Raymond George Smith. 18 February 1927 – 27 August 2025. BGS 1964-1989.

We are saddened to announce the passing of long term former staff member Ray Smith.

Funeral details

Please contact Lucy Joseph, Ray's daughter, by September 23 to RSVP to Ray's Celebration of Life on Wednesday 1 October in Redland, Bristol. Lucy Joseph josephlr32@gmail.com

Messages to Ray's family  - Please leave comments below or send to community@bgs.bristol.sch.uk and we will pass on to Ray's family.

About Ray

Ray taught at BGS for 25 years, first as a classroom teacher and head of year, then for 13 years as Senior Master (Deputy Head). He was a fantastic teacher and a very able and meticulous administrator, who was responsible for developing the school’s timetable every year. During the 1970s and 1980s, the family always spent time each summer staying at Lodge Hill, the BGS field centre, and have very fond memories of holidays there.

Ray was born on 18th February 1927 in Walworth, South East London and grew up in Chadwell Heath, Dagenham. He attended Dagenham County High School and was evacuated during the Second World War to Norfolk and Devon. After the war, Ray did National Service in the Royal Navy, and then went up to Oxford University in 1948 to study History.

After Oxford, and a brief stint in insurance sales, Ray began his teaching career – although he’d graduated in History, he took a job teaching Maths and turned out to be extremely good at it.

In the mid-1950s Ray taught at Akeley Wood Prep School, Buckinghamshire, where he met his wife Marjorie (who was Matron there). They married in Oxford in 1962. After a year in California in 1962-63 teaching at a new school there, and then teaching at the Worth School in Sussex, Ray got a job at Bristol Grammar School in 1965, and the family moved into Bristol, to the house in Westbury Park where Ray and Marjorie lived until Ray’s retirement. Ray and Marjorie had three children, Katy (born 1964) and twins Peter and Lucy (born 1967).

Ray retired from BGS in 1989, and in 1990 he and Marjorie moved to Compton Dundon, Somerset, to a small cottage in a very rural area. Sadly, Marjorie was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1992, but Ray continued living in Compton Dundon, enjoying gardening and walking, involvement with local wildlife and walking groups and attending music, film and theatre performances at the Strode Theatre, Street, and in Bristol, Bath and Cardiff. He also continued playing the piano to a very high standard throughout most of his life.

Ray turned 90 in 2017 and soon afterwards he made the decision to move to St Monica’s in Henleaze, Bristol, to a small flat where he had access to more care and support. In 2020, during the early days of the Covid pandemic, Ray was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and moved to the Sundials dementia unit in Garden House at St Monica’s, where he spent five years until his death on 27th August this year. The family are so grateful to the wonderful Sundials staff for the care, affection and respect with which they looked after Ray at the end of his life.

In keeping with Ray’s wishes, there will not be a formal funeral, but there will be a small gathering for family and friends to celebrate his life and remember him, on Wednesday 1st October in, Redland, Bristol.

From the Chronicle - written be Charles Martin, Chronicle 1989

Ray Smith was the first person I met at Bristol Grammar School. It was October 1985 and he had been given the task of showing the School to the ‘longlist’ of aspiring candidates for the BGS Headship, and giving them lunch prior to sending them on their way to the Governors’ Office for interview. Ray took me off to a local hostelry where he plied me liberally with steak-and-kidney pie and claret while filling me with the various ‘hot potatoes’, as he called them, which I should have to handle were I to be appointed, such as Saturday morning school, subject-based classrooms , the implementation of GSCE. I feel sure I should have cut and run at that stage had it not been for his avuncular charm and his straight and steady gaze. I did not realise it at the time, of course, but he was having exactly the same effect on me that he has on all those in need of help and guidance.

Ray Smith retires after twenty-five years of exceptional service to the School, as an outstanding classroom teacher, as Under Master of the Thirds and Fourths, and, during the past thirteen years, as Senior Master (he’s never cared much for his more recent appellation of ‘Assistant Head’). Throughout this second half of his long career, in his office adjoining the Staff Common Room, he has achieved daily miracles of planning and organisation.The hideous complexities of the timetable have been quietly tamed, the insatiable d emand for examination invigilators has been effectively supplied, the shifting sands of staff cover have been skilfully negotiated—and all this  with the minimum of fuss and maximum of goodwill. This meticulous attention to detail and unerring ability to assess implications have made him an invaluable member of staff and governors’ committees alike. Here his characteristic contributions, trenchant, irreverent, on occasion controversial, have illuminated subjects in need of more careful appraisal. Ace administrator he may have been, but he remained throughout his career a brilliant natural teacher and communicator. In his hands recalcitrant pupils have been as putty, abstruse mathematical problems have become crystal clear. He understands the foibles of the young and it has been significant how many miscreants, of their own accord, have turned to him for guidance as the water has been getting hot.

Great teachers have a magic about them - they weave a spell. Ray is an actor, a paradox, a chameleon. This colourful diversity of talents has nowhere been better illustrated than in his music-making. I remember coming upon him one dark December afternoon in the Great Hall prior to one of his legendary chair-moving marathons for the Carol Service. Perched all alone at the grand piano he was serenely tinkling out a version of All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. In a very different context he recently delighted his audience at a lunchtime concert in the Music School with the sensitive intensity of his playing of a Mozart piano sonata. By way of a third contrast I shall often think of his inspired jazz improvisation which came as a happy climax to the leaving-party which the Governors gave in his honour at the end of the Summer term.

How does one begin to sum up this complex and loveable character? Integrity, sanity, serenity - qualities such as these have been among Ray Smith's trademarks. But perhaps above everything else, all of us who have known him have been conscious that he's an unusually good man, someone who about every aspect of his work has asked the question, "Is it right?" as often as, "Does it work?". We realise how incredibly fortunate we have been to have his influence so much at the heart of our large community, and we thank him for all that he has done during his time here. We shall think of him and Marjorie with great affection as they embark upon the next stage of their life together and wish them and their family every happiness for the future.

Charles Martin

Further details and photos to be added when provided.