Autumn 2020 Old Orwellian Newsle�er ORWELL PARK SCHOOL, NACTON, IPSWICH, IP10 0ER 01473 659225 www.orwellpark.co.uk HEADMASTER we are reviewing our recognition of donations to the School Foundation, including the introduction of plaques for donors past, present and future. The autumn term is now upon us and we are glad to be seeing all the children for the new school year.We are fortunate that for the second half of the summer term we had several year groups in school and by the end of term nearly all year groups were back, including over 50 boarders.This term, we are offering a broad and balanced curriculum, including sport and activities. We are very positive about the return to school, though, given the success of OPS Online during lockdown, we are ready and able to offer distance learning should the circumstances arise in the future. I hope that it will not be long before we can also welcome our Old Orwellians back for our usual calendar of events. Yours sincerely, Adrian Brown Headmaster I hope you had an enjoyable summer.The School site has been busy over the recent months with repairs to the domes at the front of the main mansion ongoing, due to be completed later this term.The Buck House, on the far side of the sports hall and swimming pool, is in the process of being refurbished for lease to The Old Orwellian Community Interest Company PLOT, an alternative education provision, offering small groups of vulnerable Archive is now LIVE! children the opportunities to learn within a vocational environment.We have already offered our facilities to PLOT during the lockdown period and this signals the A huge thank you to beginning of a more formal relationship, with PLOT everyone who donated to occupying an entirely separate area on the edge of the our giving challenge to School site. make this project a reality. We have also been developing our music facilities: 60 music lockers have been installed in the music corridor, thanks to the generosity of the Reed family, and they Visit archive.orwellpark.org will provide excellent safe storage for pupils’ to explore the collection.* instruments. In addition, a new recording studio is being created in one of the larger practice rooms at the end of the music corridor. Our thanks to Governor Adrian Melrose and his family for their generous financial Join the conversation support of this project.We are also looking forward to with other Old reinstating the clock tower chimes following a kind donation from our Year 8 leavers’ parents. As a school Orwellians online 2 NEWS NEW! Wilkinson-Spurgeon Bursary Fund We are delighted to announce that the Wilkinson-Spurgeon Bursary Fund has been established thanks to a very generous gift of £50,000 to the School Foundation. This Fund has been set up in memory of the School’s founding families.In the coming months,we will be seeking to grow the Fund so that it can support a number of bursaries at Orwell Park in perpetuity.If you are interested in contributing to the Fund, or to learn more, please contact Development Manager Amy Carbonero on [email protected] or 01473 653228. Improved sports facilities The Everall family generously donated a set of three cricket pitch covers to the School to commemorate their sonWilliam’s time at Orwell Park (2014-19). They said:“William had a wonderful 5 years at OPS and we wanted to do something to benefit the School, as a thank you to all the excellent staff and delightful parents we met.” *Archive Update The Old Orwellian Archive is LIVE!You can access the archive by visiting archive.orwellpark.org.You will need to login to access the materials - click ‘Request Login Details’ on the archive homepage to register and gain access.We hope you enjoy exploring the collection! Successful‘Save Our Steinway’ campaign Director of Music Martin O’Brien and Development Manager Amy Carbonero, with others, ran a total of 88 miles to raise the funds to save our Steinway piano.Visit sos.orwellpark.org to learn more. Digital reunions Visit page 12 to feed into our planning for a series of online reunions in the coming months. Thank you! A belated thank you to theYear 8 leavers of 2019 who donated a large cricket net to the School last year. The net has been invaluable this last summer term, as it has enabled pupils to practise their bowling and batting in a socially-distant way. Thank you to our 2019 leavers and their families, and we hope you have enjoyed your first year of senior school! 