OLD AZURIANS

An account of this sort must, of necessity, be in the nature of a catalogue of events rather than a connected narrative. A History of the School through twenty-five years would require far name space than can be given in this magazine.

 

I have attempted, therefore, to chronicle those events which, in my view, have contributed most to the growth and development of our community. For this reason emphasis is laid on the “first time." There are, too, references to activities of the Old Azurians' Association, since its life has inevitably been bound up with that of the School. Few names have been mentioned, because this is the story of a community rather than of individuals.

 

The story begins on January 15th, 1924. when seven masters and some 130 boys assembled in the quadrangle for prayers as the result of a test carried out a few days before, the boys were allotted to their Forms, and after a short address by the Headmaster, they went to their rooms, and the work of the School had begun. No time was lost in establishing the social side of the School, and by the end of the first term there existed two flourishing societies, a Literary and Debating Society and a Scientific and Photographic Society. In addition, owing to the generosity of a number of donors, the nucleus of a School Library was established.

 

As with work, so with sport: we played our first Rugby Football match on March 8th against a scratch Worthing team. In spite, or because of, the fact that two members of the Staff played we lost 26-6, but we learned a lot about Rugby Football.

 

Our first Sports Meeting was held on June 18th, and with this was combined the ceremonial opening of the School, by Lord Leconfield, the Lord Lieutenant of the County. On this occasion the School Song was first sung.

May 31st witnessed the first Staff  v. School cricket match. The School won 35-25! In May, also, we had our firstSchool outing, to the Wembley Exhibition.

 

By the third term, further Societies had been formed, the Musical and Dramatic, Art and Manual, Wireless, Chess and Gardening, and parentswere entertained to an Orchestral and Dramatic performance. During the year we were presented with two shields and seventeen cups to be competed for on Sports Day, and in the Swimming Gala, the latter taking place in July. The two Houses 'A' and 'B' into which the School was originally divided, had, by now been replaced by the present House system.

 

By the end of the year our numbers had grown and the Staff had increased to thirteen. Thus ended the first year in which thw foundation of the School had been laid, and the pace set for future years.

 

On the occasion of the second Sports Day in 1925, the Old Azurians Association was launched. This year saw, too, our first Speech Day, in the Connaught Hall, now the Ritz Ballroom. In the same Hall lie staged our first dramatic performance when Mr. Turner produced 'As You Like It'. It is interesting to note that we had an understudy for every one of the twenty-six main characters. We were already suffering from growing pains and a new Dining Room was built. The Library, by this time consisting of more than a thousand books, was now housed in this room.

 

The following year, 1926, an Art Room, Physics and Biology Labs. and Lecture Room were built. The latter we equipped with a cinema projector (silent), which we worked by hand until we were able to obtain an electric motor to do the job for us. This brought another Society„ the Cinema Club, into being.

 

Our playing space shrank as our class-room accommodation grew, but in spite of this we experimented with a second School game, Hockey, later abandoned because of the unsuitability of the ground. In March the first Inter-School Athletics Contest was held, against Colilyer's School. Horsham. This we won 9-2. 1927 is notable as the year of our first School Camp, organised by the late Headmaster, Mr. R G Martin, at Brightstone, Isle of Wight. This was the forerunner of a succession of such Camps at Clifton Hampden (three times), Tavistock, Ross on Wye, Fowey. Savernake, Lechlade (five times), Bradfield, Wanstead (twice). and a Forestry Camp in 1940.

 

In 1928, the long-awaited Assembly Hall materialized, and we set to work to equip the stage. Members of the Staff, assisted by Senior boys, put in a lighting panel, top and footlights, and built the proscenium. Up to this time the Dramatic Society had presented a number of one-act plays on a make-shift stage in the Dining Room.

 

In December of the following year (1929) we staged the first public performance in the new hall, when Staff and boys presented Bulldog Drummond. This encouraged the formation of an Old Boys' Dramatic Society, which, like the School Society, was content to produce one-act plays for the first year.

 

By 1930 a number of Old Boys had made their way to Universities and Colleges and this led to the opening of a Scholarship Endowment Fund in aid of which we held a Bazaar, a three-day effort, which realized £560. In December the O.A.'s Dramatic Society, aided by members of the Staff, staged its first full-length play, In the Next Room.

 

The Scholarship Endowment Fund reached its first £1,000 and had made a substantial start towards the second £1,000 by the Summer of 1932.

 

Changes had occurred in our Sports arrangements by this time, Soccer replacing Hockey, and a series of triangular Athletics Contests started. Soccer was abandoned the following year, and more time was devoted to Athletic training. This year the Old Boys' Cricket Club was founded, and very soon established a reputation equal to that of their Rugby Club.

