Changing Fashions

The HM of Lawrence has sorted out some new House strip for Rugby and Soccer. The difference of the new shirts is pretty striking.

Here are the old ones

And this is the new model.

This is not the first time that the strip has changed. Trawling for a picture from the past I found the online Museum of Rugby with a picture of Jim Unwin (L 1926) in a Lawrence team in 1930. It may be copyright so I have not pasted it into the blog, but you can see it here. The rest of his story with a section on his time at Haileybury is here.

Meanwhile at the end of half term the girls house hockey tournament was going on and there were some shirts which gave me a double take. The blue and magenta quarters of the old Hailey rugby shirt have become blue and pink.

Not as pink as the athletics tops mind. Here is a picture plundered from Haileybury's own website of a competitor in the House athletics in 2010. Quid Forteous Leone!

We Know The Answer, But What Was The Question?

Yesterday at match tea after the Saturday games there was quite a Hailey reunion. Peter Ansell (Ha 1976) was there with his sister and nephew who is at Merchat Taylors and who had been playing in the matches against Haileybury. Also there was Peter's father, John, (Ha 1945). We showed the chaps from Merchant Taylors that, yes, you can speak into the corners of the Hall and be heard by someone standing in the diagonally opposite niche, and reminisced about the New Guv's test.

Pete remembered a question about the obelisk. Something about 'where will you find a needle?' Neither of us could remember what the question was, but were sure the answer was the Boer War memorial. Can anyone remember the question?

Cars

I still walk quickly because there were only five minutes to get from, for instance, the Art School or the Whatton Block to the Science Labs or Bradby. I have never been good in the mornings either, and the payback for maximising time in bed was the rush to get to breakfast on time from Hailey.

We have learned this week that visionaries are thinking about rocket - planes to cut the travel time from London to Sydney to two hours.

It is noticeable how many cars there are nowadays around Haileybury. There are many more day pupils than once there were, and many of those who, like my boys, board, go home most weekends. Parents come to watch games in large numbers and attend things at school much more than in the days when we were dropped off for eleven weeks of no contact except by post. Many senior pupils have cars. Car parks are springing up: on the corner of XX Acre; on the lawn outside the Batten entrance to the KBM block; by the mini range on the edge of Hailey Field, and anywhere people can park a car.

With the cars come notices and yellow lines and so on. I suppose it is inevitable, but it does seem a shame.

Reading

Returning to the 'Proud Father' theme from Sunday evening's post, seeing No3 reading in chapel as the youngest boy in the school (he will not be 12 until next August), I was put in mind of the reading I did as one of the youngest (my birthday falls in June) in my first term at Haileybury.

London Weekend Television broadcasted the Remembrance Sunday service from the Chapel in November 1979, and I was asked to read the scripture passage (it was the Beatitudes in Matthew Ch5). It was all a very last minute arrangement and I was whisked out of lessons to be drilled in getting it right. I remember the Chaplains (Peter Lewis and Jim Pullen) were pretty stressed.

I decided not to tell anyone in House that I was doing the reading; not sure why, I suppose I thought I might not be believed and that I might be thought to be showing off - a sure way to get taken down a peg or two. I remember sprucing myself up to be all neat and then having to help tidy up the VI From corridor kitchen ready for Sunday House inspection, and getting all messy in the process.

When the moment finally came I was put on the end of the row in Chapel, and the prefect sitting next to me thought I had gone mad when I got up to go and read.

It was the days before video recording was common. I seem to remember seeing a recording once some years later, but I don't know if it is anywhere preserved.

Motto?

I have had an email from Peter Fowkes (H 1957), Father of Chris (H 1987) and Pen (H & Alb 1988) and uncle of George (H 1982) asking whether Thomason has a House Motto.

He writes

I looked up the blog trying to find Thomason’s motto; Helen Tranter [Director of Development] provided me with Edmonstone’s (Nil nisi bonum) – odd as it usually applied to the dead (de mortuis) - but no one can provide Thomason – not even Bob Eastwood (Th 1957) who is coming to a reunion (which is why I want the motto). Can you help?

 

In similar vein, does Hailey have a new and more ladylike motto? Quid fortius leone (what is braver than a lion?) was fine when we were a bunch of thugs;  we won the boxing cup almost every year between about 1956 and 1962, partly by entering 9/10^th of the House, and Cock House rugger I think four times between 1954 and 1961, though we drew with Allenby after extra time in 1961.

