Coming straight into MP, I started inauspiciously by scoring zero out of forty on a German irregular-verbs test, but Science School soon proved a happier hunting ground. Sitting at the teak desks in the imperturbable Martin Gregory's (Co Ro, 1962 - 99) Physics lab, I would have been surprised beyond measure at the idea that 20 years later I would be teaching in the same room myself. Pupils often ask whether it felt strange to come back as a don; I think it probably feels less strange for an OW than for anybody else!

My lab is a room with many personal memories, but it also holds part of the school’s history. On top of the glass cabinets there are pieces of apparatus dating back over a century. Many are from the time of William Bleaden Croft ('The Bleeder'), who arrived at Winchester in 1874 and became our very first Physics don: he was ably assisted by the technician Mr Abley, who constructed many of the items himself. Over the past couple of decades I’ve had the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with these classic pieces of kit and share them with new audiences of Wykehamists and others.

There are some star attractions: the glacier of tar pitch that has been flowing down its wooden channel since 1906; the X-ray apparatus used before World War I to diagnose patients from the Royal Hampshire County Hospital; the replica that Croft created of Hertz’s apparatus for producing the first ever radio signals. This last is one of my favourites: not only do we have original photographs of it being demonstrated, we also have Croft’s scrapbooks of the time, complete with journal clippings, correspondence with Royal Society members, and his own diagrams – a tangible record of the history of science and the history of teaching science at Winchester College.

It’s rare good fortune to have such treasures around: at many schools, new buildings and staff turnover over the course of the 20th century led to the loss, willy-nilly, of historical equipment and expertise. We should make the most of it.