STOURBRIDGE OLD EDWARDIAN CLUB

ED-Words  Newsletter
December 2023

Have a good Christmas and I wish you all a 'Healthy and Happy New Year'.

The College community gathered together - to stand in remembrance to those who have fallen to protect the sovereignty of our peace - on Friday 10th November.

At 11am the Last Post was played which was followed by a two minute silence. The Chair of the Students Union read a passage, which was followed by the Reveille. 

Invited guests then progressed to the main hall where wreaths were laid (John Edwards laid the SOEC wreath as usual) followed by brief prayers and a reception - which was a welcome chance to meet some of the staff, members of the Students Union and College Principal Holly Bembridge.

Pease note, no photographs were allowed (by the College) to be taken involving students due to their protection rules and hence no images of the outside ceremony are included above.

Our forthcoming events are visible on our Events Calendar.

Reviewed past events may be found by clicking HERE>>  including the Gala Evening to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Club's foundation - which was an absolute triumph - and Kenneth Wright's most informative talk about Old Boys in the Great War.

Of immediate note is the traditional Boar's Head Supper on Friday 23rd December. The boar's head will be paraded in at 8.0 pm  so please be there in sufficient time to socialise before hand.

The AGM was held at the Club on Monday 4th December at which Clive Bowen-Davies was installed as the President. Arnold Homer was elected to the General Committee in addition to the existing members. He is a lecturer in taxation and Inland Revenue, an Author, and a Citizen of the City of London and will bring added value to our expertise.  Full details of the proceedings may be found by clicking HERE>> .

Long ago there lived a boy, Horatio was his name
He sailed a boat on a lake it was his favourite game
He even had a dream that one day he’d go to sea
And be famous admiral with a famous victory

He had brothers and sisters, seven altogether 
They played games with their boats when they had nice weather.
One boat belonged to Horatio and one to his brother
‘The England’ was Horatio’s, ‘The Frog’ was the other.

One sunny morning they were all out having fun,
Playing English against the Frogs, the battle had begun.
Horatio’s speech to his crew was a thing of beauty,
‘England expects that every man will do his duty.

The English rowed towards the Frogs, there would be no mistake 
Then crashed into the enemy and tipped them in the lake.
The Frogs. were  soaking wet, there was nothing they could do
‘Hip Hip Hooray for Horatio’ said the English crew

Horatio was pleased and said ‘I’m really very clever,
Those Frogs will never beat me, never ever ever.
I could even beat them with my arm behind my back
I’ll close one eye and still win the attack’

Just then there was a voice shouting in the distance.

“Dinner time, come home now kids”. It was spoken with insistence
Horatio heard the voice, his mother’s he supposed
He put a telescope to the eye he had just closed
“I can’t see anyone, perhaps we imagined the call
But then he felt quite hungry so went home after all.

Horatio laughed at his brother during dinner.
He wanted everyone to know England had been the winner.
“We won” said Horatian. “It’s really plain to see,
In fact I am going to rename my boat The Victory

That night when Horatio fell asleep he had a vivid dream
That he was fully grown up and an admiral supreme.
He had a ship called Victory and he was the commander
He was sailing off to battle to a place called Trafalgar.

He thought about his dream next morning when he woke.
He wanted to be a hero, adored by common folk.
One day he would be famous for his genius and flair 
And honoured with a massive statue in Trafalgar Square.

When the Assembly Hall was completed in 1931 and the War Memorial incorporated in the wall facing Lower High Street, the Memorial included fine stained glass windows from the studio of T.W. Camm of Smethwick. Depicted in the windows are images which include those of our two founders of 1430, and recorded in the School Magazine, at the time following its dedication, as being Philip and Joan Hareby - not Hayley.

George Burley in his short history of the School, published in 1948, makes clear reference to the founders being Hareby who established the Chantry of the Holy Trinity on 21^st May 1430 and built a chapel on the site of the present Assembly Hall, and that a school existed prior to the granting of the Charter by King Edward VI. It was the Chairman of the Governors, Mr. H.E. Palfrey, a known local historian, who had provided the information to Mr Burley, extracting it from the documents held in the Public Records Office. Amongst the documents researched was the transcribed Chantry Certificate dated 1546 clearly stating the founders as the Harebys.

