A.O.S.A. 2000 ANNUAL REPORT
Robbie Riddle (1919-23) certainly started something last year, with his tales of girls and boys "walking round” on the playground in his day, after Sunday morning Meeting. Since then he has backed them up with a photograph of this most sedate activity which may be seen below (on page 28 in the Magazine).
Rawdon School/Rawdon House
Frank Ambler (1940-45) who lives in Leeds, sent me a photo of Rawdon School as it is today (Page 28). Frank's mother, Violet Yates, attended Rawdon School in the early nineteen hundreds; she was very happy there and talked about her days at Rawdon to her family, for the rest of her life.
Our Rawdon House has now been magnificently refurbished, it was officially opened as a Show House by William Hague last May. An article covering this by Jane Campbell (Bye 1953-60), may be found by following this link (on Page 24 of the magazine) with a photo of the 'new' Rawdon House and the boys' schoolroom as seen from Station Road, (on Page 25 of the Magazine).
The 1970s' Time Capsule
During the course of its history as a school, the Friends' School site has seen much building and rebuilding, and at least two time capsules were incorporated into the foundations. This time last year, despite various efforts to locate these capsules it appeared that they had been demolished with the buildings, and lost for good. On a visit to Ayton (and the 'school') last autumn, I was told by the builders that they had found a 'time capsule' - it turned out to be the one incorporated into the foundations of the Sports' Hall in the late 1970s. It has been opened, its contents checked and it has now been reburied somewhere on site.
Richmond Castle and the Gaudie Family
Martyn Gaudie's (1935-38) father was a conscientious objector, and as the result of his beliefs, he, along with fifteen others who also refused to fight, was imprisoned in Richmond Castle, in May 1916, to await their fate. (Conscription had been introduced in the January of 1916.) (But for a message in a bottle, thrown out of a train window at York station, to their supporters, all sixteen would probably have been executed in France.) While in Richmond Castle, for lack of notebooks they used the castle walls to write their diaries. One prisoner drew from a photo which Norman Gaudie had in his possessions, a portrait of his mother Elizabeth. The jottings remain on the walls to this day. Last May, Lloyd Grossman, the Commissioner and Chairman of Museums for English Heritage, who own Richmond Castle, was at the Castle to open a computerised 'virtual reality' exhibition of this famous graffiti, which is now too fragile to be seen close to. Martyn went to meet him and to give him a 'second hand' account of the prisoners and their murals.
The Association is alive and well……
Last November Joe Tillott heard news of his former classmate Wolfgang (Wolfi) Brassloff, via Alan Noble and the Alumni Association of former students from King's College, Newcastle (see News, 1930s). Wolfi it seems, had returned to England to lecture at Salford University, where he later became a Professor of Economics. Joe assumed that, by now he would be retired and rang Salford University to see if they had a forwarding address. Eventually he was put on to a lady who was able to help and who said that if Joe wrote a letter to Salford, with a covering note, she would see that it was forwarded to Wolfi's last known address. This Joe did, more in hope than expectation. Ten days later, a very excited Joe rang me up to say: “I have just had a long phonecall from Wolfi who received my letter this morning!” The two are now regularly in touch, Wolfi has been updated with the saga of his old school over the past sixty years and Joe is hoping to persuade him and his wife to join us at the reunion in June.
Gill Jackson (Hinds 1950-55)
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