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THE CLOCK TOWER AND THE WEATHER VANE
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BORROWDALE CAMP
The clock tower and weather vane date to 1931 and the new school buildings in Rusholme. It has often been noted that because the buildings were completed during a time of financial austerity, they are somewhat severe and lacking in ornamentation. However, the exception must be the tower and weather vane situated directly above the main quad.
Borrowdale was not the first MGS camp, that honour going to the Alderley Camp at Whitsuntide in 1904, nor was it even the first MGS camp in the Lake District, as in the summer of 1904 MGS boys were already camping near Grasmere in the Easedale valley. By the 1920s the search for ever more mountainous terrain led to camps being held first in Snowdonia then the Lake District. However, it was not until 1931 that J.L. Latimer and H.A. Field first brought MGS to the Stonethwaite site in the field at the foot of Bull Crag, and the name ‘Borrowdale Camp’ was thereafter used in Ulula to speak of these mountaineering camps even after they relocated to Snowdonia or Langdale. In 1940, wartime and the threat of invasion put a sudden end to camping when Borrowdalers were summoned back to Manchester after only three days. Fortunately, the camp was re-established in 1946 and has existed in Borrowdale ever since, though with a couple of moves, firstly in 2003 down the lane to the Chapel Farm campsite, and then in 2007, when all camps were relocated to Activities Week in late June, to Stuart Bland’s field beside the Dinah Hoggus Camping Barn in Rosthwaite.
The weather vane depicts a teacher clad in gown and mortar board chasing a school boy with a cane. The vane and tower seem to have had an impact on generations of MGS boys.
A boy’s reminiscences of entrance examination day in 1970 mention: The large and somewhat menacing shadow of the clock tower in the quad reminded me slightly of a bat swooping in for the kill The bell and turret cost £130 and were paid for by the Old Mancunians Association. The clock itself was the gift of Owen Cox, who served as school Receiver (a forerunner of our modern Bursar) for 46 years from 1888 to 1934. He oversaw the moved from Long Millgate to Old Hall Lane. Not only did he give the clock, but he also provided money to create a dedicated fund to provide for its upkeep and maintenance. He also donated the cloister water fountain which is no longer in existence. His son Claude attended the school between 1905 and 1908 and then emigrated to Canada. He died of wounds sustained at Etaples in 1917 and is commemorated on the school memorial boards. Owen Cox himself died in 1945. Rachel Kneale
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The image of Borrowdale as a tough, fell-walking camp for those of a hardier disposition dates right back to those early years and the saying, attributed to Field, that ‘only boys willing to eat little and live rough need apply’. Certainly, my own memories of Borrowdale in the 1960s, when we sweated up Dale Head from Honister Pass or scrambled up Scafell from the Mickledore Buttress, suggest