The Old Bordenian Association

Following the addition of the history of the Football Club recently, it is worth visiting the link below to a recent article in the East Kent Gazette referring to the Club in the 50′s and 60′s.  Dick Day and Ashley Read have contributed their memories and refer to Brian Tyler, still a regular at the Annual Dinner, who was still performing in his forties when I first started playing for the Club whilst still at school in 1967.

Let’s hear from other former players with tales of skill, artistry and football magic!

http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/east-kent-gazette-the-sittingbourne-uk/mi_8114/is_20100414/football-memories-flood/ai_n53161632/

Although this news about Brian Shrubsall is a couple of months out of date, better late than never!  http://www.kent-online.co.uk/sittingbourne_messenger/news/2009/june/17/former_borden_boys_obe_joy.aspx

This one is for John Macrae – provider or originator of much of the material on the site.  A 1959 Physics paper.  Answers please on the modern equivalent of a postcard – the box at the bottom of the article!

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We have been given a number of old GCE ‘O’ level examination papers from the late 50′s and early 60′s.  These will be added regularly to the site.  There are differing views on whether exams are getting easier, children are brighter or trying harder, teaching is better, etc.  It is not my place to offer a view, I shall just stimulate the debate.  Below is the July 1959 Mathematics ‘O’ level paper 1 for your ‘enjoyment’. 

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The link to the Sittingbourne Heritage Museum on the right will take you to an excellent and comprehensive article by John Butler of life at the School in the 1950s.

Bob Davis was, without any doubt, the iconic figure at Borden in the late fifties. Blessed with a fine physique, he was a magnificent sportsman. His main love was football but he could seemingly turn his hand to any sport. Although he never liked cricket, he scored the only century of our period at school. He could throw a javelin a fair distance and hockey and tennis came easily to him. He was no fool in the classroom but what singled him out from the rest of us was his iconoclastic attitude to life at Borden. There was a James Dean-type rebelliousness about him yet he became head boy because George Hardy wisely recognised his cult status. It was a job he did almost casually but all respected him. I think many of us were in awe of him. Read the rest of this entry →

By John Macrae

This is the first in a series of articles that you have probably been reading about in the Maroon for some time.  Well, I have finally got round to it in this run-up to Christmas 2007.  I have just finished helping Graham Barnes put the 2008 Maroon to bed, attended the Sheppey Dinner, completed the minutes for the AGM and the recent Committee meeting and organised the mailing of the last Maroon to the Leavers of July 2007.  So with some spare time on my hands I have begun searching the archive for photographs of the School and Old Bordenians.  There is surprisingly little considering there should be more than a hundred years of evidence.  What I have found is a box containing some photographic records that have been collecting dust for some years and the consequent deterioration of the prints.  It was with a matter of urgency that I started photographing this evidence and storing it digitally.  This project alone is time consuming so I decided to combine this work with my Memory Lane chapters to show how Borden has changed and to recall some of the characters who have lived and worked therein.

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