Eton honours Great Marlow headmaster

Mr St John Ellis died on Boxing Day last year, aged 77. He was the first Eton and Oxford University-educated headmaster to teach at a secondary modern school.

He was headmaster at Great Marlow from 1963 to 1971.

During his time there, he paid for the school's first rowing boat out of his own money. The school later produced four-times Olympic Gold medallist Steve Redgrave.

Phyllis Carr, who worked as a secretary and business education teacher at the school during the entire time Mr St John Ellis was head, said: "It was a small proportion of his life but I am sure there will be many former pupils in Marlow who will remember him.

"He was a remarkable man of many, many, talents."

Before coming to Great Marlow, Mr St John Ellis was awarded the George Medal for defusing a wartime bomb he had been ordered not to touch, in a Plymouth hospital.

At 16, he sailed his father's 36ft yacht single-handedly down the English Channel without permission.

The experience seemed to inspire him and after the war he devoted much of his life to working with teenagers. He worked hard to create opportunity for the less privileged. He created the Ocean Youth Club in 1960 with the Rev Christopher Courtauld which offered potential for excluded young children and a possible cure for social ills.

More than 100,000 children have sailed with OYC so far and it has since been taken over by his daughter Emma. Mr St John Ellis was also survived by his wife Gill and three sons.

Mr St John Ellis returned to Eton after his spell at Great Marlow.

The service will take place at Eton College Chapel at 2.45pm. After the service, there will be a special exhibition showing some of Mr St John Ellis's work as an inventor, craftsman and draughtsman. His earliest architectural drawings won him childhood prizes.

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