Bemrose School Chess Club
Bemrose was a name greatly respected within British school chess circles for around a quarter of a century from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. During this period, the school’s teams achieved consistently good results in both junior and adult leagues, and the first team reached the national stages of the British Schools Championship, then under the sponsorship of the Sunday Times, on many occasions. Over the years, the school produced many strong county players and several county champions.
Chess had been played at the school since its foundation in 1930, but it wasn’t properly organised until the arrival in 1952 of maths teacher Roger Molyneaux, to whom much of the credit for subsequent successes is due.
One of Roger’s earliest protégés was Maurice Hill, who learned to play after Roger challenged anyone who could play to join in a simultaneous against him. Maurice went from strength to strength, later becoming one of the leading Rolls-Royce club players in the late 1950s, Derbyshire champion in 1965 and 42 years later, Nottinghamshire champion in 2007. Maurice also co-founded ‘The Chess Player’ with Tony Gillam and was a significant figure in my own chess development. Through the circumstance of my grandmother knowing his mother, it was arranged for me to meet him for coaching sessions. At the first of these, when we played on the county championship trophy board which Maurice held at the time, I could barely move the pieces, but he gave me much valuable advice and on subsequent occasions I improved to the point where I was ready to play league chess when I became a Bemrose School pupil.
By 1954, chess had become extremely popular at the school, the leading player being Vukovic who seldom lost a game on top board. He was followed in 1956 by Chris Williams, an excellent organiser as well as player, and the club, now well established, was equal in strength to any school club in the country.
In 1958 Tony Gillam, who had been playing for the first team since his second form days, came to the fore as a fine organiser and teacher, setting the club on course for ever greater achievements over the next few years. In the same year, the school team won the inaugural Sunday Times zonal final, a feat which would be repeated many times over the years, and entered the Derbyshire League for the first time. The club had more than 200 members at this point.
Bemrose School chess attained the zenith of its success in 1962 by reaching the final four in the national final of the Sunday Times tournament, which had an entry of 390 schools that year. The semi-finals and final were played at the Rembrandt Hotel in Knightsbridge on the 27th and 28th of July. In the semi-final, Bemrose faced King Edward’s School, Birmingham, which a few years later would produce Britain’s first over the board grandmaster, Tony Miles. The following quote, from the 1963 KES Chronicle, gives a flavour of the calibre of the Bemrose team: “So the team, consisting of J.D.L.Ball, J.M.Orrin, M.S.Dunn, M.R.B.Bailey, C.J.Stanton and R.B Davies went to London on the morning of the 27th to play Bemrose School, Derby, in the afternoon. Here, the opposition was much stronger than any we had met previously and towards the end of the four-hour session, it was becoming very clear which was the stronger side. We lost the match by 4.5-1.5, a decisive enough margin”. In the final the following day, Bemrose actually won the match 3.5-2.5, but unfortunately their opponents, Liverpool Institute High School, were a relatively young team and they were declared the winners due to the age handicap system used in the competition. The Bemrose team members on this unique occasion were Dick Greaves, Ray Gamble, Tony Gillam, David Pearson, Peter Chapman and Ian Gregory. Dick later captained the Birmingham University team; Ray went on to become Derbyshire Champion six times and is still an extremely tough tournament player; Tony, who went on to play for Nottinghamshire, has now published numerous works under The Chess Player and is an acclaimed chess author and researcher; David became the leading player at the British Celanese Club and a very strong county player for many years; Peter developed into a very good player while still at school, playing on second board for the county, below only the county champion; and Ian remains a strong club player with an ECF grade of 165 at the time of writing.
In 1964, Bemrose won the Sunday Times zonal final once again, but this time they were eliminated in the first round of the national stage in a match played by telephone against Allan Glen’s School of Glasgow, whose team included future Scottish Champion Craig Pritchett. By this time, Peter Chapman was leading the school team and was a great influence on the younger players following up behind him, most notably Mike Vecsey, Geoff Bridges and Steve Shardlow.
I arrived at the school in September 1967. Geoff had left at the end of the previous term and Steve, Derbyshire junior champion in 1965-6, was now the school’s leading player. The chess club was located in Roger’s maths room during lunch times and was often a pretty raucous place, especially in wet weather. Order was normally maintained by Sean Walters, who was only a couple of years older than me but who possessed an authoritative manner and was capable of clearing the room in short order, usually with the aid of a few well-chosen expletives. The equipment, kept in a wooden chest which Sean would unlock at the start of each session, was basic, with boards which appeared to have been made from chequered lino and mixed-up sets with pieces of various sizes, often with knights’ heads either missing or with crude replacements made during woodwork lessons. Better sets were used for league matches, and eventually Dave Amedro, a keen chess player who taught Spanish and Russian, donated a nice set for top board use.
A considerable proportion of the boys at the school played chess, and as well as casual games, the club hosted various competitions including ‘ladder’ tournaments, coaching sessions by the stronger players, and occasional variants such as kriegspiel. House matches were played in the club room after school, while league matches normally took place in the library. Roger, an enthusiastic pipe-smoker, always took a keen interest in the play and you knew when he was approaching your board by the intensifying aroma of tobacco smoke.
