RASH reflects on his time as a master at the RGS and as History HMI in this interview
RASH a railway bibliography
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
RASH remembers
RASH reflects on his time as a master at the RGS and as History HMI in this interview
RASH a railway bibliography
Transport Circle @ Philadelphia
The end of steam on British Railways did not put a stop to Transport Circle Saturday engine shed visits. The colliery railways of the National Coal Board (not surprisingly) remained coal powered for a while longer. On a trip to Philadelphia shed on the Lambton Railway we see
Sam Pearlman proudly posing in the cab while Ian Sansom (with a sack full of sandwiches) daringly hangs from a guard rail. Ian Hope smiles for the camera, while Andrew Walker inspects an oil lamp. Junior members look on.
Happily, Lambton 0-6-2 tank No. 29 built in 1904 has been preserved on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.
© Copyright John Lucas and licensed for reuse under Creative Copyright Licence.
John Lilburne ON
The ONA magazine (No 82) arrived today. I note we are told it is "now available online", and "each edition is added to the ONA website shortly after circulation". In fact the "current" edition on the site is No. 79 - Summer 2010. Nevertheless, I was delighted to see the image of "Free-born" John Lilburne on the cover, and to read Sir Geoffrey Bindman's Article on his "legal hero" first published in the Guardian. You can read it here 'until' the ONA version is actually online.
Sir G. (O.N.) writes "When I was at school between 1945 and 1950 I knew nothing of Lilburne, and for many years later was unaware of his link with the school. Every day we sang the school song which listed those famous Old Novos: "Collingwood, Armstrong, Eldon and Bourne, Akenside, Stowell and Brand." Why leave out John Lilburne, who, apart from his pivotal role in the development of our legal system, was one of our most important constitutional thinkers?"
Well, those of us who were privileged to be taught 17th century History by Alan Mitchell knew who John Lilburne was and why his name was omitted. Furthermore, in the Novo of Summer 1968 (appropriately) a new verse for the school song was proposed in his memory by Iain McGill. Here it is:
School books: school histories
The first school history, The Story of Our School, was published in 1924. It was written by senior English master J. B. Brodie (1898 - 1928) and senior science master A. R. Laws (1892 - 1928), and included the text of the school song written by Brodie and first performed in April 1914.
Copies of this book were given to each boy entering the school. I don't know when this custom ceased but I remember seeing boxes full of copies in the bookroom behind the organ in the mid-1960s.
A special edition of Brodie and Laws was produced for the so-called 400th anniversary of the school in 1925. This included the programme for the event and copies of some of the portraits of distinguished ONs from the hall. The date discrepancy arises from Thomas Horsley's conception of the school in his will of 1525 and its actual foundation after his death in 1545.
In 1925 Laws published his two-volume Schola Novocastrensis: A Biographical History of the Royal Free Grammar School of Newcastle - upon - Tyne. A third planned volume continuing the story from 1845 was never published. This combines a more substantial history of the school with biographical details of alumni.
All of these volumes were part of headmaster Ebenezer Rhys Thomas (1922 - 1948) policy of reinforcing the school's sense off status and pride, and promoting it as a public day school preparing its pupils for leadership (discendo duces).
The Register of the Royal Grammar School Newcastle upon Tyne 1545 - 1954 by B. D. Stevens (1955) repeated Laws' biographical record and continued it (with less detail) down to 1954. A supplement was published the following year. The ON News picked up and continued the project from the 1980s until it ceased publication in the 1990s.
"It is my privilege to be Headmaster of the Royal Grammar School at the time this Register is issued. The author, Mr. B. D. Stevens, is a young Old Boy, and to his ability and devotion our best thanks are due. It has been a tremendous task, taking years of patient and careful research—which indeed he is continuing. Since the reign of Henry VIII Old Boys of the R.G.S. have . played a prominent and valuable part in the life of Newcastle and of the country. I hope the present—and the future—generations may be relied on to live up to the record of their predecessors during the last four centuries. I am convinced that they will."
