Commemoration of the First World War

The cataloguing of the Archive is moving on well and, by the time you read this, I will be confronting our mountain of photographs, which need sorting and recording. I very much look forward to this and just hope that I do not get sidetracked too often, for too long. One of my favourite photographs is of the College Cricket XI in 1862, which gives an idea of how College sport evolved.

At this stage there was no school organisation for sport, but masters and pupils joined in together to create the Cricket Club, led at this stage by Mr. Jefferys, in the centre. The original photograph is still owned by Mr. Jefferys' family, and this copy was made in the early days, when I snapped the original using a 35mm camera. How things have improved in this digital age!

I was reminded of this today when a proof copy of a pamphlet on W.W. Robinson arrived. Robinson is sitting to the right. The pamphlet tells of how Robinson introduced cricket to Aukland, New Zealand. I recommend it for an interesting read about the beginnings of colonial society. Order it from rowan.gibbs@paradise.net.nz

Every spare moment has lately been used up on our First World War Old Epsomians. the commemoration is approaching, and one of the ways the Archive will mark this is by starting a long-term project to research our boys and their achievements. We have about 955 Old Epsomians known to have served, of whom 155 died in the War. this was from at school of 276 in September 1914. Therefore we particularly have something to remember and to research. Very often we do know the bare details of O.E.s' careers in the forces, but we need to know more - the achievements and the stories behind the bare records are our real targets. I hope to keep up-to-date the list on the website at:  http://archive.epsomcollege.org.uk/First_World_War/Known%20to%20have%20served.pdf

Do have a look and register your interest in helping the research by E-mailing me. I do know that many of our Old Epsomians were doctors, but many were not - we have traced sailors, airmen, those in the ranks and senior officers. Anyone can join in, given the ubiquity of internet resources nowadays, but just be careful to record your sources of information! I will keep this blog up-to-date with the important discoveries, as they arise.

Progress in the Archive

Since my last post here, there has been much discussion of what we really need an archive for, and how this relates to what the College is prepared to pay. Even I have to admit that the prime purpose of Epsom College is teaching pupils, and that an Archive comes far down the list of priorities. However, more and more school are creating archives, manned professionally at the larger schools, and there must be some point in this.
In my view the question divides into two points of focus - how an archive benefits the pupils and how it benefits the school administration.
An archive benefits the pupils by promoting an understanding of the history of the school and the achievements of ex-pupils. This helps them value their surroundings and the tradition of the school, gaining an understanding of the privilege that they enjoy as a member of it and the values it seeks to imbue in them. A good school sees social values as an important part of its education, though these are very difficult to address directly. An understanding of the tradition of excellence, personally, academically and socially is a real requirement for future happiness and success. The Archive at Epsom supports this through providing knowledge in its support, whether it be of the meanings of windows in Chapel or the experiences of previous generations. Examples are not far to seek, whether in the careers and achievements of O.E. doctors or in the values shown by Brigadier Glyn Hughes in the direct responsibility he took for the welfare of the Jewish prisoners during the relief of the Bergen-Belsen 'horror camp'. It was our privilege to support the writing of the 150th Anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall showing exactly these values.
Institutionally the Archive is very important, and seeks to be more so. Old Epsomians and members of the public send enquiries from week to week about family history, all of which need to be answered and all of which take time to research. Members of Common Room are not born with a knowledge of the history of the College, so that maintaining a knowledge of the background of their working lives is important. What is the history of Granville House? Why is this picture important? Should this part of the College be changed? Are these pictures insured? This all takes time and is very worth while. College publications benefit from the perspective permitted through our thousands of photographs. We are a repository for things the College does not want in the way, but does not feel able to destroy. College records need to be organised and sifted, being destroyed at particular intervals to comply with data protection laws.Old Epsomians like to feel that they are remembered though, unaided by an archive, schools forget the past remarkably fast as pupils and staff change, so memories tend to be very short. Reputations rise and fall according to how they are remembered, so the Archive tends to hold a privileged place. To be the guardian of continuity is an important institutional role. As the need to raise money is always rather apparent, the Archive services the departments involved, providing the necessary background for relations with O.E.s. After all, the need to appeal for money from subscribers pre-dates the opening of the College itself.
So, for the last few months I have been submersed in the creation of an archive catalogue to improve access to those departments most directly involved. I am sure that this will be very valuable, even at the present stage, but in fact it is just the beginning of the cataloguing of the Archive as a whole, which will continue as a main aim indefinitely, improving access for all users. Benefits flowing from this will soon become evident on the Archive website and elsewhere in the life of the College.

