The School Cap

A generation ago most British schoolboys wore peaked caps as part of their uniform. These caps ranged from the simple to the ornate, and were produced in a rainbow palette of colours from plain black to bright yellow. There were many ways in which official colours could be introduced, from making the entire cap in one shade, to a contrasted peak, alternating segments, a maltese cross design, buttons and ribbons.

Nowadays the once ubiquitous school caps are a much less common sight. In the 1960s and 1970s many schools relaxed their uniform regulations, making caps optional for older boys and eventually voluntary for all. What had been for many decades a normal - and practical - form of headgear came to be viewed as old fashioned and juvenile and was eventually abandoned by most state schools.

During the heyday of the school cap its wearing was strictly enforced by the more authoritarian schools. Boys who breached the regulations would be punished with lines, detentions or even corporal punishment. Entries in a Kent grammar school punishment book of the early 1960s reveal pupils being caned for 'absence of school caps' or for being 'out of school without permission and without caps.'

Some boarding schools were even stricter: 'To be without a cap anywhere in the school at any time was a beatable offence. It is easy to see how this rule lent itself to abuse and a weakling's life could be made misery in his vain attempt to retain or recapture his cap from bullies.' (Public school memoir)

Caps certainly served a useful purpose in identifying boys as belonging to particular schools. As one ex-pupil remembered:

• 'We had to behave on the school bus. There always seemed to be some member of the public spying on us and we were easily identifiable in our green caps emblazoned R.G.S. It didn't occcur to us to remove our caps - that was a hanging offence in itself...'

Other memories

• School caps were a real concern for us junior boys. At my grammar school (1958-1963) it was compulsory for all boys up to Form IV to wear caps. The rule stated that we had to wear the cap at all times travelling between home and school. I journeyed to school six miles away by train, and there were specially appointed train prefects whose main job was to see that we kept our caps on! It became the done thing to wear the cap as far back on the head as possible. Only 'creeps' wore their caps pulled down over their foreheads.

• It was a school rule that boys below the sixth form had to wear their caps when travelling between home and school. If you were caught it meant a detention, so for most boys it was a matter of judging the theoretical chance of being detected before taking the decision to remove one's headgear.

The younger boys - first and second formers - did not especially mind having to wear caps, but we older boys really resented the rule. No other school in the area insisted that boys of 15 or 16 wear caps, so we really stood out. Our embarrassment was compounded by the design of the cap, navy blue with contrasting segments coloured a vivid yellow, the whole topped by a gold button.

There were prefects and masters who seemed to go out of their way to catch boys breaking the caps rule and after all these years I can still vividly recall a particular incident. I had stayed late for a school club and was reaching the end of my 25-minute walk home when a car pulled up alongside me. As was my usual practice, I had removed my cap once I thought I had reached a safe distance from the school and the sound of the vehicle stopping made my heart skip a beat. However, I did not recognise the car as belonging to any of the masters from my school and when the motorist wound down his window I assumed he was lost and seeking directions. I went over to the car to offer assistance and found to my dismay that it was Mr Dorrington, the chemistry master - a particular zealot in the matter of caps. He had also just acquired a new car to replace his familiar old Morris Minor.

I was given a detention and since I had already been in trouble for breaking the caps rule a couple of times that term, I also received three strokes of the cane. That was only the third time I had been caned during my school career and I really felt aggrieved that it should be over something as petty as not wearing the wretched school cap.

• I attended a grammar school in Manchester in the 1960s and the regulations specified short trousers and cap for the first two years. This was complemented by school tie, a blazer with red piping, drab grey shirt, knee-length grey socks and grey v-neck pullover. Books had to be carried in a satchel (what has happened to the satchel makers of Great Britain? - obviously a dying or dead art). Routes to and from school were patrolled by prefects to enforce the correct wearing of the above. If you lived on one of the big council estates, like I did, this juvenile get-up made you a constant source of amusement and target practice from the lads attending the local secondary modern. I got out of shorts in the third year but still had to wear the wretched cap: indeed, it was a punishable offence not to have one in your possession right up to the fifth form.

