STOURBRIDGE OLD EDWARDIAN CLUB

ED-Words  Newsletter
December 2022

I would like to pay tribute to retiring President Rob Hill who served his term of office with grace and dignity. I would also thank him on behalf of all the members for working extremely diligently with Secretary Alan Roden in creating an up-to-date membership database.

In my year of office, we will celebrate the Club’s 125^th Anniversary and the 50^th anniversary of occupying the current premises. We will hopefully theme our events to celebrate our anniversaries and will be organising an event to celebrate the coronation, an event many of us have never witnessed before. 

My first club event will be the Boar’s Head Supper which will take place on Friday 23^rd December 2022 with the boar's head ceremoniously paraded at 8pm. I hope as many members accompanied by wives/ partners and their friends will join me in what is really a unique event.

In my year I want to promote a wide range of events for the enjoyment of members, and hence I am planning to hold on Saturday 28^th January 2023 a Chinese banquet in the Club and on Saturday 18^th March 2023 an evening with local historian John Sparry. Details to follow for both events.

In conclusion, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a 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 11th November.

At 11am the Last Post was played which was followed by a two minute silence. Chair of the Students Union, Gold Akanbi, 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 a reception which was a chance to meet some of the staff and new College Principal Holly Bembridge.

Our forthcoming events are visible on our Events Calendar.

Reviewed past events may be found by clicking HERE>>

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 annual AGM was held at the Club on Monday 5th December at which Robin Morrison was installed as next President. Full details of the proceedings may be found by clicking HERE>>

Please be patient and understanding if sometimes the delivery of membership cards or fobs take a little longer than expected as it takes time to reconcile payments with applications and approvals. It makes it much harder when some take advantage of the system and choose to pay several weeks late thereby spoiling the process for most who pay on time and delaying our much needed cash flow.

…………. In France and Flanders, they faced a different set of problems, that of rebuilding their shattered towns and villages and providing the civilian population with the basic needs which so many had lost in the shelling of their homes. In Britain, various charities and localised initiatives encouraged by town and city councils “adopted” a town or village in France or Belgium by making donations to assist with the cost of rebuilding and resettling the inhabitants. Even today, one hundred years on, there is evidence abroad of the generosity of the residents of British towns and cities in the naming of roads after their benefactors. A visitor to Albert, the epi-centre of British control of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, for example, will perhaps notice that on entering the town by car they will drive towards the town’s rebuilt basilica down the rue de Birmingham, a tribute by the townspeople of Albert to the kindness and generosity given by England’s second city.

Stourbridge was also able to make its own “adoption” in the village of Grandcourt on the Somme.

Like many similar schools, King Edward VI Grammar School, Stourbridge had its own in-house magazine, which it named “The Stourbridge Edwardian” This first saw the light of day as a foolscap typewritten publication in April 1911, selling for 2d (1p) and, for unknown reasons, it only ran to five editions ending in July 1912. One of the two editors of the 4^th and 5^th editions was W.L. Perks, who was to lose his life on the Somme in August 1916. However, the magazine was restarted in 1922 as a printed work, containing many interesting articles as well as reporting on sporting results, House activities and School life generally. 

The Summer of 1923 (Vol. 1 No. 4) edition of the magazine includes an account written by three boys who took part in a trip to the battlefields. Organised by the British League of Help¹, a party of 300 English schoolboys, during the Whitsuntide holidays, made a five-day trip to France.

There were 10 boys in the Stourbridge contingent, 8 of whom were Stourbridge Grammar School boys, led by Mr. C.W.P. Aggleton, a master at the School, who had temporarily vacated his position at the School to join up soon after War broke out. He was to go on to gain a commission and served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers involved with railway management. He was “Mentioned in Dispatches” and completed his service in Northern Russia. He was one of the longest serving masters of the School, remembered as a keen cricketer, and taught some of our older extant “Old Boys”.

While the trip was intended more as a holiday than purely an educational exercise, it did however have a humanitarian purpose. The article describes their journey from Stourbridge by train, the Channel crossing in a “steamer” and onward train journey to Paris. They spent two nights in the French capital with days being spent sightseeing, and a trip to the Palace of Versailles where they saw the table on which the Armistice was signed (No reference is made to the railway carriage at nearby Compiègne). The following day they (i.e. the entire party of 300) travelled by “chars-à-bancs” to Amiens via Montdidier where they went souvenir hunting on the battlefield, together with an account of over half the “chars-à-bancs” breaking down and the party having to cram into the remaining three to complete their journey. 

Next day the Stourbridge group went by train to Beaucourt Hamel (Somme) and then by horse drawn vehicles to Grandcourt. There they were accommodated in the local school, a reception was organised and the group were invited to have lunch with the Mayor, presenting the village with gifts of linen, enough for each household, purchased with money given by the Stourbridge residents. More battlefield visiting and souvenir hunting followed - helmets, bayonets and other items comprising of the “harvest of steel” - until rained off.

Returning to Amiens and meeting up with the main party, they returned to England and back to Stourbridge.

1. The British League of Help (for the Devastated Areas of France & Belgium) was founded  in 1920 by Lady Bathurst, proprietor of The Morning Post. The aim of the League  was to bring help to those residents of destroyed towns and villages in the form of  practical and personal aid. The League lobbied local newspapers and held public meetings, resulting in around 80 towns and cities being adopted. The League was dissolved in 1927.

To all our readers:

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

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