‘The children were his top priority’

NAUGHTY children feared his reprimands, but all respected his sense of fairness and love of teaching. 

Godfrey Ridler, who taught at St Alban’s Primary School in Holborn for more than 30 years, was praised as a “servant of the community” at a memorial service on Saturday, fol­lowing his death in October, aged 69.

Strict but fair, Mr Ridler, whose chiding of pupils was usually preceded by his stroking of his chin, was deputy head at St Alban’s from 1980 until his retirement in 2000.  

In the early 1970s, when the Inner London Education Authority threatened St Alban’s with closure because of a drop in the number of pupils, he organised after-school clubs and canvassed in the area to boost intake. 

At the service at St Alban the Martyr Church off Gray’s Inn Road, attended by around 100 people, friends and former pupils remembered his dry wit and enthusiasm for his job. 

Colleague Jon Francis said Mr Ridler demanded high standards from himself and pupils. 

“He encouraged the shyest of pupils to participate in class activities,” he said. 

Charles Nicol, a former pupil, paid tribute to Mr Ridler, describing him as “the best teacher I ever had”. 

“Around here no one had any money and the estates were rough,” he said, “but he put us on the right path.” 

Labour councillor for Holborn and Covent Garden Julian Fulbrook praised Mr Ridler as “an outstanding teacher who had a great effect on everyone who met him”.

Born to devoutly Christian, working-class parents in Chingford in 1940, Mr Ridler was sent to London to live with a family friend after the untimely death of his mother in 1950. After finishing school, he worked as a librarian, subsequently training as a teacher and getting a job at Ben Jonson School in Bethnal Green before joining St Alban’s. 

He owned a flat in Bloomsbury and attended St Martin-in-the-Fields church every Sunday.  

His niece, Anne Heywood, said: “He was always looking to the welfare of others. As a teacher, he believed children could take in much more complex music and stories than was thought at the time. He never talked down to children.” 

Alongside his love of ballet and opera, Mr Ridler enjoyed Doris Day songs, Disney films and children’s books. 

Among his former pupils, many fondly recalled school trips to London Zoo and the cinema in Camden Town.

Allie Currie, who was head of St Alban’s from 1979-1986, had been warned by councillors that the school was in danger of being shut down unless it attracted more children. 

At the time it had just 43 pupils but capacity for 200. 

Together, she and Mr Ridler turned around the school’s fortunes.

Today, it has 215 pupils and a new nursery with 26 children. 

Alison Kahane, head of the school at the time of Mr Ridler’s retirement in 2000, said the glowing Ofsted report the school received in that year was a testament to his hard work.

Mr Ridler moved to his “dream home” in Saffron Walden, Essex, in 2005. Within two years he had been diagnosed with cancer but remained cheerful despite his illness.

Of his immediate family, he is survived by his sister, Muriel, who lives in Belgium. 
JOSH LOEB