The Old Peterite Club Committee

All Old Peterites are members of the ‘Old Peterite Club’.

The Club is run by a committee which consists of Old Peterites, the Head Master and the School’s Development & Alumni Manager, who acts as the Secretary to the Club. The Club holds three meetings a year, and it works with the School to support and advise on the annual programme of OP events and activities. Committee members also volunteer at events such as OP Day.

Harry Gration Old Peterite President 20202022 (1969)

Ellie Binks (2011) Graham Todd (1964)

Victoria Bradley-Inness (1990) Peter Emsley (1964)

Susanna Dale-Simmonds (2000)

Anthony Dixon (1981) Mark Hepworth (1971) Robert Hudson (1974)

Bill Hudson (1964) Peter Netherwood (1957) Linden Richardson (1964)

The Committee would like to publicly express its thanks to Committee Members Mike Jobling (1966) and Anthony Robinson (1973) for the time and commitment they have shown the OP Club Committee over the years. They are both stepping down from their roles, after both having made significant contributions to the Club. Both Mike and Anthony will continue to support the School and Club, Mike will continue to organise events in Newcastle and Anthony is continuing his role as a volunteer supporting the Archive Department.

It is wonderful that we’ve started to make some inroads into a return to normality and the start to 2021 at School, the return of our annual OP Day really showed that. It was great to see people back at the School and to be able to give the Class of 2020 and 2021 a proper welcome to the Old Peterite Community, with the addition of the Celebration Dinner in the evening in September 2021.

It makes such a difference to have events filling the diary and to see so many Old Peterites in person again. We had a great time in London at the drinks and it’s lovely to finally be planning even more events for 2022 and beyond! Especially after an unexpectedly quiet start to my time as OP President! Our regular Committee meetings have been filled with great discussions, as we are keen to make sure that we do all we can to bring together the Old Peterite Community. Please get in touch if you’ve got ideas you want to share or things you want to see!

I want to commend the School on how well they have handled the challenges over the last couple of years- and still come away with wonderful achievements such as The TES awards- as Old Peterites and the parent of Old Peterites – I am very proud.

I look forward to meeting you at an OP event in the near future, ‘Once a Peterite, always a Peterite’.

Harry Gration Old Peterite President 2020-2022

Comments and suggestions from the OP Community are always welcome. You can contact any member of the Committee by contacting the OP Club Secretary, Philippa Dunford-Jeffs who will forward your enquiry: p.dunfordjeffs@stpetersyork.org.uk

It is now just over a year since I first got involved in the OP Committee and the time has flown by. In the ten years since I left the school (again that has gone quickly too - not sure how a decade has come and gone so swiftly!) I’ve been back a few times; for a careers event, an OP vs current Peterite debate and the Rise Centenary celebration in 2018. Just a guess, but I imagine most people average a similar number of visits in the decade since they left, but probably through OP days.

I’ve always enjoyed reading the Cross-Keys magazine (even more so now it’s available online so I’m not just reading it when I visit my parents because I haven’t kept my address information up to date...) but other than that I hadn’t been involved in the OP Club. Flash forward to deepest darkest Tier 4 Lockdown in London in the December of 2020, and the suggestion that I might want to get involved more formally than the odd event came when I had time to properly consider it.

Ironically, I haven’t been back to St Peter’s since joining the OP Committee as the group has entirely embraced hybrid meetings. This is great for me – I live and work in London and my journeys up to Yorkshire tend to be focused on family events, hen dos and weddings. One of the first OP Club events I joined as a Committee member was the online gin tasting with York Gin. It was a great evening and I really enjoyed the fact that it was a total mix of year groups who joined the event (and of course the excellent quantity of gin provided). The ‘In Conversation with...’ series is a great idea – the OP Club has run these events for a while, but the virtual one held with the women who made up the first intake of girls was the first one I joined.

I’m really enjoying being part of the Committee and shaping OP Club plans for the next couple of years – the school has some exciting anniversaries coming up and it’ll be great to be part of the celebrations in some way. As much as I’ve enjoyed the virtual events, and I’m so grateful to have been welcomed by the long-standing Committee so warmly, the thing that has really shown me the value in being part of the OP Club was the first in person OP event I attended. This was the London OP Drinks held last October in Marylebone.

I went along with an OP friend that I am very much still in touch with and we both had a great time meeting OPs who had left the school a few years before us, or in some cases, decades before us and reconnecting with people that we hadn’t seen since Sixth Form. The energy in the room was great and although this will sound very schmaltzy there is something special about shared connections and memories. Of course, it is always interesting to find out what people are up to now– sometimes it is exactly what you would have imagined someone would grow up to be when you were queuing up for lunch in the Monkey Cage ten or so years ago or on a coach journey enroute to a regatta somewhere, others are completely different. Either way though, reconnecting and catching up is lovely.

Whether you’ve been back to St Peter’s ten times or never since you left, and no matter where in the world you’re based, I’d really recommend staying in touch. Fellow Committee members and I are actively trying to make the Committee as diverse and representative of the OP Club as possible and we’re keen to develop the events offered throughout the year. If I am totally honest, I don’t think 18 year old me left the school thinking that the OP Club was for me (or at least that it wouldn’t be for quite a few years), but things are changing and I hope that as the next generations of OPs walk out of the big doors of the Minster at the end of Commem, they start to feel that there is something in the OP Club for them. Being involved in the OP Club doesn’t have to mean being on the Committee (although if you want to, there will be opportunities later this year), it can just be coming along to some of our events (in person or virtual - we’re planning on keeping both and making them as easy to attend as possible). We’re always keen to hear your suggestions for events and things you would like to see in Cross-Keys, so do let us know your thoughts.

Ellie Binks (Rise, 2011)