ONA Now and Then From the 50s & 60s by Ian Gotts (59-66)
I read with interest and sadness Melvyn Wallhead’s (56-66) obituary of the late Derek Wanless (59-66) (Issue 86). In the Sixth Form there were five of us who would play cards: Derek Wanless (59-66), Melvyn Wallhead (5666), Bruce Morrison (56-66) and Andrew Du Plessis (59-66), usually in Joe Liddell’s room. Derek used to keep the running total of points from playing solo and Black Maria, with tens of thousands of points recorded in a running total. He usually managed to edge the game, with Wallhead close behind. Moving away to Leeds to start my degree I never managed to keep up with any of the group, or indeed of the form I started in (2-3? with Mr Macro) almost all of whom were boys starting at the secondary school rather than migrating up from the primary. It is a long time ago, but many of the memories are still vivid. And the roll call of names for that form aren’t far away; Brown, Burgess, Coulson… ending up with Wallhead, Wanless, Wright A & Wright Q. Although you won’t find me on any lists of achievement at the school either literary or sporting, I realise the value in
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my working life I gained from going to the RGS compared to the other option which would have been Morpeth Grammar (especially so, having read Sid Waddell’s account of his life there, whose brother I knew well at primary school). My Dad had pushed for a scholarship for me, though the hour and a half travel each way every day was a bind, especially when the bus was late and I ended up in late detention (why didn’t they put the driver in detention, not me?) I was encouraged to join the school orchestra on Saturdays, which would have been another three hours on the bus, at which point I packed up playing the ‘cello. A pity I never took up Uncle Jasper Doull’s offer to be taught the guitar in three easy lessons! The one thing the school never managed was to teach me how to write neatly, despite three attempts including by Larry Watson in English (who still owes me 6d for some minor challenge he had during the lesson) and some bright young thing on teaching practice whose name I can’t remember. Even clients complained they could not read my writing on flipcharts, so I think that is a family trait. Now, after 20 years in the best British engineering firms British Aerospace, Eurotherm, Marconi and ITT, followed by 20 years as a consultant in KPMG, I have swapped all that for becoming a full time family historian, photographer, and scuba diver, and combinations of all three, interspersed with seeing my lovely family. Having benefited from a County scholarship to the school when it was a Direct Grant school, I support the Bursary scheme as a way of giving something back for what the school has given me.
ONA – Old Novocastrians Association Magazine Spring 2013
From the Archive 2012 was a year of much rain and a royal jubilee. The accompanying extract from Novo records a damp royal visit by King Edward and Queen Alexandra on July 11 1906 which left our reporter slightly underwhelmed. The King had come to Newcastle to formally open the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Armstrong College. The latter had been established in 1871 to offer instruction in mathematics and the sciences and had been renamed after William George Armstrong in 1904. It later became part of the Newcastle division of Durham University. The ‘Mr Logan’ referred to in the piece was Headmaster of the Royal Grammar School between 1883 and 1912. Three months after the royal visit a much more significant event in the history of the School took place: the relocation from Rye Hill to the current Jesmond site. Oliver Edwards
School Archivist