One of the first residents of International Students House, Peter Willis, reflects on the Goats Club, the opening of the House on Park Crescent in 1965, and his life from medical doctor to potter.
Exploring the world started early for me. When I was 12, the rest of my family went to Washington, D.C., and I travelled alone on the RMS Queen Elizabeth or RMS Queen Mary to visit them every summer. On one crossing, Captain Sorrell let me steer the mighty ocean liner for 20 minutes in the mid-Atlantic.
Over three years, we explored virtually all of the USA – five of us in our un-air-conditioned Studebaker. During the other school holidays, I visited friends and family all over the UK by steam train.
I hadn’t expected to pass the exams needed for medical school on the first try, but I did. So I had a wonderful gap year working as a lab technician at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
l escaped back to the UK within days of getting my first letter about American military service! | suppose that makes me a draft dodger.
As a student at the Middlesex Hospital, I lived first at International Hall, sharing a large, double room with my brother James.
I joined the Goats Club at the suggestion of Iain Chalmers, a friend I’d met at our first coffee break at the Middlesex. I was drawn to the club because I always loved discovering new things and ideas, which is precisely what the club’s talks were all about.
[Mary] handed me an application form and said, “Label it 1.” I put “1” at the top, so I was the first International Students House applicant.
I attended one of the regular Tuesday meet-ups of the Goats Club and, as we prepared the coffee trolley before the meeting, Mary Trevelyan announced that the application forms for residence at International Students House had just arrived.
She handed me an application form and said, “Label it 1.” I put “1” at the top, so I was the first International Students House applicant. When I asked her who I should put as referees she said: “Put me for one and Christopher Paton for the other.”
The room I shared with my brother in International Hall was large enough to hold meetings of the future ISH House Committee, with Christopher Paton in attendance. Captain Ashok Bansal, the first chairman, lived across the corridor from me and is still a friend.
We all moved to Park Crescent on the day ISH opened, still smelling strongly of paint.
The camaraderie amongst the residents led to long-lasting friendships.
Even with a busy schedule as a medical student, I was still able to participate in the activities of the House. The camaraderie amongst the residents led to long-lasting friendships.
It was also during my stay at ISH that I got an opportunity to travel and intern in Nigeria for three months.
Along my journey as a GP in Marylebone/ Paddington, I was the International Students House doctor for a while, doing weekly surgeries at Park Crescent and York Terrace East.
My practice was the happiest partnership that I had ever come across but eventually, that too came to an end when I retired. That life might have been over, but another was to start.
I was very occupied with our lovely garden in Barnsbury, but my partner said, “Why don’t you try making pots rather than just collecting other people’s?” What a great idea!
I did four years at City and Islington College and then a part-time BA in Ceramics at Westminster University.
I was one of the fortunate final graduating groups from what had been a revered school, the Harrow School of Art. “You can’t store clay on computer memory sticks”, we were told. So, the prestigious degree course closed on our heels in 2012.
I now have a little studio at the end of the garden. “Home-made Heaven” I have called the garden, and my diminishing energies are spent pottering there and at my wheel.
I still keep in touch with International Students House and am delighted to attend many of the monthly Goats Bar Nights to meet up with old friends and make new ones.