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Jump to: A True Original (full-length version): John Nettleship and the roots of Severus Snape Appendix: Caerwent, Camelot and the magical coming-and-going lake
This condensed version of my memorial essay about John Nettleship appeared in May 2012 in the Australian New Age publication Magick Magazine.
Born in Nottingham on Lammas 1939, John Nettleship wasn't a pagan in any formal sense, but he was a Goddess-worshipper if there ever was one, and a wizard on many levels.
As JK Rowling's Chemistry master in the 1970s and her mother's employer and friend, he inspired the difficult, heroic wizard Severus Snape in the Harry Potter books. Rowling admitted making Snape Hogwarts' Potions master to lampoon her Chemistry teacher, and everybody who knew John, except John himself, saw the likeness at once - the swinging black curtains of hair, the long nose, the pallor, the thinness and intensity, the academic brilliance, the strictness, the snaggly teeth and the hot temper - even though Snape is meant to be ugly, and John looked like Richard III's even-more handsome twin. Rowling even draws Snape in the distinctive Dracula-collared coat John wore when she knew him.
John was Head of Science at Wyedean Comprehensive on the Welsh border, where Anne Rowling and his own future second wife Shirley were his lab. assistants. A lifelong Labour Party activist and defender of the disadvantaged, John hired Anne when she was already disabled by MS. He later became a much-re-elected local councillor, and even when fighting cancer he drove around at night checking on constituents he knew were being threatened by violent ex partners.
An innovative, inspirational teacher and an advocate of child-centred learning, John cared deeply about teaching and about his students, but when Rowling knew him his first marriage was failing and he was dazed with insomnia, which explains why Snape is so angry and excitable. He also had to compensate for looking about eighteen - and for the children's mockery of his social clumsiness.
Aware that he probably had Asperger's Syndrome, he knew himself unable to lie, dissemble or manipulate; that he didn't understand the rules about what you could say to whom; that he couldn't tell what people were feeling without being told; that he couldn't judge whether people were friendly or hostile, or distinguish affectionate send-up from sneering attack. John in September 1976, four weeks after JK Rowling started at Wyedean He also showed limited "stimming", such as tutting repetitively when stressed. He trusted that everyone was well-disposed and every criticism kindly unless otherwise proven, and because he knew he didn't know how to filter his conversation, he divided the world into acquaintances to whom he was stiff and reserved, and trusted friends to whom he would tell anything and was as bouncy and playful as Tigger. His social awkwardness and black-on-white colouration attracted notice and he became the nail which many tried unsuccessfully to hammer flat. As a child he suffered extreme physical abuse from youths running a Cub Scouts troop. At the school he taught at before Wyedean his colleagues marginalised and bullied him for his outspoken independence, and at both schools he endured Marauder-like verbal and physical attacks from certain students: but at both there were also students who admired and supported him. His former pupils saw his resemblance to Snape immediately, but John was mortified, believing Snape was intended as a bad man and a bad teacher. But the fans persuaded him that his alter ego had many sterling qualities, and he came to revel in "being Snape" and to see Snape as his Horcrux, his means to immortality. He remembered Rowling, who had spent her break-times in the office he shared with her mother, with fond admiration, and became an active fan who conducted Snape-tours while wearing an academic gown, and lectured on likely local inspirations for people and places in the Potterverse. Photo' taken for an interview in 2007 For a slight guy of 5'8" he was a remarkably strong baritone, as well as a jazz musician, and won cups for folk-singing. He liked performing musical sketches at school, but it was only after Rowling had left that he first sang Peter Jenkyns' lyrics about a wizard with a wicked gaze and a terrible smile. Rowling understood that the schoolmaster with his long black hair that he was so proud of wanted in his heart to be a wild mage. As in fanfiction, the lovely lab. assistant saw past Snape's snarling to the gold beneath, and salved his emotional pain by marrying him. John really liked women, and Shirley became his lodestar. A deeply devoted couple, they became fond parents and grandparents to each other's families as well as their own. He loved Caerwent, Shirley's home village; loved Gwent and Wales itself. No more an official Christian than an official pagan, he nevertheless treasured the area's little Mediaeval churches and sang there regularly. A keen local historian, he believed Caerwent might be the birthplace of St Patrick and the original Camelot - for this tiny village was once one of the last great fortified strongholds of Rome in Britain, and with neighbouring Caerleon it has some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in Europe. Caerwent's ancient church may well overlie the one where, according to Malory, Arthur married Guenever and buried twelve defeated rebel kings, and John felt that the hillside behind it was in some sense the centre of the world. He even located the lost lake of Llyn Liwan, one of Nennius's Wonders of Britain, which came and went between the surface and a siphoning chamber under the hills. His sense of the land was strongly magical: he loved places which were as the Welsh say "grey", halfway into the spirit world. When he took the faithful up Gray Hill every year to see the Midwinter sunrise, he was effectively the local Druid. When everyone else came to a Roman Day in togas John came in sackcloth with a shillelagh for beating back the invaders, and when the cancer took him he was buried in the churchyard where Arthur buried the rebel kings, beneath the slope he thought was the heart of the world. Further information on John and on the connection between Caerwent and Camelot, lyrics to The Wizard, recordings of John singing etc. can be found at: A True Original (full-length version): John Nettleship and the roots of Severus Snape Appendix: Caerwent, Camelot and the magical coming-and-going lake The singing of John Nettleship (also includes a track by Phyllis Lewis) The Wizard by Peter Jenkyns: lyrics and music for one of John's favourite performance-pieces.