 

I do have one other claim – the XXX in 1961 not only won all its matches, but did not have its line crossed. I wonder if any other side can match that! Again we were more a bunch of thugs than skilled players – our impressively large outsides came right up at every lineout – if we won the ball I, as scrum half, kicked it further up the line or gave it to the fly-half to do the same. The rules did not prevent this gaining ground in those days. If the other side won the ball our outsides tackled them very hard, so they knocked on and we had the scrum – which we almost certainly won as our pack weighed a ton!

 

I wasn’t the second best fly half – the younger Sibcy (E 1958) was – but Basil Edwards (bless him) (Staff 1955 - 1972) wanted a thug who could kick with both feet.  Sibcy was a very elegant boxer; I don’t know how good his chin was as he was almost impossible to hit – I never succeeded! As to kicking with both feet, “Killer” Cook insisted we practice with the “wrong” foot, which improved the “right” foot as well. As a former All Black we respected his opinion; his walking stick on the field was much respected too!

 

Imogen Thomas says in Haileybury 1806 - 1987 that the badges were adopted in 1868 to identify teams on the football field. She says that the origin of all the badges is not known, and Thomason is among those. It appears without a motto. Neither Lawrence nor Highfield have a motto.

Things Called Haileybury

A  Guest Post from Brain Fawcett (Ha 1952)

Following on from your 'blog' and streets called 'Haileybury',are you aware that there were

trenches in WWI named after Public Schools and one of which was called 'Haileybury Trench'?.

I  visited the Imperial War Museum,London, some time ago whilst researching another topic,but their trench maps do not name all the trenches. Unfortunately I do not know  exactly where this trench was located, in the Somme area I think.

Maybe someone who is interested in WWI can find the exact location and the next time I am in the locality I can visit it.  Another thought  is that,when the Removes have their annual visit,they could possibly locate the area.   A topic for research for those taking History as a  subject?

Fr Luke writes:

I found a book on Amazon here which may have the information, but it is a bit costly on the off chance it may be in there. There is an article on trench maps here. For those with an interest in slang there is a piece on the specialised language which developed in the trenches here. 

New Guv's Test 4

We have had a dayoff from the test. On Tuesday the question was "Where are the Penthouses at Haileybury?" The Penthouses are grander than they once were. They used to be two bits of corrugated iron forming a sort of metal ridge tent. They still serve the same purpose: to provide a dry place to put your tracksuit and other kit when you are playing sport in the rain. The answer is "On the edge of XX Acre."

I promised that the next question would have a musical flavour. I think this is one which Roger Bass, (HM Hailey 1986) added to the test as he thought that we should be able to answer the query of any bemused visitor who looked at the panel outside the music school and asked what it all meant.

"apta camenis"

The words come from a poem written by EH Bradby and carved in panels round the Bradby Hall. When the new Music School was opened in 1979 the 'Bridge of Sighs' was built to join it to the Bradby. The panel was removed to allow for the bridge.

Your question is: What does the writing on the panel mean?

"Wear it Out"!

Sir Bartle Frere and Henry Melvill are buried in the crypt of S Paul's cathedral where we gathered last evening following the installation.  There were lots of living Haileyburians as well. The Master; the Chaplain, The Rev'd Chris Briggs; the General Secretary, Robin Bishop; the Chairman of Council, Michael Gatenby (K 1958) were there as well as the two of my sons who are so far Haileyburians, my sister Anne (H & Aby 1984).

James Thomson, the Master of the London Charterhouse & Past President (C 1953) is sadly not in the picture but he was there. He was the originator of the President's medal which he presented to the Society in its 50th year. I slipped it on under my robes, but the magenta ribbon was showing and the Dean asked after it. He siad "Wear it out!" meaning on top of the robes so that it could be seen in church which I duly did. The Bishop was similarly indulgent. 

The Master, by the way, must be getting fed up with me. I went to a parents' meeting on Tuesday and saw him there, he kindly came to the installation yesterday, and tonight he was at the General Committee of the Society which I chaired. More about that meeting tomorrow.

The happy event which I hope to be able to report looks as if it may indeed come to pass, but be patient on that one. 