Back to Work!

At last I am back to work as Archivist, my contract having been renewed for another year. Meanwhile the Archive has acquired mounds of new materials, and much else needs to be re-filed. I will be spending today on housekeeping and getting up-to-date with my post, my next visit being on Friday, when I will start on the new catalogue.
I am particularly pleased to see that our website has logged up nearly a thousand hits since March. This represents a thousand visits, rather than page views. It is really earning its keep. Do remember to support it with new material.
The focus of work over the next year is to re-create our catalogue on the In-Touch database system, which will allow the sharing of information with other departments and the linking of materials with particular names, places and issues. This will allow much better access to our resources, becoming less reliant on memory and more on IT, allowing the Archive itself to develop in future. More on this in other posts, as it develops.

The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?

Writing towards the end of August, I have much to report.
The last few months have been particularly busy, with a large investigation into OEs who fought in the First World War in preparation for a book by Anthony Selden, research into the origins of Crawfurd House in preparation for the reunion and the mammoth task of publishing the biographies of OE Doctors, prepared by Dr Michael Salmon (OE). I also spent time researching possible house names for Epsom College, Kuala Lumpur and on replying to a large number of enquiries.
My first involvement with archival resources came in 1979, when I wanted to teach about the First World War to the Middle Fourth, and realised that a large number of OEs would have been involved. The information was available in the Register, 1855-1955, but to count and organise I needed to use something. We had the first computer in school (made by Southwest Tech), but the only way to use it was to write our own program. Eric Huxter helped, and we tried to process the results, but it was our ignorance of how to organise the facts to be countable that finally defeated us. What did we want to count, how could information be sorted. What were the important facts? 33 years later, all these problems have been solved, so that the horror of the statistics is clear to all:

• There were 275 boys in College in Michaelmas Term 1914.
• 942 Old Epsomians are known to have served, the vast majority as doctors.
• 155 Old Epsomians died, of whom we have only one still uncertain. One was a housemaster, Mr. Addenbrooke.

It does not look as though I will be available in College for Remembrance Day this year, but I hope that the College will be reminded of these statistics.
Unfortunately I have to take a couple of months away from the College, hoping to eventually be able to resume my duties. Until then, do remember that:

A school is a school is a school, until it has it's own history...

Growing Pains

The last few months have shown that nothing is predictable. At the end of last term I was looking forward to quickly adding different sections to the Archive Website, but that wasn't to be. The problem was that different parameters were changed on the College network, and at first I couldn't write to the website. Time was lost and other priorities intervened. Now I'm hoping to catch up over the next few weeks, having already added a lot of First World War information and soon to add the Old Epsomian information  so comprehensively compiled by Dr. Michael Salmon.
The section of the website devoted to Archie Paxton has produced a most interesting E-mail from Quintin Watt at South Bromsgrove High School. He has Paxton's Army Field Message Book! He has been using it for some years to motivate pupils in his own school's trips to the Somme battlefield. Now I hope to be able to swap information with him.
We look forward to seeing Old Crawfurdians on Saturday 23rd June for a reunion. I am hard at work transcribing information about Sir Raymond Crawfurd, the creation of Crawfurd House and the entries in the Crawfurd House Books which relate to the Second World War. I hope that this will interest Crawfurdians during the afternoon.
Lastly, a plea - if you like my website, do consider donating towards the digitisation of College records. I have found a firm to do the work in bulk, but I need £2,000 to start the work off, with thousands of pages to digitise at £1:00 per page. Donations through the Education Trust would be very greatly appreciated. I hope to publish more about this as time goes on.

