We are very sorry to announce that former BGS staff Conrad Snook passed away on the 18th August 2024 following his battle with Parkinsons. Conrad worked at BGS from 1978 until 2002 and was an excellent Economics teacher and Deputy Head of Sixth Form. He will also be remembered as an outstanding rugby coach and accompanied several sports tours and took 2 teams to the U15 Daily Mail Cup finals. 

The Old Bristolians and Bristol Grammar School community send our condolences to the Snook family. 

Funeral details 

It is with sadness that we announce the passing of Conrad Snook - Husband, Brother, Dad, Grandad, Teacher, Rugby Coach and inspiration to many over his long teaching career and active sporting life. Conrad died peacefully on Sunday 18th August 2024 surrounded by his family. 

It would be a pleasure for the family to welcome all who wish to attend a celebration of his life at Canford Crematorium and thereafter at Gloucestershire County Cricket Ground. Please click link below if you would like to make a donation to our Just Giving Page for Parkinson's UK. https://www.justgiving.com/page/familysnook-1724174597182

Eulogy - by Dan Snook, son of Conrad

It’s a pleasure for our family to welcome you to celebrate the full and varied life of Dad, Grandad, Conrad, team mate or Sir. However you addressed him, he touched the lives of many people during his life in the classroom, on the sports field or amongst his friends and family.

As you know he had been suffering from the vile disease that is Parkinson’s for the last 15 years or so which had such a debilitating effect on a spirited, energetic and physical person, but we want to ensure we remember him today for the man he really was.

Intensely passionate about his family, unwaveringly loyal to his friends, determined, competitive, compassionate, strict yet scrupulously fair, with a great sense of humour. He wouldn’t back down if he felt in the right in any situation, including the Tesco carpark on one occasion where a standoff resulted against a car not following the directional arrows. I believe Mum got out and started walking home…

Dad loved a good party. Whether that be at the bar after a game of cricket at Westbury, The Mem after a Bristol game, or with a bottle of whisky playing cards late into the night with his favourite daughter in law (that was his little joke as he only had one), he was often one of the last to bed.

And as for those after match sessions at Headstone Lane …  I’ve no idea how the car navigated its way home …and many is the evening I recall sitting outside a pub with the girls nursing a coke and a packet of crisps.

As a young boy in Wales and already engrossed by sports, his Dad would take him to see Glamorgan play cricket and Swansea play football. Tragic circumstances led to the move to Ruislip where our wonderful grandmother raised the family on her own. From all accounts although times were tough, the house at 79 The Fairway was a place of fun and laughter where all were welcome and the relationships and family ties made there have endured to this day.

Later in his life Dad would say how difficult that period was, being picked on for his Valleys accent, but typically he fought the bullies and even took up boxing to go one better. Those who played rugby with him may have seen those skills occasionally displayed… He remained a proud Welshman through and through.

Luckily Dad was part of the first intake of the newly opened St Nicks Grammar, and reveled in his new school life. Rugby, cricket, athletics filled his days, often in the same team as his dear brother Harry, and he continued to play for St Nicks Old Boys after he left to attended Liverpool University. And yes, he saw the Beatles at the Cavern, and had vivid memories of being sardined onto the Cop at Anfield, along with the dockers straight from the pubs.

However, the ties with Ruislip were strong, especially as Dad had met a girl at the youth club…

It would have been Mum and Dad’s 59th wedding anniversary next March. Without being inelegant about mum’s age, it is incredible to think that they had known each other for almost 65 years. Four kids, 6 grandchildren, family was such a vital part of Dad’s life.

