The following letter was sent to inform parents or guardians that their child had been awarded a place at the (Bond Street) Burton Grammar School.
The letters were sent from the then County Borough Education Department and signed by the Education Secretary and Director, Arthur Blake who was for a time, at the same school as Bill Gillion who he would later appoint as Headmaster at the ‘new’ Winshill School.
At the Inaugural Old Boys Association Dinner in 1921, Mr Frank Evershed expressed a hope that some day, the school might possess its own School Song which could be sung on such occasions.
Mr W.T. Jeffcott who had recently retired from the school as Senior Classical Master, set to work on some words. Mr F.A. Lowe composed the necessary music with help from W.P. Lowe and the School Song was born and proudly sung on many occasions.
The below song sheet was unearthed but no-one seems to remember what the tune was!
This first form school report for 1969 gives some idea of the curriculum.
Subjects taken can be seen to include:
The class was split so that half did Metalwork, the other half did Woodwork. After the first half of the year, the groups swapped over. Latin was only taken by the ‘A’ Stream.
Note that the pocket calculator had not yet made its debut and log tables were still very much in evidence so subjects such as the modern ICT (Information and Computer Technology) were still pure Science Fiction!
The school song, which started with the School Motto ‘Deus Nobiscum’ (Latin: God be with us), is thought to have had the words written by Elizabeth Radford, with some input from Robin ‘Bumble’ Langton.
Contrary to popular belief, the music was not composed my music teacher, Mr Dawe, but in fact composed by F.B. Westbrook.
Go on, I bet you can’t resist singing at least the first few lines in your head!
Deus Nobiscum: God with us
be this our ensign yet.
Our forbears’ deeds victorious
Oh let us not forget.
For thy bright honour Lord they strove
may we their flame maintain.
The fervour which them forward drove
shall us today sustain.Our school has stood the test of time
the centuries have crowned her.
With earnest zeal to heights sublime
her sons have risen round her.
Fair play and hard health-giving toil
and strong united will,
make us good seed in this fair soil
to sing “God with us” still.God with us, may we forward move
to heights which now we scan.
God with us may we worthy prove
of others faith. We can,
with thee beside us, reach the crest,
Where shines eternal day.
Deus Nobiscum: God with us
shall be our song for e’er.
The school was split into four houses; Wellington (Maroon), Clive (Green), Drake (Blue) and Nelson (Black). So we each had to have a house sports shirt in the appropriate colour.
The wooden shields themselves took pride of place in the main hall with two either side of the main school shield.
Looking at the House Shields rekindles the thoughts of how Clive looks somehow out of place and would be more fittingly depicted as a white shield with a green cross. I have not been able to find any genuine heraldic reasons to relate the four crests to their associated historic figures, neither have I been able to identify any other example where the same combination of shields is used so their origin remains a slight mystery; hopefully, I will be enlightened one day.
Seen here are two of the original wooden wall crests from the area in front of the library. While every effort has been made to restore the images, no attempt has been made to ‘graphically restore’ the conditions of the actual crests, which I remember being in much brighter condition.