Head of History (from 1976) Brian Mains and ON Anthony Tuck produced their Royal Grammar School Newcastle upon Tyne: A Hsitroy of the School in its Community in 1986. A substantial and scholarly collection of essays examining the history of the school and its context, subscribers' copies came with a strange letter from headmaster A. S. Cox hoping that readers would not be too disappointed with its serious tone.
Great War Memorial Roll
This Memorial Volume is dedicated to Old Novocastrians of all generations who in it may learn how much they owe to those brave men, who, at the call of duty, fought for the honour of their country, and, following the great example, willingly laid down their lives for others.
The complete roll can be found here.
The School Crest and motto
The current version of the school crest as found on the website and on blazers is a kind of blurry version of the one I remember from the 1960s. It no longer carries the motto Discendo Duces, which now, indeed, seems to have disappeared completely.
According to Anthony Tuck ON in his essay 'Towards the Front Rank 1922 - 1945' this coat of arms was adopted in 1930 to replace the tradition followed since the nineteenth century of juxtaposing the arms of Queen Elizabeth I with those of the city. The cost of the grant for the new arms was met by Sir Arthur Sutherland. Discendo Duces ('through learning you will lead') became the school motto the following year apparently replacing Progrediendum Est (which sort of means 'setting out'), although I have not been able to find an example of this.
The new crest and motto were part of an attempt by headmaster Ebenezer Rhys Thomas (1922 - 1948) to reinforce the school's sense of status and pride. The school song also dates from this period.
Prior to the nineteenth century the school seems to have simply used the arms of the city.
Newcastle on Film
Michael Smith’s Deep North was bizarrely described as "the novelist returns to his native city of Newcastle upon Tyne". "Bizarre" because it turns out he comes from Hartlepool and only made the odd holiday trip north with his grandma. On that basis I could return to my 'native' Butlin's. Anyway others have already suitably dissed the poor chap.
I never went on holiday to Hartlepool, but remember the shame of discovering my great- great- great- grandfather had been born there (only overcome when I found out his father had been born in Fulham).
An odd fact I remember from Transport Circle days about Hartlepool is that its corporation transport department was the smallest in the country with only four buses bought second-hand from London and crewed by a local coach company.
Rattletraps to Byker and Berlin
I have just realized I filched those rattletrap pictures from the wonderful Northumbrian Railways website for which I apologize. I saved them in my pictures so long ago I had forgotten where they came from. I have a load of my own somewhere that I'll try to dig out, scan and replace them with (you know what I mean).
Something it would be nice to see from rattletrap days would be a picture of the maps that used to be in the trains which showed long closed stations like St Anthony's or Byker (whose overgrown platforms could be seen at the junction of the Riverside branch), and lost opportunities to change at Monkseaton for Blyth and Newbiggin. I was always reminded of those maps when I spent some time in Berlin and the maps in the U-bahn showed stations in the East which the trains passed through , but where they could no longer stop. Actually they used to go through them at a crawl as if to say "we would stop if we could but see there are armed border police on the platforms to discourage us." I never saw armed police at Byker (station, anyway) but I did once see an old bloke in cap and muffler waiting hopefully. Come to think of it, is it possible that trains still made 'unscheduled' stops at Byker even after it was closed to the public? I know that happened at Eryholme on the way to Catterick Camp (an entire branch line and station that did not appear in the public timetable).
When I was at primary school in Tynemouth we used to have 'school trips' by train, including one I remember to Edinburgh which took the Blyth branch at Monkseaton and then reversed at Morpeth. The teachers told us the train was actually going back home because we were behaving so badly.
Something it would be nice to see from rattletrap days would be a picture of the maps that used to be in the trains which showed long closed stations like St Anthony's or Byker (whose overgrown platforms could be seen at the junction of the Riverside branch), and lost opportunities to change at Monkseaton for Blyth and Newbiggin. I was always reminded of those maps when I spent some time in Berlin and the maps in the U-bahn showed stations in the East which the trains passed through , but where they could no longer stop. Actually they used to go through them at a crawl as if to say "we would stop if we could but see there are armed border police on the platforms to discourage us." I never saw armed police at Byker (station, anyway) but I did once see an old bloke in cap and muffler waiting hopefully. Come to think of it, is it possible that trains still made 'unscheduled' stops at Byker even after it was closed to the public? I know that happened at Eryholme on the way to Catterick Camp (an entire branch line and station that did not appear in the public timetable).
