ONA Now and Then

Major building/development programme

Above: Impression of new landmark entrance, reception and offices on Eskdale Terrace Right: Phase 2, library, care centre, IT hub, additional teaching space etc.

I am delighted to announce a major programme of building and development. We have started work on a £10 million project that, with a mixture of conversion, extension and new build, will represent the major first phase in what is being termed Project XL, a development to take the RGS forward to the year 2040 with outstanding facilities matched by few independent day schools.

This plan demonstrates both our current strength and our total confidence in the future of the RGS. Places at the school have never been in such demand since we became independent in the 1970s. Our stock is high, and our reputation as the premier school in the entire North East goes before us: we are proving all the time that boys and girls who are happy, well cared for and appropriately challenged succeed – and do so at the highest levels. At the start of April work began on three pieces of extension/ refurbishment:

1.Creation of new offices and an entirely new reception area at the front of the school’s 1906 main building. 2.Extension to the RGS Junior School’s Lambton House in response to enormous (and still increasing) demand for places. 3.Extension to the school’s kitchens. We are now serving 1,400 meals a day!

In July, work will begin on a major new sports facility between the school’s existing sports hall and all-weather pitch. This will be a very significant building comprising:

• New six-lane 25-metre swimming-pool • A second sports hall above • New fitness suite • Weights room • Aerobic dance studio • A new suite of sports offices and administration • Changing-rooms to accommodate all the school’s foreseeable sporting needs. It doesn’t stop there! As a future Phase 2, we have planning permission to create a major new building on the corner of Eskdale Terrace and Lambton Road making significantly better use of the space available by demolishing the current 1930s-built swimming pool and changingrooms, now getting tired. The new building will include an exciting state-of-the-art library, new lecture room, seminar rooms, IT hub and care centre encompassing pastoral and medical services for students – plus additional teaching space (including laboratories, effectively extending the Science and Technology Centre).

The school’s governing body is embarking on this ambitious project with great confidence, under the chairmanship of Mr Paul Walker. The Governors base their commitment to the project, some two years in preparation, on the assurance of demand for places at the school and student numbers remaining buoyant.

So that’s it! Exciting times beckon. There will be some inconvenience but not, we believe, of sufficient degree to call it disruption. We work around the process of building, carrying on largely as normal and exercising a modicum of patience as we picture the enormous improvements that are coming.

Bernard Trafford

Headmaster

ONA Now and Then

The final chapter! End of an era as Plender Library closed

Lord and Lady Plender, RGS Prizegiving circa. 1929.

Generations of ONs will hear the news of the demise of the Plender Library with nostalgia. A new reception area, as described by the Headmaster on the opposite page, is under construction which includes the area which has served as Library, Classroom, Private Study area, Debating Chamber, Meeting Room for Governors and countless School Societies, ‘Prison’ (detention), and so on. William Plender (1861-1946), later Baron Plender of Sundridge rose to senior partner in the accountancy firm Delloite, Plender, Griffiths & Co., and served as an adviser to the Government across a vast range of matters. Although he only attended the school for one year from 1875-76 and made his career far from Tyneside, living in Kent, in 1931, as part of major alterations and extensions, he generously provided fine oak bookcases, furniture and panelling to furnish a library in what had formerly been the Art Room. He died at the age of 84 in 1946, his name, perpetuated not only in the Library’s name, but also in the History Prize and leaving Exhibition he endowed to the school.

The oak bookcases have recently been carefully dismantled; all parts numbered, and are currently stored in a container. The plan is to re-assemble one run of bookcases in the new English office which was the former end classroom in the NE corner of the Hall. Another will be utilised in the new English classroom (currently the English Office above the Staff Common Room). The plaque commemorating Lord Plender’s generosity has been kept and there is a plan to call the new classroom ‘the Plender Room’ to keep alive the tradition.

Former staff member William Macro chatting to Peter Taylor (38-49) in the Plender Library at the unveiling of Lord Taylor’s portrait in the School Hall, 1994.

Generations of RGS students will remember using the Plender Library for a huge number of activities. To name a few, almost all Old Novocastrians’ Association meetings and AGMs have been held here. The XXI Club (Drama) would hold readings at its tables and countless debates have been hotly contested within its walls. A poster from December 1961 advertises a topical and controversial contest (then as well as now?): ‘This House Opposes the Immigration Bill. Proposed by JH Beecham (53-62) & PJ Coats (59-62). Opposed by CJ Dewey (56-63) & IR Gardhouse (54-64)’. The Bridge Club, Christian Union, Photographic Society and Stamp Club were just a few of the myriad of extra curricular societies which met in this memorable space.

Although Lord Plender’s endowments were less spectacular than those of Sir Arthur Sutherland, his career and home were in the South of England which made them all the more significant. ONs will be grateful that the school has decided to perpetuate his name.

By David Goldwater (51-62)

The Plender Library, 1959.