 

In the meantime the academic life of the School had been marked by growing successes in School Certificates and Higher Certificates, and in 1935 we recorded, with pride, our first State Scholarship. This was the beginning of a series of such successes, our Honours board now showing 37 Open and State Scholarships, in Science, History, Medicine, Arts and Geography, at Oxford, Cambridge, London, Southampton and Leicester.

 

In the local celebrations on the occasion of the Jubilee of King George V, we entered a colourful tableau.

 

In August of this year the Dramatic Society enhanced its already con­siderable reputation by touring Germany with a performance of Twelfth Night with members of the Staff, School and Old Boys in the cast. They visited Kiel, Lubeck, Hanover, Oldenburg and Bremen, being enthusiastically received everywhere.

 

This was followed in 1936 by a visit to Worthing of a number it German boys from Soest who lived for a while with pupils of our School.

 

1937 saw us stage yet another tableau, this time in the Coronation procession.

 

In 1938 the war clouds were gathering quickly, and this was the beginning of those years which were to make such an impression on the life of the School. We attempted to organise an Air Defence Cadet Force, but without success. The Staff were occupied in training for A.R.P. duties and First Aid and a number of Senior boys spent a good deal of time in helping to assemble and fit gas masks.

 

After Munich, the early part of 1939 saw the School functioning fairly normally until the Summer holidays, when the Staff were recalled to handle the colossal task of housing evacuees. The new term started with the country at war, and the pupils and Staff of Battersea Grammar School sharing our buildings with us. This was only made possible by the goodwill and co-operation of the pupils and Staffs of the two Schools, and we were reduced to working in shifts.

 

Soon our playing space was further reduced as deep shelters were constructed (and how we hated the sight of these before we were finished with them) and the authorities saw fit to plant a searchlight in the middle of our cricket pitch. Our games periods now necessitated a trek out to the Worthing Rugby field at West Worthing.

 

The Summer holiday of 1940 was our strangest on record the School was kept open! Staff and boys engaged in such activities as helping to build defence works, digging allotments, making splints, treating the School windows to make them (theoretically) splinter-proof, and A and B divisions doing Cadet drill. The last fortnight of the - holidays" was actually occupied with lessons.

 

The fall of France in 1940 had changed the picture; Battersea School left us for a 'safer' arca, and soon after we became evacuees ourselves, except for some 100 or so boys who elected to stay here. This necessitated the administration of the School in two areas, Newark under Mr. Martin, and Worthing under Mr. Turner. A touch of irony was introduced by the fact that we received at the same time our notice of evacuation and our official permission to form an A.T.C., with Mr. Turner as C.O., for which we had striven so long. By this time war had taken its toll of our Old Boys and friends, but we were proud to record the first decoration, a D.F.C., the fore­runner of a long list of such honours. September of the same year saw the main school back in Worthing and by the end of the term the last of us had said good-hye to Nottinghamshire. The threads of life here were taken up again, but our enemies did their best to upset the even tenor of our way and we spent so many hours in the shelters that we were finally reduced to continuing lessons below ground.

 

In 1942 the A.C.F. was formed with the Headmaster (Mr. Martin) as Commanding Officer. The presence of the two Corps led to the erection, in the following year, of the Rifle Range, built with funds raised by the School. which encouraged the formation of the Small-bore Rifle Club.

 

In 1944 a new factor in the life of the School appeared, when the Parent-Teacher's Association was formed. In this year, too, we admitted the first son of an Old Boy.

 

In 1945 came V.E. Day and V.J. Day- and the end of hostilities. We set about trying to restore much of what had been lost to us for six years. The Dramatic Society was revived and gave its first post-war performance the following year. Many Societies which had lapsed came into being again so that in addition to those started in the first year we have had at some time or other such Societies as Natural History, Model Aircraft, Model Theatre, Nautical, Philatelic, Stagecraft, Astronomical, Arts' Appreciation, Gramophone and Table Tennis. This year was marked by the election of an Old Boy to the Town Council. Our one disappointment was that we were compelled, very reluctantly, to disband the A.T.C.

 

1946 saw another post-war revival in the School Camp at Lechlade, a favourite spot of ours.

 

In this year an Old Boy, Mr. E. C. Newman, was appointed to the Staff ; since then two other Old Boys, Mr. J. F. Gravett and Mr. J. A. McLeod, have joined him in the Common Room.

 

October, 1947, severed a link with the foundation of the School when we mourned the death of our Headmaster, Mr. R. G. Martin. This was followed by a period of uncertainty until Mr. Turner was appointed to fill the vacant place in 1948, thus assuring the continuation of the traditions which had been built up in the past.

 

So we reach 1949, our Jubilee year, and take stock of our first quarter of a century.

 

Much has been attempted, much accomplished, by the efforts and self-sacrifice of Staff, pupils and Old Boys. Those of us who were privileged to be in at the start remember those first years of hard work, of frustrations, of improvisations, and finally triumphs, and feel that it has been well worth it.

 

J. JOHNSON