Best Shooting Ever?

Mr Massey worked at Haileybury for a couple of years on a scheme from the University of Virginia. He was a House Tutor in Highfield so I knew him a bit. Rooting around on the web I found this video. He is very good at basketball!

(For older OHs this is all going on in the Sports Hall on the end of XX Acre)




For those who feel this is a rugby term (correct) here is a clip of a Junior House rugby final on Terrace. It says 'unfinished,' which it is - the annoying music goes on for some time after all the Rugby has finished. I should turn the sound off if I were you!

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.

Indian Summer

At Haileybury today I had my summer hat out in the sunshine on XX Acre to watch the Junior Colts team in which No 1 son plays win against Kings Canterbury. It was more cricket weather than rugby.

Rare picture of the Archdeacon not in clericals!

The school is in Summer uniform and there is talk of having to cancel next week's games if there is no rain. That in turn led to a conversation on the touch line about when conditions ever cause the rugby to have to be cancelled. Frost - which is of course the same problem as heat: the ground gets too hard; but anything else? No1 Son tells me that there was a match last season which had to be stopped when the fog became so thick that they could not see from one end to the other, and the ball (and the chap carrying it) would come out of the murk unexpectedly. Otherwise, rain, snow, wind they play through it all. After all, as we all know, when you stand on XX Acre there is nothing between us and the Ural mountains.

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?

Commonplace

In the Lent Mission of 1982 Bishop Frank Cocks (BFr 1927) suggested to us that we should start commonplace books. He did not use that phrase, and his suggestion was for rather more specifically devotional or theological notes than many commonplace books.

I still use mine - it is a hard backed exercise book I bought in the bookroom. I find I use it in fits and starts. Sometimes I will not make an entry for years, and then I take it up again and use it rather a lot. I remain grateful to Bishop Cocks for the suggestion. I wonder if others also keep commonplace books following that mission?

In his published Commonplace Book (1993) Mgr Alfred Gilbey commented acerbically that "The Indian Empire was lost on the playing fields of Haileybury." A bit unfair, but he would have ben no supporter of Mr Attlee's government.

Gilbey's family came from Harlow. A contemporary of mine from seminary served there and tells a story of conducing a family funeral and being rewarded with a fine bottle of gin. Despite the near geography, I do not know whether Mgr Gilbey ever came to Haileybury or walked across XX Acre.

Quitchells Ditch

Haileybury is increasingly full of cars these days and the increased traffic has led to the appearance of speed bumps and a rule that those walking along College Road behind the kitchens to and from Highfield should cross one of the bridges and walk along the path near the eves of the wood. The bridges cross the Quitchells Ditch, which runs down from Highfield all the way along the edge of the XX Acre. It is a boundary marker and is about 360 years old. 

Molly Matthews in Haileybury Since Roman Times says the ditch was dug by Colonel Lawrence, nephew of Oliver Cromwell, who was Lord of the Manor of Goldington. Lawrence was a friend of Milton's, and the latter came out to see him in his country estate and wrote a sonnet about it. Matthews suggests the scene of Milton and Lawrence walking along the side of what is now Twenty Acre. Anyway, Lawrence had the ditch dug along the boundary, already ancient between the Manor of Goldington and Hailey Bushes, the part of the Manor of Hailey on which the College now stands. 


The boundary was also marked by a line of pollarded oaks of which, according to Matthews the Quitchell's Oak on the corner by the sports centre car park is the last remaining, though the fine tree next to it is also great and possibly ancient. Pollarding, cutting back the branches of the young tree, made the trunk grow thicker to prolong the life of the tree. The Quitchells Oak was probably planted in the 13th Century, not so long after the time of Robin Hood. 


The Ditch is now a bit up in the air as when the cricket pitches were leveled it was left rather high and dry. 


Today, both manors are owned by the College and Matthews says 'The Bursar presiding in his office over problems concerned with the Heath is the lineal descendent of Ralph de Limesi and Geoffrey de Bec, or to go one step further back, of the unnamed Bailiff who managed Great Amwell for Earl Harold and Ulwin, the Thane of Hailey.'

(h)oips

Greek is now very strong at Haileybury - last year we had something extraordinary like a third of all A Level Greek entries in the country. But how many members of the Haileybury community now remember (h)oips? It's Greek, and I can't work out how to get Blogger to let me type in Greek letters (answers in the comments please)*. It was the name for the junior pitch on XX Acre, now buried somewhere under the Sports Hall I suppose.

I had forgotten the name until I  came across it while leafing through RL Ashcroft's Random Recollections of Haileybury (more about that extraordinary volume another time). It is one of those bits of school slang which used to form a separate kind of language but have now largely passed into desuetude. (Words like groize and terms such as New Guv'nor also seem to have gone now.) I'm not now sure, but I think it was pronounced without the breathing - oips, not hoips.

The derivation of (h)oips was (h)oi polloi - the many -  and so you were not part of the elite, the few, the XV or the XXX, but one of the many, playing on the junior pitch. There is an explanation - which makes reference to the Haileybury usage here.
Strange in a way that in our egalitarian days the first team should still have on Terrace its dedicated pitch with its special name but the poor old (h)oi polloi just play any old where.


Update
Carole Gandon, Head of Classics, writes to correct my hyperbole - to have a third of the entries we would need the whole VI to take Greek but, she says: we do more than keep our end up Greek wise and our numbers would compare favourably with most, other than the Classical powerhouses of the likes of Winchester.