Anthony Chenevix-Trench

Who was Anthony Chenevix-Trench?

Anthony Chenevix-Trench was a British schoolteacher. He was born in British India, educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford, and served in the Second World War as an artillery officer with British Indian units in Malaya. Captured by the Japanese in Singapore, he was forced to work on the Burma Railway.

He taught Classics at Shrewsbury School, where he became housemaster, and for a year at Christ Church. He served as Headmaster of Bradfield College, where he raised academic standards and instituted a substantial programme of new building works. Appointed Headmaster of Eton College in 1963, he broadened the curriculum immensely and introduced a greater focus on achieving strong examination results, but was asked to leave in 1969 after a series of problems.

After a one-year break during which he taught for one term at the prep school Swanbourne House, he served as Headmaster of Fettes College, where he succeeded in greatly increasing enrolment and in reforming the harsh traditional atmosphere of the school. He died while still Headmaster there. Just over a decade after his death, a press controversy arose over recollections of his use of bare bottom belting and caning as punishments; he had abolished birching at Eton.