For many years, there had been the myth of “The Black Box” and, if this could be found, it would contain many ancient documents about the School. Hitherto, there had been a paucity of information about the School’s early history.

In 1951, this “Black Box” did manifest itself in the guise of two metal deed boxes discovered in the offices of local solicitors Harward & Evers. The numerous documents did indeed reveal much of the lost history, although they mainly related to the post-Charter period, and there was nothing about the origins of the School in 1430.

Amongst the newly-found documents were leases to which were affixed    a seal relating to the City of Lincoln which gave rise to the discovery of a link with Lincolnshire, in that the name Hareby is local to that county (there even being a village there of that name). The leases granted by the Governors of the School were sealed with this ancient seal, understood to be formerly that of the Office of Staple (a commercial arrangement probably associated with the wool trade) which had become defunct in 1369 and thereby surplus to requirements. It is more than probable that this obsolete seal had been brought from Lincoln to Stourbridge by our founders.

The evidence of the name Hayley arises from two documents discovered later - in 1959 - from additional School records uncovered in Harward & Evers’ archives. The documents were the original deeds of May 1430 creating the foundation, stating the two donors of the chapel to be Philip & Joan Hayley – not Hareby.

By way of coincidence, according to subsequent research carried out by Mr. R.L. Chambers, the only reference in the fifteenth century to the name of Hayley is also linked to Lincolnshire. 

In Mr. Chambers’ book “The Story of a School”, published in 1988, which provides much of the source of this article, he comments that the only previous reference to Hareby is in the Chantry Certificate transcribed in 1546 (referred to above), prepared 116 years after the chapel’s foundation. He draws the conclusion that it was possibly some form of clerical error at the time, in the mis-hearing, or mis-spelling, or even perhaps the inclusion of the wrong name.

While, for a little over four centuries, the name of our founders was believed to be Hareby, the contents of the mythical “black box” discovered in a solicitor’s office in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s reveals that the true name of our founders is, in fact, Hayley, giving its name to the Assembly Hall.

All down to a Tudor clerical error !

Post Script – Discovery of the actual “Black Box”

We will all remember the School caretaker, Charlie Hough, perhaps not always with glowing memories as, in my experience, he tended to be a little “prickly”.

However, the Hough family had long associations with the School in the capacity of caretaker. Charlie’s father. Frank – a former brick maker - known to the boys as “Arbin” - from his habit of starting most subjects of conversation with “Arbin’ thinkin’…..” had been caretaker before, and indeed he was also caretaker/steward of the Club when it was situated at Alexandra Chambers. Frank was married to Lizzie (née Roberts) whose parents William (a former coal miner) and Maria Roberts had been the School caretakers from 1898 up until when Frank and Lizzie took over in 1911.

Mrs Roberts had alluded to a piece of furniture referred to as “Mrs Rupert Deakin’s blanket-box” [Rupert Deakin - Headmaster 1885-1905]. The Deakins then lived in the headmaster’s house (subsequently demolished to make way for the new Assembly Hall), and indeed next door to the Houghs’/Roberts’ residence.

Quite by chance, Mr. Chambers, in 1954, was passing a walk-in store cupboard under the stairs in P Block and spied something of interest which looked like an old chest. Charlie identified it as the said “blanket box” which he was then using as a repository for light bulbs and toilet rolls.

The old oak box, now black with age, having three iron bands and three holes cut in the timber which had at one time contained three locks, was photographed, and this evidence was sent to the Victoria & Albert Museum for expert evaluation.

“Mrs Rupert Deakin’s blanket box” turned out to be an English chest of Midland oak dating from the pre-Tudor period, concluding that it was the original muniment [document] chest belonging to the “chantry chapel” founded by the Hayleys.

Kenneth Wright

Club Archivist                                                                                             December 2023

 Afterthought - Remember the large “black box” that contained the felt slippers that it was mandatory to wear over shoes before being allowed into the Library ?

To all our readers:

And, most importantly........

"A very Happy Christmas and a healthy and fulfilling New Year - full of the things which you would wish for yourself and your families".