A-Z of Loughborough Grammar School

A to Z

of LGS

John Weitzel LGS Archivist

A is for Architects As you stand and view the Quad with Buckland House behind you, you are surrounded by the work of George Harry Barrowcliff who was at the School from 1875 to 1881. He was the youngest of three boys and in his exams in 1880 he was bottom in French with 30 (top mark 446!) but more successful in freehand drawing with 110 (top mark 200) which probably explains why he became an architect rather than a linguist! He was the School’s architect responsible for the ‘new buildings’ on the South Sides, erected to mark the School’s 400th anniversary – the original science buildings and a woodwork room with the cricket pavilion following shortly afterwards.

On the North Side he was responsible for the extension to School House in 1902 and the Reading Room in 1904. In between the last two buildings he designed his own house – Buckland House, built in 1903. (See The Houses and Residents of Burton Walks in the digital archive).

In 1889 he went into partnership with Edward T. Allcock who was a few years younger having been at the School from 1885 to 1888. Within the School, they were responsible for the Swimming Pool in 1929. However, it is not just within the School that one can see their work – most of Loughborough seems to have been designed by them and many feature in the ‘Town Trail’ available from the School. The Charnwood Forest Convalescent Home (1894); Roseberry School (1897); Taylor’s Bell Foundry (1898); The Memorial Baths and Drill Hall, which is now Charnwood Museum (1898); The Carnegie Library (1905); The Congregational Church, which is now the United Reformed Church (1908); and an extension to Emmanuel Church (1909). It will come as no surprise that they were quite good at designing schools and in addition to Roseberry and LGS were: King James Grammar School, Knaresborough (1898); Ashby Girls Grammar School (1901); Barrowupon-Soar Grammar School (1901); Hinckley Grammar School (1906); and King Edward VII Grammar School, Coalville (1909).

The Memorial Baths

The Carnegie Library After George’s death in 1924 Edward went on to design the Loughborough Echo Offices (1931) and in the same year was responsible for the design of the Burton Chapel in the Parish Church. He died in 1958.

George’s son, Arnold Montague Barrowcliff, was at the School from 1898 to 1904 and, after studying architecture at London University, decided against working for his father and joined Everard, Son and Pick. In the Great War he was attached to a tunnelling company of the Royal Engineers and was awarded the Military Cross for his work on 10 August 1916. The citation read ‘For conspicuous gallantry. When the enemy exploded a mine, he at once collected six infantry men, went over the parapet in broad daylight, and worked at consolidating the crater till he was wounded in three places and forced to withdraw.’ After the war he returned and in 1924-1925 was responsible for designing St Mary’s Catholic Church on the Ashby Road.

It will come as no surprise that the School has relied on its old boys to act as architects. Francis Charles Haynes was academically the exact opposite of George - in the exams in his final year in 1899 he was top in French and 11th (out of 26) in Science. He joined Albert E.King & Co in 1902 and in 1931 was responsible for the extension to the Science Block, which is now the Library, and 30 years later, the Hodson Hall and N Block. Because of the war not much else of note was built in between! He was active within the OLA and a Governor of the Endowed Schools. He was made an honorary life member of Loughborough and District Photographic Society for his services in promoting and encouraging the art of amateur photography in the district and died in 1964. More recently John Morfey (LGS 1961-72) of Stephen George and Partners was responsible for The Queen’s Building, The Cope Building, The Maths and Science Park and the Music School.

Nearly 100 years earlier in 1873, Charles Mason entered the School. He was a boy I would have appreciated for in 1876 he was top of the mathematical side of the School and a member of the cricket 1st XI! On leaving, he was articled to a Nottingham architect later becoming an Associate of R.I.B.A. His first public appointment was as Deputy Borough Engineer for Nottingham before moving to a similar position at Leicester in 1889. He was then appointed chief surveyor to St Martin in the Fields, Westminster before returning to Beeston where he played a prominent part in its public life. A staunch Conservative, he represented Nottinghamshire on the Grand Council of the Primrose League and was an Alderman of the County Council. He died on 1 January 1950 in his 90th year.

Fifteen days after Charles died, so did another OL architect. Ernest George Fowler entered the School 20 years after Charles in 1893 and he too was bright, being a County Scholar and awarded a prize in his final year, 1898. He was clearly an athlete and was the most successful competitor at Sports Day in 1898 and was Captain of the Football 1 st XI. ‘Right full-back. Too slow to be really good: but plays hard, kicks well and generally uses his weight with advantage.’

He went on to be Leicestershire’s Education Architect for 38 years where he supervised the building of 40 new primary schools, enlarged 23 more primary schools and 23 secondary schools and had built three technical colleges.

He was a Fellow of R.I.B.A. as was Walter K.Bedingfield who was 10 years his senior, being at the School from 1882 to 1886. At some stage he adopted his father’s name ‘Waller’ rather than ‘Walter’ and there is much speculation that it was an error on his birth certificate in 1870 that meant he was known as ‘Walter’ for the early part of his life including whilst he was here. He went into partnership at Keites, Fosbrooke and Bedingfield before Keites retired, when the firm was then known as just Fosbrooke and Bedingfield, and they were responsible for many buildings in the county like the Rothley Garden Suburb and Eastern Boulevard, Leicester.

He was first secretary and then president of the Leicester Society of Architects and was a prominent member of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, best known for the 1930 excavations of the Leicester Abbey site, including the restoration and layout of the surviving remains.

However, it was in Rotary that he was to make his name. He was one of seven local business men who met on 17 March 1916 and decided to form a club in Leicester which was formally chartered in October that year. He undertook the role of speakerfinder, a position he was to hold for the next 20 years, as well as being Club President, a District Governor and District Secretary and Treasurer. He took the lead in developing the Rotary movement and established new clubs not just in Leicestershire and adjacent areas, but also as far away as Lincoln, Cambridge, Norwich and even Ipswich. Thus he had a key role in developing Rotary in Britain.

He took a prominent role in developing the Leicester Club’s charitable activities and led the Club’s purchase in 1925, and subsequent management for the following six years, of the 133 acres of Swithland Wood in Charnwood Forest – the first part of what is now known as Bradgate Park. His fine calligraphic design survives today carved into the face of the old Great Quarry in Swithland Wood: ‘The Leicester Rotary Club Secured Swithland Wood as a National Heritage.’ He died in 1952 and in 2021 his home for 44 years, St Aubin House, Lutterworth, was part of a list of ‘non-designated assets of architectural, historic or archaeological interest’ drawn up by Market Harborough’s district council.

Two years after Walter left School, in 1888 Charles Frederick Grundy entered the School for three years. On leaving, he was articled to Barrowcliff and Allcock and after completing his training remained with them as an assistant so would have been involved in much of their Loughborough building. He then joined the Old Cheshire Lines with responsibility for the maintenance of railway buildings between Manchester and Liverpool before returning to Loughborough to practise on his own account.

Also articled to Barrowcliff and Allcock on leaving LGS was William Frederick Cartwright who entered the School in 1911. He too decided to change his first name, this time to Wilfred. His school career was similar to Barrowcliff’s, ‘Weak in English Grammar. French Fair. Other subjects very good’, but clearly was a typical teenager, ‘Does not give an impression of being keen’. However his record card for his U VI term refers again to his weakness in French but also ‘Special Work’ working for R.I.B.A. so his career was fairly obvious when he was 16. His greatest contribution to the School was the World War One Memorial – see ‘W’.

I can’t leave ‘A’ without mentioning two current practising architects.

I still remember teaching David Kohn in my form when he entered the School from Stoneygate in 1985 and went on to read architecture at Jesus College, Cambridge, before becoming a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York. He set up his own practice in 2007 and was named Young Architect of the Year in 2009. He was described in The Observer as being ‘the British Architect with a gift for the quietly surreal’ and ‘pursuing common-sense goals with uncommon results.’ His works have included a new Quad for New College Oxford and the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new photography galleries. In 2019, he presented the prizes at Junior Prize Giving.

New Warham House, New College

Also leaving School in 1990 was Niall Maxwell, previous star of my musicals most notably as Tom Sawyer in the Junior Musical, Tom and Huck, and then as Lazar-Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof, as well as being ever present alongside me in the Choir. In 2017, along with James Wright, their house ‘Caring Wood’ was named R.I.B.A. House of the Year, with the competition being featured on Channel 4. Inspired by the traditional oast houses of Kent, it re-imagined the traditional English country house with four towers and interlinking roofs made with locally sourced hand-made peg clay tiles, locally quarried ragstone and coppiced chestnut cladding.

There will be many more architects that the School has produced but they all have one thing in common with those mentioned above. They will all have taken inspiration from John Morris of John Morris and Charles Grieve Hebson of Upper Stamford Street in Lambeth who, back in 1849, were given the contract to design the School on its present site. 170 years later I don’t think he did such a bad job and it is wonderful that so much of the School since then was designed by OL’s, inspired by his work, along with most other schools in Leicestershire and most of Loughborough itself!

B is for Battalions With the exception of the Queen, Emma Pauline Cunliffe-Owen is the only woman who features prominently in this A to Z. Previously a widow she married her life-time friend Dr Robert Stamford after the Great War in 1919 and in 1920 they moved into Red House where she was to live for the next 30 years, half of them alone after Dr Stamford’s death in 1935. Thus she clearly would have been well known by the boys of that era not least because of what she had achieved in the War but also because of her severe arthritis which meant she was always to be seen outside in an elaborate wheelchair.

She was born in 1863 actually within the Victoria and Albert Museum where her father was director. In her youth,she was well known as an ‘all round sportswoman’ and was very active in outdoor pursuits. At the outbreak of war on Sunday 6 September 1914, she was walking down Bond Street when she met two big-game hunters of her acquaintance. Half-jokingly, she asked them why they had not signed up and, half-jokingly, they challenged her to raise a battalion of middle and upper class men up to the age of 45. She promptly went with them to a post office and telegraphed Lord Kitchener: “Will you accept complete battalion of upper and middle class men, physically fit, able to shoot and ride, up to the age of forty-five?” The reply was “Lord Kitchener gratefully accepts complete battalion.”

She set about her task with rare vigour, hiring the grand India Room in the 800 room Hotel Cecil on the Strand and corralling 12 retired army men as recruiting officers. Adverts were placed in newspapers and recruiting events held all over the country.

The advert in The Times reflected her love of sport: ‘Sportsmen, aged 19 to 45, upper and middle class only. Wanted at Once.

Entrance fee 3 guineas, or kit. No other financial obligations. Head Recruiting Office, E.Cunliffe-Owen, Hotel Cecil, London.

Hours 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.’

First Sportsman Battalion at their training camp in Essex

In just four weeks she had her first battalion. Training at first took place outside the hotel on The Strand itself, regularly stopping the traffic. She realised this was not a long term solution and as more and more recruits joined up - she was asked to raise a second battalion of 1600 men - she paid a contractor to build a camp in just 19 days at Hornchurch, Essex.

In the autumn of 1915, the 23rd and 24th Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London) Regiment were cheered by crowds as they marched in their finery behind a band to Liverpool Street Station. They soon were nicknamed the 1st and 2nd Sportsman’s Battalions. She was the first woman to raise a regiment in 120 years since the Duchess of Gordon raised the Gordon Highlanders in 1794.

Despite the advert stipulating ‘upper and middle classes only’ the mixture of recruits was extraordinary and there were also sports stars of the past and present. The definition of a ‘sportsman’ was somewhat loose and actually ended up being anyone, in essence, who was a good sport! Many of the volunteers lied about their age to be accepted, but not quite in the usual way.

They had to say they were younger than they were to meet the 45 year old limit…some were in their 60’s!

The battalions went to France in November 1915 and, before they left, Emma presented all ranks with a silver medallion, bearing her signature and the message ‘God Guard You.’ Throughout the war, the 23rd saw nearly 5,000 men pass through its ranks and suffered more than 3,200 casualties, won 173 bravery awards and suffered 944 fatalities. One of those was William ‘Bill’ Henry White who, not surprisingly, was our oldest Old Boy to die in the War. He was the second son of Frank White who taught at Fairfield (then the junior part of the High School) and was at the School from 1879 to 1884. He inherited his father’s interest in music and became a violin teacher. Both his brothers had sons at the School and he was living in Bern, Switzerland when war broke out. Having been born in 1880, he realised that he was too old to join up before he saw Emma’s advert and then returned to England to try and join her battalion. He died in France on 26 November 1916 and is buried in the Boulogne Eastern Cemetery.

Emma never lost touch with her battalions, writing to every sick and wounded man. In January 1920, she was awarded the O.B.E. and later that year moved into Red House where she lived for the next 30 years until her death on 13 November 1950.

Emma’s battalions were part of the Pals battalions of the War, comprising men who had enlisted together in recruiting drives with the promise that they would be able to serve alongside friends and colleagues. Another group were the Public Schools Battalions where the decision was taken to raise a battalion exclusively from public schoolboys and university men. Their recruiting office was at 24 St James Street, London and began recruiting on 4 September 1914. A week later, four Public School Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers formed at Epsom Downs Racecourse. A few weeks later they were distributed between Epsom, Ewell, Ashstead and Leatherhead, each battalion mustering over 1000 strong.

15 LGS pupils joined those Battalions and in the January 1915 Loughburian (written in November/December 1914) an article appears by one of them, Private W.A.Deakin (See ‘J’).

‘Practically all the men connected with Loughborough or with its School belong to the 4 th Battalion stationed at Ashstead under the command of Lt.Col. Stuart-Wortley. The LGS is well represented, and the majority of the Loughborough boys have remained together in the same company. The corps offers a unique opportunity for friends and old schoolfellows to serve together.’ It then goes on to describe what sort of work they were doing, not just learning how to fire rifles but also, ‘The men have been engaged during the last few weeks in digging trenches which form the second line of defence around London.’ It talks about ‘Some rowdy happenings take place occasionally in the places of amusement in Epsom, which are much frequented by the men, though the authorities have certainly succeeded of late in maintaining a higher standard of peace and order than was obtained a month or two ago.’

However the last paragraph, which is full of rather naïve optimism, has an air of foreboding.

‘Soldiering, as we have it up to the present, savours much of the pranks and harmless escapades in which every schoolboy delights. It is a fine training ground and teaches a man to rely on his own resources and imbues him with the spirit of comrade­ ship and self-sacrifice. There are times, such as “trenching” days, when we ask one another what on earth possessed us to make us join the army, but we remember that “ trenching ” does not last or ever, and while standing in the rain console ourselves by singing hymn tunes to such words as “ Are we downhearted? ” Our battalion is now recognised as the 21st Service Battalion Royal Fusiliers, and as this week we have received our regimental numbers, things are gradually assuming a more promising outlook, and we hope for great opportunities in the near future.’

Of those 15, Hilary Clarke (LGS 1904-1907) was killed on 31 August 1918 aged 22; Charles Lancaster (LGS 1900-1907) was killed on 21 March 1918 aged 26; Albert Perkins (LGS 1901-1906) was killed on 4 October 1917 and Francis Pitts (LGS 1897-1904) died in a German prison on 17 May 1917 aged 27.

C is for Canons and Chaplains The October 1923 Loughburian contains the very simple paragraph that probably records the most significant event in the life of the School since its move to its present site in 1852.

‘We publish in this edition a copy of “The School Hymn,” by Canon G.W.Briggs, the Rector of Loughborough, who is himself an Old Loughburian.’

Canon George Wallace Briggs was born in Nottingham on 14 December 1875, the son of George Briggs and Betsy Ann Hardstaff, and attended the School from 1891 to 1893 before progressing to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His first curacy was at Alverthorpe, near Wakefield, before serving as a padre in the Royal Navy from 1902 to 1909 and then Vicar of St Andrew’s Church, Norwich until 1918 when he became Rector of the Parish Church in Loughborough.

He soon realised that the connection between the Parish Church and the School that was founded inside it was not as strong as it might be. On becoming a Governor of his old school, he suggested to the new Headmaster, Captain Tom Stinton, that the traditional Founder’s Day, which consisted of a special assembly and half day holiday, be ‘upgraded’ to what he would call ‘The Burton Service’. This would involve the whole town and be held in the Parish Church. On 5 June 1921, the first Burton Service was held and its history can be read on page 40 of the 2021 Beyond the Barrier, available on the digital archive.

At that service George realised that the School did not have a School Hymn and this was his next challenge. He completed the words and the tune for the start of the Autumn Term in 1923 and it has been sung ever since.

Few schools have had their ‘School Hymn’ or ‘School Song’ written by a ‘professional hymn writer’ which probably explains why it has been adopted by many other schools, such as Whitgift, but not only do they have to sing a different second verse but also a different first line singing ‘servants’ rather than ‘servant’ that is sung at LGS (referring to Thomas Burton). For me, the best renditions I have heard have been in football stadia when supporting LGS 1 st XI in the finals of the Mercian Cup and also at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1995 at the service to mark the quincentenary of the School, complete with descant composed by Dr Peter Underwood. To mark its centenary, a full orchestration has been composed by Richard West.

The hymn was an early piece in a prolific career of writing hymns, which included the college hymn for Loughborough College of Technology. His works would appear in Little Bible (1923), Songs of Praise (1925), Prayers and Hymns for Use in Schools (1927), Prayers and Hymns for Junior Schools (1933) and Sons of Faith (1945). George also helped to found the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. On two occasions in the 1940s, he tried to persuade Ralph Vaughan Williams to write the tunes for his hymns but on both occasions his words were passed on to Martin Shaw, the latter being ‘Lord God of earth and seas and skies’ which was published by Oxford University Press in 1944.

His next idea was to have a scheme of commemoration in the Church which would recall for many generations to come the names of those who had been intimately involved with the Grammar School. Working with the architect Edward Allcock, who had been at School from 1885 to 1888, they designed the Burton Chapel which was dedicated on 1 November 1931.

George had married Constance Emily Barrow in 1909 and had five children. Of these David was a pupil at Fairfield (which was associated with the High School at the time) for a year 1923-1924 before winning a Choral Scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge and was in the choir when it made its first Christmas broadcast in 1928. He was later to return to King’s College School as Headmaster in 1959, a position he was to hold for 18 years. David visited the School in 2013 when the room carrying the family name was dedicated in the Music School. For the period 1978 to 1991, the name was also to be remembered as Briggs joined four of the names of previous headmasters – Wallace, Colgrove, Turner and Kaye – as one of the House names.

George was made a Canon at Leicester Cathedral in 1927 and in 1934 decided to move on and became a Canon at Worcester Cathedral where he served until his retirement in 1956.

He died on 30th December 1959 at Hindhead, Surrey A young David Briggs An equally formidable father and son combination with connections to both the School and the Parish Church was the Howe family –John (Senior) and his son John. John (Senior) succeeded Mr Edmunds as ‘usher’ – assistant master – on the appointment of Mr Atkinson as Headmaster in 1627. Given the size of the School at that time, it is likely they were the only two staff employed. It was a ‘dual role’ for, although the School had moved out of the Parish Church and was now in a separate building in the churchyard John, (Senior) was also curate of the Church. Given his role, he would have had a property provided by the Feoffees close by. John was born there on 17 May 1630, in probably the same house as John Cleveland (see ‘N’) had been born 17 years earlier.

But their lives were to change for ever when Charles I appointed William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. He was sympathetic to Roman Catholics and hostile to the growing Puritan movement, of which John (Senior) was a part. On 6 November 1634, in the Court of the High Commission, he was charged that as a minister, and having been so for six years, in his prayer before his sermon, he used sundry offensive words and especially ‘he prayed that the young prince, meaning Prince Charles, might not be brought up in property whereof there was great cause to fear.’ He was ordered to be attached and to stand committed during His Majesty’s pleasure, to be suspended from the execution of his ministry and to be fined £500 to His Majesty. The entry for 19 February 1635 read that Howe ‘late curate of Loughborough’ had been fined £500 for scandalous speeches in derogation of the King’s Government which fine was mitigated to £20.

