Who can honestly say that after leaving St Mary’s, they didn’t indulge in a spot of ostrich farming for a short time? I know I did.

I jest of course but that is precisely the latter-day occupation of one of the most popular teachers in the school’s history.

Richard ‘Dicky’ Earle arrived at St Mary’s at the beginning of the 1970/71 term and was a much-loved English teacher with an enlightened, progressive approach to teaching.

Though born in the Cotswolds in November 1941, Richard grew up in South Africa and spent five years in a seminary in Pretoria before leaving and coming to the UK in his 20s, after realising he wanted to teach for a living.

After an initial position in a Catholic secondary modern in Bermondsey, Richard was delighted to land a job at St Mary’s: “It was absolutely fantastic to come to a school where it seemed to me that the vast majority of boys were genuinely keen to learn. I wanted to teach and at St Mary’s I found I could do exactly that so it was a great move for me and I discovered what an excellent, kind and understanding headmaster Fr Graystone was,” he told me.

Andre Villaret, who started at St Mary’s in 1970, said: “He was a fantastic form master to us and he genuinely cared for our well-being,” while John Arundel (1972), said: “Dicky was a really great person and very inclusive.”

There was sadness when he left St Mary’s at the end of the 1975/76 year to move to a school in Corby which was followed by a deputy headship in Pontypridd.

After five years year, the much-travelled 45-year-old started to get itchy feet and craved a new challenge. Deciding against going for a headship, Richard opted for a completely new life in Australia, emigrating with his family in January 1987

After teaching in a school for a couple of years, Richard moved to Marlow, some 36 miles north of Sydney. He then made one of the more unusual career moves for a former St Mary’s teacher – he began farming ostriches: “It was really great to be able to live on the land, build things and have a break from teaching with all the drawing pins and chewing gum and I really enjoyed the ostrich farming.”

He now lives in Garfield, Victoria, seventy miles south of Melbourne.

He is recalled with huge fondness by boys who attended St Mary’s during the first half of the 1970s. It is a feeling which is reciprocated: “Looking back I think I related to the boys at St Mary’s better than other pupils at any school I taught at,” he said. “I view my time there as a kind of honeymoon period.”