From the Archivist

Anne Bradley

What might have been a thin year with

little to report is turning out to be full of interest. Of course, some projects have

slowed down, including our digitisation of the Chronicles, but most of them are now done and as soon as possible we shall be making that website available to former pupils. We already have some additional photographs to include, and if anyone has a specific item which they would like to sponsor for inclusion we can facilitate that once Lockdown 3 ends.

We have continued to receive enquiries. Interest in the Great War continues, and there are many new enquiries concerning World War II with a consequent revision of the amazing work Leslie Morris did in producing the Roll of Honour and Record of War Service. There are many more stories to tell there, and we hope to include one in the next issue of Bristolienses. If anyone has information to share about BGS and WWII we’d love to hear from you.

And new gifts arrive.

After last year’s gift of a BGS prize volume which turned up in a Spanish charity shop, we have just received a set of prize volumes found in the South of France, part of the estate of a gentleman who so far as we can tell had no connection with either BGS or the recipient of the prizes. More details when I am in School rather than working from home!

We are also looking ahead. 2032 approaches fast: only eleven years away from the 500th Anniversary.

Bring out your old records! Yes, we still receive gems from the 1930s.

12 January 2021. On a brief and extremely isolated visit, I have identified the most recent gift as three prize volumes, two volumes of the ‘Oeuvres de Moliere’ and Jules Verne’s ‘Vingt Mille Lieues sous les Mers’, immediately recognisable by the educated Old Bristolian even though ‘Mers’ carries very different overtones at

the moment. They were awarded to William Stuart MacGowan, for French, in 1880 when he was in the A Division of the Third Form, and in 1881 when he was in the Fifth Form. They are stamped ‘Bristol Grammar School, Founded by Robt Thorne 1536’; 1536 is a short lived error frequently printed on the crest at this sort of time. All are signed ‘John W Caldicott, DD’, the Headmaster who moved the School from Unity Street to Tyndall’s Park.

The Rev W S MacGowan MA, LLD, Clerk in Holy Orders, 1864-1939, was born in Kent. He married and had three sons, two born in Cheltenham and the third in Grahamstown, Cape Colony, South Africa. Clearly his academic promise was fulfilled, though he seems to have moved away from French to publish German readers and a book on German religious philosopher Rudolf Eucken. I probably need Crockford’s Clerical Directory to explain South Africa, and that alas is closed to me.

William and his three brothers all came to BGS, and the register identifies their father as Alexander Thorburn MacGowan, of Vyvyan House, Clifton. Definitely the gentry!

But how, o how, did the books come to be in southern France?

Anne Bradley

Archivist