End of Term

It seems amazing that, just a few weeks ago, we were in the depths of winter. For the last two weeks we have been enjoying unseasonably bright and often warm conditions, so that everyone seems to have decided that 'global warming' is to blame. As everyone goes home for the Easter holiday they look forward to a continuation of this barbecue weather - it's almost as though we are into exam weather already! Not so long ago, Easters were very different.
I remember myself the great excitement of getting off on Adventurous Training, either to Snowdonia or the Lake District, certain of a week or two of the snow conditions which made such expeditions truly arduous and exciting. When else did one use ice axes and crampons? This year there is no Adventurous Training - a truly sad casualty of the times - especially as it would be Dr. Huxter's last year.
If one looks further back, winters were truly cold. There are the photographs of the great Roman fort built in the snow by boys in 1916. One is on the Archive Website. It's difficult to believe that it was possible to ice skate on the flooded fields around the College quite regularly, but there is a bundle of skates hanging in the Archive Store that prove the point. Lately the Archive acquired a wonderful photograph from Wilson Steps of the scene on the field in 1963 - truly an Arctic winter. Compared to that, even a hosepipe ban seems a small sacrifice for this wonderful weather.
The Archive has had a truly busy term, but now the worst is past - the Archive Website has properly happened in so far as one can ever say. It is there, though what is there is just a shadow of what has still to evolve. I still have much to add, but the framework is in most respects complete and the additions are the work of future years. It should be possible for the Website to mirror the development of the Archive, showing something of the researches we do from year to year. Next term the website will continue to grow, but the emphasis can be on other things.
I am told that, in May, we will at last have access to the In-Touch database, created for Development and the O.E.s. This should for the first time allow us to access the careers of pupils arriving after 1955. It will open the possibility of cataloguing the Archive in concert with the work of other departments, which should be a great advantage to all of us. This will also allow us to appeal for more materials, which can now be acquired and dealt with digitally. the future is just getting a bit nearer in the study of the past.

Dom Wulstan

Do see the obituary for Dom Wulstan, who is to be buried today. The obituary is on the Farnborough Abbey blog: http://blog.farnboroughabbey.org/ I thought it a wonderful obituary to an extraordinary life. Dom Wulstan visited the College at least twice in my time here and preached in Chapel with such humility and certainty in faith that I found the experience most memorable. To think he was one of our boys...
I'm still making slow progress on the Website, working on the 1920s and 1930s, which I hope to finish today. I was very pleased to be able to show the website at Headington School in Oxford, on Wednesday, where we are building a completely new Archive in the eaves of a very large teaching block. It should be open in September, and includes moveable shelving and air conditioning - truly this is out of our league. Recruiting for an Archivist is to take place quite soon, if anyone has the required skills, and a book is expected for their 100th Anniversary in 2015!
Much to do, so will sign off at this point.

Gradual but real progress

It always surprises me that so much of the Archivist's job revolves around IT. The last two weeks have been a good example of how computers can be both a huge boon and can cause unnecessary delays.

The huge boon is partly that the College has supplied me with Adobe Pagemaker CS5. This is a decided improvement on the 10-year-old program I was using before. It will allow me to build the website around style sheets which should eventually save me quite a lot of time. The other nice innovation has been the program that allows me to run my Archive computer from home, or anywhere else in the country! It's an advantage because I can often spend an odd few minutes making progress without needing to be here. No, I won't be working from home on Fridays because I enjoy coming into school to see colleagues and pupils. However, while I was away last week, I thought I would be able to spend some time on the website - but that wasn't to be...

The downside of technology is that one is part of a communal enterprise - others can take initiatives that you really are not expecting. I was the victim of a well-meaning transfer of all my Archive files to a new file server. So, I used my new technology to window into a blank space! Of course I had ultimate faith in Mr. Davies and didn't fear that 30 year's work could be lost, oh no! However, here I am today in College, making up the time lost, restoring the links on the catalogue and getting everything working again - but not able to work much on the website meanwhile.

