspected that sometimes his mild eccentricity was not
fully appreciated.
His nickname at the school was Bill Bantock and many former pupils relate, with amusement, the routine of asking him for the daily 'password'. "What's the password today Bill," was often heard between lessons but the significance was never really explained.
He rode his trusty bicycle everywhere and took long summer holidays
travelling the world, leaving as the bell rang on the last day of the summer
term, and not returning until the day before the new term started. Once, due to
an air strike, he was stranded in Australia in early September and was delighted
to be able to phone the school to tell them that, on the day they went back, he
was enjoying a swim in an isolated billabong!
His adventures were always chronicled in a series of very detailed and interesting letters that were sent home to Bristol during his travels. Some of these letters have been turned into books with others being filed for posterity.
Please click here for details of these books how to get hold of your copy
During the 1970s he formed an after school club which received the grandiose name “The Malago Archive Committee”. This was born after some staff wrote a home-made musical called “Malago”, so named after the local stream that runs down from Dundry Hill to Bedminster. The teachers asked Anton what anecdotes of local history they should include, and he said, “There is no local history. It’s a concrete jungle”. How wrong could he be?
The sixth formers of the time went out with Anton (usually by bike) and interviewed old people in the area they chose to study, which stretched from Dundry to the New Cut in Bedminster, and from Long Ashton to Whitchurch. A lot of information was collected and thus began the life of a local history magazine called Malago now (in 2006) selling its 55th edition. This became very popular with local people – those who had lived in the area all their lives as well as those who had moved there from elsewhere. Initially it was typed by schoolchildren and printed on a duplicating machine, but later more sophisticated technology took over and the magazine is still as popular as ever.
Younger children at the school became involved and presented a weekly evening class based on local historic events, rehearsing at 4.00pm after school, and acting out the stories in the evening. This led to the formation of “The Malagomaniacs” and in later years, after the formation of The Malago Society for local history in south-west Bristol, adult ‘actors’ were recruited. The Society formed in 1978 and still meets once a month for talks and other events.
Anton is a skilled artist and takes a sketch book everywhere he goes. The drawings have been made into slide shows of most of his talks and audiences enjoy seeing these, which are very different from the usual ‘holiday snaps’. These sketches, coloured and mounted, have formed the basis of many exhibitions in this country and abroad (he has mounted exhibitions of his work in Germany and France), and have been sold to the public in aid of The Sponsorship Fund.