Servant

After tonight's service at S Paul's cathedral at which I was installed as Archdeacon of Hampsted there was a wonderful surprise when someone came over and said 'You won't remember me, but you were my fag.' I thought Ihad not seen Jim Dodgin (H 1978) since he left in 1980, but he reminded me that I had entertained him to tea - made by my fag - in 1984 when I was at the top of the school.

Fagging was of course open to abuse, but the £7 a term I was paid by Jim for cleaning his shoes, making his bed and tidying his study was riches indeed. It also meant that I had a supporter in the VI who would not stand for anyone else pushing me about (too much). In those days Removes had no private space at all - linving in the dormitory and in the DC, and there were moments, once it had been tidied, and when he was out, that Jim's study could be mine.

You were my Fag

There was also an arm chair, which had been Jim's and which I aquired when he left. It took that chair right up the school, and jolly comfy it was too. I wonder what happened to it.

I know it could be a bad thing, but fagging was a system that had a lot of good in it too. Being a servant for a bit made me alert to those who serve me in different ways in life. Amid all the gradeur of the Cathedral (and what fun it was!) it did me no harm at all tonight to be reminded of how to be a boss and to be reminded that I was and still am a servant.

Thanks to all those others who came tonight to support and pray for me - there were lots of Haileybury people there. More tomorrow and maybe some very good news indeed in the next couple of days about that which was lost and which might now have been found.

Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings is a play by Sir Alan Ayckbourn (Tr 1952) which is on at the National Theatre this Christmas. It has been well reviewed, including by Quentin Letts (Ha 1976).

Two writers of different kinds both schooled by the same English department, and possibly both taught by Jack Thomas (staff 1954) - who famously, and possibly apocryphally, said that Ayckbourn would never amount to much if he tried a career in writing. Ayckbourn cut the original form for Season's Greetings from three acts in three hours by a third, and Lett's review is an example of journalistic brevity. The suburban characters


use intrinsically English expressions, enjoying nothing better than discussing power tools, preferably in the wife-free zone of a shed or pub.

"Great set" say Quentin Letts

When Neville is asked if there is any ginger wine in the house, he doesn’t just say, ‘yes’. He says, truculently, that ‘we are awash’ in the stuff. …

David Troughton’s Uncle Harvey has the gait and neck tweaks of a former chief pety officer. 


Brevity is a virtue in a preacher as well - but one more difficult to attain than it seems. I think it was Churchill who once wrote  I am sorry to have written you a long letter. I did not have time to write a short one."

Garden House

When Dr Henley, first Principal of the East India College, retired the Company refused to 'buy in' his effects. Despite his stipend of £1,000 Henley was hard up and he sold some of his things. Specifically he sold a 'Garden House' to Professor Malthus, who erected it in the Hailey Garden. The garden is described in a letter quoted by Patricia James in her biography of Malthus, and maybe as the weather gets colder again now we can take heart from the beautiful description of Spring in the Hailey Garden:

The House is in a cluster of tall shrubs and young trees, with a little bit of smooth lawn sloping to a bright pond, in which old weeping willows are dipping their hair, and rows of young pear trees admiring their blooming faces… There are young horse-chestnuts with flowers half a yard long, fresh full-clustered white lilacs, tall Guelder roses, broad spreading pear and cherry trees, low thickets off blooming sloe, and crowds of juicy looking detached thorns, quite covered with their blooming May flowers, half open like ivory filigree, and half shut like Indian pears… and resounding with nightingales, and thrushes, and sky-larks, shrilling high up, overhead, among dazzling slow sailing clouds.

No wonder Malthus liked to be outside, and the tradition is that in the 'garden house' he worked through his great theories of population.

Generations of Haileybury swimmers will know the garden house as the "Wings Hut" at the shallow end of the old pool. There it still stands, sadly dilapidated. There is talk of trying to get it fixed up, which would be a good thing. But where then to put it? The Hailey Garden is now mainly lawn and the ponds are gone. Maybe it should go back to the Master and be placed near the Moorhen Pond where still the willows dip their hair in the still waters.

Cloaca

The eldest son having to go to the orthodontist this morning and the Council meeting on Friday together with an ordinary pick up on Saturday means that I feel as though I have been living on the A10 over the last few days. I was pleased at the Haileybury end of one of the trips that the Bradby was open so that I could answer the call of nature.