But progress is being made. Even at this early stage, numbers visiting the website are climbing from week to week. Meanwhile I have added the first sections of the College history and an index for the College Register. More pages of these will become available in the next few days. The emphasis now is not really on programs but on preparing content. If anyone would like to do some scanning for me, do let me know!

The Archive Website Goes Active

Old news! You may well say that I have been talking about the new website for several weeks, but at last a section of it is ready to show. You may peruse the part on  the Somme, which tells the story of the death of Archie Paxton through his letters and possessions, or you may look at 19th Century pictures. Other items will follow as quickly as I can prepare them. I am concentrating now on the 19th Century up to 1914 and will add sections of the College history and Register information, over the next week.

Happy browsing! Please tell me what you think.

The OE News

Happy New Year! I intended to write a new blog right through January, but the pressure of correspondence has been such that everything else has been put off. Mostly this has been the effect of the publication of the OE News in December. This excellent magazine is now resurgent under the editorship of Steve McCubbin and creates a good deal of comment and interest - so much so that my small part of this more than keeps me busy.
Each year we try to publish at least one photograph with something wrong or uncertain in it, asking readers to correspond  - and they do! This way we have amassed large numbers of new friends, who keep in touch on other archival matters. Though a lot of work, this is what we are here for.

This year there has been correspondence on three main matters - two of the photographs, one already published last year of the Granville dayroom in about 1960 and the other of the gigantic gym display for the 100th Anniversary Founder's Day have been particularly effective in causing discussion. The third issue was about Mr. Berridge and Hart-Smith. This has actually been an issue for many years, with murmured comments during reunions so that I already knew most people's opinions of 'Connie B'. There comes a time, however, when it is best to find out all there is to know. Mr. Berridge, housemaster of Hart-Smith in the late 1930s through to the early 1950s was a sententious and despicable person, we are told. He made a practice of 'sex talks' to boys in their dressing gowns and had recourse to using the cane on every possible pretext, often unjustly (thus 'Constant Beater'). He would certainly not be employed in a modern school, but on the other hand I have no evidence that anything particularly culpable went on. If it did, perhaps we should know?
What is surprising is that Mr. Berridge continued as housemaster for so long, certainly with the support of the College 'establishment'. I find it difficult to imagine that he retained this support without some redeeming qualities, and I am very aware that, listening only to the impressions he made on small boys, I may not have the full picture. If anyone can supply the necessary balance, I would be most obliged if you would get in touch.

Progress on the website has been brisk over the last few weeks. At present the foundations of the website are finished, as is the section on Archie Paxton and the Somme. The section on the 19th Century is my focus for today. However, nothing has appeared on the Internet, since it needs to be checked through by the IT Department. As soon as this is finished, we will publish.
The rest of the website will evolve over the next few months, as I mentioned in previous blogs.

Christmas!