Many private schools kept caps as part of their uniform for some years after state schools had abolished compulsory headgear for pupils. The cap, usually worn in conjunction with a traditional style of uniform, served to mark the school's exclusivity - although not all boys were particularly happy about this:

• I greatly disliked the peaked schoolcap I had to wear as a pupil at my fee-paying school since it marked me out as attending a 'posh' private school. Wearing a cap meant you were more likely to be picked on by kids from other schools - it goes without saying that none of the local state schools still had caps as part of their uniform. Boys from rival schools used to grab our caps from our heads and play catch with them, while we frantically tried to retrieve them knowing we'd get lines or even a detention if we turned up at school the next day without the regulation headgear.

Nowadays caps are mainly worn by youngsters at private preparatory schools and a cap-wearing state school such as the Roman Catholic primary in South Kensington, London featured in the Times newspaper in January 1998, is a rarity. 'School discipline is strict,' noted the Times, which reported the head teacher as proclaiming: 'It's caps for boys to and from school. If I tell a pupil to put his cap on, he puts it on.'

Memories of school caps from a 1960s grammar school boy

'I enrolled at a state grammar school for boys in 1961. At that time caps were worn throughout the school - including by the sixth form. Indeed, sixth form prefects were identified both by their special ties and by virtue of wearing caps with attached tassels. Although the school had strict regulations concerning the wearing of caps, this did not really impinge on us junior boys since we wore the required headgear quite willingly. Indeed, I can remember proudly wearing my grammar school cap and blazer at the age of 12 or 13 when visiting the local library on Saturday mornings - which of course was not a school day.

'However, as I progressed up the school I, along with many of my classmates, began to resent the enforced wearing of the school cap. By the time I reached the fourth form, aged 15, caps had been made optional for sixth formers and we considered that we also ought to be allowed this privilege. We were no longer squeaky-voiced juniors, after all. But the prefects and masters continued to enforce the rule, with dire threats of lines or detentions, and the only gesture of rebellion we could make was to wear our caps precariously balanced at the backs of our heads.

'It must be appreciated that our dislike of compulsory caps coincided with the 1960s youth revolution typified by Beatle haircuts and Carnaby Street fashions. Hats of all types were distinctly outre. In the same vein, many of us resented our obligatory service in the school corps which also involved the enforced wearing of unwanted headgear - in that case, the unflattering beret which accompanied the drab khaki army cadet uniform.

'Some time during my second term in the fifth form, flouting of the caps rule had become so commonplace that the headmaster threw in the towel and decided to abolish caps for all seniors. In what appeared to be a quite spontaneous gesture, most of us took our well-worn navy blue and maroon grammar school caps to the playground, threw them into a heap and set the lot on fire! That funeral pyre of smouldering caps was symbolic in more ways than one...

'I recently met someone who had also been at a grammar school in the 1960s and was taken aback when he proudly produced his cap, cherished for over thirty years. As I examined this now scarce artifact, with its school crest and shiny silk lining, I found myself wishing that I had also held onto my own cap as a token of my fondly remembered schooldays.'

Memories from the Duke of York's Royal Military School

'In the days when 'Dukies' wore army kit for their everyday school uniform, junior boys were distinguished by the fact that they dressed in a short-trousered version of the military-issue khaki battledress. However, by the time I joined the school in the late 1960s, normal school uniform had replaced military dress and our version of the short trousers/long trousers 'rite of passage' was rather less spectacular - juniors wore drab grey shirts whilst seniors enjoyed the privilege of white shirts.

'Juniors were also identifiable by their school caps, which they were expected to wear whenever they were outside the school grounds. Another, more memorable, rite of passage occurred at the end of my second year as I travelled home on the school train from Dover to London. All we second-formers on the train knew that we would no longer be compelled to wear the official school headgear next term, and as our carriages rattled across the railway bridge over the River Thames we took great delight in throwing our redundant caps out of the window into the murky waters below.

'Compulsory school caps were phased out altogether at the beginning of the 1970s, so the ritual throwing away of their caps by the junior boys did not continue long enough to assume the status of a hallowed tradition.'

Read about the eight different caps worn by boys at a London comprehensive school.