The effect of such a determined and fearless usher in the Grammar School may well be imagined and no doubt Howe’s outspoken references to the upbringing of the heir to the throne would find echoes in the hearts of some Loughburians favouring, as many of them did, the Puritan and Parliamentarian causes.

As a consequence, the Howe family were driven to take refuge in Ireland, but it is likely that the six year old John attended the school briefly prior to that. They returned to England in 1641, settling in Lancaster, and John went on to study at Christ’s College, Cambridge and at Magdalen College, Oxford achieving his B.A. in 1650 and his M.A. in 1652 before becoming College Chaplain. In 1654 he was appointed to the curacy of Great Torrington, Devon but everything was to change. Whilst on a visit to London in 1656, he was asked by Oliver Cromwell to preach at Whitehall and as a result he was asked to be Oliver Cromwell’s Chaplain.

Thomas Abney, OL, was born 10 years after John Howe but it is interesting to read in the section dealing with his relationship with the church in Jeremiah Smith’s Character of Sir Thomas Abney: ‘Among particular churches he took some to be more conformed to Scripture rule than others and more fitted thereby for spiritual edification; such he believed those of the protestant dissenters to be, and therefore joined himself with one of them, first under Dr Jacomb and after his decease, of that excellent person, and great divine, Mr John Howe.’ I am sure that in their moments together the days of their boyhood in Loughborough would not be forgotten.

D is for Designers The very first Loughburian gives a vivid description of Speech Day on 28 July 1879. ‘At the close of the Speeches, Reports, Recitations, Singing, &c, nearly two hundred of the Visitors were entertained by the Headmaster at luncheon. After toasts the Company adjourned to the playground to witness the cricket match of Past v Present……The Ground was tastefully decorated with flags, and enlivened by the strains of the Loughborough Band.’ There then follows a full account of the proceedings from the Loughborough Monitor and News which is well worth a read! The cricket match resulted in victory for the Present who, having scored 91, then bowled out the Past for just 39 thanks to ‘Gregory i greatly distinguished himself with the ball.’ In that Old Loughburians side was H.L.Gardiner who had left the School the previous year.

Herbert Gardiner had joined the School three years earlier and in 1887 he was responsible for the stained glass window in the South aisle West of St Andrew’s Church in Aylestone with a central picture of a woman giving a hungry child a loaf of bread. In the base of the light is a portrait of Queen Victoria with the Royal cipher V R and the dates 1837-1887 as the window was a gift of Mr and Mrs John Beasley to commemorate Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee.

Herbert must have had quite a reputation for designing stained glass windows as in 1892 he headed to Edinburgh to form a partnership with Alexander Ballantine, who was best known for winning the competition to design windows for the new Houses of Parliament in 1843.

The May 1900 Loughburian recorded that he had become ‘a partner in a Stained Glass Artistic business in Edinburgh.’ For the next 13 years, Ballantine and Gardiner were incredibly prolific in their design of stained glass windows, especially in Scotland, but in 1905 Alexander’s son, James, joined the firm and it was then known as A.Ballantine & Son. I don’t know of another OL who specialised in stained glass but if we consider a craftsman in wood and metal then Alfred Burrows, who entered the School in 1875, would be regarded as one of the best. Initially he was a draughtsman in a lace factory and in 1899 qualified as a teacher – his brother was an art teacher at LGS at the time. In 1907 he taught handicrafts for the County Council visiting grammar schools, including LGS, as a master of arts and crafts, and ran a village carving class.

However, it was ecclesiastical carvings which he loved to beautify churches in Leicestershire and surrounding counties that pleased him most. He designed and carved much of his own church at Cossall, Nottinghamshire, where, after his death in 1948, there is a stained glass window dedicated to his memory.

He moved to Quorn in 1908 and did some work there as well as being a key member of the bell ringing team. He also arranged for his daughter, Louisa (‘Louie’), to set up an all-female team to share duties at the Church.

Louisa was also a teacher and in 1903 was attending a pupilteacher centre at Ilkeston where she met D.H.Lawrence. The two of them became engaged in 1910, but the engagement was broken off in February 1912. In 1915 D.H.Lawrence published The Rainbow, the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, a dynasty of farmers and craftsmen who live in the East Midlands. This is based on the Burrows, with Louie as Ursula Brangwen and Alfred as her father William. ‘The dreamy, Ruskinized young man who loves gothic carvings.’ The television version of the book was filmed in Cossall featuring ‘Cossethay’ Church cottage (Yew Cottage in the book) the former home of the Burrows family. An OL featuring in a book by D.H.Lawrence, who would have thought that?

Harry Humber entered the School from Rendell Street in September 1919. A member of West House, he showed his loyalty to the House on Wednesday 28 July 1920 at the Swimming Sports, held in those days at the Memorial Swimming Baths (now Charnwood Museum). ‘In the next event, One Length (under 12), only one competitor turned out (Humber), and he swam the course that his House might benefit by three points.’ He also featured in the House cricket final in 1923, where West lost to South by 25 runs.

After gaining his School Certificate, he left the School at the end of the Winter Term in 1924 and was apprenticed to Mr Johnson, a master plasterer, at ten pence an hour, learning every facet of the art and craft. He specialised in artistic ceilings for country houses and theatres – indeed his last job was to assist in completing the ceiling at the Royal Opera House.

In those early days plastering did not bring in much money, so together with some friends from School, he formed a dance band and after work they went round playing at dances, he at the piano, and sometimes on his own. He always said he earned more playing in one night than he did working as a plasterer full time for a week! In order to keep his hands in good shape to play the piano he wore gloves while plastering and these became something of a hallmark for him.

During part of the War, he was working for a building company which was looking after aerodrome runways, and he was put in charge. He was so competent and trustworthy, he was sent to London where after the War he set up his own company.

He was elected President of the London Master Plasterers’ Association in 1948 and became a Liveryman in the Plasterers’ Company in 1950 and Master in 1958. From the time he joined the Company, he dreamed of them having their own Hall despite them having no money or a site to build one! But not deterred, during his Mastership he suggested to the Court that The Company should try for one and explained that if a limited liability company was set up to carry out all negotiations and buildings, no liability could fall on the Plaisterers’ Company. The Court agreed and the company was set up in 1960 with him as Chairman, a position he was to hold for the next 33 years until his death.

Due to his skill in negotiation and dogged determination, after ten years of diplomacy he had a site and an arrangement for financing the building of the hall and work started in 1970 with it being completed in 1972. He was able to design the Hall as a showpiece of the art and craft of plastering in the neoclassical style created by Robert Adam in the 18th century that he so loved.

It is the largest and one of the finest livery halls in London.

He never forgot the School that he felt had given him the competence and confidence that had served him so well throughout his life. For ten years from 1983 he hosted the OLA London Dinner in his Hall until his death in 1993.

The OLA returned there for its Quincentenary Dinner in 1995 and again 27 years later on 23 April 2022 when Professor Hubert Lacey (LGS 1956-1963) masterfully told the story of Harry and the link between LGS and the Worshipful Company of Plaisterers and its magnificent Hall which Harry had designed.

E is for e There are two numbers in mathematics that mathematicians love more than any others. Pi - 3.14159…. - is first encountered by boys at the age of about 13 and then at 17 boys come across e – 2.71828…… Given boys’ love of mathematics, it is inevitable that the School has produced many fine mathematicians and I want to concentrate on just three.

Edgar Giraldus Phillips was born on 20 May 1897, the son of Rev W.V.Phillips, Baptist Minister of the Church in Highfields, Leicester (now the New Testament Church of God). It is fair to assume that his second name reflected his father’s determination to preserve his Welsh heritage – Giraldus Cambrensis was archdeacon of Brecknock from 1175 to 1204.

Edgar joined the School in 1910 aged 13, from Ashby Road H.E.S., as a County Scholar and was always close to the top of his form, actually being top on two occasions. He achieved Honours in both his Oxford Local Juniors Exams (1912) and Seniors (1913), not surprisingly achieving a distinction in Religious Knowledge. In 1914 he was awarded a Wallace Prize for Scholarship.

However, his mathematical skills would not have suggested what was to occur later. In his second year, he had a ‘poor maths exam’, and the following year his ‘bookkeeping exam was disappointing’ whilst his French was excellent! Once he started doing Scholarship work, he ‘found the regular solution of problems a difficulty’ and his ‘conics are weak’. However the most interesting comment comes in the December before he leaves ‘Working very well but maths master doubts if he has real maths ability’!

On leaving us in April 1916, he immediately joined the Royal Garrison Artillery as Gunner 290934 and he served with them until the end of the war. Immediately on being demobbed he applied to Manchester University to read Mathematics and at the end of his Part I was awarded the Dalton Mathematical Scholarship of £30. He achieved honours in his Part II and in 1920 was offered a Sizership to Trinity College, Cambridge where he won a Senior Scholarship two years later. He went straight from Cambridge to be a lecturer in Pure Mathematics at University College of North Wales, Bangor, in 1924.

There he became Senior Lecturer in Mathematics and had two books published that have become the foundation of many university courses. A Course of Analysis in 1930 has been reprinted nine times and Functions of a Complex Variable, with applications’ in 1940, had its most recent edition published in paperback in May 2020. Both books rely heavily on the number e!

He became Chief Examiner for Mathematics at the Joint Matriculation Board and in 1955 was delighted to actually mark some papers from his old school!

He retired in 1963 and died in 1969.

William Barry Pennington was born on 9 July 1923 in Bawtry, Yorkshire. By the time he entered the school in 1932 the family had moved to West Bridgford and thus he would have been a boarder. He continually showed himself, a fine academic and, although he played football for the 1st XI he clearly did not excel as well there. ‘Did not use his speed to the best advantage, and his work in general is disappointing.’ Despite this, he was Head boy for his final year 1940-41. He won a State Scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge – which resulted in a half day holiday to celebrate - where he had a distinguished career and was a wrangler and Rayleigh prizeman. During World War 2 (from 1943 to 1946) he served as a Radar Officer in the RNVR in the Pacific Ocean before returning to Cambridge to complete his doctorate.

After being at Harvard University on the Choate Memorial fellowship from 1950 to 1952, he was elected Research Fellow of Jesus College and was then appointed Reader in Mathematics at Westfield College, University of London. In 1961 he was appointed Professor of Pure Mathematics at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth becoming its Head of Department the following year.

He was a most able mathematician and lecturer and made a substantial contribution to the analytic theory of numbers but was best known for his work on Ramanujan’s tau function, which features e!

His father was the auctioneer W.Pennington & Co of Market Street who owned Red House from 1950 to 1962 and was involved in many discussions involving its sale to the School, which you can read about in The Houses and Residents of Burton Walks available on the digital archive.

In 5 March 1968, aged just 44, he collapsed and died suddenly at the peak of his mathematical powers.

Julian Ernst Besag was born on 26 March 1945 in Loughborough. His mother died when he was four years old and he was brought up in Birmingham by German speaking grandparents – not an easy upbringing in the years after the War – until his father remarried in 1953 and he entered the School as an eight year old.

Whilst excelling in the classroom, after starting in the cross country team he went on to make his mark representing the School as a hockey player, being vice -captain of the 1st XI for two years, and badminton, where he was also vicecaptain. He was Head Monitor too but it was in chess that he was to excel, playing for the School for four years and being selected in the final 24 for the Leicestershire Under 18 Championships in 1963. In 1959, he formed the Photographic Society.

His family were climbers and as a boy Julian walked in the Alps each year, a pursuit that was not without incident. Aged 16, he held the record for the longest non-fatal fall off the Black Rocks in North Wales!

On leaving the School in 1963, he progressed to Churchill College, Cambridge, to study engineering but realised the error of his ways and moved to the University of Birmingham to study statistics, graduating in 1968. He then spent a year as a research assistant at Oxford University before obtaining a lectureship at Liverpool University. He moved to Durham University in 1975, where he became a professor in 1986. He was visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle during 1989-90 and after a year at Newcastle University, returned to Seattle long-term.

The Daily Telegraph’s obituary for Julian explained in language you might understand, his achievements. ‘He was an eminent statistician and played a vital role in developing mathematically-sound models for a host of practical problems – from agricultural field trails to mapping the incidence of diseases.(If he had been alive today he would have been on our TV screens virtually every day as he would have been the government’s main advisor on Covid.) His speciality was spatial statistics, in which data are pegged to geographic location. This can refer to the place of galaxies within the universe, or the plotting of cancer cases within a town, country or continent.’ All of this would have involved lots of e’s and not bad for a boy who was regularly in the bottom third of the form when at LGS!

He continued playing hockey with Northop Hall Hockey club and once trialled for the Welsh national team. The Royal Statistical Society awarded him its Guy Medal in 1983 and he became the sixth OL to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004 after Richard Pultney (LGS 1743-1746) in 1762, Sir Basil Mott in 1932 (see ‘K’), Denys Wilkinson in 1956, Arthur Walsh in 1964 and George Cooke in 1969 (see ‘U’ for these three). Ian Tomlinson (LGS 1974-1981) became the seventh in 2019.

Julian retired in 2007 and died on 6 August 2010 in hospital in Bristol, following surgery.

F is for Fleet Air Arm Although in its long history the School has had many sets of four or more brothers, it is unusual for them all to be at the School at the same time. For the academic year 1897 to 1898, this occurred with the Bumpus family. A.E.Bumpus was the oldest (1892 -1898) and was Captain of Cricket and is featured on the 1 st XI photo of 1898 with little brother T.H (1894 – 1902). Next came F.A. (1895 – 1902) who was not a sportsman, and finally A.S. (1897 – 1904) who was football captain as well as playing cricket and tennis for the School. It will come as no surprise that their father Alderman Alfred Bumpus, the first Mayor of Loughborough in 1888, was Chairman of Governors from 1918 to 1923.

Frank Arnold Bumpus was born in Herrick Road on 20 March 1886 and in his Board of Education Exams in 1902 passed exams in Practical Plane and Solid Geometry, Advanced Stage; Mathematics, stage III; and Magnetism and Electricity, Advanced Stage.

He then went to Imperial College, London where he achieved a BSc in Mechanical Engineering and distinction as a Whitworth Scholar. This gained him employment with the Westinghouse Company in Pittsburgh, USA, until war broke out in 1914 while he was on home leave. He joined the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant in 1915 and was posted as the resident Air Board representative in Leeds where he worked with Robert Blackburn. When war ended Robert persuaded him to join Blackburn Aircraft as chief designer and, with him, joint managing director.

Frank’s first task was to design a carrier based torpedo bomber under specifications issued by the Air Ministry in 1919. He designed the T.1. Swift which was a two-bay biplane, with staggered folding wings (the first time this had been done on a British aircraft) built around a strong structure of steel tubes. It had a divided undercarriage which meant that the wheels did not have to be dropped to launch a torpedo. A prototype was built during the first five months of 1920 and shown for the first time at the Olympia Air Show in July 1920. The maiden flight was made later in the year and was nearly a complete disaster!

The centre of gravity was in the wrong place and as a result there was no elevator control and the aircraft couldn’t be stopped from climbing. The test pilot managed to land the aircraft intact, and the problem was solved by sweeping the wings back by a few degrees. With this modification the aircraft had a more successful second flight.

On 23 December 1920, the first Swift 1 was delivered to the RAF and tests on land were completed by 9 May 1921 and the Swift then passed to the navy for deck landings. It attracted a number of export orders – the US ordered two, Japan ordered two and Spain ordered three – but the biggest order came from Britain where the type was ordered into production as the Blackburn Dart. This was the first of a long line of Blackburn biplane torpedo bombers which Frank was to design.

Of these, we will concentrate on just two.

It was soon apparent that the torpedoes that the Dart was designed to launch would not sink large warships so there was a need for larger torpedoes. In 1922 a new specification was issued by the Air Ministry for a long range torpedo bomber capable of carrying a 21 inch torpedo (which was at the time capable of sinking the largest warship) and a range of 800 miles. Frank came up with the Blackburn T.4 Cubaroo which at the time of its first flight in secrecy in the summer of 1924 was the largest single-engine aircraft in the world. It was delivered for testing but, after it had been fitted with a metal propeller, its weight became too great and it was written off after its undercarriage collapsed on 2 February 1925! A second prototype flew later in the year, but then the Air Ministry decided that the requirement to carry the 21 inch torpedo was not necessary and lost interest in single-engine heavy bombers.

In 1924 the Fleet Air Arm was formed and by the 1930s it was equipped with Frank’s Blackburn Ripons, which were powered by elderly water-cooled Napier Lion engines. When a modern aircooled radial engine - the Bristol Pegasus – was invented, it was clear that it would be possible to increase the payload and Frank set about designing the Blackburn Baffin. The prototype flew, this time successfully, on 30 September 1932 and the Fleet Air Arm placed orders for 26 newly built aircraft and 38 conversions of Ripon airframes and went into service in January 1934 on HMS Courageous, HMS Furious, HMS Glorious and HMS Eagle. Although it was only to serve for two years, the Blackburn Baffin was to become part of the English language as it is said to have inspired the coining of the word ‘Boffin’ – ‘a scientist or technical expert, originally carrying out work for the RAF’.

In 1937 Frank became Blackburn’s Chief Engineer and he went to Dunbarton to set up its new factory on land owned by the shipbuilder William Denny and Bros Ltd where production of the Blackburn Botha started in 1939. He was to remain in that role after the company was absorbed into Hawker Siddeley in 1960 and in retirement settled in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire, where he died on 6 April 1980. However if you thought that would be the end of the School’s connection with the Fleet Air Arm you would be wrong!

Horace Stamper joined the staff in January 1920 and although he retired in 1958 he was still active in the School in the week before his death in 1967. In addition to his mathematics teaching, he was heavily involved in gymnastics, athletics, swimming, cricket and soccer; responsible for plays; involved with the Cadet Corps; and chaired the committees that raised money for the swimming pool in 1928 and Hodson Hall in 1956. In addition he was responsible for the provision of text books, exercise books and everything else necessary for the classroom. During World War 2, he was Commanding Officer for the Loughborough Home Guard with a force of 2000 men.

He was the logistics expert and in every sense he was a ‘legend’ at the School.

On 12 October 1926 his wife gave birth to their first child – a son – John Trevor Stamper who, after a period at Fairfield, which at that time was associated with the High School, entered the School aged 7 in September 1934. Despite being absent for his first four terms he soon made up lost ground and during the next nine years he was regularly top of his form, was Head Boy in 1943-4 and left with a state bursary to read Aeronautical Engineering at Jesus College, Cambridge. The absence occurred when he contracted infantile paralysis which left him with mobility problems for the rest of his life. Despite this, he played a good game of tennis and represented his college with a fellow OL who had a wooden leg and kept his sock up with a drawing pin!

He too joined Blackburn Aircraft as a post graduate apprentice. There he became Head of Aerodynamics 1955, Head of Structures 1956, Flight Test Manager 1960 and, in 1961, followed Frank Bumpus to become its chief designer.

By the 1950s the main threat to the Country came from the Soviet Union and the Fleet Air Arm needed an attack aircraft that could approach ships at low altitudes below the ship’s radar horizon and in addition to carrying conventional weapons could, if necessary, carry a nuclear bomb. John set about the brief and, on 30 April 1958, the Blackburn Buccaneer made its first flight.

The aircraft was described by the Ministry of Defence at the time as ‘ahead of any other aircraft in the world’. It entered Royal Navy Service in 1962, by which time Blackburn Aircraft had been absorbed into Hawker Siddeley and as such was officially known as the Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer. It was to outlive the last of its large aircraft carriers which was retired in 1978. Their Buccaneers were passed onto the RAF and saw combat action in the Gulf War in 1991 before being officially retired on 31 March 1994. In total, 211 aircraft were built and the fact that it was in service for 32 years gives an indication of John’s imaginative and ground breaking design.

