THE SCHOOL CENTENARY 1941

The School Centenary was officially celebrated on General Meeting Day, June 19th, 1941. The last few days of feverish preparation were spent under a burning sun and, early on the great day itself, a luminous sky, above hazy hills, heralded brilliant weather. It was as well that the gods so favoured us, for all our activities were out-of-doors and it was estimated that there were some 800 people present. The main items of the day were the School Meeting on the playground and the Pageant of the School's history. No outside speaker was called in for this most important of our General Meeting Days. Edward Hodgkin was in the Chair, and Sir John Pease Fry, Chairman of the Committee for 21 years, gave the address. He told of characters old and young, rich and poor, whose work and personalities had gone into the fabric of Ayton School, and kept his vast audience amused and interested‑for half an hour or so. Edward Hodgkin read greetings and congratulations from Friends and other Friends' Schools all over the country. W. Arthur Cooper brought Ackworth's greetings personally, and Constance Nightingale, The Mount's. Arthur Taylor spoke as an Old Scholar, and for the Old Scholars, of all that Ayton meant for him and them.

About quarter of an hour later, the Pageant, written specially for the occasion by Beatrice Saxon-Snell, began. The grey wall at the end of the Bath was our back-cloth, the tennis court the stage, the "little garden" the green room and the site of the old "Girls' Hut" the auditorium.

Scene I showed us the Conning family, much perturbed at the un-Quakerly white muslin in which their daughter Mary had decked herself. Into the midst of this family trouble came young Will Nellis with his most unacceptable proposal that he, a non-Friend, should marry Mary. Jonathan and Hannah Backhouse joined with her father and mother in urging Mary to think carefully before taking such a disastrous step. But Will pleaded his cause well - and not only his cause, but that of the more progressive members of the Society, when he said: "Ma'am, it's not our fault if Quaakers mak' it a crime for a lad an' lass to fall in luv except wi'in t'bounds o' t'Society. Yo' cann't stop Naature so; yo' can only thin y'ranks-an' that, if you'll pardon me, is sheer cootin' off y'nose to spite y'faace." And Mary, having faced the prospect of disownment by family and Society, took off her Quaker bonnet and, turning to Will, accepted him and, with him, all the hardships that disownment was to mean for herself and her family.

It was chiefly for the children of such "disowned" Friends as Mary Nellis that Ayton was founded. The four remaining scenes of the Pageant showed us Mary Nellis struggling to bring up a large family, helped at last by Friends to send the two eldest to Ayton; the first General Meeting in 1842; something of school life in 1866, just as Ralph Dixon was taking over the Superintendency from George, his father; and, finally, an Old Scholars' Reunion in 1902. Perhaps the scene that will remain longest in our memories was the beginning of the first General Meeting, when Hannah Backhouse, in white muslin Quaker cap and grey dress, knelt in prayer for the new school, supported, in the Elders' benches, by George and Alice Dixon, and visiting Friends in the sombre but beautiful dress of a hundred years ago, and flanked on the one side by the boys in their grey tweed jackets, corduroy breeches and black stockings, and on the other by the girls in ginghams and blue-checked aprons. The end of the prayer: "May Thy blessing rest upon this place and upon all who teach therein, for the sake of Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ, Amen," cast a silence over the audience, which was broken only by the rustlings of poplins and taffetas as the Elders sat down again.

One sees, too, in one's mind's eye, the chestnut trees above the "stage" in full bloom against a brilliant blue sky; old Edward Pease, white-bearded and bent with age, lamenting the good old days when even Quakers quenched their thirst with a glass of beer; the exquisite gesture of Mary Conning as she took off her Quaker bonnet and turned to Will Nellis; the rather pathetic little figure of Robert Petty on his penitentiary stool holding up his mouth for the raisins that Betsey March was dropping into it; and the be-stockinged and be-tunicked gym display of the girls in 1902.

It would be invidious to pick out individuals for special praise and comment  - so many took part both within the cast and outside its bounds. Every member of the School Staff helped in some capacity, Old Scholars and members of the Meeting acted many of the grownup parts and between 60 and 70 boys and girls took part or helped with production. Other Friends and Friends' Schools lent us clothes, without which, it is hardly too much to say, the presentation of the Pageant would have been impossible.

Looking back now, one feels the Pageant to be almost as remote as the days it depicted. It cost a great deal of effort, but it gave a great deal of pleasure, and even of inspiration, to those who took part and to those who watched. It celebrated a century of honest endeavour and achievement at a time when doubts and fears were uppermost in the minds of many. In this way, we hope, it served as more than a day's entertainment.

Other displays followed - fire‑fighting by the boys and gym by the girls; there was the usual exhibition of arts and crafts in the Boys' Schoolroom and a programme of music in the Meeting House. The day ended at 8-10 with Evening Reading in a Meeting House almost as crowded as it had been in the morning.

Of the history of the hundred years so celebrated, more need not be said here, for G. A. Watson has written it fully and vividly and Old Scholars may have the book, which is reviewed at the end of this article, on application to Doris McNall.

The children, who had worked so hard to make G.M. a success, were promised a real celebration after it was over, and this they had in the form of a grand excursion to Danby-picnic, bathe in the river and journey by train and all on July 23rd.

No one who was a member of Ayton School during its Centenary Year is likely to forget the Summer Term celebrations, and even the smallest and least imaginative must have felt some thrill of pride in being an Aytonian on our hundredth General Meeting Day.