It is sad to lose an important member of our community. Mike Oliver goes to be Head of the Senior School in Epsom College Kuala Lumpur, where he will be working from January. During his leaving do in Main Hall I was looking at the magnificent Christmas tree and remembering past Christmases, especially in Main Hall. Once it was called the Refectory, and was the setting for the most Dickensian occasion I know of at the College.
Pensioners each occupied one set of rooms out of four in each of the houses in the Asylum (the Terrace), one each side of the stairs on the ground floor and the same on the first floor. They were initially expected to buy and cook their own food, and facilities were provided for each of them. They had to promise that they each had an income of £50 a year, but it soon became obvious that several did not. In 1857 £10 per year was given towards the wages for a servant approved by the Headmaster, who also acted as Warden for the Pensioners. The Headmaster was also the Chaplain of the Pensioners, and took these duties seriously, especially the policing of who the Pensioners may have living with them. Their children may stay, up to the age of 15, when boys must leave. Girls stayed on to nurse their ailing parents. Pensions were stopped if permission was not asked for relations to stay, as they were if a Pensioner was absent for more than two or three weeks.
By 1857 Pensioners were often extremely poor. Despite being allowed £10 a year for 'servants' in fact they often had as little as £15 a year for food and expenses. Mr. Propert appreciated this and did all he could to raise their pensions over the next few years, but in 1858 life was very hard for many of them.This was the setting at Christmas, when John Propert personally invited all the Pensioners to Christmas dinner in the Refectory. Mr. Propert paid for this from his own pocket and gave them a thoroughly good time. There is and account of the occasion in one of the carefully conserved scrapbooks in the Archive, which I hope soon to publish.
The plan is to create a website for the Archive, concentrating first on the 19th Century. A large number of photographs are already organised, and this blog will form part of the finished product. I am concentrating first on updating the Alex Paxton part of the site that already exists, then I will start on the 19th Century, parts of which should be published over the next term. I have in mind to publish the records of all 19th Century Epsomians, their applications for Foundationerships and the applications for Pensionerships. I will also include as many of the pieces from the Scrapbooks as I can mount in the time available. I will probably have to move on with the 20th Century before everything is truly finished, but the website will gradually fill out to provide a facility both for those with specific enquiries and for those who simply want to browse. Hopefully this will stimulate discussion and further donations of archive items.

Meanwhile, Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to all my readers!

Finding People

One of the joys of being an Archivist is the many requests for information about past Epsomians. Just this morning I replied to a request for information about Sir Pendril Varrier Jones, founder of the Papworth Village Settlement and therefore of Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. These requests often require a hunt through the records and photographs to make sense of what we have and it is satisfying to be able to do this. However, other requests involve much deeper research, and recourse often has to be made to public databases and newspaper archives. A very good start can be made by refering to the National Newspaper Library at Colindale. This is part of the British Library and has lately established an excellent internet facility: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ where for a small fee you can download newspaper pages. The search facility is so thorough that it is easy to generate thousands of 'hits', so be careful to define your enquiry closely. I was also interested to find out that, through membership of my local library (Surrey) I could gain free access to the remarkable 'Ancestry' database, which is so widely advertised. This includes access to Birth, Death and Marriage certificates and huge numbers of other references to family history resources. You can buy personal membership at http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ . I find this rather a large and diffuse archive of documents for which it is difficult to narrow the search effectively enough to save time. Therefore I prefer the facility offered by S&N Genealogy Supplies of Salisbury, who offer a competitive service with their Diamond deal. This gives complete access to Census, Birth Death Marriage, Roll of Honour, Landowner, Parish, Non-Conformist, Military, Electoral, School, College, Will, Newspaper etc. records at £119.45 per year. The advantage being that one can access everything from home or office, paying just once. At present there is an offer at: http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/14day/ which gives a 14 day trial.

So, for those of you out there with a wish to find out who you are, this seems to be the way forward. Happy researching over Christmas!

Archive Plans

It is some time since I last posted a blog. Family problems, retirement and the need to reorganise the Archive have left little time. However, now I am able to devote more attention to this and to other aspects of Archive policy and the Archive website.

The last months have been particularly busy. It was very pleasing to see the interest shown on Founder's Day in the Archive display and talk. the O.E. part of the day was a resounding success, with an excellent turnout of O.E.s and their families. Many did come on to the Archive talk, to the extent that we will have to find somewhere larger next year. the highlight were short films, shot in the late 1940s, by John Gaisford and his friends. These were remarkable, not just for the 'blood and thunder' form of the plots, but for the quality of shooting and the way they showed life at Epsom in those days.

Among the highlights of the last few months have been the details of William Wills Robinson's career in New Zealand and the piecing together of his life and achievements. He seems to have introduced Rugby Football to Aukland, New Zealand and appears in the very first teams for cricket here. Gradually the early sports history of the College is coming into focus, even though we have no real records before 1870 ourselves, If anyone knows more, please let me know.

