John Hamer retires from the Heritage Education Trust after 22 years of service
A personal reflection by Eric Steed
I first met John when he visited Wigan Pier sometime in the mid-1980s. I had been appointed as the history adviser for the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in 1982. This was an informal meeting with the three members of the Schools’ Centre staff, myself, John Slater (the staff inspector for history) and John. As one member said following the meeting, “It was like a coffee morning chat.” However, on reflection it was realised that the HMIs’ gentle questioning and interest had drawn from us all our plans and hopes for the future of the pier. The exchanges were not one-sided because the thoughts and ideas discussed and exchanged were later incorporated into the presentation for our successful bid for a Sandford Award in 1987.
The discussion skills that John exhibited at Wigan Pier had been honed and perfected over years of teaching in primary, secondary and a sixth form college. Coming from a family of three generations of teachers, John decided to give teaching a try and spent “a few years in Manchester and Montreal in primary education” – which he found he rather enjoyed. Having gained a history degree from Durham University, he opted for a Diploma in Education at Oxford. Fortuitously, his term of teaching practice was in a boys’ grammar school in Horsham. On completion of the Dip Ed., he returned as a member of staff and remained for twenty-three years. This was no day-to-day job for across the years he worked part-time to receive an advanced diploma in education before, again on a part-time basis, a Masters degree in Philosophy. In parallel, he experienced the school becoming a sixth form college whilst he progressed to be head of history and vice principal.
In 1983 John partially left the classroom to enter Her Majesty’s Inspectorate as a history and assessment specialist. This was the practitioner who charmed the staff at Wigan Pier. This had not been John’s first visit to Wigan. In December 1984, he inspected a sixth form college that had once been a grammar school: John should have been comfortable in this situation. However, according to the story that he shared with retired HMIs, he arranged with the teacher to leave a lesson at mid-point to get to another appointment. He moved quietly to the door, opened it gently and on closing it found himself in the stock room. This should have furnished John with one amusing after-dinner story but there was more to follow! As an HMI John visited Wigan twice more on official business; once to inspect history as part of a whole LEA inspection and again to give a talk to Wigan history teachers. He found time to visit Wigan Pier where the staff members insisted that he should be the second adult (the first was John Slater HMI) to receive a framed certificate appointing him to “the rank, honour and responsibility of Assistant Piermaster of Wigan Pier”. The certificate remains on display in John’s home “as a prized possession” despite the fact that the appointment expired in 1999.
On leaving HMI in 1997, John became the education adviser to the Heritage Lottery Fund. This appointment ended when he reached the age of sixty in 2000. At this time, he decided to become a freelance education consultant and formed the Heritage Education Group (HEG) with several former colleagues.
Following Wigan Pier’s successful bid for a Sandford Award in 1987, I was invited to become a judge (now assessor) later that year. In 1999 I received notification from the Heritage Education Trust (HET) that John had been appointed to the short-lived HET Advisory Council. By June 2000 he had become a Director of HET. In 2006, John suggested that the chief executive of HET should join HEG as a member of the ad hoc forum of like-minded people because this would widen perception of heritage and heritage contacts and thinking.
As a director, John played a substantive role in aiding the successful partnership of HET with Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU), Lincoln. The then university college approached Gareth Fitzpatrick, the chief executive of HET at the time, with a suggestion that it take over and run the award scheme, proposing a meeting with the college directorate to consider the offer. John had been a former visiting examiner of the college and willingly accompanied Gareth to a meeting at BGU in October 2007. The rest, as they say, is history.
John stepped into the role of chairman in July 2008 when illness caused the then chairman to miss the meeting of the directors. Appointed as substantive chairman by acclamation in 2009, he remained in this position until his resignation at the end of March 2022. During this time, his style of gentle, focused and unfailingly good-humoured leadership was appreciated by the directors and judges/assessors alike. It is typical of John that although he intended to go earlier, he stayed in post to see HET through the challenging times of the Covid Pandemic. In recognition of his services to heritage education, John was awarded an OBE in 2011.
If one seeks information on John’s background and accomplishments over his working life, it becomes a case of seek and ye shall be overwhelmed! However, it is a worthwhile exercise that I commend to everyone.
Eric Steed
Sandford Award assessor [1987-present]