Category: Woodbridge News
Woodbridge School Prep pupils have helped to revive a centuries-old custom at St Mary’s Church – the distribution of loaves on Candlemas Day (2 February) in accordance with the Will of George Carlow.
So who was he?
Within the precincts of the Bull Hotel in Woodbridge there is a quiet garden with an ancient tomb. Here, George Carlow, a former owner of the Bull, was laid to rest two hundred years ago. He belonged to a Christian sect called the Separate Congregation, who kept the Sabbath on Saturday. Rather than be buried in St Mary’s Churchyard, Carlow had a tomb built for himself in the hotel’s garden.
Carlow died on 2 March 1738, leaving a Will stipulating that the Rector and churchwardens of St Mary’s Parish Church ‘shall and do yearly and every year for ever after my decease give and distribute twenty shillings worth of good wheaten bread at, or upon, the said tomb on the second day of February, commonly called Candlemas, except when it is a Saturday …’ Similar instructions were also inscribed on his tomb, and were followed for many years. The custom was revived in 1867 and continued unbroken until recently, when the tomb became part of a private property.
And so it was with great joy that on Candlemas Day this year, the Rector of St Mary’s, the Revd Canon Kevan McCormack, and his two churchwardens were able to reinstate Carlow’s Dole, thanks to the hospitality of the Bull’s current proprietors, David and Sarah Clarke. They allowed the ceremony to take place in what is known as ‘Carlow’s Room’, and a group of children from Woodbridge School Prep were invited to take part . After telling the story of Carlow’s Dole, the Rector blessed the loaves, and with the churchwardens distributed them to the children. ‘So how much would twenty shillings be worth now?’ asked the Rector. The children quickly rose to the challenge – it helped that many of them were from the Maths group – and correctly calculated the present-day value to around £200.
The loaves, donated by Peter Wright of The Cake Shop, were made even more appetising when Mr and Mrs Clarke generously provided butter and jam (or marmite) and glasses of orange juice. One of the children gave a heartfelt vote of thanks, followed by uproarious general applause.
May George Carlow’s tradition long continue!
A message from Graham Watson, Chief Executive of Seckford Foundation:
I am pleased to announce that the Board of Governors of the Seckford Foundation has appointed Clive Schlee as its new Chairman, succeeding Roger Finbow who retires from the role at the end of February. Clive will bring a broad range of experience to the Foundation, after spending the last sixteen years as Chief Executive of Pret A Manger.
Clive helped to grow Pret into a billion-pound business with strong values and over 500 stores in ten countries. Prior to that he spent 17 years in restaurants and financial services at Jardine Matheson & Co Ltd, the Hong Kong based conglomerate. He is also Chairman of Itsu, the London based sushi chain.
During his career, Clive has a track record of giving back to the community. He championed the Pret Foundation, greatly increasing its income and starting to offer jobs and accommodation to the homeless in addition to distributing unsold food to hostels every night.
Clive spent much of his childhood in Suffolk and has lived in Bromeswell for over 20 years. Following his retirement from Pret in October last year, he plans to spend more time in Suffolk and hopes to use his business experience to help the local community.
Roger Finbow, our current Chairman, said: “It has been a great privilege to be Chairman of the Seckford Foundation over a ten year period which has witnessed many changes in the fields in which the Foundation is active. I am delighted that Clive has been appointed to succeed me and am confident that he will find the role as challenging and enjoyable as I have.”
Clive Schlee said: “It is an honour to be able to serve the Foundation as it plays such an important role in the lives of so many people in Woodbridge and Suffolk.”
I am sure that you will join me in welcoming our new Chairman to the Foundation as he begins to immerse himself in the broad range of our work. There will be opportunities to thank Roger for his huge commitment to the Foundation in due course.
Graham Watson
Chief Executive, Seckford Foundation
We are thrilled to announce Ms Shona Norman as the new Head of Woodbridge School.
Ms Norman’s appointment comes at the end of a comprehensive and thorough selection process that saw nearly 30 candidates from across the country and abroad apply for the role. The selection panel, which concluded its findings on Friday 15th November, came to a unanimous decision to invite Shona to become the next Head.
