A.O.S.A. 2000 ANNUAL REPORT

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Dorothy Dawson
President 1999 - 2000

Madam Chairman, fellow Old Scholars and friends here today, and those reading this address in the Annual Report in May 2000.

When I received, early in 1998, a letter inviting me to be your President this year, a well-known Quaker phrase came into my mind 'That name would not have occurred to me'. However, I thank you for this opportunity to say a few words today. The letter stated quite clearly that the 1999 Old Scholars' gathering would not be held in the Ayton area and so this is why we are here in this village hall in Wensleydale - as good a place as any.

We should have been in the Meeting House but urgent repairs to the floor made it unavailable. This hall is built on the site of the earlier Meeting House, in use until 1834, and Meetings for Worship were held in a cottage on the site before that, from 1668.

There is so much I could say about a 50-year connection with the school, and I have found it extremely difficult to be selective. My mind works along musical lines: a reunion is like a fugue: the magazine a theme and variations, and so I decided, like the classical composers of the eighteenth century, to construct this address on the design of sonata form, familiar to all music students with its three main sections of exposition, development and recapitulation, preceded by an introduction and followed by a coda. The rules are quite strict. Normally only two main themes are used. We have lost our buildings and the grounds and it is about these two subjects that I wish to address my remarks, to fill in gaps in the knowledge of younger Old Scholars, some of whom have hazy ideas of what has gone before. That is my introduction and I now pass to the exposition.

Looking back over early schooldays, now more that fifty years ago, those post-war years were not easy for anyone, pupils or staff. Food and clothing were rationed or in very short supply, but it was the same for everyone and seemed quite normal. As war-time building restrictions were lifted, the Waltons were built and occupied by four staff families.

During the 1940s and 1950s, much was done to improve the grounds and other outdoor facilities. The open-air theatre appeared, the plantation at the end of the lake was laid out, the long hedge between the tennis courts and top field was removed and the rockery on the staff terrace was built and planted up. The lake was drained in the mid 1950s, and the land returned to a level playing field. The lake had been built in the 1920s, to store water for use in the Mill building to produce electricity. Ayton was the first Friends' school to be lit by electricity way back before the First World War. With the coming of the national grid, the lake became silted up and, after draining, it was cleared by Old Scholar, Stanley Hall (1916-19). The buildings we used were all of stone. The classrooms in the 1938 block, with the upstairs rooms having partitions on to the veranda, were an innovation. Senior girls slept at Cleveland Lodge - the home of the then Chairman of the School Committee;  we had a wing at the back of the house for nineteen girls and one member of staff. We trekked back and forth in all weathers until Dixon House, on the green, was bought to house the resident maids. This made bedrooms for senior girls available in the West and old wings and brought everyone under one roof.

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