Not the least shock of going round the new Hailey after the refurbishment to make the House ready for girls was to discover that my former study has been turned into a toilet. I always thought that the infamous White City (demolished in 1961) was just a well intentioned Edwardian mistake. It was built during the rule of Wynne Wilson to remove the need for earth closets in the dormitories. It seems however that even Old Haileybury brought communality to what we moderns think of as a private activity. There were twelve water closets in Wilkin's design, as accepted. The architect had provided for thirty - in three rows of ten. This was positively Roman. I learnt about Roman toilets from a splendid book I was persuaded to buy by my scatological sons (well, it did not take much persuasion in fact) on a trip to Verulamium this year. Latrinae et Foricae, Toilets in the Roman World by Barry Hobson. (See here.)

Latrine on Hadrian's Wall: a Roman White City?

Editorial Intelligence

Congratulations to Quentin Letts (Ha 1976) for winning the Political Sketch writer of the year award at this years Comment Awards. (Follow the ink and see Quentin at 1.40 in the video.) he and I were in Hailey together - he a bit older than me, but I have not met up with him since he left school. Quentin, if you read this I should love to try and put together a Hailey reunion in my presidential year.

Here is Quentin telling us that he "didn't become an Englishman to have emotions."

The Sadness of Winter

Alison Stephens (Aby & Ha 86) died this week. She was an immensely talented mandolin player. Here she is playing a piece called La Tristezza D'Inverno - the Sadness of Winter.

Norman Wisdom

Some day in 1979 a bloke in the Middles called Nigel Scorgie (Ha 1978) looked me up and down and said, "You're name is Norman." I was Norman - or Norm -  from that day on to almost everyone at school. 'Scorge' (whom I met last year at a reunion having not seen him since he left Haileybury 27 years previously) said later that he gave me the name as he thought I looked like Norman Wisdom, a personage of whom I then knew nothing. I vividly remember the moment when on my first day at University I made the decision on being asked my name that I would choose to be called Luke by my contemporaries, and put childish things away. Norman Wisdom died today. You make up your mind on the similarities - or lack of them.

VJ Day

Menu Card for the 1945 OH Dinner at Changi

The sixty fifth anniversary of the end of the war in the Far East us being marked today with what may be the last formal reunions of the so - called "Forgotten Army." Andrew Hambing in his Haileybury in Two World Wars records that William Marley (LeBas 1924) was a liaison officer with General McArthur and was present on the USS Missouri when the surrender was signed. As the POWs began to be able to send news and to return home harrowing stories came to light. There were also some lighter memories. In the midst of the suffering in the notorious Changi Goal Haileyburians from Hertfordshire and from Australia has saved and scraped together rations to hold dinners of the Haileybury Society. Imogen Thomas gives the details in her Haileybury 1806 - 1987. On 21st March 1943 Privates RWL McCall (M 1928), ADA Mosley (he seems not to be in the Haileybury Register) and AS Cassells (Ha 1929), Sgt RH Wade (Ha 1918) had dined on salt fish, rice, bananas and tea. On 18th August 1945 Maj FAH Magee (L 1917) , Capt JC De La Mare (M 1921), Maj J Radford (Tr 1921) and LT Cdr VCF Clark (M 1922) of England, dined with Lt JW Huddlestone and LT WE Smith of Haileybury Australia. Hambling tells us they dined on native beans and dripping. Of these McCall, Wade, Magee, De La Mare, Radford and Clark survived the war. Cassels died at Kuching PoW camp Borneo in July 1945.

Changi by Ronald Searle who was a prisoner there

The Evolution of Dormitories 4

The movement over the last twenty years has been to smaller and smaller dormitories for younger pupils and to bed sits for the more senior. The pattern has been to have a 'dormitory' for Removes and Middles and study bedrooms for Vths and above. When the school became co-educational the new Bartle Frere and Edmonstone were set up in this way. Colvin and Melvill meanwhile were equipped with single rooms throughout. Hailey has a dormitory (the old Upper) but the Lower was divided into rooms for four girls each. This is similar to what was done in Allenby when the conversion was made. That pattern has recently been replicated in Trevelyan and Thomason where the Removes and Middles live and work in rooms of four. (Four is a pastorally good number as it reduces the chances of a two on one division happening in a room.)

Meanwhile the new Lower School boys' accommodation in Highfield is in Dormitories of eight.  The Lower School girls' dormitory is in Alban's and while it has great character it is not as swish as the boys' rooms.

