The heron Jan 2015

The

Heron The Newsletter of Loughborough Grammar School Edition 11 January 2015

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January 2015

The Big Apple During the Autumn half term, GCSE, AS and A2 Art students stayed in Manhattan for an artistic tour of New York. They viewed the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art. Familiar exhibits produced by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Edward Hopper were enjoyed, as well as the Matisse Cutouts exhibition.

The boys also found time for some sightseeing, including a visit to the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Centre, Grand Central Station, the State of Liberty and the 9/11 Memorial, plus a little retail therapy.

Out & A En vacances

Twenty eight boys from Years 10 to 13 escaped the English wet weather over the half term break, to spend an exceptionally warm and sunny week in Montpellier in the south of France, where they stayed with families as part of a homestay trip. The week’s programme included morning lessons by specialists in teaching French as a foreign language. The afternoons saw boys enjoying the delights of the city, with a guided tour, trip to the beach, bowling, and of course lots of shopping and sampling of French cuisine! In addition to an afternoon excursion to the ancient city of Nimes, students also attended an evening handball match, where they cheered on the home team and national champions Montpellier: who won!

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& About

January 2015

OK the Nou Over the Christmas break, the LGS 1st XI Football squad experienced their first pre-season training tour which took place in Barcelona between the 30th of December and the 4th January. Famed for its footballing prowess, and in the shadow of FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou, Spain’s second city was the setting for a week of intensive football drills and coaching from LGS Football Staff and extended sessions with a Real Federación Española de Fútbol (RFEF) elite coach. Time was also taken to visit the Camp Nou, Las Ramblas and La Sagrada Família in the centre of Barcelona which allowed the boys to enjoy some of the cultural offerings of the Catalan capital. At the end of the six-day tour, two fixtures were played against local youth club teams in the city: one win, one loss.

Strings attached Twenty boys visited Munich and Salzburg just before Christmas, accompanied by Mrs Coles and Mr Kerr. The trip was a cultural feast with visits which included the beautiful palace of Neuschwanstein, Salzburg cathedral and fortress, two modern art galleries and a performance of Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel at the celebrated Salzburg Puppet Theatre.

There was a lovely festive atmosphere in the cities and the boys thoroughly enjoyed their time spent in the vibrant and colourful Christmas markets. The highlight for some was definitely the visit to the Allianz Arena and it is suspected that the profits of the Bayern München Megastore rose rapidly after the visit of the LGS boys!

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January 2015

Good Morning, Vietnam

For the second time, the first being in 2007, Vietnam was the destination for the LGS Expedition Group during the autumn half term. The group clearly made the most of the twelve day excursion: they enjoyed the sights, sounds and tastes (and smells, no doubt) of the country’s major cities and embarked on a trek through the countryside before ending their excursion at the fabulous Ha Long Bay.

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January 2015

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January 2015

Aspects of War “Over by Christmas”, performed by Drama students from the Grammar School and the High School, was an astonishingly powerful event which was received, until the very end, in stunned silence by the audience as aspects of war exploded in the Drama Studio.

Presented on a stage set which resembled “The Menin Road” by Paul Nash, the devised performances and extracts from plays ranging from the 5th century BC to the present day examined, with excoriating detail and forensic precision, all aspects of war, from the Great War to Afghanistan and Iraq and from children’s perspectives to the use of social media and computergenerated gaming in promoting the concept of war as a glorious and heroic event.

The evening was a tour de force. The consummate and uniformly excellent acting; the startling and emotionally riveting choreography; the atmospheric and superbly controlled lighting; the apposite and sometimes unexpectedly moving music; the stunning insightfulness and incision of the thoughts which inspired the devised performances; and, above all, the threads which held them together, combined to present a devastating critique of what war really means while at the same time paying homage to those who paid the ultimate price with body or mind in the service of their country or ideals.

The sustained applause at the end was like that at the conclusion of a brilliantly-rendered symphony: a release of pent-up emotion and appreciation for what will live long in the memory of those who experienced it and those who took part.

Fallen Com

This edition of the Heron pays tribute to O “Great War”. In all, 58 of our former colleag to end all wars”, a very significant number School had far fewer than 100 boys at the t

The images on these two pages show the v autumn term of 2014.

The Da rkes On 13 May 2015 four Old Loughburians lost their lives fighting in the same trench during the Second Battle of Ypres: Corporal J. C. Needham, Lance Corporal W. F. Kent, Private H. A. Grudgings and Private L. J. Moir, all of the Leicestershire Yeomanry.

Over the last weekend in November, Messrs Alan Dossett and David Evans went on fact-finding tour to identify the precise location of the places of rest of three of these men: sadly the remains of Private Moir were not found and he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial along with some

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January 2015

Comrades

tribute to OLs who gave their lives in the rmer colleagues lost their lives in that “war ant number when one remembers that the oys at the time.

show the variety of events held during the

e Da rkest Day 57000 other souls. They also visited St George’s Memorial Church where we have recently placed a commemorative plaque to all those who fought in the Ypres Salient between 1914 and 1918. The information gathered will he used in next year’s School Planner.