Following the merger of Blackburn Aircraft and Hawker Siddeley in 1966, John was appointed Executive Design Director (Military), Executive Director and Deputy Chief Engineer (Civil) in 1968 and then became Technical Director until 1977. The amalgamation of the aircraft industry in 1977 saw the formation of British Aerospace with John as Corporate Technical Director which he continued to be until his retirement in 1985.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) in 1965, was President in 1981-2 and made a Hon.FRAeS in 1984. He was awarded the RAeS Hodgeson Prize in both 1975 and 1986 and the RAeS British Gold Medal for Aeronautics in 1976. He was made an Honorary Doctor of Science by Loughborough University in 1986. John died on 15 November 2003.

Thus, from before the formation of the Fleet Air Arm, right the way to the end of the 20 th Century their planes being flown were mostly designed by two OLs. A truly remarkable achievement.

G is for Government In the School Notes from the Easter 1935 Loughburian is the following piece:-

‘We owe a grudge and at the same time a debt of gratitude to our friends at the Junior College for discovering and luring back to Loughborough Sir Samuel Chapman, one of the MP’s representing Edinburgh and an Old Boy of the School. Sir Samuel found time to pay a hurried visit to the School, and was delighted to be shown a photo of himself at the age of 13 as a member of the 1st Cricket XI in 1873. The sight of the 1st XI field recalled also a victory in the 100 yards, and he was greatly interested to see the enormous developments which have taken place since his day.’

Until that point, I thought we had just been responsible for three MPs. Recently Nigel Mills (LGS 1986-1993), Conservative MP for Amber Valley since 2010, who was re-elected with an increased majority in December 2020. Sir Thomas Abney (LGS 16471652) who served as a Whig M.P for The City of London from 30 December 1701 to 2 July 1702, 185 days. And Charles McCurdy, Liberal MP for Northampton from 1910 to 1923.

The son of a Methodist minister, Charles McCurdy was at the School with his brother, Edward, from 1881-87, being Captain of School in his final year. He then went to Pembroke College, Cambridge. After training as a barrister, he was to become Minister for Food in 1920 in Lloyd George’s Coalition Government of 1916 and, after the Ministry was abolished in 1921, became Liberal Chief Whip. He was very much in favour of forming a Centre Party made up of Liberals and moderate Conservative and Labour MPs and in this respect he could not have been further away from Sir Samuel.

Charles McCurdy

Having been knighted in 1920 for his valuable war work, especially in connection with the Perthshire Prisoners of War Fund, Sir Samuel became Conservative MP for Edinburgh South in 1922 and was to remain its MP until 1945. However, he became involved in extreme right wing politics in the 1930s. He was one of the leading campaigners against Jews from Germany being allowed into the country. In 1939, he was a founder member of a secret society called the Right Club, an antisemitic and fascist group which attempted to unify all the different right-wing groups in Britain.

Apart from his hurried visit to the School in 1935 I don’t suppose Sir Samuel kept in touch with the School, which was probably a good thing. Charles McCurdy was the exact opposite and every boy since 1958 has passed a plaque with his name on in the School, probably without realising it! In 1938, he gave £500 to be spent on the Library in memory of his lifelong school friend, Wilfred Moss…who, incidentally was responsible for the building of the Carillon. The war dashed any hopes of an early start being made and it took 20 years for the library to be created – not where it is now but where the Wycliffe Room/Chapel is, with it moving to its present home in 1964. Even with added interest that £500 was insufficient for its purpose and was augmented by Wilfred Moss’s son and daughter to cover the cost of the bookshelves.

However, that gift was insignificant by comparison to Charles’s gift to the School of the six volumes of the Flora Londinensis. The work, by William Curtis, one of the founders of the Royal Botanical Society, was published between 1777 and 1798 and contains 432 engravings, hand coloured, of plants to be found in the London area of his day. Their history at the School is quite remarkable.

Charles McCurdy died in 1941 and the first reference to the books is in the Loughburian of 1950 where it talks about them being on display in the Reading Room. The next reference comes 24 years later when the February Loughburian records: ‘But the biggest single item of library news this term has been the discovery that the FIVE volumes of “Flora Londinensis” in the Fine Binding cupboard may turn out to be really valuable; exactly how valuable will be know when consultations with a firm of experts are concluded.’

You will note that there were only five not the full six…that was found later in 1974 as the July Loughburian reports: ‘Mr Redden, on a visit to the Art Studio, was amazed to discover a boy quietly engaged in copying the illustrations from the missing volume. Evidently, the hue and cry for Volume One had not come to the ears of Mr Major (the art master) who said that the late Headmaster, S.R.Pullinger, had given it to him ‘about 20 years ago…..The discovery of Volume One occurred in a week apparently lacking in newsworthy happenings, so the story was published on the front page of the ‘Loughborough Monitor’, together with a photograph of Messrs. Redden and Massiah, learnedly contemplating the six volumes.’

Pencilled in to Volume 1, in a modern script, is the purchase price of the volumes - £12. The valuation the School received back in 1974 was £1000 but if I was to take it to The Antiques Roadshow I reckon I would receive a valuation today of around £25,000. It will be of no surprise that is does not reside in the Library!

H is for Ham House Having been ordained a priest in Lincoln Cathedral, Rev. Ralph Tollemache became rector of St John the Baptist, South Wytham, in Lincolnshire in 1850. Three years later he married his cousin, Caroline, and a year later, on 15 th January 1854 they had their first child, a son, called Lyonel. However, in 1859 a dispute arose with his wife’s trustees and he built up debts of approximately £4000 and in 1863 was declared bankrupt. In 1867, his wife died and a year later he was discharged from bankruptcy. In 1869 he remarried to the daughter of a Colonel in the Spanish Army.

With his money troubles behind him, he started looking for a School for Lyonel, now aged 18, and his two little brothers Granville, aged 13, and Marchmont, aged 11. South Wytham is in the middle of nowhere and is very much to the south of the county, just short of the border with Rutland. Thus, Peterborough Cathedral is much closer than Lincoln Cathedral so the chances are that he would have had dealings with both its bishop, George Davys (OL) and the Revd. James Wallace who was Headmaster at Peterborough Cathedral School from 1856 until arriving at Loughborough in 1860. As Ralph, himself, had been educated at Uppingham, I can think of no other reason why ‘Big Tolly’, ‘Middle Tolly and ‘Nipper Tolly’ - as they were affectionately known during their time at LGS - should have been boarders. Indeed given that Lyonel was already 18 he must have been big!

Lyonel was here as a boy from 1871 to 1873 before graduating from Jesus College, Cambridge in 1876 with a BA, marrying in 1881, and living a normal life in Eastbourne where they had three daughters and three sons. All that was to change when on 22 November 1935 his second cousin, William, died. William was 9th Earl of Dysart, 3rd Baronet and so Sir Lyonel Felix Carteret Eugene Tollemache, to give him his full name, became the 4th Baronet of Hanby Hall at the age of 81.

The Dysart title and some estates were passed to Dysart’s niece but he inherited the Dysart’s holding in the Buckminster estate and the entirety of Ham House with the surrounding land and property in Petersham, Ham and Canbury as well as the gravel works at Ham.

Lyonel, his wife, and his eldest bachelor son, Cecil (aged 49) moved into Ham House with all its splendour overlooking the Thames. It had been the scene of the Cabal meetings in the reign of Charles II and contained a fine collection of art treasures, including pictures, tapestries and valuable furniture of the postRestoration period. It was later described as ‘unique in Europe as the most complete survival of 17th century fashion and power.’

However it will come as no surprise that father and son struggled to maintain the house, especially when war broke out and the labour supply halted.

The nearby aircraft factor was a target for bombing raids and the house and grounds suffered minor damage and most of the house’s contents were removed to the country for safety. It was apparent that Sir Lyonel, now approaching 90, could not maintain the house, so in 1943 he invited the National Trust’s first Historic Buildings Secretary, James Lees-Milne, to visit the house. He recorded both the melancholy state of the house and grounds but, even though it was devoid of its contents, he could immediately see the splendour of the underlying buildings and grounds.

In 1948, Sir Lyonel donated the house and its grounds to the National Trust. The stables and other outlying buildings were sold privately and much of the remaining estate sold at auction in 1949. The contents of the house were purchased by the government for £90,000 who entrusted them to the Victoria and Albert Museum. By 1950, the house was opened to the public and a series of research and restoration works undertaken since, have reproduced the house’s former splendour.

Sir Lyonel and his son moved ‘down the road’ to Langham House on Ham Common, one of the many Tollemache properties in the area, where he died on 4 March 1952 at the age of 98 when he was Britain’s oldest Baronet and also, at the time, the School’s oldest old boy.

Sir Lyonel didn’t move into Ham House until he was 81. As far as I am aware, the only OL to be born in a National Trust Property was Roger Brian Gimson who was born locally at Stoneywell, Ulverscroft, on 24 June 1951. He was the great grandson of Sydney Gimson who had had Stoneywell designed by his brother Ernest in 1897 to be his summer residence.

Roger was at the School from 1959 to 1969 and was the son of Donald Gimson who sold the property to the National Trust in 2012 following an appeal and donations from The Monument Trust and the J.Paul Getty Jnr Trust.

I is for Irish Artists When researching for Willoughby Hamilton (see ‘T’) I really struggled to work out why he was sent to board here from Ireland in the 19th Century. I did find that he had a brother living locally, which to me justified the choice of School. However, I am totally lost as to why two boys from Dublin should arrive here in 1865 and 1873 and then, remarkably, go on to be arguably our best known artists.

Claude Hayes was born in Dublin and arrived here as a 15 year old in October 1865, the 449 th boy to be admitted on the present site. He was the son of Edwin Hayes, the English and Irish marine artist who painted seascapes all over Europe featuring ships in high seas and also harbour scenes. Claude was at the School for less than a term before leaving at the Christmas. This may seem rather a short time to be here, but actually for boarders it seems to be the norm as facilities for boarders were very basic at the time. It was only in 1870, after the School was shut for six weeks after an outbreak of scarlet fever, that the main drain was extended to the School and the cess pools emptied and as late as 1887 Headmasters were still complaining to Governors about the poor sanitation. (see History of Boarding Volume 1 available on the digital archive.)

However, life in the boarding house prepared him well for his next adventure as in October 1867, aged 17, he ran away to sea serving on The Golden Fleece sailing from London to Aden to act in the Abyssinian Expedition as a hospital ship before returning in September the following year. He then left the calling of the sea and went to America for a year. He then came back and decided to follow his father studying art at Heatherley School of Fine Art in London and for three years at the Royal Academy Schools. He also studied in Antwerp under Charles Verlat.

Claude’s first exhibition was held at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1874 showing 21 works and two years later he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time. He first practiced as a portrait painter in oil, but soon abandoned portraiture for landscapes , first in oil and then in watercolour, as his favourite medium exhibiting extensively throughout Great Britain. He was made a full member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1886, a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1883 and a full member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours from 1902 to 1907.

Farmers in a Rural Landscape

After his death in 1922,his work was still in demand and over recent years his works have been auctioned 504 times, 80 of them at Bonhams, being sold for anything from £800 to £9000. Martin Hardie wrote about his work ‘Maintaining worthily and without imitation their breezy open style, had the power of following broken ground into receding distance with able indication of form and colour values. His transparent use of fresh and untroubled colour allowed the sparkle of white paper play its part in the general scheme. He has never quite received the recognition which he deserves.’

Pier Reflections

William Julius Hare was also born in Dublin on 23 January 1859, the son of Mathias Hare LLD and he was the 761 st boy to enter the School on its present site aged 14 in April 1873. His arrival is even more intriguing as he had been a Scholar at Crescent House School, Brighton previously, so a move to the Midlands is all the more mysterious. However, whilst Claude managed less than a term, Julius managed just over one and left during the Michaelmas term that year. He followed Claude to study at Heatherley School of Fine Art and then at the West London School of Art and under Adolphe Yvon in Paris.

He too was a painter of portraits and landscapes and was made an associate of the Royal Academy of Art and exhibited there. He married Elizabeth Griffiths in 1882 in Llanrwst and the two of them settled in Plas Mawr, Conwy, North Wales and had one child, a daughter Ellen. He was nowhere near as prolific in producing work as Claude and since his death on 12th March 1932 only 43 of his paintings have come up at auction, 9 at Bonhams.

Most have not sold for as much as Claude’s work normally going for between £300 and £1000 however in 2008 at Sotheby’s, New York, his picture Dressing Up sold for $58,000 which at the time was about £40,000.

Dressing Up So with one Irish impressionist artist, educated in England and living in Wales, and another Irish artist also educated in England but living in Scotland, one is left to reflect on how they both must have regarded their early lives. I reckon the Spartan conditions of School House in the mid-19th Century had something to do with that!

J is for Journalism It will come as no surprise that the School has a close connection with the Loughborough Echo which was founded in 1891 by Joseph Deakin. When he died in 1929, his son (William) Arthur Deakin took over as Managing Director. He had entered the School in 1902 aged 8 and comments like ‘Very good at all subjects except maths’ and ‘Excellent – on literary side only’ suggest that a career with a newspaper was more to his liking than being an accountant. So when he left in 1909 he joined the family business.

On 8 October 1936 he was present at the dedication of a carved oak reredos in the Burton Chapel by Canon George Briggs (see ‘C’ and ‘W’) to the memory of his father. It had been designed by E.T.Allcock (see ‘A’) in the late Gothic style to correspond with the other woodwork in the chapel. Also present was a very small five year old, his son John David (Jerry) Deakin who was to enter the School three years later for five years before going to Felsted.

However, their connection with the School was a lot greater than that. For many years, Arthur was Secretary of the Old Loughburians and was its Chairman in the early 1960s, whilst Jerry was the editor of the Old Loughburian from its first production in 1975 to 1996 and was also Chairman in the 1990s. Even more significant is that in 1964 Arthur presented to the School the wrought-iron gates to the Quad that every boy in the School passes by several times each day. They were made in the School’s workshops by metalwork teacher Ken Ward and his ‘assistants’.

Jerry Deakin became involved in the production of the paper and was Chairman of Echo Press Limited which in addition to printing the paper had a large commercial printing department. It will come as no surprise that thousands of copies of The Loughburian and The Old Loughburian were printed there.

I don’t suppose back in the early 1900s there was much local competition for the Echo but on 10 October 1905 the Nottingham Guardian was launched, with Arthur Forman as its proprietor. Arthur was a boarder here from February 1864 to mid 1865 – the 398th boy to enter on the present site – and gave three guineas in 1903 to help fund the building of the reading room. He retired in 1919 and the paper was to last until 1953.

For a short time, Arthur would have overlapped in the School, which numbered about 90 at the time, with Zacchaeus Duckett Ferriman who was here from Easter 1865 to Christmas 1865 – the 433rd boy to enter on the present site. His obituary describes him as a ‘scholar, journalist, author, traveller, linguist, Bohemian – in short an unusual man.’! He became, amongst other things, a specialist war correspondent, first covering the RussoTurkish war of 1877-78 before becoming tutor to two young Turkish princes. He became professor of English Literature at the University of Cairo in the time of General Gordon, and served as correspondent of the Morning Post in the Egyptian War. He acted again as war correspondent for the Daily Chronicle during World War One, his activities being mainly concerned with the Near East and the Dardanelles.

Zacchaeus was a fine Scholar, was fluent in six different languages and a well-known author and presented a selection of his books to the School library. Aged over 80, he wrote a piece ‘The Cradle of Modern English’ for The Loughburian (Christmas 1931) which was the last piece he had published and he died three years later. A contemporary wrote this ‘At his funeral at Finchley it seemed like the end of a rare phase in London Journalism. Dickensian figures in Fleet Street persist through the generations, but Thackerayan figures are rare and probably end with this travelled, learned, obscure Bohemian.’

William George Wright entered the school as a 14 year old from Framlingham College in January 1913 and has a record card that gives a fair indication of his two years here: ‘Work suffers from carelessness’, ‘Has tried but should be higher’, ‘Scrip, Geog, & Hist weak.’, ‘Very backward has not worked as well as last term’, ‘Idle at Scrip & Eng: Maths weak & Science.’ However, he did play 2nd XI Cricket but on leaving clearly decided that he wanted to pursue a career different from his father who was a draper. He attended day classes at Nottingham University before joining the editorial department at The Boys’ Realm when it resumed publication after the war on 5 April 1919 and worked there until the ‘story paper’ ended ten years later.

Being an editor of The Boys’ Realm is one thing, but being editor of The Guardian for over 20 years is another!

Peter John Preston entered the school in 1947 aged 9, the son of a wholesale fruit merchant, and for the first two term occupied a place in the middle of form 1a. In the spring of 1948, his father contracted polio and very quickly died, aged 37.

Shortly afterwards Peter contracted the disease and was ‘whizzed into Markfield Sanatorium and then hung around there between living and not living. For a week or two I was in an iron lung.’

In a letter to Peter’s children, his step-father detailed how he coped at school: ‘Fortunately his home was on a bus route, and every morning his mother, helped by the conductor, would get him on to the bus. His schoolmasters soon knew the drill: they would meet the bus, help him off and after school get him back on board. His mother would await his return at the bus stop, and then take him home

The school endeavored to cope with its most difficult scholar. Any class that necessitated access by stairs was out of the question. There was considerable consternation when he fell in a narrow passageway and the combined efforts of three masters were needed to get him on his feet again. But, as time went on, he began to rehabilitate himself more and more.

After a year of school it was decided that in his summer holidays he would return to hospital to have a piece of bone taken from his leg and grafted on to his shoulder to peg his upper arm and stop it ‘swinging about uselessly.’

Writing was a real challenge:- ‘His writing was far too slow. To do so, he had to swing his right forearm, catch it on his left wrist and guide his right hand which held the pen with two fingers.’ However, despite this, English and History were his favourite subjects and he really struggled with his Maths which he had to retake when he took his School Certificate in 1955.

One of his loves was magic – he once ‘amputated’ a master’s arm at a School concert! - and his first run at journalism was writing for Magic Circle News. ‘I must have been about 15 and began writing about magic and conjuring tricks. Five to six months later I got sacked. Why? I was too critical. We were supposed to say how wonderful all these magicians were. They weren’t.’

Peter really flourished when he entered the 6th form. He was editor of The Loughburian throughout that time and, most probably, the most prolific writer it has ever had, with major pieces occupying the seven magazines from Christmas 1955 to 1957. His Higher School Certificate was outstanding and he won a rare ‘State Scholarship’ to read English at St John’s College, Oxford which was celebrated by an extra half-day holiday for the School.

With his experience with The Loughburian, it was only natural that he should become involved in Oxford’s student paper, The Cherwell, which came out twice a week and that occupied much of his time becoming its editor as well. Leaving Oxford in 1960, he became a graduate trainee on the Liverpool Daily Post and three years later moved to join the Manchester Guardian. Successful spells as a reporter, foreign correspondent, features editor and night editor led to him taking up the editorship in 1975 at the age of 37…a post he was to hold for 20 years. In retirement, he continued to write columns for The Guardian and The Observer and his final article was published a week before he died in 2018.

In producing this A to Z Val Bunn and I have read every single Loughburian. They are all available on line on the digital archive www.lgs-heritage.org should you also want to do this! For me, out of all 267 editions there is one piece of writing that stands out more than any other. In 1916 Arthur Deakin was Private W.A.Deakin of the Royal Fusiliers and took part in the great offensive movement on the 1 st July that was the first day of the Battle of the Somme. He wrote home his impressions of the day and his father published these in his paper. They were reprinted in the September Loughburian and are an outstanding piece of journalism - do go and read the whole piece. I want to end with just a small extract that shows OL journalism at its best.