He trusted that everyone was well-disposed and every criticism kindly unless otherwise proven, and because he knew he didn't know how to filter his conversation, he divided the world into acquaintances to whom he was stiff and reserved, and trusted friends to whom he would tell anything and was as bouncy and playful as Tigger.
His social awkwardness and black-on-white colouration attracted notice and he became the nail which many tried unsuccessfully to hammer flat. As a child he suffered extreme physical abuse from youths running a Cub Scouts troop. At the school he taught at before Wyedean his colleagues marginalised and bullied him for his outspoken independence, and at both schools he endured Marauder-like verbal and physical attacks from certain students: but at both there were also students who admired and supported him.
His former pupils saw his resemblance to Snape immediately, but John was mortified, believing Snape was intended as a bad man and a bad teacher. But the fans persuaded him that his alter ego had many sterling qualities, and he came to revel in "being Snape" and to see Snape as his Horcrux, his means to immortality. He remembered Rowling, who had spent her break-times in the office he shared with her mother, with fond admiration, and became an active fan who conducted Snape-tours while wearing an academic gown, and lectured on likely local inspirations for people and places in the Potterverse.
For a slight guy of 5'8" he was a remarkably strong baritone, as well as a jazz musician, and won cups for folk-singing. He liked performing musical sketches at school, but it was only after Rowling had left that he first sang Peter Jenkyns' lyrics about a wizard with a wicked gaze and a terrible smile. Rowling understood that the schoolmaster with his long black hair that he was so proud of wanted in his heart to be a wild mage.
As in fanfiction, the lovely lab. assistant saw past Snape's snarling to the gold beneath, and salved his emotional pain by marrying him. John really liked women, and Shirley became his lodestar. A deeply devoted couple, they became fond parents and grandparents to each other's families as well as their own. He loved Caerwent, Shirley's home village; loved Gwent and Wales itself. No more an official Christian than an official pagan, he nevertheless treasured the area's little Mediaeval churches and sang there regularly. A keen local historian, he believed Caerwent might be the birthplace of St Patrick and the original Camelot - for this tiny village was once one of the last great fortified strongholds of Rome in Britain, and with neighbouring Caerleon it has some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in Europe.
Caerwent's ancient church may well overlie the one where, according to Malory, Arthur married Guenever and buried twelve defeated rebel kings, and John felt that the hillside behind it was in some sense the centre of the world. He even located the lost lake of Llyn Liwan, one of Nennius's Wonders of Britain, which came and went between the surface and a siphoning chamber under the hills.
His sense of the land was strongly magical: he loved places which were as the Welsh say "grey", halfway into the spirit world. When he took the faithful up Gray Hill every year to see the Midwinter sunrise, he was effectively the local Druid. When everyone else came to a Roman Day in togas John came in sackcloth with a shillelagh for beating back the invaders, and when the cancer took him he was buried in the churchyard where Arthur buried the rebel kings, beneath the slope he thought was the heart of the world.
Further information on John and on the connection between Caerwent and Camelot, lyrics to The Wizard, recordings of John singing etc. can be found at:
A True Original (full-length version): John Nettleship and the roots of Severus Snape Appendix: Caerwent, Camelot and the magical coming-and-going lake The singing of John Nettleship (also includes a track by Phyllis Lewis) The Wizard by Peter Jenkyns: lyrics and music for one of John's favourite performance-pieces.
