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Isabella Eastham, Director of Development,  presented an assembly to herald in the start of our 450th Anniversary events.  Here is her address and a link to the accompanying film

If I could offer you all one piece of advice for the day, it would be to slow down a little and look around you.

When you sit on a stool in the biology labs, be faintly thankful that had it not been for a flood, concrete cancer and some interesting building work, you’d have had to trudge up three flights of stairs to the old labs on top of the science block.  When I was at school, my form room was on the fifth floor.  I understand the pain of trudging up stairs.

When you check a book out of the library, know that not so very long ago, the now  famous modern philosopher, Roger Scruton, was expelled from this school for accidentally setting fire to what is now the Computer Centre, then the assembly stage.  He doesn’t hold it against us, as he still got his place at Cambridge.

When you knock on the Staff Room door in School House, spare a thought for the hundreds of pupils who once ate their dinner in there as part of the boarding houses we ran.  It caught fire in the 1930s and the pupils all spent a few nights boarding in Godstowe School, just down the hill.

When you run over to Uplyme Fields for games, imagine what it once was like as the fields that belonged to the girls’ school Lady Verney High.  The Main Block would have been the only large building you could see for miles around.  The Queen’s Hall certainly didn’t exist.

If you are in Mr Pantridge’s office, take a look at his fireplace, where the motto of the Disraeli family is engraved.  Coningsby Disraeli loved our school – he donated the clock tower you can see out of the window and even helped buy the land the school sits on today.

The School Blazer that you’re all superbly modelling now, used to be a LOT flashier, with wide blue and burgundy stripes.  Green was never a school colour.

You’ve seen the School changing before your eyes, the old gym’s conversion to the Sixth Form Mezzanine and Maths Classrooms.  You’re the last group of RGS boys to ever see the Old Gym, or the old changing rooms for that matter.


That’s a bit weird, if you think about it.  You’re the last group of people to ever have seen something before it changed forever.  It might seem small and insignificant, because things are always changing and there are huge world-altering events that happen without warning that impact upon us all.  

But this is something you’re always going to be a part of.  Some of your parents donated money towards those buildings – some of you will have had some good memories of those buildings.  And now some of those buildings are gone or have changed shape and function entirely.

We are, as you know, 450 years old.  That makes our head boy, Henry Dean, the 450th Head Boy we have ever had.  Older than Charles Dickens, who is 200 this year.  This school stood strong through two world wars, it saw London’s great fire blaze in the distance and was teaching boys before the first British colony was declared in America and before even the first daily newspaper was printed in England or Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels.  We certainly outdate ipads, cars, televisions, hoodies and all the comforts you have in daily life today.

There are about 3,500 state secondary schools in England and only a tiny percentage are nearly half as old as us. If you think of the 52million or so people in England alive today, there are less than 100 RGS Head Boys in that group.  Henry Dean and indeed all of you are an exclusive group, you’re all helping us change the way we shape the future of the School just as old boys of the past have shaped the school in their time.

When you walk between lessons today, be aware that you’re walking on a site that is 98 years old.  There are 98 years’ worth of detentions, classes, lunches, blazers, teachers and games of foursquare that have gone before you and it’s really up to you in the seven years that you are here to leave something for the next generation to remember you by.  

We are planning a whole year of celebrations to commemorate our history and 450th birthday, from gala concerts to balls, fairs and lectures.  I urge you all to get involved in some way.  You might want to host a stall or activity at the family day on 5 May, come and listen to our sports commentating old boy talk us through the Olympics and how the RGS is historically linked to that other major 2012 event.  Hopefully you will have all seen the calendar of events that was given out before Christmas.  Take another look and make sure you share this year with us.  It is definitely something you will look back on, in years to come.

So many, many things have changed since we were founded.  We’ve moved building twice, accepted girls into the sixth form on occasion (her name is recorded on the honour board in the Queen’s Hall) and now I’d like to show you a film that Year 7 made, about the school you know, the buildings you sit in, and the history you are a part of.