‘A scene more fittingly representing hell on earth would be difficult to imagine.’

‘Among all this tumult and chaos it seemed strange that nature should still persist in having a say. For, as it were, in protest against the unearthly pandemonium which prevailed, a skylark suddenly rose from among the thistles and long grass between the lines and burst forth into joyous song as it soared aloft. The sweetness of its song rose above the fury of the bombardment, and took our thoughts from the present to the past, and from the past to what we hoped for in the future.

Strange what an influence a little incident such as this, so insignificant in itself, can have upon one where the sense are quickened and a crisis is at hand.’

K is for Knights Day 21 of the British Wreck Commissioner’s inquiry on the sinking of the Titanic in May and June of 1912 started with these words: Attorney General: ‘Sir Walter Howell, are you one of the assistant Secretaries to the Board of Trade?’

Sir Walter: ‘Yes’ Attorney General: ‘And Chief of the Marine Department?’

Sir Walter: ‘I am’ Attorney General: ‘You entered the Board of Trade nearly 40 years ago’ Sir Walter: ‘That is so’ The next 3 days were to prove pivotal at the enquiry as, in his evidence, Sir Walter explained why, quite legally, there were so few lifeboats on the ship.

Walter Jack Howell was born on 16 August 1851 in Marylebone and entered LGS as a boarder in 1863. After leaving here in 1868, he proceeded to Kings College, London and then, as you will have gathered, entered the Board of Trade by open examination in 1873. He served as private secretary to Sir Henry Calcraft and Lord St. Aldwyn and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the November 1902 Birthday Honours, being promoted to Knight Commander in 1907, when he was thanked by the Government for his services as member of the Faber Departmental Committee, which considered the arrangements for the Hague Conference in 1907.

He was also a Knight Commander of the Norwegian Order of St Olaf and thus, being Knighted twice, is in this section rather than ‘N’ as there is only one portrait of him in the National Portrait Gallery! He was called to the bar in 1886 and was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He died on 29 January 1913, a year after he had given his crucial evidence to the Titanic enquiry Elsewhere we come across other Knights. Sir Samuel Chapman and Sir Thomas Abney are in ‘G’; Sir Denys Wilkinson is in ‘U’; Sir Lyonel Tollemache is in ‘H’ and Sir William Coates is in ‘N’.

Sir George Edwin Bailey was born on 19 October 1879 and was the youngest of five brothers (there were also five sisters!) all of whom attended the School. He was here from 1887 to 1893 and on leaving became an apprentice at the Brush Works whilst continuing his technical education at the University College, Nottingham. In 1907 he joined the British Westinghouse Company which would later become the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company Ltd. When George retired in 1954, Lord Chandos wrote this of him. ‘With the retirement of Sir George Bailey, Associated Electrical Industries loses not only one of its most colourful figures, but also one of the most noted engineers in the Country. He was Chief Draughtsman in 1909, Superintendent of the Engineer Department in 1913, Works Manager in 1919, Director of the M-V in 1927, Director of A.E.I. in 1945, Deputy Chairman in 1946 and Chairman of A.E.I. from 1951 to 1954.’

However he had received his knighthood ten years earlier, in 1944, three years after he had been awarded the CBE, in recognition of his ability to manufacture the first thousand radar transmitters that were to prove so crucial in winning the war. He died on 14 October 1965 at his home in Berkshire.

Sir Sidney Wadsworth was born on 21 December 1888 and entered the School in 1899. In the summer exams at the end of his first year, he was fourth overall and won a prize – his strength was in languages where he was 10th in English, 1st in French and 4th in Latin. His maths was not so good – he was 21st! Five years late, he had dropped maths and was top in French, Latin and Greek and thus top overall. I am then a little confused as to why he was to remain at the School for a further three years ‘doing special work’, with no positions being given but always winning a £5 Exhibition.

However, he did play for the 1st XI’s in both football – ‘Has improved considerably and often centres very well indeed. Tackles well and plays hard. Has a good and useful turn of speed and uses it to advantage. He might keep a little more on the wing.’ - and cricket - where he batted number 10 or 11 and recorded scores of 5, 1, 0 and 0! before leaving at Easter 1908.

On leaving, he furthered his education at the Sorbonne, Paris, Jesus College, Cambridge and Middle Temple, eventually becoming a Judge of the Madras High Court in the Indian Civil Service in 1935. He was knighted in 1946 and retired to the Isle of Man the following year. There he took a keen interest in local activities, and was a founder member and president over many years of the Mannin Arts Group and was also a J.P.. He published his memoirs in Lo! The Poor Indian and died on 2 March 1976.

Sir John Winfield Bonser’s father was the Reverend John Bonsor and so, after being born in Norfolk on 24 October 1847 he was forced to be educated where his father was a local Vicar. Thus his time at LGS from 1860 to 1863, when he was the 264th boy to enter on today’s site, was sandwiched between being at Ashby Grammar School and Heath Grammar School, Halifax. However the changes of School did not affect his education which continued at Christ’s College, Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn. He was Attorney General of the Straits Settlements (Penang, Singapore, Malacca and Dinding) between 1883 and 1893 at which point he was appointed Chief Justice of them, a post he held for just a few months before becoming Chief Justice of Ceylon (Sri Lanka!) where he remained for almost 10 years until retirement in 1902. He was knighted in 1894. After retirement, he returned to England and was sworn a member of the Privy Council and was a member of its Judicial Committee, living in London where he died on 9 December 1914.

One of the delights of doing this research is when you discover something about a boy educated here nearly 150 years ago. Thus in the 1881 Exams Charles Frederick Oliver in the 4th Form finished top with a total across 17 subjects of 3604. The boy who came second scored 2903 and the boy who was bottom 823! For his efforts Charles was awarded a £3 exhibition and we also know he was a boarder. One wonders if in 150 years’ time the School’s Archivist will be able to find the exam results for 2022! He was the son of George Oliver who had opened his first shoe shop in 1860 and he only spent one year at LGS before continuing his education at Rugby School. In 1897, Charles took over management of the business but the one shop had grown to 140 branches and claimed to be the largest footwear retailer in the world. He was knighted in 1933 ‘for political and public services in Leicestershire.’ He was also Chairman of Leicestershire County Cricket Club and in Freemasonry was Grand Master of the Leicestershire Province. He died in 1939 and he was succeeded by his sons. Olivers Shoes were later to take over both Hiltons Footwear and Timpson Shoes creating the third largest footwear retailing chain in Britain with 500 shops in 1987. However, by 2000 it was making a loss and the business was acquired by ShoeZone which continues to trade today.

At Easter 1868, a little eight year old, Basil Mott, entered the School – the 328th boy to do so on this site. He only stayed one term but that is sufficient to make him an OL! He continued his education at the International School at Isleworth in Middlesex and after that to Soleure in Switzerland. He finished his education at the Royal School of Mines where he won the Murchison Medal in 1879. He went on to be one of the most notable English civil engineers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was responsible for some of the most innovative work on tunnels and bridges in the UK over 40 years centred on the First World War. First employed as a mining engineer in 1886, he joined the City & South London Railway and was responsible for the extension from Stockwell to Clapham. In 1902 he set up in partnership with David Hay and they worked together on extending the Central London Railway, the building of escalators on London’s Underground and the construction of the Tyne and Southwark Bridges. They also designed the underpinning required to stabilise Clifford’s Tower in York.

His most well know work is the Mersey Tunnel, which he worked on between 1922 and 1924. From the outset it was designed on a large scale and 100 years later is still the longest, widest road tunnel in GB. However, he still loved to return to the London Underground and was responsible for the extension of the Northern Line to Morden.

For anyone involved in tunnels in the 1920s there was one challenge greater than any other – the idea of a Channel Tunnel. In 1930, aged 71, he gave evidence to the British Government inquiry on the engineering aspects of it. In the same year, he was created a baronet and in May 1932 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society – a rare honour for a civil engineer. However, in the tunnelling world the name Mott continued. Mott, Hay and Anderson designed the bulk of the successful scheme for the Channel Tunnel 50 years later. A great achievement for a boy who received the rudiments of his education here.

Whilst researching this A to Z, you will have gathered that much reading took place of the Loughburians at the beginning of the 20th Century. There the name Maurice Levy appears as being a donor to the Albert Dexter Memorial Fund, set up in 1900 following the tragic death of Albert (LGS 1879-1885) whilst rescuing his friend in the sea at Poldhu, Cornwall. He gave two guineas and three years later he gave five guineas to the fund to finance the building of the Reading Room. As he was born in Leicester in 185, and gave the prizes at the School in 1918 we thought he may well have attended the School. After searching the records we found that was not the case – in fact he went to London University School, now University College School. As all the other donors were OL’s one wondered why he had given to the School. He did so because from 1900 to 1918 he was the Liberal MP for Loughborough and in those days the links between the School and the Town were much greater. For example, the meeting that decided to hold a fete and a bazaar to raise money for the Reading Room took place in the Town Hall and was chaired by the Mayor on 12 February 12 1903. Thus he clearly wanted to support the School as Loughborough’s MP, hence his inclusion in this A to Z. He was knighted in 1907.

In the 525 year history of the School, there must be other OL’s who have been knighted, it is just a matter of finding them!

Any help would be gratefully received!

L is for Lemyngton In the entire A to Z there is only one name that is associated with a letter, and that person didn’t even attend the School – L is for Lemyngton. That is deliberate as in every sense Ralph Lemyngton is the ‘forgotten man’ in both the School’s and Loughborough’s history. He would have been totally forgotten had it not been for Percy Davenport who was at the School from 1895 to 1901. After leaving School, he went on to hold an important position in the Ministry of Health but he was also regarded as an archaeologist and local historian.

He had a book published on the History of Stanmore, Middlesex, where he lived and in the early 1930s returned to visit the history of his old School and contributed a series of articles to the Loughburian. These dealt with its origins, its early scholars and particularly with the part played in its foundation by Ralph Lemyngton. Through the College of Heralds he established that the Lemygton arms were adopted as the arms of the School, rather than just using them without any permission as it had been doing since 1873!

In 1936 he sent the following letter to the Town Council:Sir,—So far, I have heard, the street now being con­structed, linking Church-gate with Baxter-gate, over the site of the recently demolished Church Gate Schools, has not yet received a name. If this is so, and it is not too late, I should like to be permitted to commend the suggestion that it be named Lemyngton Street, to commemorate the name of one who deserves well of the inhabitants of Loughborough— Ralph Lemyngton.

The Lemyngton family were important merchants of the Wool Staple of Calais, and Ralph, who lived close to the church (he had a house in Sparrow-hill) was perhaps the most influential of the family. Not only was he related to Thomas Burton and the Wyggestons, of Leicester, but he was one of the early feoffees of the Loughborough Town lands which now carry the name of the Burton Charity, although the lands embraced far more property than the lands from which the Town Trust takes its name.

Lemyngton’s coat of arms, perpetuated in the familiar Grammar School and High School badges, is carved in stone over the west door of the Parish Church of All Saints’, Loughborough, together with the arms of the Staple of Calais; which goes to suggest that he was largely responsible for the building of the present church tower. He also founded a chantry in the church, with revenues far greater than that endowed by Thomas Burton; and he lies buried in the church in which he worshipped.

The more one studies Ralph Lemyngton, the stronger does the conviction grow that he has deserved far better of Loughburians than they have hitherto realised. It would be a small and tardy act of recognition to give his name to the new street hard by where he lived, and near the monuments of his piety and public spirit.—Yours sincerely, Percy Davenport.

The Council agreed and finally the name Lemyngton had appeared in Loughborough, although I don’t suppose many of those people who drive or walk down Lemyngton Street actually know who Ralph Lemyngton was.

Yet his name still did not appear anywhere in the School that he almost definitely founded. We have Burton Street, Burton Walks, Burton Hall, Burton Service, Thomas Burton Award, Thomas Burton Lodge, Thomas Burton Society etc. but no Lemyngton. 86 years after Percy’s letter to the Council and 527 years to the day that the deed of feoffment left all Thomas Burton’s lands to eventually form his Charity on 29 April 2022, Headmaster Dr Christopher Barnett M.B.E. unveiled a plaque renaming the L Block (was it Library or Laboratory?) the Lemyngton Buildings and this was corrected.

M is for Markets and Mayors Loughborough’s Market and Fair celebrated 800 years in 2021 and back in November 2019, as the Fair was celebrating 798 years the Loughborough Echo published a full page article entitled ‘Remembering “Mr Market”’ which shared photos and memories of the town’s fairs and markets manager Maurice Green.

Maurice William Green entered the School from Roseberry Street in 1931 and at the end of his first term, when he was 21st , the comment on his report card is ‘Useful boy. Form Captain & Keen Footballer.’ By the end of the year he had progressed to 12th - ‘Good – rather jumpy and excitable’.

However, his 2nd year in the School saw him towards the bottom of the form – ‘Tries without much result’ – and he was to stay there until 1936 when he left and joined the rate office where he worked for four years before joining the Royal Army Ordinance Corps in 1940.

He spent most of the war years in London, having been recruited as a pianist in a dance band entertaining the 10,000 troops and civilians during the blitz. At the end of the war he was offered a job as assistant manager of the Hammersmith Palais, but marriage meant he turned it down and returned home. In 1947 he was made assistant to the then markets and fairs manager and in 1956 took over the job itself for the next 24 years before retiring in 1980. In 1962 he published Loughborough’s Markets and Fairs which was the first detailed history of the Markets and Fairs of a small provincial town.

Known in retail and wholesale markets throughout the country, he was also held in high esteem by the Showman’s Guild who appreciated his efforts to make the Fair one of the foremost in safety standards. On his retirement the market traders presented him with a portable TV set in recognition of his hard work.

For the first 634 years there was very little of importance at the end of the Market and then in 1855 the Town Hall was built, originally as a corn exchange where local farmers could meet and trade with upstairs a ballroom for the use of the gentry. Until 1888, Loughborough had no charter but once this was granted the Corn Exchange Company agreed to sell the building and, after conversion, opened as a municipal building in 1890.

Since then it has housed the Mayors of Loughborough and from 1974 the Mayors of Charnwood (I think nine of these are OL’s).

William Charles was the first of these Loughborough Mayors from 1919-1921 (see ‘Z’) and he was followed by Wilfred Moss who was at the School from 1882 to 1888 and Mayor from 1922-1923. Back in 1919, he had the concept, being associated with Belgium where so many British servicemen died, along with the influence of Taylor’s Bell Foundry in the Town, of building a Carillon. It was completed in his time as Mayor and dedicated on Sunday 22 July just after he had left office when a special piece Memorial Chimes, written by Edward Edgar , was played. He was awarded the C.B.E. for involvement in the project and following a gift from Charles McCurdy (see ‘G’) the School’s Library is named in his memory.

If The Carillon Tower is the lasting influence of Wilfred Moss, his little brother Alan, who was at the School from 1883 to 1887 had an even greater influence on the town. He was responsible for the layout of the Shelthorpe Estate and was Mayor too from 1927-29. Their father, William, had also been Mayor 1891-1892, the 3rd Mayor. Alan’s name is perpetuated as the name of the main thoroughfare running through the Thorpe Acre Estate. His most appreciated gift to the town is the Outwoods, 48 acres, which he and his wife presented as a public open space in 1946 in thanksgiving for their golden wedding.

Henry Clemerson was Mayor 1923-24 (see ‘P’) but at School with both Wilfred and Alan was Thomas William Bailey who was at the School from 1882 to 1886. He was elected to the Town Council in 1919 and served as an alderman for 15 years being Mayor in 1931-1932. He died suddenly in June 1946, just a month before he was to have received the Freedom of the Borough in appreciation of his services.

John Corah entered the School 1909 and left the School aged 15 in 1916 to join his grandfather’s and father’s printing business, John Corah and Son, and he was to become its Managing Director. He was Mayor in 1950-51, being elevated to the aldermanic bench during his year of office. He was a governor of the Schools and was also President of the Leicester Master Printers’ Association.

He was followed as Mayor by Arnold Earnest Wilde who was at the School from 1920 to 1926 and on leaving joined his father’s business as a grocer. In 1952 at Speech Day, Headmaster Pullinger ‘spoke with especial pleasure on the fact that for the first time, one of his former pupils had been chosen as Mayor of Loughborough’.

John Rodgers entered the School in 1922 and in his five years here was very successful, being top in his final term. He also played 2 nd XI football for the School. He joined Clifford’s Solicitors in Baxter Gate as a clerk before qualifying as a solicitor. In 1939, he became Treasurer of the OLA before doing war service in the R.A.F. he was for many years a member of both Loughborough and Leicestershire County Councils, becoming Mayor of Loughborough 1966-7. In that role he was asked to open the ‘Grand Gala’ here on Saturday 16 July: ‘At 2.30 the Mayor, John Rodgers, and some guests arrived in a 1905 De Dion Bouton, loaned by Mr Arthur Tyler.

The moment of opening the Gala was heralded by the releasing of hundreds of balloons in the balloon race, and Loughborough Borough Prize Band provided the right musical heraldic touch.’ He was Chairman of the County Education Committees in the 70s and 80s until his death in 1986 and also a School Governor. In 1982 he gave a ‘Prize for Endeavour’ which was awarded for the next 20 years and last awarded in 2002.

I don’t know if Guy Moss was ever driven in a 1905 De Dion Bouton but he was to spend his life involved in cars.

He was at the School from 1927 to 1931 before leaving to go to Repton aged 13. That was achieved thanks to Headmaster Pullinger who suggested that he repeat year IV (Year 8 now!), as he was technically a year young, and he went from being near the bottom to being top for all three terms in that year

His father, Archie, once had a business in horses and horse transport but by the time Guy started here was the town’s dealer in Hunter Cars. Guy helped build up the firm’s business and became its managing director. In 1954, accompanied by his wife and driving a Sunbeam Talbot Mark II, he qualified for a first class award in the Tulip Rally, the only British car to do so, completing the 2000 mile from Switzerland to Holland without losing a mark.

In 1963, he headed across the Atlantic spending time with Chrysler in Detroit, as well as undertaking speaking engagements, and the company became Vauxhall’s dealership in Woodgate. When the company moved to Belton Road in the 1980s he moved into the Travel business and opened bookshops in the High Street and Woodhouse Eaves until he retired. Archie E. Moss Ltd was acquired by the Pentagon Motor Group in 2019.

Guy became a Town Councillor in 1952, then Alderman and then Mayor in 1970-1971, the fourth member of the Moss family to do so, and was an original founder member of the twinning with Epinal and Schwabisch Hall and also of John Storer House.

In 1973, he became Chairman of Governors here, a position he was to hold for 12 years.

In the ‘Old Boys’ Notes’ for 1973 there is the following entry:- ‘James L. Walker has been elected Loughborough’s 61st (and last) Mayor. A Loughborough man he had been employed in the switchgear department of the Brush Co. for 25 years and had been a Labour member of the Town Council since 1958. He was elected to the new Charnwood District Council and when it met for the first time in April 1974 he was leader of the Labour group.’ Unlike all the other OL’s mentioned, his dates at the School are not in brackets after his name...this is no surprise as after many weeks of research I am 99% certain he never came here!

Which leaves the obvious question - why does he appear in the notes anyway?!

Remarkably, in the 48 years that Charnwood has been established, the School has never had a Mayor. Hopefully that will be corrected in the future as three members of the present Council are OLs, - Richard Bailey (LGS 1989-96), Paul Mercer (LGS 1971-79) and Ted Parton (LGS1983-88).

N is for National Portrait Gallery ‘It is a source of sincere gratification that this new building has been designed by an old boy, built by a firm in which there are two generations of old boys, and even the bricks were manufactured by a firm of old boys. It is, therefore, only appropriate that for such a building we should have an old boy to open it.’ …was the start of Headmaster Pullinger’s address at the opening of the new science buildings on 30 October 30 1931. That Old Boy was Dr. William Coates who was at the School from 1894 to 1898 and at the time was Vice Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).

