January 2015

Dear <<First Name>>

Welcome to our first newsletter of 2015 packed full of news and updates. Our key goal this year is to try and make Founder's Day a more social gathering - not in terms of formal reunions but a time (and place) where alumni can return to the school, visit old haunts, chat to teachers and current students, and even enjoy lunch and a drink. So during the course of this year we will be making suggestions and asking all our alumni for ideas.

The Editor - please e-mail news and comments here.

Alumni Update - and e-mail us your own news!

Anthony Skillicorn who taught at the school in the 80s is now retired and living in Berlin - where he met Klaus Binko, who was at the Peter Droller Gymnasium and was an exchange student with us.
After LWS, Anthony went to Singapore where he held various posts at the United World College of South East Asia. He is now very active in youth initiated peace projects.

Updates on recent leavers: Sadie Kemper (Politics, Durham), Atilla Kromer (Economics, Edinburgh), Jessica Lampit (Textiles, Manchester),Yolande Lomas (English, Birmingham), Octavia Ludlum (Sports, Winchester), Charlie Messenger (Nursing, Manchester), Holly Miles (Psychology, Bournemouth), Emma Pearce (Biology, Lancaster), Jessica Pearson (Computer Science, Coventry), Amy Ring (Midwifery), Natalie Schmidt (Geography, Cardiff), Madelin Shoh (Geography, Oxford.) More in the next newsletter.

Tom Munday who was at the school in the 1980s now lives in Leeds, works in IT, and is recently engaged. His brother Peter lives in Sydenham and is a builder.

Steve Bingham writes 'looking ahead to the new year there are several concerts and courses with the Quartet, quite a few solo concert appearances, a trip to South America to perform "Touchable Dreams" with Jeremy Harmer and conducting with Ely Sinfonia and the City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra, including several premieres and a performance of Carmina Burana in Ely Cathedral in October!

http://www.binghamquartet.net
http://www.elysinfonia.co.uk
http://cpso.org.uk

I'm also already working on a couple of CD collaborative projects (more on these soon), and I'l be launching a new online music service with my son Chris in February: This will offer digital music services and we hope will be a useful tool for independent musicians of all ages and in all genres.

Congratulations to Ken Batley, one of elder OTs, who was made an MBE in the New Year Honours.

10 Jan Committee Meeting

This was held at the School. The main items for discussion were:

1. Arrangements for the sports fixture at Founder's Day...with the difficulty in getting OT matches off the ground, we will now see whether we can get the School's 1st XV to play another school's XV.
2. Everyone had only good things to say about the Founder's Day lunch but at the same time we don't want to continue increasing the price. It was agreed to fix it at £12 and if the caterers do want to charge more then we will absorb the cost.
3. We will donate £250 towards the repair of the archive room.
4. Founder's Day and the excellent lunch provides a great opportunity for alumni to have informal reunions, meet some of the staff, see the School, and enjoy lunch and a bar. We will publicise this more this year.

We also agreed that a third Roll of Honour board should be displayed in the School, recording the names omitted from the current two. These names are:

Boer War

Michael Bond - died of illness while serving in South Africa

H Reynolds - severely wounded and who died prematurely from his wounds
Charles Plim - killed while serving with the Imperial Yeomanry near Steinkop

1st World War

James Arthur Greenhalgh - killed in action on the Western Front

Bertram Wheeler Mason - drowned at sea on HMS McNaughton

2nd World War

Howard Marples Stockwell Wagner - died three years after the end of the War as a result of spending three years as a PoW in Singapore.

Brian Ward was at school in the 1940s in the "Dyer Years" and was interested in hearing more about the headmaster:

One of our archivists had this to say:

A previous archivist, Gerald Howat, gave a lecture on the history of the school from 1866 to 1944 and this has some balanced comments to make about Arthur Dyer. When he succeeded Walter Bye as headmaster he was actually older than his predecessor, who went on to another headship. The two men were quite similar: both ex-army, Walter Bye a captain and Arthur a major - perhaps. My researches don’t find any promotion to major. He served as a Lieutenant in the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry and was mentioned in dispatches. Before the war he was a mathematics teacher at King Edward VI School, Lytham having been educated at Cambridge university. The school was founded in 1908 so he would have been one of the first members of staff. Later - after the war I think - he taught at Giggleswick and became commanding officer of the Giggleswick School contingent of the Junior Division of the Officer Training Corps with the rank of Captain, effective from 2nd February 1920. He was still in the same role with the same rank in 1928 shortly before he became headmaster of LWGS in 1929. Possibly his promotion to Major came with his headmastership but I’ve found no evidence of this.

Howat writes of Arthur Dyer that he was more academically inclined than Walter Bye and his main achievement in the school was to raise the academic standards and get more boys to stay on into the sixth form. Howat writes “he shouldered a heavy burden and shouldered it well.” “He had a thorough grip on the school and knew the boys.” “He carried an exceedingly heavy teaching programme". But Howat acknowledges that he was not popular with the pupils. He was a strict disciplinarian, intolerant with younger staff, and introduced petty rules. What came home to me forcefully as I read through the issues of the Tamensian between 1938 and 1945 is that the school was a cultural desert. There’s not a single record of a school concert or play during that period, whereas they had been quite common in the first three decades of the century and were to become frequent again after Dyer retired and was succeeded by Hugh Mullins. I think this is probably why the Aris brothers got no mention. I am being a bit stereotypical but, having taught in a school with a Jewish boarding house, I know that Jewish boys were usually very gifted in the arts but uninterested or unskilled in games. Dyer was clearly interested in games. One of the first things he did on arrival was to abolish football and replace it with ‘rugger’ (Rugby football) and build a new gymnasium.

Gerard Gould Archive

In the last newsletter we noted that the Gerard Gould's estate has kindly given us archival material that relates to school plays ranging from 1959 through until 1976. This has all been uploaded to our Flickr archives - as well as being featured on our Facebook page.

OT Golf - a third and final early warning...please add to your diaries

The OT Golf Day is Friday 3rd July 2015; 12 noon tee at Studley Wood Golf Club. This year over 40 OTs and friends took part. So please join us in July.

OT News from 1910

Herbert Joyce 1899-1907 had gained a Second Class honours degree from Oxford and was going on to study theology. G Bailey was playing for Thame Football Club and the County. Duncan Ostreham played for the County in hockey but was emigrating to Canada. Frank Deane was married in Auckland, New Zealand. W. H. Smith had emigrated to British Columbia. The Old Boys cricket match was cancelled because of the death of King Edward. B.O Corbett played cricket for Derbyshire. R R Williams passed his Law finals. W Parker, Clerk to the Governors of Lord Williams’s Trust, died – he was thought to be the last of Dr Fooke’s old pupils pre 1860 but not the only one alive. E.J Stevens married. E.B Shaw had gone up to Trinity College Cambridge. A.W.S Wagner (1905-10) went up to St John’s College Oxford. Donald Shaw 1899-1907 graduated in History from Balliol College, Oxford with a 2nd.

John Hampden War Memorial Fund - positions vacant

We are still looking for a new Secretary and also a firm to manage our funds. We will share details later but if anyone would like to discuss this now please contact us.

Want to know more?
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