Made in The Great War When Sam Sweeney (OL and multi-instrumentalist with bands such as Bellowhead, The Remnant Kings and The Full English) walked onto the stage in the Drama Studio at 7 o’clock on Wednesday 17th September he was greeted by a slightly awkward silence.

“You weren’t sure whether to applaud,” he observed wryly. By the end of his bravura performance of “Made in the Great War”, the story of his violin – the pieces of which were made in 1915 and finally assembled in 2008 – the audience were definitely sure they had to . . . and applaud they did; oh goodness, yes! Unforgettably so.

Sam’s show told the remarkable tale of a violin bought by him in Oxford in 2008 which looked like a new instrument but which was actually made by Roger Claridge from parts prepared in 1915 by a luthier and music hall performer from Leeds called Richard Spencer Howard. Howard, conscripted in 1915 at the age of 35 and killed two years later during the battle of Messines Ridge, had put a label in the body of the violin which read simply: “Made in the Great War”. The combined genius of Sam, storyteller Hugh Lupton and stage designer Emma Thompson meant that the story of that violin was made memorable, too.

During the visit, Mr Alan Dossett laid a wreath at the nightly ceremony at the Menin Gate in honour of all our dead.

We will remember them

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January 2015

The Compliments of the Day Superbly led by Drum Major Edward Brown and under the appreciative gaze of a record number of bystanders, the Corps of Drums and 250 CCF Cadets turned out in fine style on Sunday 9 November for the Annual Remembrance Day Service in Loughborough’s Queen’s Park, forming the largest single unit on parade and marching magnificently to and from the centre of Loughborough along the A6. The RAF Section is seen here paying compliments to the Garden of Remembrance in Queen’s Park after the Service.

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January 2015

LGS Remembers In this very special year LGS held a very special service of remembrance.

The whole school assembled in The Quadrangle to honour all who gave their lives in the two World Wars and all other conflicts and, in this centenary year, the 58 Old Loughburians who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Great War. Fittingly, as the two-minute silence ended, the bells of the Tower clock rang out at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, bells which were presented by former headmaster Bingham Dixon Turner in honour of his son, Roger, who was tragically killed in Palestine in 1917.

The youngest boy in the School, Muhammad Naeem, laid a wreath at the war memorial in the Orangery, whilst Head of School, Henry Throp, did likewise in the Hodson Hall.

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January 2015

Grease meets Shakespeare At the end of November, the Curve Theatre Studio was the venue for the annual Shakespeare for Schools Festival and this year the Loughborough Endowed Schools Drama Department put on a quite remarkable performance of The Taming of the Shrew If members of the audience were expecting a traditional interpretation of this well-loved classic, they were in for a surprise. Gone were customary costumes of the late 16th century and in their place the boys donned the Thunderbird leathers and the girls the dazzling Pink Lady jackets and polka dot skirts we all remember from Grease.

Sights & S

It’s there in lights

For the 793rd time the Loughborough Fair came to town and, as always, the LES Music School Fanfare Trumpeters were on hand to give it a rousing send off. They first welcomed the mayoral party as they left the Town Hall and then, from the steps of one of the rides, played the official opening fanfare and the National Anthem.

As always their playing was immaculate and even the showmen on the Waltzer seemed to appreciate it.

Moore and more On a very cold, frosty and misty morning in November the Year 9 artists set off to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and braved the outdoors for four hours photographing and drawing some of the most famous sculptures in Europe, observing some of the traditional Henry Moore bronzes plus more contemporary pieces by Tracy Emin and Marc Quinn.

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& Sounds

Ribbon development with a swing

On Monday 3rd November, in the presence of the Secretary of State for Transport, and the Secretary of State for Education, the Swing Band entertained the assembled members of the public who witnessed the official opening of the Inner Relief Road. Directed

by Chris Groom, the band were in fine form and warmly applauded for the quality of their musical contribution to the event which took place in the recently completed pedestrian area of the Market Place and old A6.

January 2015

Sauce for the Goose This year’s Year 7 Pantomime was Mother Goose ‌ oh yes it was! As usual, egged on by the audience, the boys threw themselves into it wholeheartedly and produced a colourful, hugely entertaining mixture of music and laughter, the more observant in the audience actually spotting the new joke!

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January 2015

We will remember them For some years now the Grammar School Tower has been floodlit at night but, arguably, it has never looked more spectacular than it did in early November. As part of the School’s on-going commemoration of the Great War, and in particular tribute to the OLs who perished in that terrible conflict, our iconic landmark was appropriately floodlit in concert with the County’s initiative to “Light Up Your Building in Red”.

Loughborough Grammar School admin@lesgrammar.org Tel: 01509 233233 www.lesgrammar.org ©2015 No unauthorised use or duplication of images or editorial content. Loughborough Endowed Schools is a Company Limited by Guarantee, Number 4038033 and is Registered in England & Wales. It is a Registered Charity, number 1081765.

The Registered Office is 3 Burton Walks, Loughborough, Leics. LE11 2DU.

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