Seckford Foundation Chair, Roger Finbow said:
“We are delighted with the outcome of this extensive selection process and our decision to invite Shona to lead our school. Experience, style, competency and cultural fit were critical aspects of our decision and Shona stood out as a clear leader with the right vision and values. Today, Woodbridge offers a rich and vibrant learning environment for students of 4 to 18 and we are excited to give Shona the opportunity to build on the great work she has done for the School over the last 17 years and lead the School on to an even brighter future.”
Shona has been Woodbridge School’s Acting Head for the last six months and will officially assume the Head position on the 1 January 2020.
Ms Norman commented:
“I am truly honoured to be given the opportunity to help our community write the next chapter for this fabulous and unique school. At Woodbridge School, we have one of the best learning cultures of any education establishment, an expert and committed teaching staff, and over 750 vibrant and engaging pupils. I’m very grateful to the board and governors of the Seckford Foundation for the trust they have put in me to lead our school, and realise the many opportunities that lie ahead.”
We’re getting a bit of a reputation at the Fringe. There again with performances as beguiling as we have put on, no wonder. And this year’s performance was outrageously good.
Fresh from a series of spectacular triumphs in Edinburgh (great audiences – perhaps the best part of 400 seeing the show over the week – and standing ovations), our players came home for a grand reprise…
A little background, if I may: Délicieux is original – written by our own Mr Williams, adapted from the book Like Water for Chocolate; staged, choreographed and developed by Miss Mayes, Mr Williams, Kathryn Clements, and the sixth formers together… from scratch. From a script. In ten days. I know – it is frankly astonishing.
A little confession, if I may: I shed a tear at the end. Was it the babies, was it the tango, was it the deaths and the tragedies; was it the happy resolution against all the odds? It was all of those things. I was swept along in the rush of emotions; I was entranced by the tiniest of movements, the stolen glances, the little characterisations all so beautifully cast towards us, understated yet all the more powerful for it. And then there was the music, the singing, the dancing – the dancing!
Manon, ah Manon – triumph over tradition, love conquers all… but only just!
A wonderful, wonderful show. Thank you cast and crew. To offer congratulations seems so insufficient.
There was a wonderful sense of community at this year’s Speech Day – even the sunshine joined in. The grounds looked wonderful; the prefects’ ushers’ carnations were in full bloom; the Dome was at its best – dazzlingly full of Mrs Mulcahy’s beautiful flowers; and the Swing Band upped the tempo and raised the smiles with its own fantastic set of joyful melodies under Mr Shepherd’s expert baton.
Mr Finbow set the scene with a perfectly judged overview of the Foundation’s aims, aims which seeks to nurture and guide young and old through its impressively diverse set of responsibilities, with our School main amongst them. Miss Norman, building on an early spontaneous round of applause to acknowledge the first female Head of the School, embraced the ideals of community and care in her inspirational vision for what a Woodbridge education stands for: young people growing into adults who understand their central commitment to others, and with a keen understanding of their responsibilities to each other and to the world around us. Of course this played well with Miss Norman’s guest, Professor Pretty, who, having enjoyed the potted biographies and admired the book choices of our prizewinners, laid out his own vision for all of our futures.
Despite the bleakness of some of his statistics, and where simple extrapolation would leave the world in as little as seventeen years, his message was full of hope. Hope, because he sees the power in small actions, and the relative unnecessariness of so many ‘things’. He exhorted us to look around, to enjoy moments, to see colours anew, to relish flavours, to preserve rather than use or destroy, to plant rather than cut. His eleven essential props, bracketed by an oak timber 8000 years old and an oak sapling no more than a year or two, each told vital stories – destruction and spoilage; but also redemption and harmony – Balinese rice fields and the Avocet, but plastic from the Arctic and avian extinction too. He called us to arms. Every little bit we can do matters. Hence the oak tree as Britain’s greatest home for biodiversity. And the richest nations must take the lead, so we should start if no one else will. So, consider your actions (or inactions) and work for the next generation (perhaps something the last few generations have begun to forget). And by way of advice, he offered the Japanese ideals: eat properly (four colours on your plate!), exercise regularly, socialise, keep on learning, and garden!; he reminded us to find value in ‘things that are not things’: a sunset, birdsong, colours, harvest and growth; he exhorted us to produce less carbon dioxide; and he left us with Mary Oliver’s poem:
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
And then to cap a truly inspiring and uplifting occasion, Head girl and boy, Poppy and Toby, offered our thanks to Professor Pretty with a beautifully judged, and immensely sincere and touching, double act. And the day’s best joke.
