John Kidd
OP 1957
2 August 1940 - 19 February 2025

With our thanks to John's brother, Tim (OP 1969)

John was born in 1940 and joined the Junior School of The Portsmouth Grammar School in 1948.  He was assigned to Hudson House and, as he moved on to the Middle and Upper Schools, became a member of Barton and Grant Houses.  He played in a skiffle group, which also featured the most famous OP of them all - Paul Jones (in those days Paul Pond).  John also played a lot of sport – boxing, swimming, rowing and, especially, rugby.  When he left school in 1957 and started working for National Provincial Bank in the Portsmouth area, he bought life membership of the Old Portmuthian Club and started playing rugby for the OPRFC.  At that time, they fielded two teams and banks opened on Saturday mornings, so John was going straight from work to play in the afternoon.  Other activities also drew on his free time, most notably rowing and serving in the Territorial Army’s 457 Regiment, Royal Artillery.  This regiment, based in Gosport, was full of Old Portmuthians, as the PGS Second Master, Colonel Willis, had commanded the regiment during the Second World War.  In 1965, John was the Ensign of the Guard of Honour formed to welcome Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to the Isle of Wight, to install Earl Mountbatten as Governor.

In 1966, John moved from National Provincial Bank to Barclays DCO (originally: Dominions, Colonies and Overseas) and spent the next 24 years roaming the world, wherever Barclays had branches.  This explains how he continued his rugby career with teams in such exotic locations as Kenya, Singapore and New Zealand.  He finally hung up his boots in 1980, at the age of 40.

It was during his globe trotting that he met Margery in Cameroon and after a prolonged courtship, often spent thousands of miles apart, they were married in 1971.  Two children, a son and daughter, duly arrived – one in Singapore and the other in New Zealand.   

John left Barclays in 1990, to become Bursar of Caterham School.  All through his time at Barclays and later, he maintained his links with the Old Portmuthian Club and served as its President in 1986-87.

John left Caterham School in 1996 and immediately found a new job as Director of the British and Foreign School Society, a charity.  He retired from full-time work in 2005 but maintained his strong interest in educational matters by giving his time and financial expertise to several charities with an educational flavour.  In 2014-16, he served as President of AROPS, the umbrella body for associations of schools’ former pupils.

In 2005, John and Margery moved from Caterham to a new home in Fishbourne.  It was from there that he was admitted to St Richard’s Hospital, in Chichester, in early 2025 and he died, after a short illness, on 19th February.

He is survived by his wife, Margery; son, Andrew; daughter, Emma; brother, Tim; and two grandsons.