Again I have found out that we have at least one O.E. who was a victim of the Nazi holocaust. I will explain more about this later in the year, by which time my research should have moved on. Obviously it is a particularly sad story, and I hope to write about it in next year's O.E. News. Remembrance Day brings a number of sad stories with it each year. I am trying to record stories about O.E. experiences in the Second World War, partly to use in school on Remembrance Days. Nowadays we have a Field of Remembrance, with each cross named, and researching the details continually brings up sad stories. If you have something to contribute, could you E-mail me the details? Unfortunately research is adding to the death toll from year to year at present, sometimes just confirming deaths, but sometimes finding new ones. If you know of any O.E. who has died in the services since the Second World War, I would be particularly pleased to hear from you.

These absorbing researches have rather taken my eye off the need to build up an Archive website, but now I am focusing on that. I hope to make real progress over the next few weeks and have something to show by Christmas. Initially I will be concentrating on photographs, but other features will follow as quickly as possible. I was pleased to see that Archie Paxton's website was used by our local newspaper, the Guardian, for copy on Remembrance Day - if you have not seen this small website about Archie, who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, do look it up: http://archive.epsomcollege.org.uk/paxton/

Archive at a Crossroads

During the last few months since my last entry, a lot has happened at the Archive. While my helper, Max, continues to work away at sports results, I have been considering the future of the Archive in several different ways. One important change is bound to happen - that is my retirement from teaching in July. I hope to continue as Archivist, but nothing is yet settled. I would enjoy keeping a real link with the College and helping in different ways, but retirement would actually give me time to deal with the second change - to make the Archive more completely digital.
The intention, for some time, has been to build a large website for the Archive. This has been delayed by a number of circumstances, not least that technology has been advancing so fast that it's difficult to keep up with the possibilities. Now it should be possible to include scanned from all our wonderful scrapbooks, lists of holdings, lists of drama, sports results, biographies of the great and good and much else. We should have areas made up just of photographs and, of course, we should have a link into this blog!
The important recent development is that the College has decided to organise access to the biographical information held by the Educational Trust, which should allow us to work together to provide accurate records of OEs and add in the interesting information that comes to me from day to day. Readers of a technical bent will realise that this will allow me to formalise the records of names of past pupils, allowing accurate data retrieval - a huge boon to the Archive - which will eventually open up huge possibilities for cataloguing.
On another matter, I must thank my correspondents, especially Tony Brewis, for their recent contributions of reminiscences about Epsom during and after the Second World War. Such contacts considerably enliven the record, I find!

Archive Mania

The last few weeks since half-term have been too busy to leave time to thing! At half-term we did a small exhibition called "Forty Years On..." focused on Holman House in the 1960s, with information mostlt from Don Armour. It was interesting to see how the versions of events were interpreted quite differently by the Housemasters and Heads of House. The I made a short speech on why the Medical Tradition at Epsom College should be revived(because it makes us different, and is very much to be proud of). This was largely made from the research of Dr. Michael Salmon and Dr. John Ford. Since half-term I have been to see the new Bursar's archive under the Library, which is much tidier and more workable than the chaos that used to reign there. The College Archive acquired quite a lot of material as a result of this tidying, which still needs to be filed and organised.
Yesterday I spent the day with two friends from Headington School Archive in Oxford. They visited the College to see what we do and to see an archive in action. It was very useful ideed to swap ideas and solutions. Now we must try to get the Archive tidied up for the end of term, and write the articles for the O.E. magazine.

Doctors and Stained Glass

The last few days have been spent writing a speech on Epsom College's links to the Medical Profession, to be given on Founder's Day on Saturday. It isn't finished, but it is going well at present. It is astonishing how a school, founded as an orphanage and to give a cheap education for doctors' sons, gradually raised its expectations during the 19th Century. If we obeyed the Founder's wishes, Epsom College would be an orphanage dedicated to doctors' sons and doctors' widows (as pensioners) but that specific purpose was increasingly ignored, even during John Propert's lifetime. The lure of creating an effective school, then a renowned school was hard to resist when each headmaster was equally energetic in the pursuit of status. Doctors' orphans didn't long remain the focus of college aspirations, but boys training to be doctors did. Even among the first generation, a huge proportion went into the profession (at a time when the education here was not particularly scientific).

