Local Face: Bob Bulpett

Bob Bulpett came to Wendover when he was only 6 years old. His father is a Wycombe man who had been an RAF apprentice at Halton and his mother’s parents had moved to Oxfordshire so they knew the area and liked it. It gave Bob an idyllic 1950’s rural childhood.

Wendover School was in the centre of the village, next to the Clocktower and links with the church were very strong. The headmaster, Figg-Egerton, always wore his dog collar and sweeping clerical robes. The children regularly walked along the Heron Path for services in St Mary’s. Bob was a member of the all male Church choir practicing once a week, singing twice on Sundays as well as weddings on Saturdays, funerals during the week and fielding a fiendish all-age football team!

Bob particularly remembers Miss Jones for an epic journey she led to the West Country. They travelled by coach, staying in extremely spartan Youth Hostels, visiting Avebury, Widdecome, Plymouth Hoe. This trip was so famous that when the school was sold, it featured in a display including original pieces of work. Bob is delighted that his four children have all attended Wendover C of E Middle School which has inherited and actively pursues these rural, spiritual and expeditionary traditions.

Bob also enjoyed the cub leadership of Mrs Lehmann, a close neighbour, whose Scout Hut was behind the Shoulder of Mutton. This meant that the cubs walked home down Dobbins Lane and through the fields at its end. The streams were a child’s delight for damming and generally getting wet – the orchards being equally inviting! All this is now developed as the top of Lionel Avenue. Bob also remembers the frogs in Witchell Ponds, no cricket ground then, just large pools of water fed by springs. Similarly, Wendover was a welcomed building site in the fifties and all the children loved the opportunities for climbing scaffolding etc. Everyone swam in Weston Turville Reservoir. How things have changed! Coombe Hill always was, and continues to be, “a good Sunday walk” with sledging in the winter.

In 1959 Bob started at the Grammar School and remembers the arrival of a young French teacher, Mr Roe; who is soon to retire as Headteacher in 1998. After “O”-levels, he started work at Richard, Thomas and Baldwin in Whitchurch. His title was “Research Assistant” and his training program included day release for City & Guilds followed by ONC at Aylesbury College then HNC and GRIP at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University). RTB was typical of its time, a firm with a very young workforce and it was expected that they would all continue with their education as well as enjoy the social facilities available after work. R TB became part of British Steel at nationalisation and was closed as part of rationalisation.

By 1970, Bob found himself as a trainee technician at the newly opened Brunel University in Uxbridge. At the time there were only 3,000 students and Bob continued to progress through MSc to PhD and now finds himself as the Director and Head of Department of research facilities for electron microscopy and chemical analysis. This generates income for the university by consultancy work for companies big and small: research, development and identification of environmental contaminants: asbestos and PMlO’s (diesel particulate matter 10 microns in size) especially in lung disease.

After a few years away, Bob returned to live in Wendover in 1985 and almost immediately took on an allotment in which he freely admits, his wife Sheila, Head of Chemistry at a local school, does most of the work. Now that they have a double allotment, they produce annually enough potatoes and most of the greens and fruit for the family. 1998 has been a poor year for carrots.

Bob was secretary for the Wendover Horticultural Society Annual Show for 5 years and greatly enjoyed the experience, as did the whole family, but his work commitments became international so his availability in the build up weeks was no longer guaranteed and he regretfully resigned. He is a keen but average golfer and a member of the local village darts league for 20 years.

Bob has received all his tertiary education through work and continues to learn on a daily basis. He is very sorry that the apprenticeship system which served him so well is now defunct so that the norm is now full-time education until at least 21 instead of the gradual learning of technical skills through work from school leaving age onwards.