Old Princethorpians

Back in October the OPs were set another archive challenge by James Hubbard to track down a poem he wrote about the school in 1985/86 for Mr Weir who lived at the end of the school drive.

James remembered that it started, "In the rolling English countryside its proud red tower stands.." and that it was in the college magazine.

Archivist Nick Baker duly rose to the challenge and managed to find James' poem and email it over to him.. Here it is below, as relevant today as it was back then!

PRINCETHORPE

In the rolling English countryside

Its proud red tower stands

a tranquil seat of learning

for boys from many lands.

Young voices ring, within its walls

There stands a corridor

Adorned with cups and trophies

Won by boys from Austin, Benet, Fisher, More.

From the playing fields away to the west

Under the winter sun

Comes the heartening cry “Just one more try”

And then the match is won.

Run the race, play the game

And heed your teacher’s call

A healthy body, an active mind

And Christ reigns over all,

JAMES HUBBARD

Spanish OP Jaime Arriole and his wife Paula came to Princethorpe in December on a flying visit.  Jaime was at Princethorpe from 1988 - 1990.

He takes up the story....

My parents wanted us to improve our level of English so they thought about sending us to a boarding school in England for one or two years. My eldest sister studied in the mid-eighties in Thornton College (Milton Keynes) and my parents asked the Headmistress at that time, Sister Genevieve Deveraux, for a good school for boys and she highly recommended Princethorpe. 

When I think of those days I remember many and very good times, most of all usually ending with an angry teacher or Father Sweeney ...!!

I remember one day in particular that a few of the Spanish students decided to show some bullfighting with some cows. A few English boys also tried but we thought we were more “professional” just because we were Spanish, ha ha ha. Eventually the shepherd saw us and he and his dog chased us to the school. When we crossed the door (I think it was the West door, next to the French classes), we ran inside and pushed the door so hard that it slammed leaving one of us outside, trapped between the building and the shepherd with his dog!!! We had to write a letter of apology and promise him that there would be no more bullfighting! ha, ha, ha.

The thing is that weekends were very long and we could think of any kind of entertainment, such as exploring the passages all around the school (pity that none took us to the girls’ bedrooms ...).

After graduating in Law and doing a Masters in Madrid, I worked in an international company in different parts of Spain and South America. Nowadays, I work in our family business which is dedicated to art and specifically with antique books.

With my family we travel a lot, we love it! Any time we have some spare days, we travel all around the world to get to know different places and cultures.

I loved going back to the College. It was something I wanted to do long ago but never found the time. Two months ago, my sisters and brothers made my wife Paula and me a present: it was a journey organised to visit Princethorpe and its surroundings. My sister organised it with Melanie Butler. Thank you Melanie!

I remembered everything bigger. The entrance tower is high, but I remembered it huge, with its two great trees in front. Also the corridors I remembered to be very long ... Everything looks much bigger when you are smaller!!

I missed the lockers in the corridors, the toilets at the end... and it was a pity that it is no longer a boarding school.

But overall, the school retains the same spirit as 28 years ago ... !!!

Archivist Nick Baker and former St Mary’s Priory pupil Biddy Allen (née Baines) look over one of the college farm ledgers from 1892, which was passed on via Biddy’s late father, Lewis Baines, who ran the home farm at Princethorpe for the Benedictine nuns, providing the monastery with meat and vegetables. Lew continued to take charge of the farm for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and was still looking after the grounds of the school well into his nineties. Lew always referred to Princethorpe as his “little bit of heaven on earth”.

The ledger forms part of a collection of memorabilia amassed by Biddy and her late parents. Her mother, Joan, who came to the village from Handsworth in Birmingham as a land girl in the war, had assiduously kept scrap books which Biddy has kindly passed on to the archive, along with many other pieces which fit into the Princethorpe jig-saw puzzle.

Biddy and Roy Allen lived in nearby Marton for 40 years before moving to Rugby near to where their son lives. Biddy is still active in Marton helping to look after the collection at the village museum and was one of the last pupils to attend the Priory which closed in 1966 as a girls’ boarding school for about seventy pupils.

The next St Mary’s Priory reunion will take place as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations on Saturday 24 September 2016 at Princethorpe. All past pupils are most welcome to attend the event which will include a tour of school and celebratory lunch.

Nick Baker and Old Princethorpian, Alex Darkes, are co-authoring a souvenir book to be published next August as part of the College’s Golden Jubilee celebrations.  For more information or to register your interest in the book please email Melanie Butler.