CCCS looks to the future
We were visited today by Mr Semmence who is the Headmaster of Repton School in Derbyshire. Repton was founded in 1573 by a local landowner and knight Sir John Port who had been given the old monastery in Repton following its dissolution by Henry VIII. He had no children of his own so he founded a grammar school which would have the use of the buildings. It is still those buildings which form the core of the School which Mr Semmence runs today. Mr Semmance started by telling us the extraordinary story of what happened when the school decided to start building a new Sixth Form centre. Digging began but no sooner was it underway than construction was halted by a grizzly discovery – a corpse. The telephone call was made to the police who were round in an instant, blue lights flashing! Experts from Humberside Constabulary were called and it was quickly established that the body was not a recent one, but most likely that of a monk from the former monastery. A Roman Catholic priest has been asked to rebury the monk near where the high altar of the monastery church would have been. These are some of the hazards of having an institution based on one of the most ancient sites in England.
I thought this was a rather touching reminder that the past and the future often exist very closely together; Repton is building for the future – a new Sixth Form social centre and café. Elsewhere, close by, Repton is about to construct a Real Tennis Court – this will make it only the fourth school in the country to have such a court – and given that we are one of the only prep schools in the country where Real Tennis is an option, this may be of interest. Indeed it’s wonderful to have heard one of our boys describing lawn tennis as “False tennis!” (as opposed to the real thing which is played at CCCS!) At any rate, Repton’s building for the future brings them into contact with the past in the form of the body of the monk. Mr Semmance quoted Henry Chadwick, a famous and illustrious former Dean of Christ Church, who said once, in the Cathedral, that in order to understand the future one had to understand the past. Historic institutions which look towards the future, seem to me to be in a very strong position – we are very fortunate that our School is in precisely this position and I am delighted that so many of our boys have such an interest in history. One of the greatest dangers today is summed up by the chilling words from George Orwell’s 1984:"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. " One weapon we have against the manipulation of the truth in this way is to have a good knowledge of the past – I am certain that this is of great importance and in this school, therefore, we take history very seriously.
The senior school test season is underway and many boys, particularly in Form 6, will be busy over the next month. We heard back from Abingdon this week that all of the boys who have applied there this year have been given interviews and that their performances were very good. They have received a great deal of teaching for the test from Mrs Fairhurst. Their interviews will be next week so they have all had a mock interview with me. One of our most important roles as a Prep School is to help people prepare for senior schools. We help parents to choose a school for their children, we help prepare the pupils for entrance tests and interviews and, most importantly, we prepare them to thrive at the senior school in which they have obtained a place. With this in mind, we are hosting a Future Schools Event next Thursday and have a number of wonderful schools joining us for the afternoon. I strongly recommend that you join us so you can learn more about them and see if they may be a good fit for your son.
I am delighted that to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Cardinal College we have decided to expand the chorister fireworks display to the whole school. May I thoroughly recommend this event. The fireworks have been chosen by Mr Robson himself who, with the help of a former parent, Mr Branderhorst, will ignite them. Not only have the resultant displays always been hugely exciting but witnessing the glee with which Mr Robson goes about the business of creating explosions is a display in itself. Indeed Mr Robson has told me that he has “refined his technique”, something which seems to involve coordination of watches and other such important details. Over the years we have had some truly memorable experiences – I remember a moon-lit night when the Cathedral became completely shrouded in smoke - fortunately Mr Robson has always returned from the depths of the post-apocalyptic, fog-filled confusion that he has created with a jaunty sense of accomplishment. I very much hope that this will be the case this year too. Do join us if you possibly can.
We had a governors’ meeting last night in the William Walton Hall. We are very fortunate in the quality of our governors - Deans, former and serving heads, bursars of major schools, canon professors, chief executives of major companies, authors – a remarkable collection of talent. As we were gathering, one of our younger pupils appeared at the door. He took one look at this eminent assembly and asked: “What’s going on here?” I wanted to take the opportunity to thank our governors for everything they do in their own time for the benefit of our school and to say that without all this “going on” we wouldn’t be the school that we are. We owe the governors a great deal!