William had started his career as a civil servant and spent 21 years with the Inland Revenue Department before becoming secretary of Nobel Industries Ltd, which was later merged with ICI where he became finance director and deputy chairman. Early in the war he was temporarily released by ICI to establish the post of Financial Advisor to the High Commission in Ottawa.

After the war, he returned to the School again to present the prizes at the 450th Speech Day in 1945 and he was knighted in 1947. He retired from I.C.I. in 1950 and became Deputy Chairman of Westminster Bank Ltd. He died in Eastbourne on 7th February 1963.

Sir William Henry Coates is sitter in 11 portraits held by the National Portrait Gallery.

However, he is outdone by John Cleveland who not only is sitter in 12 portraits but also has a portrait in the National Galleries Scotland. His father, Thomas, was usher – assistant master – for ten years from 1611 to 1621 under Headmasters Dawson, Spong and Woodmansly and John was born on 16 June 1613 probably in the same house as John Howe (see ‘C’) 17 years later. He started his education under his father, who was also curate at the Parish Church, until his father was made Vicar of Hinckley in 1621 and John transferred to Hinckley Grammar School . 353 years later in 1974, after the abolition of Grammar Schools in Leicestershire, that school would carry his name.

There his education continued under the Rev. Richard Vines, a notable champion of the Puritan party and an excellent classical scholar. Though Rev. Vines was successful in instilling in him a love of classics, he was certainly unable to teach him to agree with his political outlook; John remained a king’s man all his life.

At the age of 14, he went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a BA in 1631 and then moved to St John’s College, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1634, becoming a college tutor and reader in rhetoric. He lived in Cambridge for nine years and became widely known as an orator, on one occasion being privileged to address a speech to King Charles I. The King was delighted, sent for him, gave him his hand to kiss and commanded a copy of the oration be sent to him.

John’s fame increased but, as it did, so did the number of his enemies and he strenuously opposed the candidature of Olive Cromwell for the representation of Cambridge in the Long Parliament. When Cromwell was returned with a majority of one vote, he declared ‘that single vote had ruined both Church and kingdom.’ For his loyalty to the King, he was ejected from his fellowship and made his way to Oxford, which was still strongly royalist and the headquarters of the King’s army. There he was warmly received and his powers as a satirist and poet made him very popular with the soldiers who dubbed him ‘The Cavalier Poet.’

The King then appointed him judge-advocate to the royal garrison at Newark on Trent. Here, in spite of the difficulties of the time, he was a faithful and upright judge and in his spare time wrote a large amount of verse, of which very little has survived.

When Newark reluctantly surrendered in 1646, he was left without means of a livelihood and for the rest of his life was almost destitute relying on the hospitality of impoverished Royalists. His poems first appeared in 1647 in The Character of a London Diurnal and then in some 20 other collections; his own volume of poems was published in 1654. During these years, he was considered a rival of Milton and, after his death in 1658, Milton’s nephew, Edward Phillips, wrote disparagingly of Cleveland’s poems, being evidently jealous of his uncle’s rival.

Thus in the space of 23 years we had as ushers (assistant masters) at the School a ‘Cavalier’ (1611 to 1621)and a ‘Roundhead’ (1627 to 1634). Both had sons, probably born in the same bed, who followed their father’s views and started their education at the School. Their role in the Civil War would have been of no interest at all to the boys during the war. Much more significant was the use of the Parish Church next door to the School as a barracks for royalist soldiers from 1644 to 1645 – now that was exciting!

O is for Ornithologists Richard Bowdler Sharpe was born at 1 Skinner Street, Snow Hill, London on 22 November 1847 and when he was baptised on 17 December, there would have been much interest in his middle name which his father, Thomas, also had. The most common view is that because Thomas was the son of a vicar and was born in 1818, it ties in with the 2 nd edition, which contained all 36 available plays, of the ‘Bowdler Family Shakespeare’ – where any material deemed too racy, blasphemous, or otherwise too sensitive for young or female audiences was removed! Whatever the reason, he was to be known as Bowdler Sharpe for the rest of his life, and as he had 10 daughters, he probably would have used Thomas & Henrietta Bowdler’s work to entertain them!

From the age of six to nine, he lived with his Aunt, Magdelen Wallace, who was the widow of the Headmaster of Sevenoaks Grammar School , was a Greek and Latin scholar and ran a preparatory school in Brighton. He then went to The King’s (The Cathedral) School Peterborough, where his cousin, The Revd. James Wallace, was Headmaster and he was a choirboy there. In 1860, James Wallace was appointed Headmaster at LGS and in January 1861, after one term, it is no surprise that Richard rejoined his cousin, the 276th boy to join the School since moving to its present site, as a boarder. However any thought that his cousin would go easy on him is dispelled in his memories of his time here.

‘He constantly talked about his Loughborough school days, asserting that when any transgression of the rules took place it was then the custom to cane the boy first and enquire into the matter afterwards. He used also to relate that, though constantly at the bottom of his class because he would not prepare his lessons or obey rules, being gifted with a wonderful memory he always came out top in the examinations and won several prizes.’

Not bothering to ‘prepare his lessons’ would have been perfect for the 14 year old. It gave Richard time to pursue his real passion which was ornithology and LGS, as it existed in 1861, was perfect for him for, unlike the King’s School situated in the middle of Peterborough, the only thing surrounding the Grammar School was wonderful greenery, trees and lots of birds. (The High School was not built until 1879, the houses in Burton Walks started the following year and opposite was ‘The Elms’ with no houses on the Leicester Road.). It would have been a real haven for birds. Indeed, even as a boy he was regarded as an enthusiastic naturalist and in his holidays at Cookham, where his father had moved to, he fondly remembered ‘careering about the neighbourhood in search of birds’ and made a collection of bird skins and eggs which he later presented to the British Museum. He left LGS the following April, aged 15 and then the following year, surprisingly, headed to London and worked as a clerk with W.H.Smith & Sons.

Initially it might seem a surprise that someone who was clearly obsessed with birds would head to London, even in 1862. But in 1862, London Zoo had taken delivery of its first living birds of paradise and so for any keen ornithologist there was only one place to be! After two years Ricahrd joined the company of the bookseller Bernard Quaritch and had an opportunity to examine ornithological books, beginning work in earnest on a monograph, purchasing specimens of kingfishers from a meagre income.

In every sense, his plan worked for in 1867, aged just 19, he became Librarian to the Zoological Society, which he held until 1872. Just after getting the job, he married his childhood sweetheart, Emily Eliza, with whom he had spent many hours in the holidays at Cookham, and went to live in Camden Town, next to the Zoo! During this period every hour which he could get for himself was spent in the study of birds and in making a private collection of them.

The Monograph of the Alcedinidae (Kingfishers), published in parts from 1868 to 1871 was a remarkable work to have been accomplished by so young a man under such conditions. In the preface Richard asked for some slight consideration ‘for an author who commences so large an undertaking at the age of 17, and who as he pens these last words has not attained the age of 23.’ This was unnecessary, for the Monograph – complete with 121 coloured plates – at once established his reputation, and still remains ‘a model which any who project a monographic work may study with advantage.’ Copies of this come up for auction from time to time. Christies sold one for £5060 in 1991 and Forum Auctions sold one for £6200 in 2019. However, there was much excitement in 2020 when Richard’s own personal copy – he had signed it on the front free endpaper – came up for auction at Sotheby’s selling for £9375.

In 1872, aged just 25, Richard joined the British Museum as Senior Assistant in the Department of Zoology taking charge of the bird collection. (Up until 1963 what we know now as the Natural History Museum was officially British Museum (Natural History). There he devoted himself to the task of building up the National Collection of Birds and then classifying and cataloguing it. He started by presenting his own private collection that he had started when at LGS to the museum and then would spend vacations using his own money to purchase desiderata rather than allowing the museum to lose them.

Moreover, he infected most of those with whom he came in contact with his own enthusiasm - visitors to the museum, travellers, collectors etc. - and as a consequence, never missed a collection that he wanted. When he joined the museum in 1872, there were about 30,000 specimens; when he died, in 1909, there were over 500,000, ie he added roughly 35 specimens every day, 365 days a year!

It wasn’t just about catalogues and collections, it was about displays as well. One of the most attractive features of exhibition galleries all over the world is the way birds and their nests are mounted as to represent their natural surroundings. This was initiated by Richard who procured the first of these natural groups, that of the Coots at Avington Park in Hampshire.

For 24 years, 1874 to 1898, he wrote half of the 27 volumes of the ‘Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum’ and inspired by those birds he saw in London Zoo when he first arrived in London published Monograph of the Paradiseidae (Birds of Paradise) in two large volumes in 1891 and 1898. Copies of these were sold for $40,000 (about £30,000) by Sotheby’s in 2019. What is quite remarkable is the incredible hand coloured lithograph plates. Here Richard had a collection of ‘willing helpers’ – his ten daughters born in early 1869, late 1869, 1871, 1873, 1875, 1876, 1881, 1882 1884, and 1887! Several of these daughters were engaged in the skilled but tedious work of colouring the natural history prints.

All the effort expended on an illustrated book by the author, artist and printer could be ruined by the hand colourers of the plates. Their work was crucial to the success of the book. Although young – their first work was in 1885 when aged 12, 10, 16 and 14 on the Monograph of Swallows with its 104 hand coloured plates – the six eldest girls stated on the 1891 census that they were ‘Artist colourist’ and they must have been kept busy as in addition to the works mentioned here, he published a further four major works and 14 British Museum Catalogues.

Also in 1891, Richard was awarded the gold medal for science by the Emperor of Austria and on 5 October 1892 he founded the British Ornithologists Club, which is still going strong today. In 1895, he was promoted to the rank of Assistant-Keeper, Vertebrate Section of the Zoology Department, a post he created for himself whilst still remaining curator of birds. In 1905, he was president of the 4th International Ornithological Congress in London.

On 16 December 1909, Richard attended a British Ornithological meeting and, seized with a chill, returned home, took to bed and contracted pneumonia. He died on Christmas Day and was mourned by naturalists throughout the world.

It is fitting that, in his memory, many species and subspecies of birds have been named after him but the National Collection of Birds still remains as a magnificent record to the life of a quite remarkable man, who took inspiration looking at birds out of the windows of the Schoolroom and School House rather than studying!

As curator of birds at the British Museum, one collector he greatly valued was fellow OL Frederick Bulstrode Lawson Whitlock (LGS 1868-1874), who had his book Birds of Derbyshire published in 1893. He was a bank manager in Nottingham who decided that money was more important than ornithology! On 15 November 1897 he emptied the safe of his bank and fled the city ‘with a large amount of money’ as its said in a Reward Notice (dated 28 December 1897) issued by the Nottingham City Police. It offered £100 – a huge sum at the time – and in the description of him contained the wording ‘he has a shifty expression when talking. He is a clever bicyclist, and a collector of birds and birds’ eggs, upon which he is a considerable authority. He usually converses on the subject when in company.’! He managed to elude the authorities and found his way to Fremantle, Western Australia.

Frederick settled in a little town called Kanowna, and must have felt he would escape justice, but he was found and arrested on 3 May 1898, was taken to Perth and on 22 May 1898 was remanded in custody and extradited – Sergeant Bryan from the Nottingham Police was despatched to escort him back to England. Despite all the effort in bringing him home, the authorities did not consider his offence a particularly serious crime! He was convicted and sentenced to prison but not for a very long time as by 1901 he was back in Australia and became known as the ‘Birdman of Kanowna’.

Frederick went on to complete the most extensive range of collecting undertaken by any ornithologist in Western Australia and discovered the last ‘new bird’ – the Grey Honeyeater – in the area. He was assisted in this by a much younger Leopold von Wieldt, whom he was delighted to find had also attended LGS from 1887 to 1892 and the two of them actually had Christmas dinner together in 1901. Leopold is even more interesting as he was the youngest son of Julius Bodo von Wenkenthal Wieldt, a Prussian field naturalist who regularly had contributions in The Midland Naturalist, who had Number 1 Burton Walks built for his family in 1880.

Thus Leopold would not have had far to walk to School!

Frederick went on to have conferred on him Honorary Life Memberships of the Royal Australian Ornithologists’ Union and Western Australian Naturalists’ Club and he too was honoured by having a number of bird species named after him. He died on 15 June 1953 aged 93 at Bunbury, Western Australia. Thus, combined with Richard, there are a large number of birds flying around named after OL’s!

Just in case you are thinking it is only OL’s of the Victorian age that decided to become ornithologists, let me reassure you that is not the case! Edward Massiah (LGS 1979-86), son of E.W.B. (Wilf!) Massiah, after studying Microbiology at Leeds University, emigrated to Barbados. There he pursued his love of birds and in 2009 co-authored Birds of Barbados which not only provides an annotated checklist of all of the 263 species of birds ever recorded on the island but also educated the public on the geographical importance of the island to the intricacies of their flight paths from North America to Africa.

P is for Pickworths On Wednesday 14 June 1899 the return cricket match between Parents and the School took place. This had been a new fixture two weeks earlier when the School had won by 67 runs. However, on this occasion ‘it resulted in a victory for the seniors by 32 runs. This was due to two players only – Mr Gibbs, who subscribed 84 runs by some grand play, mainly on the off side, and Mr Pickworth, whose underhand lobs took eight wickets.’ There then follows the scorecard which makes impressive reading. At the time it was the best bowling performance against LGS and to this day is the 6th best….just a shame that I am the 3rd best, achieved 72 years later!

Henry Pickworth was a pupil here from 1864 to 1869 and he was playing because his sons, Thomas Bailey and Cecil Henry Pickworth were pupils from 1897 to 1902, although neither was playing against their father as they were too young. They did, however, play together for the 2nd XI in their final year. Henry was the son of Thomas Pickworth who had left his Lincolnshire farming community to make his way in the world. He arrived in Loughborough and in 1840 set up a draper’s shop on the corner of Market Place and Biggin Street.

Business prospered and Thomas became heavily involved in the local community and soon became a prominent figure within the town with his radical liberal views. But that did not stop him sending Henry to LGS. Thomas died in 1907 and Henry took over the business.

On leaving School, Thomas Bailey had been earmarked to take over the family business and worked with Marshall and Snelgrove, London; Affleck and Brown, Manchester; and occupied the position of manager of a general merchant’s establishment in Burmah for four years with a view to one day taking over from his father. Unfortunately his health broke down, and on his return to England he contracted pleurisy. He died on 21 November 1915 aged just 27. With no real future in the family firm Cecil trained as an engineer and after the war also headed overseas to Nigeria where he was the chief engineer in the erection of the electric power station for supplying Lagos at Iddo.

Henry expanded into floor coverings and imported skin rugs from China which he processed on the premises and re-sold. In the 1920s there was a lucrative trade for these products and customers included some of the Royal Houses of Europe. In 1929, the original property was demolished when the A6 was widened and Henry was offered a modern two storey building but instead insisted on moving into the Imperial Buildings – art deco with a grand façade and no step! Henry died in 1933 with no obvious successor as Thomas had died 18 years earlier. His grandson, Ronald Jackson, worked briefly in the business and after the war purchased the business from the Pickworth Estate. The business expanded into carpets, curtains clothing and linens until this part of Pickworths closed in 1987 after the controversial development of the Imperial Buildings.

However in 1970, Ronald’s son, Paul, joined the business and diversified into furniture where they acquired the new premises on Ward’s End. Paul’s son Michael (LGS 1990-1995) great, great, great grandson to the founder, joined in 2000 and he and the store are still going strong today, 182 years after it was founded.

Eight years after Pickworths was established in 1848, a small ironmongers and house furnishing business was established by Henry Clemerson Snr in a small, old-fashioned, bow-windowed shop in Mill Street (later to be called Market Street). He sent his son Henry Clemerson Jnr to the School in 1862 but ,in 1864, he died at the age of 35 and his widow, Betsey, took over the running of the business. She was joined by her 13 year old son and his sister. Between them, they greatly expanded the business, taking in the houses and offices either side, including manufacturing furniture and also opening branches in Leicester and Nottingham. Further expansion occurred in 1887 with the purchase of land on the opposite corner and a tall building that was to dominate the Market Place erected with six floors of space being added so that residents could be given furnishing facilities without equal elsewhere. Henry became involved in the town’s public affairs and was elected to the Town Council in 1894. He retained his seat, except for short intervals, for 26 years, being elected an Alderman in 1922 and Mayor for the year 1923-24. He was Chairman of the Town’s Education Committee and for many years a governor of the School. He died on 7 December 1927.

Not only did Henry expand the business but he also expanded his own family, matching Henry Deane in having six daughters at the High School and six sons at the Grammar School. As they lived in ‘The White House’ which is now Mayers, on the corner of Leicester Road and Beeches Road, it would not have been a problem getting to School!

Five of his sons were to be involved in the business. James, the eldest, was at the School from 1889 to 1894 and took charge of the Branch Retail Shop that opened in 1897 on St Nicholas Street, Leicester. He died after a serious illness at the early age of 21. Tragically it was a similar fate for Ernest, who was at the School 1898 to 1903 who died suddenly at the age of 22 whilst in charge of the Retail Shop opened in 1905 in Nottingham at the corner of Carrington Street and Canal Street in Nottingham.

Arthur Riste Clemerson, who was at the School from 1890 to 1895, and Frank Millington Clemerson, at LGS 1897 to 1902, were to join their father and became joint Managing Directors, with Arthur taking control of the manufacturing side and Frank the retail side. In 1897 land was purchased and a modern factory erected in Granby Street just up from the retail business and in 1927 they purchased from Messrs Simpkin and James the large three storey building on the other (west) side of Market Street so they now had the key location on the corner of Market Street opposite the Town Hall (now Costa Coffee!) and by the time of their centenary in 1948 owned the whole block.

Frank was a founder member of Loughborough Rotary Club, being president in its 21st year (1944-45), and President of the Loughborough Chamber of Trade. An ardent Freemason, he was master of the Beacon Lodge and a founder member of the Thomas Burton Lodge. Unlike his father he did not believe in large families, having just one son, Reginald Frank who joined the School, aged 9, in 1924. He had considerable problems in his early years with his spelling and his English was never strong and progress was also hindered by periods of absence. On leaving the School in 1932, after a brief period of time he joined his father and uncle’s business in 1937.

Leonard Turner Clemerson was the youngest and was at the School from 1913 to 1920. After a promising start, he struggled with academic work.: ‘Inattention etc. prevents good position being occupied’, ‘Has not done his best’, ‘Not without ability but lacks energy’, ‘Does not make enough effort.’ He was bottom of his form when he left aged 16 to join the family business. He took over the Leicester side of the business which had grown and now occupied the corner of St Nicholas Street and Great Central Street. He was to have three sons in the School, the eldest, Peter Henry Clemerson (LGS 19361944) went into the business.

For completeness the sixth son, Alfred Henry Clemerson, (LGS1912-1917) was marginally better than Leonard but decided to enter farming, studying at the Midland Agricultural College and then farming at Barrow-on-Soar.

Further expansion took place during the 1950s and 60s and following the deaths of his father in 1962 and uncle in 1965 Alfred took over control of the business, along with Mr W.A.Foster. However, by the late 1960s the firm was finding that giving individual attention and personal service was becoming expensive and also their shop being split in two by Market Street was not helping. However, it was the Selective Employment Tax (S.E.T.) that was to be the final straw. Designed to subsidise manufacturing companies to boost exports, they were entitled to a refund, but non-production firms like Clemersons were not - which meant they were faced with a tax bill of £10,000 a year. On Saturday 7 February 1970 they started a closing down sale, although the furniture removal and storage business would continue, and shortly afterwards the most distinctive store in Loughborough closed.