When I was at primary school in Tynemouth we used to have 'school trips' by train, including one I remember to Edinburgh which took the Blyth branch at Monkseaton and then reversed at Morpeth. The teachers told us the train was actually going back home because we were behaving so badly.
Coast rattletraps
We used to travel to school on these things. We called them the 'rattletraps'. The sliding doors were hand-operated and the trains would run with them wide open. Foolhardy types would climb between the cars on the long stretch between Backworth and Benton. There were actually internal connecting doors but I never saw anyone use them.School 1910
The Eskdale Terrace site in about 1910. The school moved here in 1906.From the new Newcastle Libraries photostream
School 1800
The entrance to the Royal Grammar School, Westgate Road (the old Virgin Mary Hospital where the school was located from 1607 to 1844) dated around 1800. The view is entitled 'Michaelmas Monday' and shows a procession of dignitaries going into the school for the Mayor's election. A group of locals blow trumpets, hurl abuse and generally cause a nuisance.From the new Newcastle Libraries photostream
School books: Brand's Newcastle 1789
The last illustration shows the Reverend Hugh Moises, Headmaster of the Royal Grammar School (1749 - 1787), watering his garden in the grounds of the Virgin Mary Hospital where the school was then located. I was on my way to buy a copy of this print from Steedman's the day I found the shop had closed.
Brian Mains writes "the scene is laden with symbols: the garden itself, sheltered, orderly and cultivated, reflects stability; the medieval church, long since the home of the School, proclaims continuity and strongly rooted tradition; the gardener, going about his task with unhurried purpose, brings his plants to useful fruitfulness" (Brian Mains and Anthony Tuck, Editors, (1986) Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne: A History of the School in its Community).
John Brand (the author) was himself an Old Novo and 'under-usher' at the school from 1778 (promoted to 'usher' in 1781) until he moved to London in 1784. I don't remember there being ushers at the school in my day, and I doubt WDH would have himself watered the plants.
James Kirkup
James Kirkup died on 10 May 2009 aged 91. He wasn't a grammar school boy - he went to South Shields High School - but he was well-known to Novocastrian poets. On 3 September 1971 several of us went to hear him read at Hancock's Museum and enjoyed the sherry afterwards. Kirkup achieved some notoriety for his poem 'The Love that Dares to Speak its Name' which was published in Gay News and led to the private prosecution of that paper for blasphemy by Mary Whitehouse. He was as the Times obituary says a 'flamboyant' character and might have become a Tyneside Quentin Crisp had it not been for his academic and literary achievements. In his memory I post here the covers (by Stephen Ross [Russ?]) of two of Kirkup's (many) autobiographical reflections. Both books were purchased from Brian Mills at the Newcastle Bookshop on the Quayside.
School outfitters
Raymond Barnes was, I think, exclusively a school outfitters (what do they mean by uniforms for leading 'colleges'?), while Isaac Walton was out to get you for life. I got my uniform from Barnes but I bought a vintage Isaac Walton tweed jacket at a retro shop only a year or so ago. It fits perefctly. Isaac Walton still exists in Newcastle, albeit on a much smaller scale and no longer as school outfitters. Still, I can't think of anywhere else in town to get a decent hat or a detachable collar.
Young gentlemen in tweed coats
The point about this not very good picture is that it shows grammar school boys at a social occasion outside school hours dressed identically to the masters on Sports Day. Furthermore the picture was taken as late as 1970 as if the 60's had never happened.
School books: The Thicket
The Thicket (1967) by David Boll is the essential Novocastrian novel because it is actually set at the grammar school in Jesmond. It is a story of trolley-bus rides, teas, books, friendship, first love and the fight against the conventional. Read it for yourself and discover where the thicket is.
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