ISSUE No.150 SUMMER 2012 School News EDITOR E DITORIAL Richard Hudson Churchill’s Hall ‘For the rain it raineth every day’ sings Feste fitting reflection of the mood at the retirement of Shrewsbury School the fool at the end of Shakespeare’s Twelfth three of the School’s most loyal servants, Shrewsbury Night. Never in my memory either as a Senior Master and former Grove housemaster SY3 7AT Salopian boy or adult has this seemed truer of Peter Fanning, Registrar and former Ingram’s Tel: 01743 280630 the Summer Term at Shrewsbury. Week after housemaster Robin Case and David Gee (is [email protected] week cricket fixtures have been painstakingly this really his retirement?), sometime arranged, house teams drawn up, only to be housemaster of both Dayboys, as it then was, ASSISTANT EDITOR cancelled when, after a brilliant early morning and Severn Hill, after 54 years on the Annabel Warburg full of the promise of a glorious day ahead, Shrewsbury staff; a little shy of Her Majesty’s serried ranks of grey clouds have invaded from stint, but bringing to his job the same OBITUARIES EDITOR Wales and the heavens opened by eleven. philosophy of unselfish service. Hugh Ramsbotham Only the rowers have been able to carry on The Queen’s Jubilee has provided serenely, though sadly with mixed success this numerous opportunities for us to be reminded Old salopian club season. The geographical distribution of the of the almost revolutionary changes which our Alex Baxter (Director) rain has, very strangely, meant that despite society has witnessed over the past 60 years. It Miriam Walton (Administrator) falling in vast quantities over Shrewsbury, the has therefore seemed fitting to start this issue Old Salopian Club river has remained more or less within its with an extended reflection by David Gee on The Schools banks. the changes he has witnessed at Shrewsbury Shrewsbury Most readers will distantly remember from over the same period. But there does seem to their schooldays a literary device, beloved by be a subtle difference. The spirit of the place, SY3 7BA both authors and film directors, called the that special Salopian ethos, seems to have Tel: 01743 280891 (Director) ‘pathetic fallacy’, where the weather reflects the remained unchanged in its essentials. And 01743 280892 (Administrator) mood. In films, for example, the sun generally seldom has it been so well described as it has shines at a wedding, and the proper weather been by David at the end of his marvellous Front cover: for a funeral is rain. Without wishing to sound retrospective. Summer of mud too morbid, the weather this summer seems a Floreat Salopia! Inter-House athletics is reborn. See page 32 2 School News F IFTY-FOUR YEARS ON . Dr David Gee (DHG), who after a number of failed attempts, will make another attempt to retire this summer, reflects on the changes he has seen at Shrewsbury over the last half century. It is over fifty-four years since I first came to teach at Shrewsbury Pool, the Cricket Centre and three new boarding houses, The and I am often asked how much it has changed. I usually answer Grove, Mary Sidney Hall and Emma Darwin Hall, being the most that in some ways it has changed out of all recognition and in other notable examples - the Site retains its extraordinary beauty and its ways not at all. Shrewsbury has its own distinctive ethos, composed compelling magic. of its landscape, its people and its structures: and the interplay Of course, the people come and go; and here, too, there have between the actors on that landscape and the ethos which they first been important changes in number, provenance and function. In inherit and then transmit is a subject of intense fascination to me. In 1958 there were forty-five members of the Common Room, all male the letter, well-known in Salopian circles, which Malcolm White, who and all Oxbridge graduates. The first female member of the had joined the Common Room in 1910, wrote four days before he permanent staff was appointed in 1979. Now there are over a was killed on the Western Front in 1916, to his colleague and hundred full-time colleagues, one fifth of them female, drawn from a contemporary Evelyn Southwell, he was comforted by the reflection wide variety of Universities. Then it was generally assumed that, that Shrewsbury is immortal. I sometimes think that the river which although ambition might lure a few away, most colleagues would flows past our school, always moving but always essentially the stay for life. Now there is much greater mobility: there have been same, provides a powerful image of that abiding ethos, of that more than sixty new members of the Common Room in the last ten ethical continuum in which we all play our part. years. Then internal promotions, especially to Housemasterships, There have