Thus, after four generations, Clemersons came to an end. Three of those generations had attended the Grammar School, but they are outdone by the Simpsons, the plumbers, which was founded in 1879 and closed in 1985. They had all four generations at the Grammar School and their story is told in ‘Bells, Bricks & Basins’ which also deals with two other local families with long connections with the School, Taylors (Bells) and Tucker (Bricks). It is on the digital archive www.lgsheritage.org and hard copy is available from the School.

Q is for Queen and Quincentenary ‘Although we are only in 1988 at present the need to have moved to decisions for 1995 must be taken by 1991/2 so that necessary booking of ‘external events’; tours and accommodation etc. can be made as well as the problems of funding can be taken fully into account. I reckon we need 2 years of pre-planning, followed by 3 years of planning, if the 500th Anniversary is to be the event it should be.’

So I wrote on 14 April 1988 and there then followed seven ‘subheadings’:Social events; School Events; National Events Hosted by LGS; Media Events; Sponsored Event; The ‘Centre-Piece’; and The School’s future. What I find amazing 34 years on is how much of this two page document actually came into being. ‘I still have this idea of an open air concert with the CBSO Orchestra and Chorus ending with the Royal Fireworks music with fireworks being fired over the quad from Fairfield/1st XI.’ ‘At the same time a major building needs to be completed in the year for the Monarch to open. Will the theatre be about due for completion then? – that would be ideal but seems a long way off.’

One of my biggest regrets is that my proposed Sponsored Event never materialised, and indeed I was still thinking about it when I retired:- ‘one thought I had was to have the whole school in Loughborough at 9.00 a.m. and have 4 boys in every Youth Hostel in Britain by 9.00 p.m. Involving major national bodies would gain maximum publicity – firms could sponsor the more exciting venues – helicopters and fighter aircraft!!’

The Quincentenary Year and the subsequent visit of Her Majesty are well recorded in the appropriate Loughburians for 1995 and 1996 (available on the digital archive). What I want to do here is look back at some of the more ‘interesting’ discussions we had during the next eight years by looking in the archives.

By Monday 2 October 1989, I had gathered together my committee that would plan the year. It consisted of representatives of the Governors, OLA, PA, High School and Fairfield along with 10 LGS Staff, including Neville Ireland, and we would then meet regularly. ‘He also mentioned that 1995 was not too far off, but as the 1996 Olympics hadn’t been fixed yet there was no need to panic!!’ The first item on that agenda was the ‘appointment of a Patron’, which never materialised ‘It was felt, however, that in the absence of a precise ‘job description’ and with a possible clash with the role of our President we may be better not having a Patron. This was agreed.’

Logo, Finance, History of the School, Commissioning of Music and structure of organisation were all discussed and five sub committees were formed:- Sport; Culture and Ceremonial; Publications and Merchandise; Social Events & General; and Finance.

For the logo, a competition was held within the School and from 65 entries there were three which appealed. These were then given to Chris White, a parent and graphic designer, who by October 1990 produced three designs based on these. The ‘circular’ version was favoured and he went back and reworked it, meeting with the Committee later that month before submitted a final design to Governors and achieving final approval in February 1991.

It might surprise you to know what dominated those early meetings – the Redesign of the Quad because of problems relating to tree roots and the paths not being able to cope with the amount of traffic using them. (This is pre Q & C Blocks…and was finally done in 2016!). ‘Mr S Leese pointed out the merits of a design at Staunton Harold Hall which had divided a large square into four smaller grass areas. This layout had included cross paths, which would be useful in our situation.’ ‘The committee reinforced its wish to have the quadrangle altered in time for 1995.’ Nothing ever happened! You will also be interested to know ‘There was some discussion of a suggestion made by Mr P.Sergeant that the pavilion be moved to the opposite side of the field, and this was generally felt to be a good idea.’ That didn’t happen either!

One event, though, was to occupy more time in discussion than any other – The Burton Service.

‘Dr Underwood felt that a major service in a large imposing cathedral ought to form the cornerstone of the ceremonial events, and pointed out that a cathedral such as Southwell would probably hold the entire Endowed Schools for a one-off event. Mr A.Field noted the greater historical link with Peterborough Cathedral, but transport to this venue would be more difficult. Mr S.Leese suggested the use of the Royal Albert Hall.’ (Oct.1990) ‘There was uncertainty as to its function in the year and whether the new Archbishop of Canterbury should be approached.’ (Feb 1991) ‘This would take place on the last morning of Spring Term at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester. It was hoped that pupils and staff from all three schools would be present. This would be the only occasion when all the foundation would ever have been together in recent times. A suitable speaker (The Cliff Richard of 1995!!) would be found.’ (Oct. 1991).

‘Following consultations after the last meeting there was a degree of uncertainty as to its venue and format. The strong feeling was that all the Grammar School should be in one place for this event and clearly if the High School and Fairfield wished to join us then the De Montfort Hall would seem a suitable venue. If the other two schools decide not to accept our invitation then we would look to an alternative venue.

The Governors felt that the Archbishop ought to be at the service but the Chaplain felt that a ‘communicator’ would be better.’ (Feb.1992) ‘Since the last meeting the feeling of the High School was that a joint service in the De Montfort Hall was logistically not possible. An outdoor service was ruled not practical and it was decided that St Paul’s Cathedral – combined with a re run of the London Train – would be a suitable event and venue.’ (June 1992) ‘The Chairman had written to St Paul’s Cathedral but had heard nothing yet.’ (Oct. 1992) ‘The Chairman read letters between him and the Dean of St Paul’s and the Provost of Leicester Cathedral. The Chapter of St Paul’s were happy to host us.’ (Jan 1993) ‘The Chairman read letters from St Paul’s and everything had been provisionally confirmed for Thursday March 30th. It was agreed to ask the Bishop of London to preach – this had to be done by St Paul’s. He had spoken with British Rail and although privatisation would affect things they couldn’t see any problem. His thoughts were that after the service we could have a birthday lunch followed by a special matinee

The actual service took place two years later and I am forever grateful that firstly the Queen didn’t visit in 1995, in the midst of all the other events going on, and secondly we were only informed of her visit at the end of February – for a visit four months later – to avoid the 54 months it took to plan the Burton Service!

The first meeting to plan her visit was on Tuesday 5 March 1996, chaired by the Chair of Governors, Mr P.J.Tomlinson. Rather like the Quincentenary, it is interesting to see how close the ideas from that first meeting were to what actually happened. As you would expect, one area was of great importance: ‘Powder Room facilities. After discussing the possibilities, i.e.

No2, Denton House, HH Toilets and BH Toilets, it was greed that the Burton Hall facilities would be more private, and that KDS should seek guidance as to whether they would be suitable, and consult with AY if any refurbishment is required.’

However, in a later meeting with the Lord Lieutenant’s Office and the Police, there is one item that might surprise you.

‘Joking/Fooling around by boys. Inspector XXXXX is very concerned by ‘jokes’ by the boys in the way of imitation bombs. He made it quite clear that if any attempt to do this occurs it will be dealt with by the police and is taken very seriously indeed. Any ‘joke’ device would need the bomb disposal people to be summoned. It was clear that this is a problem that he has encountered before. He would like to speak to 20 senior, selected 6th formers from both senior schools about this in May so that they might diffuse any such situation before it occurs. As I hadn’t thought of this at all it came as something of a surprise and I thought that even mentioning it might give the boys ideas. However it was this that was the most serious point to come from the Inspector all morning.’

A 45 minute video where I talk about the full preparation of her visit Who is going down the fat trap’ is available to view via ‘The Loughburians’ website. As you would expect we did not have a problem with any joke ‘devices’ and I think my best memories are of the hours spent with the search teams in the fortnight before her visit rather than the excitement of the visit itself which, despite the early torrential rain, went like ‘clockwork’.

Now, over 25 years later, I look back very fondly at those two years 1994 to 1996. There were so many events and the response and support of staff and boys alike was tremendous along with the OLA and PA. However, more than anything else, it made me really appreciate the role of the ‘non-teaching staff’ in the day to day running of the School. The catering staff, the caretakers, the ground staff, the maintenance teams and the secretaries simply coped with the increased workload and every problem I created. Without them, ‘Q is for Queen and the Quincentenary’ would not have been as successful as they were.

R is for Rope maker John Pritchard was a boy at the School from 1882 to 1886 and so overlapped slightly with the youngest of the six Taylor boys, Owen (LGS 1876-83). For the Taylors, and Edmund Deninson (LGS 1872-79) in particular, this was the start of a very close connection between the Bellfoundry and the School. (This is covered in Bells, Bricks and Basins – The story of LGS through the lives of three local families available on the digital archive.)

However, most of the bells Taylors cast would have been useless without John Pritchard’s help as he became the principal church bell rope maker in the country. Indeed, his established rope and tent making business was known all over the world, just like the bells.

The firm of John Pritchard (Ropes) Ltd was originally started in 1820 on the Ashby Road by John’s grandfather. In those early days, the main items of manufacture were ropes, canvas goods of all types and marquees for hire, the marquees being hand sewn. In the 1841 Census, John’s Grandfather lists his occupation as ‘sailmaker.’ John Taylor’s was established in Loughborough in 1840 and, after consultations between the two firms, the manufacture of bell ropes was commenced: these were made in the open completely by hand, during fine weather, the sallies being trimmed by hand with sheep shears.

By 1854 at the latest, the company had moved into premises at 26 Swan Street, including a frontage with retail shops - one of these was used for retail sales of ropes, twines, canvas, leather goods and oil lamps. The manufacturing side of the firm was carried on at the rear of the premises. It was here that John joined the family business after leaving School in 1886.

Looking at the 1904 editions of Bell News, there were three major rope makers in the country. John Astley and Sons in Coventry, which had been established in 1730 and started producing bell ropes in the 1760s; John Nicoll in Peckham which also had been established in 1760; and John Pritchard’s.

The retail shops were sold when Swan Street was widened in the early 1930s but the rear of the premises was retained, together with shops leading onto Biggin Street, and the company stayed there until 1982.

The firm became a Limited Company on 20 November 1937 with John as one of its three Directors but, unfortunately on 1 May 1940 whilst working in the garden of his home, he had a seizure and succumbed before help could arrive. He had been a Freemason and a keen bowler.

For the next five years, the bells of the British Isles were silenced and the manufacture of bell ropes was suspended. Thus in 1941, we see that their business had moved into ‘sun blinds, lorry sheets and waterproof covers of every description.’ The company quickly turned over to the manufacture of goods for the armed forces but, after the war, most of the company’s pre-war competitors decided not to resume bell rope making and Pritchard’s had a virtual monopoly.

The business dominated the market during the period 1950 to 1970 with two people being the main rope makers for the company. Vic Wilson was the person who made the ropes and Alf Ellis cut and finished them. The company was then acquired by Mr A.Kilburn at that point, Alf decided it was time to set up on his own. Pritchard’s continued to manufacture ropes under the watchful eye of Vic and soon his son David was taught the art of rope making.

It became an associated company in 1982 when it was acquired by a consortium including John Taylor & Co, Alan Hughes of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and Nicholas Smith of Derby. Pritchard’s moved into Taylor’s works at Loughborough and operated from the Bell foundry address until it ceased trading in 2004

It was put into administration and the bell rope side was acquired by Ellis Ropes - the company set up by Alf Ellis thirty years earlier – and moved to ‘The Rope Works’ in Costock. There bell ropes continue to be manufactured under the Ellis and Pritchard brand, so the name of John Pritchard continues to this day!

I am grateful to Lynne Dyer for a large amount of information contained in the above.

S is for Scientists and Surgeons The appointment of Paul Fisher as Headmaster in 1998 was notable in the School’s history for two things. Firstly, he was the first Catholic to be appointed Head since the Reformation and, secondly, he was allowed to educate his own sons in his School., something his most recent predecessors had not be allowed to do. Fortunately, the trustees at the end of the 19 th century weren’t as fussy when in 1792 they appointed Rev Edward Shaw Headmaster.

Edward’s son Joseph Shaw was 8 at the time and he was to spend the whole of his school life under his father before entering Christ’s College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1803. He became a scholar in the same year and a Tancred divinity student in 1804. He gained a B A in 1807, was ordained deacon at Peterborough in 1808 and then gained a M A in 1810. He was a fellow of the College between 1807 and 1849 when he then became Master. However, he resigned the office before his term of grace had expired, in the conscientious feeling that his age – he was 65 at the time – rendered him unsuited of the responsibilities of office. He became a Senior Fellow and briefly left the precincts of the college to become rector of Kegworth from 1852-53 before returning. He died there in 1859 and was buried in the ante-chapel at Christ’s.

In his role at Christ’s College in 1828 Joseph found himself as tutor to a 19 year old student who had neglected his medical studies for the previous three years at the University of Edinburgh, Charles Darwin. His father shrewdly sent him to Christ’s to study for a B A as the first step towards becoming an Anglican country parson and in Joseph he found the perfect tutor for his three years there, not least because both of them preferred riding and shooting to studying!

Also at Cambridge, but at Trinity College, was Thomas Green who was admitted as a sizar in 1756, becoming a scholar in 1759 B A in 1760 and an M A in 1763. He had been admitted to the School in 1748 when Thomas Parkinson was appointed Headmaster. He went on to become a geologist and was appointed Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University in 1778. A post he was to hold for ten years before his death.

In 1854, a Mr Spanton gave up his preparatory School in Ward’s End and joined the LGS staff, which numbered four at the time, as English master. He was joined by his son, William Dunnett Spanton, 14 at the time, the 126th boy to be admitted since moving to its present site, and spent a year at the School.

William then became an apprentice to a Loughborough Surgeon, Josiah Pritchard. He served as an unqualified assistant at Saffron Walden and became a student at the Middlesex Hospital in 1859 where, in 1862, he was made Resident Obstetric Assistant. He served as House Surgeon at the Buckinghamshire Infirmary at Aylesbury until he was appointed to a similar post in Sheffield in 1863. In 1864, he was elected House Surgeon at North Staffordshire Infirmary and thus began his lifelong connection with the Potteries. He was elected Medical Officer to the infirmary in 1867 and Surgeon in 1868, an office he held until 1903 when he became Consulting Surgeon. During this time, he did much to improve both the buildings and the organisation of the Infirmary, which was made a model among modern provincial hospitals.

William became F.R.C.S.Edin in 1881 and F.R.C.S.Eng in 1898 and was the last President of the British Gynaecological Society before it was absorbed as a section of the Royal Society of Medicine.

In 1915 he presented to the School two portfolios of dried specimens of the flowers and grasses he collected whilst he was an apprentice in Loughborough. The portfolios were accompanied by letters from the then owners of Beaumanor Park and Garendon giving him permission to go anywhere on their land in his botanical rambles. In 1921, he also presented his autobiography and gave prizes in his name, which continued for five years after his death in 1922. In recognition of his achievements, especially in the treatment of hernias, the Royal College of Surgeons created a memorial medal in his name.

Not just a student at the Middlesex Hospital, William Sampson Handley spent most of his career there in the cancer research wing and ended up as honorary senior consulting surgeon. He was at the School from 1884 to 1889 before studying medicine at Guy’s Hospital, and graduated M.B., B.S. in 1895, winning the London University exhibition and gold medal. He proceeded M.D. one year later and M.S. in 1899, and took F.R.C.S. in 1897.

After qualification, William remained at Guy’s and in 1903 obtained the Richard Hollins cancer research scholarship and moved to the Middlesex Hospital. The following year, he was awarded the Astley Cooper prize for his discoveries in how cancer spread. In particular he found the main extension of breast cancer was along the lymphatics and he coined the words Lymphatic permeation. In 1906, he published Cancer of the Breast and its Operative Treatment which created his reputation within the wider medical establishment. Further recognition came in 1911 when the Royal College of Surgeons awarded him the Walker Prize for the best work in advancing the knowledge of the pathology and therapeutics of cancer during the previous five years.

During the First World War William served as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and in 1923 became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, being its vice -president from 1931 to 1934. His views on the spread of cancer received worldwide acceptance and recognition and he was elected Honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and Foreign Member of the Academy of Medicine of Rome. He was also a member of the Council of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and a onetime President of the Royal Society of Medicine. However, throughout his career he kept in close contact with his contemporaries, meeting regularly at the OLA London Dinners in the 1930s.

Marmaduke Barrowcliff was at the School from 1894 to 1899 when he entered University College, Nottingham, to study Chemistry. Three years later, he joined the staff of the Indian Chemical Research Laboratories and carried out research work on the separation and constitution of natural products derived from plants. After a period in the Department of Agriculture in the Federated Malay States, he returned to England in 1915 to work at Boots in Nottingham. Many problems arising out of the war engaged his attention, among which was a process for the manufacture of saccharin and a method for the preparation of granules for use in anti-gas masks for which he was awarded the M B E in 1920.

In 1921, whilst working for the British Dyestuffs Corporation, he published a book Organic Medicinal Chemicals (Synthetic and Natural) with Howard Carr. The book is still used to this day and is regarded by scholars as being culturally important as part of the knowledge base of civilisation as we know it and in recent years has had several facsimile editions published. He spent the rest of his working life with Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd, Dyestuffs Division, ending up as Research Manager until his retirement in 1945.

Marmaduke himself set great store in chemistry and considered the title ‘chemist’ as sufficiently meritorious and honourable, and himself sought no other description. I reckon the same could be said of Harry Allcock who joined the School from Cobden Street in 1943.

In the 2013 Old Loughburian, Harry reflected on his time in the School: ‘I left LGS in 1950 armed with an excellent education in the Sciences and Geography; an interest in writing and a working knowledge of French and German, all of which proved to be vital importance in coming years.’ He went on to study Chemistry and Biology at University College, Leicester, where he first obtained his BSc in 1953 and then his PhD in Chemistry in 1956, both degrees being awarded by the University of London.

An offer of a one year post-doctoral research position in Indiana took him across the Atlantic and he never returned, ending up at Pennsylvania State University where he rose to an Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Pennsylvania State’s highest academic honour. In 2006, he received an honorary degree from Loughborough University. His research was at the interface between inorganic and organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, biomedicine and materials science. It is based on the principle that new materials with hitherto unseen combinations of properties are accessible by the incorporation of inorganic elements into the backbone structure of polymers. Along with his co-workers, he has published over 600 papers and several books. In 1984, he was awarded the American Chemical Society National Award in Polymer Chemistry, in 1992 their award in Materials Chemistry and in 2007 their award in Applied Polymer Science.

Elsewhere in this A to Z you will find other Scientists, mostly under ‘U’, but I leave it to Harry to sum up what all scientists leaving the School will know. ‘I passed my 80th birthday this year, and I still consider myself exceedingly fortunate to be still working full time in a career that I enjoy. I am also aware that the groundwork for what has been accomplished was established during my time at LGS. As an educator for the past forty six years I can appreciate the talents of the LGS staff, and the benefit of being taught by them.’

T is for Tennis The tennis report in the very first Loughburian of 1879 ends with these words ‘The result of this year’s contest for the Captaincy is that Hamilton is victorious. Paget was absent and did not compete, or the result might have been different; but in Hamilton we have one who is likely to develop into a thoroughly good athlete – especially in Cricket.’ 11 years later, aged just 25, Hamilton becomes the first (of three) Irishman to win Wimbledon.

(James) Willoughby Hamilton was born on 9 December 1864 in Monasterevin, County Kildare, the seventh of nine children of Revd. Canon William Alfred Hamilton, a Church of Ireland rector, and Henrietta Cole. So the obvious question is - why did they chose LGS as the boarding School for their very sporty son? Surely a more prestigious boarding school would have been their choice. Here the clue comes from the knowledge that his big brother – 15 years older – is Revd Henry Balfour Hamilton who we know became the first Rector of the recently restored St Helena’s Church in West Leake in 1882, the year after Willoughby left LGS. So it is likely that he was at another local church prior to that appointment and able to look after little brother at halfterms etc.