Many of the boys' houses have clever bunks in a "T" shape where the top bunk is at right angles to the bottom one and supported at either end by wardrobes.

The Evolution of Dormitories 2

Once the East India College became a school the old single rooms were knocked together to produce the 'long dormitories' which were to be part of Haileybury life from the 1860s to the 1990s. At first each bed was surrounded by a cubicle - 'comparts' as they were known - with high walls.  The hot water of Old Haileybury days was done away with. Dr Bradby, Master from 1868 - 1883, insisted that the wash jugs be filled in the evening to ensure the morning was was always in cold water. It was under Wynne Wilson, Master between 1905 and 1911 that the compart walls were cut down, though in his time curtains were provided around the head of each bed to allow some privacy.

The curtains went in due course, but the old hospital style beds survived until the mid 1980s when new beds were provided with drawers underneath, and the old chests of drawers were removed. In some Houses every other compart wall was removed. The new bed meant that 'lampposting' became impossible as lifting the bed up onto the headboard was now impossible. Maybe this was something only done in Hailey (and Allenby?) as we - being civilized places - had three smaller dormitories rather than one long one. It meant that inter-dormitory raids took place.

Singing

Music has been an exceptional strength of Haileybury for many years. I have just got back from a three day parish pilgrimage to Walsingham. We had an afternoon out at Wells-next-the-Sea and I found in the second hand bookshop there a small volume published in 1889 called Songs Sung at Haileybury. The content is interesting, more on that another time; but the use is presumably that described in Random Recollections of Haileybury: 'Another use of Big School which has lapsed (1953) was "Upper School Singing" on Saturday nights, when the School collected with the old Haileybury Song Book to let off steam with community singing. To this sophisticated age such an entertainment may well savour of "Eric or Little by Little." But then, the cacophonous jazz records one now hears from study windows had not yet vitiated the standard of taste or or enjoyment.'

Hugo Bagnall-Oakeley (Ha 51.1-55.2) wrote today to remark on another musical entry in Random Recollections in which Ashcroft referred to "the exceptionally high standard of the 1954 house unison singing competition. I only realised later that this was the year Hailey won the competition and I was the director and conductor. The regulations provided that the entire house must take part—i.e. not just the good singers--- but I instructed those who couldn’t sing in tune to mime the words without making a sound. Incidentally our housemaster Killer Cook was distinctly unimpressed as he regarded musicians as long haired, limp wrested nancy boys but I managed to convince him that this was, after all, a team event so he grudgingly agreed to have the cup in Hailey, although he would much rather have won cock house rugger!"

What would Mr Cook have thought of Haileybury winning the BBC Choir of the year competition in 2005?


(PS you can buy one of the CDs by clicking here or on the picture of the Haileybury Coat of Arms at the bottom of the blog home page.)

What's in a Name?

One of the lines that has to appear in the Policies that every school now has to have is the statement 'every child has the right to be called by the name he or she chooses.' Many of my contemporaries called me Norman at school because a bloke in the Vth thought that I looked like Norman Wisdom. it was quite a decision when after five years of answering to 'Luke' at home and 'Miller' (at least before entering the LVIth) to adults at school, I had to decide what I wanted new friends at University to call me. Most of my contemporaries seem to have done what I did and drop their school nicknames on leaving.

There were two Millers (we are not related) in Hailey in my year and so I had the privilege - as I thought it - of having initials after my name: Miller LJ. My spies in Lower School tell me that despite the universal use of Christian names, and even of nicknames (provided chosen by the child and not imposed) some of the young (at least the males of the species) still call one another by their Surnames. This raises for brothers the age old problem of having the same name. Nicknames and epithets come into play, but they sometimes resort to Mega and Minor (mixing Greek and Latin in a way that would once have attracted considerable opprobrium).

At first 'Major' and 'Minor' was the official way of distinguishing between brothers at Haileybury. One was Miller MA or Miller MI. The business of having initials came in around 1928 with the advent of two sets of brothers named Serjeant to Thomason (FRM 1923.3 and J 1924.3) and a pair named Minor to Trevelyan (R 1925.1 and B 1927.1). It was felt Sergeant Major and Minor Minor was just all too much to manage.

The younger Minor in fact became a Major, so in the end he was Major Minor. Sadly he was killed in action in the Middle East in 1942.