Regular get-togethers with our aunts, uncles, cousins for Spring breaks are some of our fondest memories, and Christmas in particular with an even wider family as daughters and sons in law joined the party. Gin and wine flowed but lunch was always served (eventually) and party games were obligatory. One of our last family Christmas saw dad draw up a list of bird names that he acted out in charades. The Con-dor was an obvious one but I’ll leave the Chough and the Blue Tit to your imagination

As a teacher he always said that while he didn’t gain the pecuniary rewards of other professions, he enjoyed riches that money couldn’t buy in seeing those he taught go on to achieve success, whether that was as simple as coaching pupils to passing A levels or going on to representative honours on the rugby field. At Mill Hill School he and mum adored the life and community with such memorable social occasions as Millers Cricket week or the 1977 The silver jubilee street. The purple dinner jacket you see here certainly had many outings.

Then 24 years at Bristol Grammar School where he and mum sent all four of us even though money was tight. He and I started on the same day both as nervous as each other.

He perfected what we kids knew as the stare: a look that would turn the most rumbustious pupil into a quivering wreck.

And he loved a good trip away, accompanying parties to the Ardèche every year where he seemed to have as much fun, if not more than the students.

He threw himself wholly into school life with a dedication and professionalism that was admired by colleagues and pupils. He adored coaching rugby and I played a season for his second XV:  the Friday pre match peptalks were full of Snookisms and generations of schoolboys will have their own favourites. His dedication extended to the hours in the launderette after the game washing the shirts …and then draping them to dry on the radiators at home.

I wanted to say some of his proudest achievements were his teams getting to Twickenham twice for the finals of the Daily Mail Cup, but that would be wrongly formulated. He wasn’t proud for his achievement but overjoyed for the boys and their families for what they had achieved. He didn’t want the limelight.

Dad loved sport and was a fit man well into his 60’s. He could turn his hand to anything, but his great loves were the team sports of rugby and cricket, and later in his life being an active part of a thriving running club in Westbury

Some of his best times were spent on the rugby field with the St Nicks Old boys or the OM’s. although but I do remember him having his head split open by a stray boot…he claimed from someone on his own team!

He played cricket well into his 40’s for Westbury Cricket Club where he was entrusted with locking up the bar on a Sunday evening and was rarely back home before midnight. Mum you were at work! Around that time, he got the running bug, and Dad being Dad had to go the extra mile, literally! Multiple half marathons with a pb of 1.17 he also won the over 60’s title for the Great Western Runners towpath 10k series in 2003 which we did together. He, Dave Perkins and Chris Taylor would do the local circuit and he dreamed of beating 3 hours for the marathon and came so close in 1991 when he clocked 3.01.

The four of us still swim or run regularly and that is his legacy, and some of the most precious times of my life were our Sunday morning run either round the Downs or with the dog through Blaise woods chatting with me trying to keep up.

And of course he was an avid sports watcher, at the Bristol Mem of course but also football at Highbury with his mate John Waite, cricket at Lords where he took me to see the 1975 Ashes, and at Cardiff and Twickenham on many occasions, including the famous Ericka Rowe streak, I don’t know why I remember that incident as a 15 year old boy!  I think you were that day too Roger.

And one of the greatest ever games in Cardiff 1973 Baba’s versus All Blacks: as he never tired of telling us, I was there.

Dad’s interests extended into many different fields. His garden was a source of great enjoyment in his retirement, and he loved the family dogs, especially the two border collies Ned and Max that he trained and for whom unsurprisingly he was the boss. Birdwatching gave him much pleasure, especially the outings with Charles Martin, and he loved singing with the Bristol Male Voice Choir.

He even used to make his own hooch, either home brew beer or various fruit wines, once serving a particularly vicious rhubarb brew to my non-plussed French pen pal.

So, all in all a life lived to the full and one to celebrate. I hope you can all join us for a glass after the service to toast him. He would been delighted to stand everyone a drink in a cricket ground bar. And who knows, he may even have saved a few bottles of that rhubarb vintage 1983.

As always, he prepared everything in advance and so I have been holding on to this poem for the last 8 years since he gave it to me expressing the wish that I read it when today came…

The Man In The Glass -  Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr.

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.

For it isn't your father, or mother, or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

He's the fellow to please - never mind all the rest
For he's with you, clear to the end
And you've passed your most difficult, dangerous test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.