2 3 FROM WILD FLOWER COMPETITIONS By John IronsideWood (1953-58) The following was provoked by the taster of the Old OrwellianArchive featured in the Spring 2020 e-newsletter with its report on Natural History Collections. Wild flower collections have long since gone out of fashion and I suspect the Orwell Park annual competition for the best wild flower collection disappeared some time in the 1960s. However, I took part in 1957 and 1958, winning the competition in collaboration with Marnix Wells in the latter year.I can remember collecting specimens in the grounds (Bell Heather near the river), near my home in Essex and on a picnic to the River Stour where I collected River Water Dropwort while swimming in the river.We were encouraged by the late Patrick Sarsfield, poet and painter as well as inspiring teacher, who I met up with in Brighton several times before his death in 2012. The point of this note is that the unfashionable wild flower competition began a life-long passion for plants which runs like a thread through my life.At first, it was just a hobby that stimulated an interest in travel to the wilder parts of the British Isles and a delight in mountains.When I got a job teaching in Sarawak after leaving Cambridge, the then untouched forests fired an interest in tropical Collecting parasitic plants from a tree inYemen, 1975 plants.This continued through a series of jobs in English language teaching and education in Somalia, Yemen, Bhutan, Colombia and Bolivia working for the British Council and the Department for International Development. In each place I combined my official work with botanical exploration in deserts, the mountains of the Himalayas and the Andes, and in tropical forests.As the years passed, I gradually developed a second part-time career in botany, taking occasional short term contracts, developing links with botanical institutions in different countries and publishing scientific papers. It was the publications that led to an invitation to join a team of researchers at the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford University in 2001, where I have been based ever since.I have been involved in the inception and implementation of Darwin Initiative projects related to biodiversity and conservation in Bolivia as well as in global studies of the systematics of several plant groups, most recently the sweet potato and its 800 wild relatives. Results of this study include the recognition of over Bolivia, 2006 60 new species as well as the discovery of evidence 4 to question the existence of Pre-Colombian links between Polynesia and South America, popularised by the Kon-Tiki expedition. Although most of my fieldwork has been in South America, my research and contacts have taken me from China and India to Cuba and Mexico and I would have travelled to three South American countries this year if Covid- 19 had not struck. This all came from an unlikely beginning with those wild flower competitions in the 1950s. You can learn more about the history of Orwell Park School through our Digital Archive.Visit archive.orwellpark.org. Alternatively, our celebratory book is available at a cost of £40 with funds going to The Orwell Park School Foundation. Visit www.orwellpark.co.uk/ orderbook Alternatively please email the Foundation on [email protected] or call 01473 653228. Thank you for your support. Bolivia, 2010 4 5 AN INTERVIEW WITH CRISS YMES An interview with Old Orwellian and recently appointed boarding, the rest made up of a mix of day pupils and Orwell Park School Governor Cris Symes (1978-85) weekly boarders, to the current make-up which is What made you interested in becoming a obviously quite different regarding the day-boarding governor at Orwell Park? mix but also the type of boarding experienced. Flexi- I have incredibly fond memories of the School having boarding did not exist. On that point, some of my spent seven very happy years there from 1978-85, happiest times at school were on Sundays making use initially as a day pupil, then a weekly boarder and then of the incredible facilities and park.The fact that the a full (seven-night/week) boarder from about age majority of other pupils were also around was eight. It is the most special of places. My two older fantastic for us all. Cosmetically, there were only brothers attended, as did my father. Having worked in floorboards and old spring-based hospital beds in the education in six schools over a period of some 24 dormitories and fire escapes which were steel ladders years as a teacher and governor,two state maintained bolted to the outside of the building – one had to and four independent,I have found myself appreciating concentrate climbing down them in dressing gowns to an even greater extent how lucky I had been to during fire practices! attend the School. I also hoped that an OPS What or who inspired you to embark on your governorship might allow me to give something back chosen career? to my alma mater,hoping to help steward it for future A joining up of a love of my chosen degree subject generations of Old Orwellians so they too may (Geography) with working in an instructional capacity benefit.The idea came to me in part having received (through involvement with outdoor education) with a very cordial email exchange with Amy Carbonero, young people with various companies and clubs.