Pete Manson was an amazing man who was taken too soon. He was caretaker and groundsman at Hornby High School for ten years until a long illness stopped him working in September. He died in mid-November aged 61. Life can be very unfair.

Pete started work at Hornby High School as the person who mowed the playing fields but when the former caretaker resigned about ten years ago, Pete reckoned he could do both the caretaking and groundsman’s jobs. He was a hard worker and certainly showed that he could.

Being caretaker of a secondary school is a tough job with unsociable hours. Pete would be out of bed long before sunrise checking that the boiler was running properly so we would have a warm school when the teachers and kids arrived. He unlocked the school and then got on with the day – typically fixing the bits we had busted the day before, mowing lawns, checking all the safety systems for the building warrant of fitness, fetching and carrying and then, once we had all gone home, making sure the school was safely locked down for the night. And then there were the extra duties like turning up at 3am when the alarms went off, or at the weekends when there would be kids running around on the roof, or a teacher had set off the alarms, or couldn’t find the key to the gym, or whatever. Pete sorted it all out.

Being caretaker and groundsman is an outdoorsy sort of job mostly and that suited Pete down to the ground – not for him being cooped up inside in an office. I don’t think we ever saw him in anything but shorts and only the coldest days of winter made him put the swannie on. Whilst there would have been many days when it was a joy to be outside in the fresh air, I also recall times in the dry months when Pete’s out there on the mower – as least we think he is – all you can see is a ball of dust moving up and down the field. There were also days so miserable you would hesitate to put the dog out, but Pete was still out there on the mower getting the job done. He was an amazing worker. Pete never said no. The impossible occasionally took a bit longer than the difficult. Pete had a deep knowledge of the school – what key fitted what lock, where the water pipes went, how the alarms worked, why this tap doesn’t work, where the power comes from. There was nothing he didn’t know about the property.

There have been special times when we were very fortunate to have Pete and his special care. At the time of the earthquakes when there was a lot of extra work required, cleaning up the mess, the safety checks, working with all the other agencies. Pete worked hard to ensure the teachers and kids were kept safe.

Currently we are in the middle of our rebuild which has meant an enormous amount of extra work for the caretaking team. There were resource rooms which had not been cleaned out for 40 years, furniture to be moved, services to be relocated, rubbish skips to be filled. Pete was also able to offer lots of good ideas and ways of doing things to make the jobs go easier. We could trust Pete to get the job done right. We could not have achieved what we have without him.

We were lucky to have Pete working with us for all those years. He was more than a caretaker – he was the bloke who took care of us at Hornby High. We are grateful and thank him wholeheartedly. The Hornby family extends our deepest sympathy to Pete’s wonderful family. He was taken too soon and will be deeply missed by us all.

Jon Rogers
November 2018