Thanks to Maurice’s coaching, I was able to play for the second team from the outset, with a couple of outings for the first team during my first year. The usual first team at this time would be chosen from a squad including Steve Shardlow, David Slattery, Pete Hinds, Mick Riordan, Richard Sissons, Rupert Mason, Julius Mach and D F Jones. By the time I reached my second year, David, Mick and DFJ had left and I became a permanent member of the first team, although the team’s strength in depth meant that I remained on board 5 or 6 until I reached my fourth year, after which I gradually leap-frogged my way up to board 2, finally taking top board after Steve left at the end of 1970. Steve had been a fine mentor, capable of holding his own against anyone in the county and always eager to pass on his knowledge and experience.
Throughout this period, we performed well at both junior and senior levels. There were several other strong school clubs within the county, notably Derby School and Swanwick Hall, but Bemrose was indubitably the leader and invariably supplied the majority of players for junior county teams. An account of our third place in the 1970 Midlands Schools’ Championship can be seen on the Derbyshire Chess Magazine page under Issue No.4, May 1970.
One of Steve’s last outings for the school was on 14th November 1970, when we travelled to Leeds as Derbyshire’s representatives in the British lightning team championship, for which we’d qualified by beating the Celanese and Rolls-Royce clubs in the local qualifying event held a few weeks earlier at the Celanese club. We were the only school team competing in a field including some of the strongest clubs in the country, so we didn’t really do too badly to finish 22nd out of 24 with 10 points, above Shrewsbury and Wakefield. The winners were King and King of London with 22 points, followed by Cavendish with 20 and Leeds with 18. I scored 6/7 on board 3, which encouraged me as I’d entered the individual tournament the following day, where I scored 5/9 to finish equal 12th out of 40. This tournament was won by Brian Eley with 8/9.
Around the time that Steve left, Roger Molyneaux retired and Richard Andruszko joined the staff as a maths teacher. Richard was a capable club player and therefore a natural replacement for Roger as staff member with responsibility for chess. Roger was a kindly, avuncular character but was very much of the old school, whereas Richard, in his early twenties, was more like a peer and we were all on reciprocal first name terms with him. Richard played for the school first team in the adult competitions, and became a useful high board player in the county second team.
By now, Mark Bullock was increasingly making his presence known. Mark was the same age as me, but whereas I’d had a good grounding in chess prior to joining the school, enabling me to hit the ground running, Mark as a slightly later starter had to spend some time catching up. However, he improved rapidly and while my playing strength began to plateau, Mark’s continued on an upward trajectory and he’d at least caught me up by the time I left school in February 1973, having dropped out of my A-level studies. In terms of sheer aggression and will to win, I couldn’t match him and he became one of the county’s top players before going on to Oxford University, where he was an associate of Jon Speelman and attained a 200+ BCF grading. As far as I’m aware, he is the only ex-Bemrose player to have taken part in an Oxford v Cambridge Varsity match, having played on board 5 in the 1977 event.
We got at least as far as the Sunday Times zonal semi-final each year, often being stopped by one or other of the strong Leicester teams. On 22nd January 1969, we lost to Wyggeston 2.5-3.5 in the semi-final; on 30th January 1970 we lost to Guthlaxton 2-4 in the semi-final; and then in January 1971 (I don’t have the exact date as I lost my scoresheet) we reached the zonal final by getting our revenge on Guthlaxton as follows:
Sunday Times zonal semi-final
Played at Guthlaxton School, Leicester, January 1971
Guthlaxton v Bemrose (Bemrose white on odd)
| 1 | I McLean | 0.5-0.5 | Mike J Alderson |
| 2 | S Graham | 0.5-0.5 | Peter C Hinds |
| 3 | D Hale | 0.5-0.5 | Richard I Sissons |
| 4 | P Dexter | 0-1 | Mark C Bullock |
| 5 | D Wood | 0.5-0.5 | Jeff K Wright |
| 6 | D J Luxton | 0.5-0.5 | Paul A Jarrald |
| 2.5-3.5 |
I recall that my game was a tense affair arising from a Closed Sicilian, with little if any material having been exchanged by the close of play, at which point we agreed a draw as neither side had achieved anything tangible. My opponent became quite strong and played on board three for the Leicestershire first team in the 1973 Derbyshire v Leicestershire match.
In the zonal final, our progress was halted by yet another Leicester team:
Sunday Times zonal final
Played at Bemrose School on 17th March 1971
Bemrose v Alderman Newton’s (Bemrose white on odd)
| 1 | Mike J Alderson | 1-0 | Alan N Morris |
| 2 | Peter C Hinds | 0.5-0.5 | S W Djuric |
| 3 | Richard I Sissons | 0-1 | J Pindard |
| 4 | Mark C Bullock | 0.5-0.5 | S S Kang |
| 5 | Jeff K Wright | 0-1 | C A Bland |
| 6 | Paul A Jarrald | 0-1 | K E Moffoot |
| 2-4 |
Alan Morris was probably the strongest player I ever met in the Sunday Times matches, but I felt little satisfaction in beating him because I simply followed analysis in the Vienna Gambit which had been published in CHESS magazine. Alan was unaware of the dangers of the line, and entered a losing sequence after which all I had to do was to mop up and avoid blundering.