been significant changes on our incomparable Site, were generally based on seniority of appointment to the staff; and which Neville Cardus described as ‘the most beautiful playing fields the average age of Housemasters was nearer 50 than 40. in the world’; but its essential characteristics of space and surprise, Colleagues addressed each other by their surnames. Senior which Laurence Le Quesne identified in a previous edition (No.100), colleagues would not hesitate to rebuke, or even report their juniors have happily, if somewhat precariously, been preserved. The for some misdemeanour or solecism. When, as a young ‘brusher’, arrangement of our buildings round a central ‘village green’ is an (Salopian slang for ‘master’), I donned a woolly ski-hat, with a bobble essential element in the Salopian ethos: and though there has been on top, for coaching on the river on a freezing February afternoon, much building in the last fifty years - the Lyle Building, Kingsland the Senior Master, usually amiable and genial to his juniors, growled, Hall, the Craft Centre, the Science Building, the Gym, the Swimming as he passed me on his bicycle, ‘Take that thing off!’ I did! Sixth Form trip to Moscow, May 1961 3 School News The Salopian Common Room, in my experience, shows it demanding full and rigorous compliance. The days when there exceptional dedication, Housemasters, of course, not least. The was a waiting list of boys whose parents could comfortably afford closed ‘green baize door’ of my earliest days at Shrewsbury has the fees are long gone: now there is intense competition for a now been flung wide open. The boys, bending over their Top dwindling constituency of potential entrants, many of whose parents Schools in Hall, no longer hear the sound of a gong announcing have to make considerable financial sacrifices: every aspect of the that their Housemaster is about to sit down to his dinner: nowadays School’s provision has to be ‘state of the art’. he’s often lucky if he can grab a sandwich. House discipline then Many of the changes which Shrewsbury has experienced in its was the preserve of the monitors. All members of staff nowadays academic life are common to other schools of its kind. In 1958 have a vastly increased administrative load, composed of UCAS teaching was seen as ‘what a gentleman does with his leisure’. forms, grade predictions, course work, preparation for external Though an Oxbridge degree was a sine qua non, a professional inspections, lesson observations and annual personal professional teaching qualification was regarded with suspicion. The Lower assessments. Risk assessments account for a considerable portion School was organised on the Form Master principle, in which a of this deluge of paper. I still shudder when I remember how, fifty colleague taught a group of related subjects to his form and years ago, I led a party of Sixth Form historians, shod only in gym- therefore had a great personal influence over them for a year and a shoes, over the notoriously dangerous rocks of Crib Goch, wet with real opportunity to give them a broader education. The idea that rain and shrouded in mist, followed by an enthusiastic American one needed a degree in a particular subject in order to be exchange-student, who kept exclaiming ‘Gee, this is cool!’. At the competent to teach it only became an established orthodoxy in the time, I knew no better: and fortunately we all came down unharmed. late 1970s. But the educational results of this ‘amateurism’ more Now I am required to fill in a risk assessment form if I drive a couple than bear comparison with those of to-day. The Sixth Form was of my Sixth Form tutees out for supper in a country pub! The organised on the basis of five ‘Sides’; Classics, Modern tremendous expansion of sport and its fixtures means that the Languages, History, Mathematics and Science, though there was demands on the staff, for coaching, refereeing or merely room for variation and for other subjects within those categories. supervising, also constantly increase. The dedication of the Since then, first Economics, (after a heated discussion in 1962 as to Common Room has been fully reflected in that of the support staff: whether it was an Art or a Science – the dichotomy was then highly on the Common, on the River, in Kingsland Hall, and in the fashionable and well established), then Business Studies, Craft, administrative offices, there has been a whole succession of great Design and Technology, ICT, Photography and Theatre Studies have servants of the school, whose notable contribution has been added to the range of subject choices, Personal, Social and appropriately been acknowledged, in several cases, by their Health Education has been introduced, while Physical Education election as Honorary Salopians.