The Old Bordenian Association

This is the first of a number of fascinating articles to be published over the coming months detailing the history of the school and particularly around the period 1928 – 1929, when the school moved to its current location.  We start before the move. 

 ‘VALE’ – Words of farewell to the Old School (from “The Bordenian” December 1928)

“At some time in the not far distant future we shall be deserting the familiar and beloved precincts of our ancient academy – “The old order changeth, yielding place to new” – and shall be exploring our new home. Before we take our departure, however, let us make a rapid survey of our old domicile.

Starting at the summit of the stately pile we find two classrooms which were one in the dim and distant past. No longer will the treble pipe of “fags” be heard in one, nor the agonised voices of history students in the other. The dormitories, too, with their thick carpet of dust, disturbed only by annual rehearsals, how long will they remain in this state? And that terrible room – shall we call it the Chamber of Horrors? – where so many “Highers” have been taken, what will become of it, with its leaning walls?

Descending to lower levels we pay a fleeting visit to the French and Geography rooms. All dormitories once, my masters, and the scene of many midnight frolics. And then the east wing, a labyrinth of dusty passages leading to diminutive and dustier cubicles to the walls of which adhere touching portraits and inscriptions – but disturb not the rest (and dust) of these sepulchral chambers and come to earth.

Here we have much to regard in a very short space of time. A fleeting glimpse of the courtyard and kitchens is sufficient, quite sufficient. The dining hall is the centre of our interest, for here within its ink-marred confines repose our ancestral arms.

 Then there is the Library, the scene of many “fagly” tortures and joys. Its battle-scarred desks could tell many a tale if only they could speak!

The Schoolroom next compels our attention, its battered walls tastefully adorned with detention lists and ancient maps, half obscured by a dense pall of dust. Here has many a youthful voice been lost. 

“With Hallooing and singing of Anthems

Small wonder the ceiling is cracked!”

Of the remaining rooms, only those of the Sixth Form and the Prefects are of outstanding interest. The former seems to re-echo with the yells which greet an unwilling victim of a practical joke, and the latter is as it ever was, a chamber of litter, pleasant in summer, but in winter as cold as the polar regions. Many tales could be told of the laboratories, of fire and water, but time and space permit not – it grows dim and we whisper farewell.”