I was waylaid this morning into searching again on the internet for details of Francis Alcock Oldaker and his stained glass. Nothing very much came up, but I have hopes that one day something will. We are particularly fortunate here to have six windows created by him, three when he was still a pupil here and was about 18 years old. One, a memorial to Prince Albert completed in 1861, is now in Big School, but was originally the west window of the old Chapel. Two other early windows are unfortunately hidden by a partition for the sacristy in the present Chapel, the Forest and Sterry windows. The third and fourth are opposite, one being the Wilberforce window, commemorating the death of Samuel Wilberforce, the well-known opponent of Darwinism. Wilberforce, as the Bishop of Winchester, fell from his horse on the downs above Abinger on hie way back from confirming boys here. The last of Oldaker's windows is the Boer War Memorial window, to the left of the High Altar. This particularly fine window was dedicated by Winston Churchill in 1903.
I would be most interested to know anything else at all about Francis Oldaker. His occupation was 'artist in stained glass', but which windows did he create? There is one in St. Martin's Church in Epsom, but where else are they?

A Day in the Archive

It's always difficult to explain what we do in the Archive, but perhaps today will do as an example of the variety of activities in which we are involved. I started off this morning working on a booklwet for our pupils going on our annual M4 trip to the Ypres and Somme Battlefields, first thing this morning. The file had become corrupted and needed extensive alterations. It includes details of the Old Epsomians whose graves or memorials we can easily visit each year. There are about 155 Old Epsomians commemorated somewhere as a result of the First World War. A high point of the trip is visiting our own memorial in St. George's Church, Ypres. We dedicated this in a memorable service in 2001 on just such a trip with pupils.
The day included a very pleasant luch in Big School with Headmasters and Headmistresses from preparatory schools. Stories included something about our founder, John Propert, about Francis Oldaker, our outstanding stained glass artist, one of whose windows was above us and during a quick trip outside to give blood, I met two OEs who remembered the glider well from the 1950s.
Now I am awaiting helpers to work on the exhibition for Founder's Day, 'Forty Years On' centred round extract from the Holman House Books harvested by Don Armour. We will show some photographs from that era in the hallway of the Drama Centre, which people can see on the way to my talk on Epsom's Medical Tradition (which will be at 11.30 am in the Drama Studio).

The Archive Website and Archie Paxton

The Archive website at http://archive.epsomcollege.org.uk was finally linked to the College website today and immediately began to attract a following. Several people praised it and the College Library decided to do a display. The website has been constructed by Alex Dowle, who has worked with the Archive for four years now. Many thanks to him for his help and efforts on a myriad of projects over his time with us. Today is his last real day at school.
The website consists of the possessions of Archie Paxton, an O.E., who joined the Middlesex Regiment in 1915 and who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It includes copies of school photographs and magazines, photographs of army friends, letters to his mother, a trench map and his orders for the day he was killed. This is a tremendous asset to us, the result of a kind donation from the Paxton family. The photographs and letters can be double-clicked to open out to full size. At the end there are two questions to answer, one easy and one really quite difficult! This is certainly worth a look.

In the beginning...

I have been going to do this for some time, but never had the reason to begin. Now seems a good time as we say goodbye to one year's exam candidates and begin the work to organise next year. In the short term I'm thinking of Founder's Day exhibitions and speech and articles for the Old Epsomian magazine: there seems to be a pile of work to do before half-term.

The main reason to start this is as a way to communicate with the many friends of the Archive at Epsom College, to assure them that we're still very active and to let them know what our focus of interest is now. Perhaps friends could help us by providing materials, for the blog or for the Archive? I certainly hope so.