Willoughby entered LGS in 1876 and would have been a boarder in School House under Headmaster John Colgrove. The following extract from an 1886 edition of Pastime provides an insight into his time here. ‘His schooldays were spent at Loughborough Grammar School, Leicestershire, where he made his mark in outdoor games and exercise, winning several races each year in the athletic sports, besides gaining a place in the cricket and football teams. During his last year he was captain of both the elevens, and won the bat given as prize for the highest cricket averages. At lawn tennis, for three years, he held the position of champion of the school.’

We know from the report of the School v Old Boys Cricket match in the Loughburan of 1881, Willoughby’s last year in the School, that he takes three wickets and top scores with 46 (being run out!) in a crushing victory for the School. We also know from the Loughburian that the one thing he wasn’t was academic! Although 17 we find him in the Fourth Form (The third tier in a School that numbered 120 at the time) and there he is 19 th out of 21 and scored just two in his Algebra!

Pastime takes up his story ‘Leaving school before the completion of his seventeenth year, Hamilton entered a stockbroker’s office in Dublin, in which city he has since remained. During the winter of 1884-5, he played Association football with such success as to be included in the Leinster team against Ulster, and to gain his international cap in the annual engagement with Wales. As a right wing forward he had, at that time, few, if any, equals in the country. Finding that he could not spare time to play cricket to his own satisfaction, although he had acquired a high reputation as a splendid field and a very promising batsman, he determined to abandon the game in favour of lawn tennis. From this point his improvement was rapid and consistent…’

After considerable success in Ireland, especially against his big brother William who was five years older than him and also represented Ireland at Soccer and Cricket (indeed it was a very sporty family as brothers Francis and Blayney also represented Ireland at Cricket!), he entered Wimbledon for the first time in 1896 and reached the quarter finals. In 1887, the County Dublin Championships clashed with the tournament but when he returned in 1888 he reached the semi-finals, which he also reached again in 1889.

In 1890, he went two stages further. He won the All-Comers competition and qualified to meet William Renshaw, the six times previous winner, for the Championship. The following description of the match is from the Daily News.

‘Some very even play was seen in the first set which was secured by Renshaw by 8 to 6. In the second set Hamilton obtained an easy victory by 6 to 2, whilst the third set went to the holder at 6-3. After this Renshaw did not meet with much success, and Hamilton taking the fourth and fifth sets at 6-1 each, won the Championship by 3 sets to 2. Of the 45 games played. Hamilton won 27.’ This, along with his other tournament successes, meant that he was ranked Number 1 in the world.

What happened next is one of the great mysteries in sport. He never ever competed in another competitive tennis match and no-one seems to know why.

According to more than one source a serious illness, blood poisoning, was said to be the cause but it is unlikely that he was seriously ill for too long as he married five years later and was working as a stockbroker in 1911. Indeed - there is evidence that he continued playing football and cricket – was he just fed up playing tennis? He lived for 53 years after his Wimbledon triumph until he died on 27th September 1943 in Dundrum, Dublin, aged 78.

As you might expect his triumph at Wimbledon was at the centre of the Chairman of Governors speech at prize giving. Mr Hussey Packe mentioned the excitement of the boys over Hamilton’s success at Wimbledon and their efforts to establish three silver challenge cups for cricket, football and tennis. Thus Hamilton’s success established the House System, which after many changes, is still in place to this day. The Loughburian of January 1891 reports that there are to be four houses:- School House; Burton House, the other boarding house; and the Day Boys, who were split in two – North & South - by residence. It also records ‘There have been several committee meetings about the Challenge Cups: after much deliberation, the inscriptions and the cups themselves have all been determined on, Ingenious members of the committee even made the designs after their own heart in which figured a pair of legs in deadly collision over a ball and various other devices.’

They were competed for that year and the next edition of The Loughburian in December 1891 records ‘Since the last issue of this magazine the Challenge Cups have come into our possession, and they are well worthy of the ancient institution to which they belong. Their total cost amounted to £66, a sum which has practically been raised by present boys and the School’s alumni; a few subscriptions were also received from others who were interested in the movement. The following are the names of the Captains and Teams who won the cups this year:Football South – Day Boys Paget i Cricket School House Stephenson Tennis North – Day Boys Toone’ The Cups were funded by the boys (parents!) of the new ‘Houses’. The Football Cup by the Day Boys with 39 listed donors; the Cricket Cup by Burton House with 26 donors and the Hamilton Cup by School House with 19 donors including the Headmaster.

Indeed, he was so taken by Hamilton’s triumph that ‘During the Midsummer holidays our Head Master has very generously had the old ash court asphalted at his own expense, and we feel sure that the whole school will heartily join us in thanking him for his great munificence.’ In those days the tennis court was on the quad.

Thus these are the three oldest and most important cups we own…and I mean own. For just three years later, after Colgrove was dismissed as Headmaster, he set up a rival School taking all three cups with him! On 8 February 1898 the Governors asked him to return the Hamilton Cup, which he refused to do, and sent him a bill for £8 which you will gather was below what the cup was worth! His rival School closed two years later and the cups were returned and as a consequence have inscribed on the base, This Cup is the property of the masters and boys, after all they had paid for it!

All three trophies are still awarded to this day.

U is for Universities Denys Wilkinson entered the school in September 1933 from Cobden Street and it was soon apparent that he was a fine academic. Already in the school was Kenneth Standley, who was in the other form, and the two of them only came together in the 6th Form where Denys beat Kenneth every term so finished his time having been top for all 21 terms.

They were great rivals: Kenneth became School Captain whilst Denys was a monitor; Kenneth was a 1st XI Cricketer and Victor Ludorum at Sports Day whilst Denys could only manage 2nd in the High Jump. They were also both superb physicists and Kenneth won a £ 100 Open Scholarship to New College, Oxford and Denys a £ 60 Open Scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge but Denys reinforced his position as being the better academic by also winning a State Scholarship as a result of his Higher Certificate Exams.

Unusually for a physicist, Denys was also editor of the Loughburian in their final year, 1940, where he records the heavy snowfalls of that winter as only a physicist could. ‘During the recent - I think fifteen days have elapsed - snowing up the forms played a major part in getting through to civilisation via the main drive. One professor of mathematics has calculated that during his efforts to transform himself into a human snow-plough, he was developing, not as you might think, a severe cold but nearly half a horse-power. The form is considering selling itself as a Ford V8.’

Kenneth went on to get a first class honours degree and then a D.Phil. at New College, Oxford; joined the Physics Department at Nottingham University; and became a reader there before becoming Professor to the Carnegie chair of Physics at Queens College, Dundee in 1965. Two years later, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and served as the Society’s vicepresident from 1973 to 1976. He was distinguished for his contributions to the study of ferromagnetic resonance and the properties of ferrites and microwave techniques, and published his book Oxide Magnetic Materials.

Kenneth wins the High Jump in 1940.

Denys became a fellow of Jesus College in 1944 and completed his PhD in 1947. After 10 further years at Cambridge, where he became reader in nuclear physics, he was appointed to the chair of nuclear physics at Oxford, and was head of the nuclear physics department from 1962 to 1976. Although he was destined to be a superb leader and administrator, his heart was always close to research, and every summer for two months he went to laboratories in the US or Canada, where he could not be reached so readily. He became Vice Chancellor of Sussex University in 1976, where he also maintained a presence in the university’s physics department, and retired as emeritus professor of physics there in 1989.

He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 34, won its Hughes Medal (1965) and Royal Medal (1980) and, in 1974, was knighted. Awards abroad included the Bonner prize for nuclear physics of the American Physical Society, also in 1974. He served as president of the Institute of Physics (1980-82), and as a vice-president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (1985-93). The high-rise science block built in 1967 at the junction of Keble Road and Banbury Road in Oxford was named the Denys Wilkinson Building in 2002, and his final paper on physics was written when he was 82 years old. Sir Denys died on 22 April 2016.

So much for physicists, what about chemists? Not to be outdone there were not two but three, all at School at the same time.

Thomas William Walker and (Arthur) Donald Walsh, who lived on Burton Street, entered the School together on 18 th September 1928. Given their surnames and that in the 1920’s boys sat in alphabetical order it is a fair bet that they sat together. Their start in the school was more straightforward than that of George William Cooke, a farmer’s son, who arrived the following year at April and was put in the year below, even though he was the oldest of the three. Having come second in July and first in December, he was moved into the ‘right’ year but in the ‘B’ Stream.

Meanwhile in the ‘A’ Stream, Donald was top at the end of his first term and like, Denys Wilkinson was to be top for all 21 terms in the School; for most of those terms Thomas was second. They must have formed a considerable academic pair together.

They joined the School just after the Barrow Building had been opened which provided more classrooms to deal with the massive expansion of the School after the First World War. In 1915, there were 106 boys in the School, and when they entered, it had more than doubled in size, with 275. When they left seven years later, it had trebled in size with 318 boys.

There may have been more classrooms but the same could not be said for science facilities. For their first three years in the School, the boys would have shared facilities built in 1895 consisting of a single chemistry lab, a single physics lab and a science lecture theatre.

Fortunately, in 1931 the new Science facilities were opened and the boys would have been able to pursue their love of chemistry in modern and well equipped facilities for their final four years.

In their final year, 1935, all three were monitors, William played 1 st XI football and was sub-editor of The Loughburian and Donald played 2nd XI cricket and football. It will come as no surprise that Arthur won a Mawson Scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge whilst Thomas was awarded a Royal Scholarship at the Royal College of Science (in 1935 a constituent college of Imperial College, London) and George headed to University College, Nottingham.

Three years later, both with first class honours degrees in chemistry, Thomas and George met up again at Rothamsted Experimental Station where they were to work together on soil science.

In 1952, Thomas emigrated to New Zealand to become the first professor of Soil Science at Canterbury Agricultural College. He returned to Britain in 1958 but returned to his old job in 1960 at the soon to be renamed Lincoln College, New Zealand. He retired in 1979 but became emeritus professor from then until his death in 2010. In 1997 he was awarded the Rutherford Gold Medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand and in the 2000 New Year Honours was appointed Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to soil science.

George stayed closer to home, indeed he never left Rothamsted! He was made its Head of Chemistry in 1956 and its Deputy Director in 1962. He moved from laboratory life to field trials, examining the use of fertilizers and the profitable management of soils. When he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969,he was the leading expert on fertilizers and manures in the UK, probably the world. His main focus throughout his career was on obtaining the maximum productivity of various soils with minimum addition of fertilizer. In 1975, he was awarded the C B E and moved to become Chief Scientific Officer of the Agricultural Research Council until his retirement in 1981.

Unfortunately, we were not to have a hat-trick of soil scientists. Describing Donald’s area of chemical interest is harder! He remained at Cambridge doing research work ‘on the absorption spectra of small molecules in the vacuum ultraviolet’ including butadiene, diacetylene and acrolein, being awarded his PhD in 1941. This was the pioneering work of the early days and spectrometers had to be designed and built by those who were to use them. Their operation required skills which were becoming increasingly rare in the micro-processor and computer-controlled age. His keenness, his skill, and his ability to apply his knowledge provided the genesis of his major contribution to chemistry.

The imminence of war was to determine that the next few years would be spent carrying out basic research on combustion in the Physical Chemistry Department at Cambridge. The wide knowledge he had gained of the molecular properties of small molecules was applied with advantage in this new field, and combustion, especially the combustion of hydrocarbons in the gaseous state, was to remain his other main research interest. He was regarded as a leading authority in this work with an international reputation.

In 1949, he accepted a Lectureship at Leeds University and during the following years he spent a semester as Visiting Professor at the University of California where he was surrounded by a galaxy of people eminent in the physical sciences.

Returning to Leeds, he worked with his typical enthusiasm, and it was at this time that he made his most important contribution to science. Stemming from his wealth of knowledge concerning the dimensions of a wide range of small molecules, he applied principles of molecular symmetry to predict the shapes of such molecules in various electronic states. Plots showing how the orbital energies of molecules vary with bond are now known as Walsh Diagrams, and the basic postulates as Walsh’s Rules.

In 1955, he was appointed to the Baxter Chair of Chemistry at Queen’s College, Dundee, then part of the University of St. Andrews, and the energy and personal drive which powered his research work was to be the source of the rapid development of the Chemistry Department in the years that followed. The expansion of British Universities in the ’60s was to lead to the creation of the University of Dundee, and he was marked out to be the first Dean of the Faculty of Science in the new University. In 1964, he was elected both a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and also a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Amongst the huge number of awards mentioned above, the one that both Denys and Donald treasured the most was when, in 1962, the Governors instituted the office of vice-president of the Endowed Schools and they were both invited, along with Johnnie Johnson, to be the first vice-presidents. Like many organisations, this was a way to acknowledge the support of top alumni who had remained in close contact with the Schools and also former Headmasters and Headmistresses. However,you can’t have vice-presidents without a President and it was Headmaster Norman Walter who suggested that this role be taken by the Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. You will have gathered that a large number of alumni mentioned in this A to Z went to Jesus College, and that is no accident.

John Somervile was Headmaster from 1647 to 1682 and in his will the following year he left money for a Scholarship at Jesus College. In 1949 George Chapman did likewise and in 1960 a Fellow of Jesus College was chosen to represent Cambridge University when the Board of Governors was enlarged. Thus the first President of Loughborough Endowed Schools was Sir Denys Page, who had been appointed Mater of Jesus College in 1959. On taking up the role he was to visit Loughborough as often as he could and his encouragement was deep and genuine and much appreciated by Governors and staff alike. Sir Denys was a classicist who served as the 34th Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge and was best known for his critical editions of the Ancient Greek Lyric poets and tragedians.

He was Chief Guest at prize giving in 1964 and opened the Pullinger Building in 1972. Indeed all of the buildings in the Maths and Science Park were to be opened by the Schools’ Presidents: the Murray (Biology) building by Sir Alan Cotterill in 1978; the Walter (Chemistry) Building by Robert Mair in 2009; and the Ireland (Physics) building by Ian White in 2012.

There is no college and no university that the School has a stronger historical link to.

Jesus College, Cambridge.

V is for Verse Under G for Government we looked at Charles McCurdy MP. Now I want to start by concentrating on his little brother, Edward. They were both boys here in the 1880s, the sons of Rev. Alexander McCurdy the Primitive Methodist Minister for Loughborough when the Church was in Swan Street. They were living at 3 Burton Street so the School could not have been more convenient! At the time, there were 117 boys in the School – 77 day boys and 40 boarders. Both boys were bright and we know that in the Cambridge University Local Examinations in the Juniors Edward, achieved a 1 st Class certificate. Out of 4844 entries he was top in drawing, 74th in maths and 132nd in Latin. In the Seniors, Charles achieved a 2nd Class certificate coming 31st in Latin out of the 660 entries. On leaving School, Charles went to Cambridge and Edward to Oxford where he showed his natural literary talent and wrote poems, serious and light.

Edward’s first book Roses of Paestum was published in 1900 but above all he became an authority on the works and personality of Leonardo da Vinci, being the first person to translate his diaries out of their original mediaeval Italian mirror letter writing. In recognition of this, he was made a member of the Athenaeum Club where the Loughburians held their London dinner in 2019. His first work on Leonardo de Vinci was published in 1904, followed in 1906 by a version of the Notebooks of Leonardo, and in 1907 by The Thoughts of Leonardo. His major work was the issue of a two-volume edition of the notebooks in 1938 which was then re-issued in 1948 and so far has run into 126 editions, the last in 2017. In the midst of this he did write an acclaimed biography of Raphael Santi published in 1917.

In 1906, he married Sylvia Stebbing, the daughter of the Assistant Editor and First leader Writer for The Times. She was a bookbinder who had trained Virginia Woolf in the skill as a therapeutic activity when she was not writing. On their marriage, she gave up her craft to concentrate on family life in Ashstead, Surrey, raising their six children.

His first book of poetry The Lays of Limpet published in 1920 had an unusual content. ‘I may say that the verses, the fruit of experience of three years’ service in the Ministry of Pensions, are concerned mainly – perhaps more than proportionately – with the incidents of the daily work and the ways and doings of officials. And yet the desire was, above all, to pay a tribute to the great protagonist in the drams, the tragic figure in the background, disabled soldier or sailor, to whose needs all the others are engaged in ministering – however diversely.’ One poem that does not do this is the first, To Alec, his first son born in 1914. A further book, simply called Poems, followed in 1925.

Unlike Charles, Edward kept in close contact with the School. In the May 1888 edition of The Loughburian he won a 5s (25p!) prize offered by the OL Association with a poem called ‘The Seagull’. He probably reflected later that entering was a big mistake as by that November he was Editor of the magazine (which in those days was produced by the OL Association) – a post he was to hold for several years - and by 1927 was Chairman of the Association.

Two years before that, in September 1925 the son of a war widow entered the School. Clifford Dyment was born on 20 January 1914 to Welsh parents living in Monmouthshire but was physically born in Alfreton, Derbyshire, where his Aunt to be was a hospital matron. As he writes in his autobiography, The Railway Game, ‘My father was very fussy about his pretty young wife and wouldn’t trust anybody but his sister to bring his first born into the world. And so it came about that I was taken to Alfreton in my mother’s womb and taken from it in a rush basket.’ In later life he was so ashamed of not being born in Wales that in his autobiography he writes, ‘I was born in two places. One, actual and official…The other, adoptive and private, has never been put down anywhere until now except in the Perfect Biographical Note which I used to draft in my rough book at Loughborough Grammar School..’!!

Four years later his father, William, was killed on 22 May 1918 on the Somme whilst serving with the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Seeking work as a sickness visitor, his mother took Clifford and his sister to Loughborough and he joined Roseberry Street School before joining LGS. Clifford did not have a happy childhood as his mother’s work meant that they were left for hours every day to their own devices or the indifferent care of strangers. He spent a period with an aunt and uncle who treated him harshly. All this led to a series of illnesses through sheer neglect. He had chronic ear discharge and only partial hearing in one of his ears.

None of this was known by the staff at the school where his education was being paid for out of a fund for the children of men who had died in the war. Clifford was in the middle or towards the bottom of his form. Comments on his record card reflect this. ‘Moderate progress’, ‘good but could do better’, ‘Slow but gradually improving in Latin.

English and Maths weak’, ‘Mostly fair. poor Latin: an illbehaved shirker’, ‘Rather Lazy’, ‘Might be keener in and out of School’, ‘Weak in Maths and Chemistry. Not strong’.

He left the School at Christmas 1929, just before his 16th birthday whilst repeating the year in LVb, having become bottom the term before, with no School Certificate, and went to work in a bicycle shop. He moved from one badly paid job to another and for a time was on the dole. He was a commercial traveller for a while and an assistant in a Montague Burton outfitters.

It is likely, however, that repeating the year for just a term was to be the inspiration for Clifford’s later life. At the end of that term, he was fifth and the comment was ‘Good, especially in English’ and this is the only clue as to why, when he was 20, The Listener published one of his poems and he was launched on a literary career. One of his first poems The Son was to become one of his most famous. It is not uncommon to read poems about the First World War written from the perspective of fathers, mothers, sister or sweethearts of men who had left to fight, but there are only two poems written by sons of soldiers. One was Ted Hughes’ Six Young Men written 40 years after the war ended, the other was The Son written in 1935.

In the same year, 1935, Clifford’s first published collection First Day containsedan acknowledgement that his thanks were due to the editors of The Listener, London Mercury, Bookman, Poetry (Chicago), Time and Tide and The Year’s Poetry for printing his poems. During World War II, he was engaged to make films, working with the British government.