Perfection: cast, setting, atmosphere, and of course one of the most delightful plays ever written. How lucky we were to be transported to Greece and enchantment at the hands of Year 9.
So here’s a play about courtship, or rivalry, or jealousy, or passion, or magic, or asses, or a talking wall (with chink); a play of kings and queens, boys and girls, wooers and wooed, masters and servants, fairies and rude mechanicals. A play like no other, cast and recast across generations and genres yet still as fresh as ever it was in its original Shakespearean clothing. And how well the cast did – all the emotion of the chase and the escape, proud conceit and terrible falls, haughty dominion and cautious mewling. But despite the confusion, the plot thickened nicely and then rose to its crisp crescendo (how now for a mixed metaphor). Had those spirits offended? No! Far from it: we gave loud applause and rejoiced at a happy ending and the happy smiles of our most confident of casts. Congratulations one and all, to those on stage and to those behind – brilliant!
And what a perfect summer’s evening it was: the sun setting serenely over the school buildings, and casting a benign and beautiful light on those keen to entertain and be entertained in turn.
With the picnic rugs out and Prosecco popping, this was definitely more Glyndebourne than Glastonbury, although the music did offer nods to both venues in its range (and quality!). We started with The Seckford Sinfonia (and here may I say what a fabulous job the sound engineering team did in capturing and relaying the music to the audience – no easy thing to give depth and balance to strings, woodwind, brass and timpani across a Chapel lawn). Youth would have its day, and the youngest of our musicians played with maturity and poise to set the evening off perfectly. The Senior Brass, Percussion, and Senior Flute ensembles picked up the baton with alacrity and showed just what a musical education at Woodbridge can achieve – not only brilliant musicianship, but also camaraderie, teamwork, and fun – such fun! Smiles all round! The Concert Band, Chamber Orchestra and Symphony Orchestra then took us to half way with a tremendous mixture of the epic cinematographic scores, a little pop, a spirited tango and at the end tingle-down-your-spine and spring-to-attention-to-salute Pomp and Circumstance from Elgar. O glorious times!
Mr Turner then offered us a change in mood as we went more contemporary (though jazz and swing with Just Jazz and the Swing Band predates Zimmer even if not the Pirates and Gladiators). Foot-tappers aplenty here, and solos too interwoven with fine ensemble play. Don’t Worry about your Baggy Trousers, they’re Cool… Fabulous. And then for a further change of mood we went (and here I show my age and innocence…) ‘pop’: Ella, The Northern Lights, and James taking on a series of immensely impressive covers. What an evening… it just needed its grand finale to send us off into the night… and here were FourbyFour to offer just that: Lewis, Jonathan, Nathan, Brendan and Anna delivered an outstanding final set of playful, gleeful, and matchless swing and jazz.
The applause flew, like the accompanying bats, into the night and in and out of the Chapel lawn trees. What a great evening, and what a lovely occasion for so many of our wonderful Year 13 musicians to take a final bow, alongside a lovely bunch of OWs I should add. We cannot thank them enough for all the pleasure they have given and for all the commitment they have shown: to their music, to the department, to their peers and to the school. And of course we must thank their teachers as well! So, to Mr Turner and all in the music department – congratulation! Encore! Bravo!
So… Birmingham is to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games…. I think we should invite the organising committee over to see how to put on a show. If you want feel good and friendly, mixed with passion and high performance, look no further than Woodbridge School sports day!