Pete Hinds and Richard Sissons both left at the end of the 1971 summer term, leaving something of a void, as both were solid, reliable players with considerable experience of county and Weekend League chess, Pete having been Derbyshire junior champion in 1968-9. However, Sean Walters and Malcolm Newsam, also seasoned players, were promoted from the second team and helped us to once again reach the zonal semi-final, in which we were knocked out by Wintringham School, Grimsby in a match played on 28th January 1972. I don’t have full details or the final score of the match, but our team was me, Mark, Sean, Paul, Malcolm and Carl Butterworth and I beat R Skelton on top board.
By 1973, Sean and Malcolm had left but the first team was replenished by two very useful players in Ant Grace, who had been improving strongly during the previous couple of years, and most importantly Steve Walker. Steve was already in his third year but had been hitherto unknown in Bemrose chess circles. He’d been a regular at the Rolls-Royce club however, honing his skills in play against their strong county players, and was more than ready for the first team by the time he was discovered. Within a couple of years, he was playing top board for the school.
In January 1973, we beat Wyggeston B in the Sunday Times zonal semi-final and faced Ashfield School in the final in March. I had left in February, but I was still eligible to play for Bemrose until the end of the school year in July. This was to be my last match though, as I started work at Rolls-Royce soon afterwards and was no longer able to commit to the school team. This time, in a nail-biter of a match, we were successful and thereby reached the final 16 in the national stage of the competition, although the team was eliminated in the next round by the eventual winners, Bolton School.
Sunday Times Zonal Final
Played at Ashfield School, Kirkby-in-Ashfield on 22nd March 1973. The match was reported in depth in the Derby Evening Telegraph’s Chess Notes column by Mark Bullock, and I’ve summarised his report and added my own comments below.
Ashfield v Bemrose (Ashfield white on odd)
| 1 | A Evans | 0-1 | Mike J Alderson |
| 2 | A Ross | 1-0 | Mark C Bullock |
| 3 | Jerry Herrington | 1-0 | Paul A Jarrald |
| 4 | S Grace | 0-1 | Steve Walker |
| 5 | B Evans | 0.5-0.5 | Carl M Butterworth |
| 6 | R Ross | 0-1 | Anthony W Grace |
| 2.5-3.5 |
Board 1 – my last game for Bemrose School is given below. I could have played the killer …Qg5 on move
Board 1 – my last game for Bemrose School is given below. I could have played the killer …Qg5 on move 16.
Board 2 – Mark’s game was strange. In a QGA, his opponent played crudely to retain the pawn with …c6 and …b5, which Mark of course knew how to refute and he duly regained the pawn and obtained a nice position with an extra centre pawn, a large space advantage and play against a weak a-pawn. I expected him to convert his advantages with ease, but in Mark’s words, he “concentrated on the wrong one of his opponent’s weaknesses and blundered away a piece in acute time trouble”.
Board 3 – Paul achieved a promising position arising from a Sicilian, but he erred badly at a late stage, exchanging his strong knight instead of a bad bishop and leaving himself with a lost ending.
Board 4 – Steve played a KIA and gradually increased the pressure on his opponent’s overextended pawn centre, eventually breaking the game open at a critical point to gain a decisive advantage.
Board 5 – Carl’s French led to a blocked game in which neither side was able to make progress and the point was shared.
Board 6 – Ant also played a KIA, losing a pawn due to an oversight, but obtaining strong pressure by way of compensation. It didn’t appear that this would suffice for victory however, and by this stage all the other games were over and we needed a win as a drawn match would have meant Ashfield going through on age handicap. Ant was fully aware of this, but kept his head, winning a piece in a time scramble and thus the game and match.
Bemrose reached the final of the 1972-3 Derby and District League Cup by beating YMCA by 4-0 in round 1, Derby by 3½-½ in round 2 and Celanese by 2-2, winning on board count, in the semi-finals. The final was postponed twice and was eventually played early in the following season with this result against one of the strongest teams in the league.
Derby and District League Cup Final 1972-3
Played at the Celanese club on 16th October 1973. Colours not specified.
Bemrose v Rolls-Royce
| 1 | Mark C Bullock | 0-1 | Raymond J Gamble |
| 2 | Richard M Andruszko | 1-0 | Maurice J Hill |
| 3 | Steve Walker | 1-0 | Robert G Monk |
| 4 | Paul A Jarrald | 1-0 | Eric Morrell |
| 3-1 |
When Mark left in 1974, the school team was left in the somewhat unusual situation of potentially having a staff member on board one in adult competitions, as Richard had been playing above Steve in the board order. With Steve continuing to improve strongly, the matter was resolved once and for all in a head to head match which he won decisively, thereby establishing himself as undisputed top board.