However it was his early childhood in Caerlon-on-Usk that was to be his greatest asset. He regarded himself as a Welshman and Dylan Thomas, who was the same age as him, befriended him with their common Welshness proving a strong bond.

He arranged for Clifford to write the words for one of the films on life in the British Isles made by the BBC Film Television Unit as a contribution to the Festival of Britain. He repaid Dylan by letting him sleep at his flat when Dylan was too drunk to go home! But on the whole Clifford did not get on well with his fellow poets. They frightened him and, an odd man out among men, he felt an odd poet out among poets.

Just before he died in 1971, his collected poems were published with one poem As a boy with a richness of needs I wandered included by Philip Larkin in the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In 1973 his friend Robert Greacen, a literary critic, visited the School on the 20 January, Clifford’s birthday, and gave a selection of readings in School Assembly. This tradition was to continue for the next few years with Wilf Massiah, the School’s librarian, choosing appropriate pieces - so the ‘ill behaved-shirker’ was not forgotten!

See also John Cleveland, Cavalier Poet in ‘N’

W is for War Memorials The School lost 60 old boys in each of the World Wars and most of them were known personally by Headmasters Bingham Turner, who started at the School 17 years before the start of the First World War, and Sydney Pullinger, who began 14 years before the Second. For Bingham Turner, one of those old boys was his own son, Roger, in whose memory the clock and chimes were given in 1917. For both Headmasters, therefore, it was really important to have memorials to what they regarded as their war dead, but these were to take on totally different formats.

Bingham Turner had worked with Morris and Co of London to produce the bronze commemorating the gift of the clock and bells to the school in 1919 and at the same time was in discussion with them about a suitable memorial for the World War I war dead. They drew up a sketch of the proposed memorial, which was shown at the launch of the Memorial Fund early in 1919. This was in a similar style to the one commemorating his son and it was the early subscribers who suggested that the memorial should be both somewhat larger than the sketch shown, and should have a raised and decorated border with the crest in relief. The design was left to Wilfred Cartwright (LGS 1911-1914) who was a brilliant draughtsman and designer articled to the architect Edward Allcock (LGS 1885-1888) This put up the cost by about £35. By the end of July, £111 14s had been raised from 152 subscribers – the largest being one gift of 5 guineas and the smallest being 2 gifts of 1/-. Looking through the list, one notes that every parent of an old boy killed contributed. Even though Bingham Turner had retired in July, he continued to head the fund and, by January 1920, £122 13s 6d had been raised, sufficient to pay for the plate ‘with all the names in full and units and ranks and to provide for fixing’. In the end the fund had a £5 surplus.

On 16 March 1921, Bingham Turner returned to unveil the memorial, which had been placed on the east wall of the corridor into ‘big school’ (where the TV is outside the 6th form centre!). Relatives of the fallen, and other friends of the School, assembled around it and the School massed outside the entrance door. In his address he centred on the words at the bottom of the memorial ‘We here highly resolve that these dead should not have died in vain.’ words spoken by President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address during the American Civil War in 1863 and also carved on the walls of his Memorial in Washington.

The memory of those old boys is remembered in another way. Both the Old Boys and the School joined forces to fund a bell in the Carillon Tower – the whole concept of which was the idea of Wilfred Moss CBE (LGS 1882-88) and Mayor in 1923. In May 500 Old Boys were approached to give towards the bell. ‘The results up to date have by no means fulfilled the expectations of the Committee, as only a sum of between £50 and £60 has been received or promised from about 27 members.‘ Two concerts were arranged in May and June 1922 to raise funds for the bell but the vast majority of the £195 needed was still to come from the Old Boys.

By July 1922, £125 had been raised, £100 from the Old Boys and £25 from the concerts, however, by the following February, ‘The bell which is the gift of the School to the Memorial Carillon has arrived and is now on view at the School. The following inscription has been placed on the bell: “The Gift of the Loughborough Grammar School (Past and Present). In memory of the 57 Old Boys who gave their lives in the Great War.”’ At that time approx. £100 had been raised by 58 subscribers, £25 from the concerts and £7 8s 6d from the Headmaster’s whist drive….there was still a long way to go to the £195! By May 1923, the total was £164 13s 0d but a ‘whip round’ at the Old Boys Dinner in June raised £12 and further donations eventually brought the total to £210 2s 9d, which meant that, after small costs, were covered £8 19s was sent to the General Fund for the War Memorial.

Thus both ‘appeals’ after World War I achieved their targets, but it had been hard work and, as a consequence, plaques to record all those OLs who had received Military medals as well as all the OLs who had served in the war were shelved.

A slightly lesser project, but just as important, was the War Memorial in Emmanuel Church which was designed by Arnold Barrowcliff. (See ‘A’)

It was a similar story after World War II. A War Memorial Sub-Committee of the OLA was established at the start of the Autumn Term 1946. They had two proposals in addition to having a bronze tablet containing the names of the fallen. Firstly, the provision of a deep-toned bell for the School Clock to chime the hours plus the electrification of the clock and, secondly, a memorial screen in the Burton Chapel of the Parish Church which was itself designed by OL Edward Allcock and had been dedicated in 1931. In fact ,they actually had bigger ideas but ‘It is imperative that consideration should be limited to a memorial which can be completed within a reasonable time, and in view of the probability of present building difficulties lasting for some time to come it is not practicable to consider any memorial involving an ambitious building programme.’

By Easter 1947, decisions had been made and ‘It is proposed therefore to mount a bronze tablet on a rough-hewn block of local granite or other appropriate material in the School quadrangle and to include on this tablet the names, not only of those who fell in the last war, but also those who fell in the war of 1914-18. In addition it is proposed to erect a panelled Screen to the gallery above the Colgrove seat in the Burton Chapel….thus completing the scheme of panelling which was begun in 1926 and which includes memorials to many who have been connected with the School.’ The cost of these two projects was put at £900.

By July, £550 had been raised and this remained the case to the end of the year, falling far short of the amount the Committee appealed and, as a consequence, they decided to abandon the idea of the granite block and just have a brass tablet in the School buildings. This meant that there was an adjusted target of £700-£750. The OLA had sent out 1,600 circulars and had only 207 subscriptions, the majority of which came from the family members of those who had died. By July 1948, only £80 was needed and instructions were issued to go ahead with both memorials. By April 1949, the fund stood at £623, still £75 short of the revised target. In the end £708 4s 2d was raised and the cost of the Screen was £343 15s 10d and the Bronze Tablet £341 5s.

On the evening of 1 Friday July 1949 as part of the OLA Trienniel Celebrations, the beautifully carved oak screen was dedicated in the Burton Chapel by the Bishop of Leicester, Dr Guy Vernon Smith, in a short service with the Parish Church packed to capacity.

The Bishop was assisted by the Rector, Archdeacon W.J.Lyon (LGS 1902-1906) and the address was given by Canon G.W.Briggs (LGS 1891-93) who was then at Worcester Cathedral having been 16 years as Rector of the Parish Church.

‘Before the dedication of the memorial by the Bishop the first verse of Laurence Binyon’s “They shall grow not old” was read by the School Captain, Roger B. Hill, and was followed by a one minute silence and the singing of the 4 th verse of the School Hymn….. The screen completes the scheme originated by Canon Briggs nearly 25 years ago which has beautified the Burton Chapel with oak panelling and pews….The carving was done by Mr Hinde of Barrow, who was unfortunately unable to undertake the work on the memorial screen which was executed by Messrs Bowman of Stamford.’

On the following day, the bronze tablet bearing the names of the fallen was unveiled at the School by Colonel J.P.W.Jamie M.C. (LGS 1907-1913) ‘who presided at lunch and inspected a smartly turned out guard of honour of cadets of the School squadron (no 609) of the Air Training Corps.’

‘Prayers read by the Rev. J.E.Eagles, M.C., were followed by a brief but sincere address by Col. Jamie, who then unveiled the memorial in the corridor. As he did so, a bugler from the 5 th Royal Leicestershire Regiment sounded the “Last Post” from the Tower. As the “Reveille” rang out a few moments later the flag was raised to full mast and to the strains of Walford Davies’ “Solemn Melody” the large gathering of parents, relatives, Old Boys and friends of the School filed past the tablet.’

The tablet was made by Messrs Wing and Webb Ltd of Wolverhampton and was moved to the Hodson Hall in 1961.

X is for XIs and a XV One only realises the value of The Loughburian when no copy exists. From 1888, we have a continuous collection (all available on the digital archive) except for the years 1891 to 1897 when it was not produced. Fortunately, when it returned in April 1897 there are ‘pen portraits’ of the football XI of 1896-97, and especially of the Vice-Captain and centre-half, Linacre. ‘Works very hard and has always been the mainstay of the team. He uses his head excellently and give the forwards every chance. One weak point is that he does not go for the man when there is no chance of securing the ball otherwise.’

Even more fortunately, one of the very few sports photos we have from the late 19th century that has names on it is of the football XI of 1893-94, and there sitting on the front row, second from the left, is Linacre.

James Henry Linacre was born on 20 June 1880 in Aston-on-Trent and entered LGS at Easter 1893, being placed in the “B” stream. At the time there were 113 boys in the School. His father was a farmer and still living in Aston-on-Trent but ‘James’ was living at ‘The Limes’ in Kegworth. Even so he must have boarded and soon was known as ‘Harry’.

He left in 1897 ‘…when barely 16, but young though he was he showed himself one of the best athletes here of recent years, quite worthy of the family traditions (he was a nephew of Fred and Frank Foremen both of whom went on to play football for England). He was in the Football and Cricket XI, 1894-5-6, and showed very pretty form. As a cricketer he had all the makings of a very taking bat.’ Rather like Willoughby Hamilton (see ‘T’), the School saw him as a cricketer – he Captained the 1st XI in 1896 – rather than a footballer. Indeed his departure at Easter 1897 meant that he would miss the season, a point reflected on in the ‘Cricket Prospects’ in the Loughburian. ‘Of last year’s team we have lost Linacre who would have been a tower of strength, and has left us while all too young. His style of batting was finished and correct, and with his greatly increased strength and reach, and the confidence that he will no doubt develop this year, he would have been invaluable.’

On leaving he had no desire to follow the family in working on the farm and trained as a cycle engineer whilst continuing to play football for his village side and then Draycott Mills. But there was one great difference between playing for those sides and LGS. Whereas he played centre-half at LGS, away from the School he was making his mark as a goal-keeper. One assumes that Derby County knew of him as they had already signed his two nephews, who were slightly older than him, and in 1898 they signed Harry as well and he became a professional footballer. However, just like his nephews, he soon moved on to Nottingham Forest – between the 3 of them they only played 19 games for Derby before leaving. Harry played just two of those in 1899 before joining Forest for whom, in the next 10 years, he made 308 appearances, most of those alongside his nephews.

However, it is clear that supporters at Derby remembered him even though he just played two games. A ‘mock funeral card’ records the obvious result of the local derby. ‘In Loving Memory of Notts Forest. After the ball was rolling, after the whistle blew, Many a heart was acheing, Till DERBY banged it through. All the crowd was cheering, You should have heard them all, When “Linacre” was knocked, Through the goal post After the ball. R.I.P. No Flowers by Request.’

1905 turned out to be the most memorable year for him. On 27 March, he played his first game for England against Wales and five days later, on 1 April, he played his last game for England against Scotland. England won both games and he only conceded one goal. Thus he is one of the very few OLs to represent his country, especially in team sports, even though it was only with two appearances.

Later in the year, he travelled with Nottingham Forest to South America on their first ever foreign tour. The tour started in Uruguay and then moved on to Argentina.

However, it seems that South American football was not as strong then as it is now!

They played eight matches, all of which they won, scored 63 goals and the one man who had least to do was Harry – he only conceded three goals!

After retiring from football in 1909, he again chose not to join his father but instead joined his Uncle’s building contractor firm. He died on 11 May 1957.

So, who are the other OLs to play for an international team? Marcus Rose (LGS 1964-1976) played for the England Rugby XV ten times between 1981 and 1987; Harry Gurney (LGS 2000-2005) played for the England White-ball Cricket XI twelve times in 2014; Christopher Lonsdale (LGS 1999-2006) played one game for Bermuda’s Cricket XI in 2007. But there can be no doubt who is the most prolific international sportsman. David Condon (LGS 2004-2009) first played hockey for the England XI in the year he left LGS, and still plays for them today. At the time of writing, he has played 180 games for England and Great Britain winning bronze medals in the Commonwealth Games of 2014 and 2018 and competing in the Rio Olympics in 2016. So there have been a few XIs and one XV.

Y is for Yeomanry Thursday 13 May 1915 fell around the middle of the Second Battle of Ypres which was fought from 22 April to 25 May for control of the tactically important high ground to the east and south of the Flemish town of Ypres in western Belgium. There were four engagements and the Battle of Frezenberg Ridge was the third of these which started on the 8 May and ended five days later.

The Leicestershire Yeomanry had landed in France in November 1914 and spent much of the severe winter engaged in digging parties and relief duties. At 5 pm on 12 May they were ordered to the front. Two hours later, they left their billets and dugouts on the western outskirts of Ypres and moved eastwards through the smouldering medieval town to the front line trenches on Frezenberg Ridge.

It was raining heavily and having crawled their way on hands and knees through the deep, clinging mud they were settled in by 1 a m. At 3.30 a m the German artillery launched an intense bombardment on the three mile front which continued to 6 a m when the Germans attempted to take the British trenches but were beaten back. A second, more violent bombardment began and eventually the Germans fought their way into the second forward trenches of the heavily outnumbered British.

The fighting, much of it hand to hand, raged for seven hours with no respite and for several hours the desperate and severely depleted Leicestershire Yeomanry was the only unit holding the line. At great cost, these brave men, 13 of whom were OLs, held on heroically and prevented the Germans from breaking through to Ypres.

At 2.30 p m the British artillery opened fire on the German lines and an hour later launched a counter-attack. The charge, led by the 10th Royal Hussars, ‘went forward with such a splendid dash that at the sight of them the gallant Leicestershire Yeomanry, reduced in numbers as they were, could not restrain themselves, but tumbled out and joined in the rush.’

Of the 281 men of the Leicestershire Yeomanry who went into battle, 93 were wounded and 94 had been killed with only 94 coming through unscathed. The 13 OLs serving in the Leicestershire Yeomanry that day fared slightly better than their comrades as a whole. Seven were unharmed, two were wounded but tragically four were killed, all of whom had been together in the School in 1904 and 1905.

Trooper Henry Grudgings Born 1892 LGS 1903-1906 He was one of seven children and whilst at school he played for the football 2nd XI and in House Cricket matches, leaving at the age of 14 to become an electrical engineer with Herbert Morris Ltd. He fought in both battles at Ypres.

Corporal Trumpeter William Kent Born 1890 LGS 1902-1905 A regular participant at Sports Day, he was successful in events such as the 100 yards and the Sack Race. He was one of seven OLs who attended the annual training camp of the Yeomanry in 1911...having a close shave when his horse reared and fell on top of him!

Trooper Leslie Moir Born 1894 LGS 1903-1909 He entered the Reading Competition twice, reading passages from Treasure Island and Kidnapped; was a bowler in the 1st XI but was best known for his shooting, winning the Donegal Medal for ‘Best Shot of the Year’ and taking part in a shooting exhibition at Speech Day scoring 6/7.

Corporal John Needham Born 1892 LGS 1904-1908 He was a prolific prizewinner winning Language, Maths and Form prizes in year IV and Wood and Metal Work Prize in year III. He was awarded an exhibition in year II, took part in the annual reading competition and played for the football 1st XI.

Henry, William and John are all buried in the Bedford House Cemetery just south of Ypres. Leslie’s remains were never found and he is commemorated on a panel of the Menin Gate. Those four, plus the ten other OLs who lost their lives in the Ypres Salient between 1915 and 1918, are also commemorated on a plaque in St George’s Memorial Church in the middle of Ypres.

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of the battle: ‘It was a most murderous affair, and they were only driven from their trenches when the trenches themselves were blasted to pieces. It is doubtful whether any regiments have endured so much in so short a time.

The Leicestershire Yeomanry suffered very severely.’

So did the School. On no other day have four former members been killed, making Thursday 13 May 1915 the ‘darkest day’ in its long history.

Z is for Zenobia In any A to Z the ‘problem’ letters are always X and Z. As you will have gathered, we rather cheated with X but here Z does not provide any problem at all.

William Frederick Charles was born in Wymeswold in 1859 and came from an old farming family. Thus when he joined the School in Easter 1872, he arrived on his beloved pony and was to do so for the next four years. On leaving LGS, he trained to become a chemist and perfumier under John Paget on Church Gate. Initially he set up in business himself as the Charnwood Pharmacy in the Market Place where he manufactured baking powder, bronchial jujubes and ‘liquid lustrine’ for cleaning military buckles before he turned his attention to the manufacture of scent.

He called this ‘Zenobia’ after the third century A.D. Queen of Palmyra, an area now located in modern Syria, and set up a shop in 1888 in Baxter Gate. As his perfumes gained in popularity, that became too small and in 1912 he took over a disused factory between Southfield Road and Woodgate, where the ‘Bee Hive’ car park is today, and returned to the Market Place to sell his perfumes.

The perfumes manufactured by the company were known as true flower perfumes, mimicking the scent of flowers such as lily of the valley, sweet pea blossom, violets, orange blossom and lilac dew. The bottles containing the perfume were as appealing as the scents themselves, being hand painted glass bottles, referred to in the company’s advertising literature as ‘Zen-Art’

William had a scientific mind and a limitless amount of patience which served him well in his research and during World War 1 he shifted his focus to producing affordable toiletries, of which his talcum powder was the most popular.

After the war, he realised that what you sold these bottles in was equally important and in 1933 he patented improvements to hinged-lid boxes and also patented improved display and delivery cabinets for his perfumes.

He wrote with authority on many subjects which were published in scientific journals. He devoted much of his leisure time to social work and was a councillor for 10 years, being Mayor of Loughborough for two terms, 1919-1921. He was outstanding as a photographer and for eleven years was president of the Loughborough Photographic Society. He was a fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society and, amongst his many other activities, was a member of the Leicester Pharmaceutical Society, a governor of Loughborough Hospital and a governor of his old School.

He died in Loughborough Hospital, directly opposite his first Zenobia Shop, on 3 March 1939. The company he left behind continued to trade successful, being run by his daughter until 1952 when it was sold to Genatosan, a subsidiary of Fisons.

Sadly, the perfume business declined and by the 1960s the factory had been demolished and was replaced with a car showroom.

It is entirely appropriate to finish with William. Covering 26 letters we have seen a whole variety of ways 100 of the School’s alumni made their mark on the world. Manufacturing perfume is probably the least expected of these.

Index

From the May 1902 Loughburian.

In my six years as archivist, I have tried to fill some of the ‘gaps’ left by the previous two histories of the School by Alfred White and Nigel Watson. The Houses and Residents of Burton Walks was first and that was followed by A History of Boarding. However, the most interesting booklet to research and write was Bell, Bricks and Basins – The story of LGS through the lives of three local families. This, along with some articles about Old Loughburians for Beyond the Barrier made me realise that the considerable achievements of so many Old Boys were not well documented and this publication looks to address that deficiency.

Further inspiration came from Val Bunn, the School’s magnificent librarian since February 1988, who then proceeded to do the considerable research on each of the Old Boys I have written about here. She has done about 95% of the work and it was her idea to come up with the rather ‘quirky’ titles which I hope will inspire you to ‘drop in’ to the book – it is not designed to be read cover to cover!

I am also grateful to Liv Smith who has proof-read and tried to correct my many English errors!

The vast majority of the Old Boys included were at the School in the Victorian era and I find what they all went on to achieve quite remarkable for what was, fundamentally, the small grammar school of a small market town in Leicestershire. I hope you are equally impressed.

John Weitzel LGS Archivist June 2022