It was a glorious occasion from the off (which of course was in some respects the weekend prior thanks to the middle distance race day), the ‘off’ being given by Mr Davis’s ever-dependable pistol (atop decorator’s ladder). A bright blue sky, a soft breeze, fantastic athleticism, and sumptuous refreshments wafting their aromas beguilingly towards expectant noses (calm down, Streat). We’ll give you all the statistics when we’ve had a chance to digest them all more thoroughly (I’m talking about sporting statistics now; I’ve moved on from the haut cuisine).
For now, though, and at the risk of missing one out (I hope not, though!), I must trumpet the extraordinary triumphs of our record breakers. After last year’s unprecedented spate of record-breaking, surely none were up for grabs this time? How wrong you are to think that!
It all started on the Saturday middle distance day, hardly surprising given the season our boys and girls have had this year: Ruby broke April’s Y7-9 3000m record by 28s in a time of 10:50; while April broke Amy’s Y10-13 5000m record by 15s in a time of 19:06!
And then to Sports Day itself: at Year 7 the star of the day was Ethan who secured three at his first attempt… the long jump record three times over no less! Jump one: record; jump two: bettered; jump three: best with 5.10m to raise John’s previous record by 56cm! He also broke the record in the 100m with a time of 12.98s (also bettering John’s old mark of 13.22s), and the 800m with a time of 2:26 to improve Calum Andrews’s record from 2011 by 4s. For the girls Nancy was our record breaker with her shot put of 9.80m, and astonishing 1.44m beyond Beau’s previous mark.
At junior (Year 8) Ruby continued her domination of middle distance running taking Amy’s 800m record with a time of 2:26.08 to improve the old mark by 9s, and then broke the magical 5 minutes for 1500m to win in 4:58.95, obliterating Elise McNally’s 1995 record by over 8s. Asonishing!
Fazil was equally impressive in the field events for the boys – how about these achievements? He raised the high jump mark which has stood since 1976 by 16cm to take it to 1.59m; and extended the triple jump mark from 10.76m to 11.09m… also set in 1976, also by Edward Lancaster. Wow.
At middle (Years 9 and 10) our record breaker was Issy with a flying 100m of 13.01s to top another old record, that of 13.09s set by Charlotte Spear in 1989.
And finally, at senior the new records fell to Nell who shattered Eloise Mabey’s shot put record by 100cm to take it to 10.07m; and Nathan who improved his own 800m record by 0.41s to take it to 2:02.55.
Many congratulations to these thirteen, and indeed to all the athletes for taking part with such enthusiasm and commitment (you should have seen some of the facial expressions as they sprinted by…). It was a great day – wonderful organisation, fabulous competition, and plenty of excitement for competitors and spectators alike. Thank you all!
Many, many congratulations to Chris Long who has just won first prize in the Trinity Law Essay Competition. This is an exceptionally prestigious competition, with extremely high standards, and it is a simply outstanding result on his part. His task was to write a response to the question: ‘What is wrong with bribery and how, if at all, should we deal with it?’; he was assessed by reference to a range of factors, including ‘the development of argument, the quality of expression and the appropriate use of supporting facts and material’. It’s an intimidating list, but Chris clearly embraced the challenge with his characteristic mix of intellectual rigour, enthusiasm and sangfroid.
https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/essay-prizes/law/ – scroll down to see his name at the top of the list!
It is with great sadness that we must inform you of the death of Nicholas Garrett who passed away earlier this week. Nick was the very much loved Master of the Abbey from 1997 to 2015. He was appointed from St Andrew’s School, Eastbourne, and after leaving Woodbridge became Headmaster of a school in Abu Dhabi. He was diagnosed with cancer last year. An event to mark his life will be held in Woodbridge School at a later stage. I am sure you will join us in prayers for Nick’s widow Ruth, his daughters Anna and Lara (who are both teachers), and his wider family. Since his return from the UAE, Nick and Ruth have been living in Eastbourne, and we will forward to Ruth any correspondence received.
May he rest in peace.