Viewing archives for 450th anniversary

HRH The Duke of Gloucester today visited QE, as the reigning Sunday Times State Secondary School of the Year prepares to celebrate its 450^th anniversary early next year.

Members of the School’s Combined Cadet Force flanked the main entrance and the senior rugby team provided a sporting backdrop as the Duke arrived for his visit, during which he marked the anniversary by planting an oak tree and by presenting a specially embroidered banner to Headmaster Neil Enright.

The visit had an eye to the future as well as the past: the Duke was given a demonstration of VEX Robotics – QE is a multi-time UK champion and was the first UK school to win a World Championship title – and even tried out driving the robots himself.

He came to QE almost exactly 90 years after another royal visit, by HRH The Prince George, Duke of Kent, who opened the new buildings – still in use as QE’s Main Building – following the School’s relocation from its historic Tudor Hall site in Wood Street, Barnet.

Following the visit, Mr Enright said: “It was a tremendous honour and my great pleasure to welcome HRH The Duke of Gloucester today. With the anniversary fast approaching, there was much to show him, including the School’s original 1573 Charter signed by Elizabeth I, our Ties through Time installation of 232 School photographs from the 1880s until comparatively modern times, and, to bring things right up to date, the robots and our new Music building, opened in May.

“The Duke showed a keen interest in everything, and I know our roboteers will be especially delighted that he was brave enough to try his hand at the controls of two of their creations.”

On his arrival, the Duke was presented to the Headmaster by Martin Russell, Representative Deputy Lieutenant of the London Borough of Barnet and a former QE parent.

He was then introduced to:

• Barrie Martin, MBE (Chairman of Governors and Chairman of the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s)
• Nick Gaskell (Vice-Chairman of Governors)
• The three Deputy Heads: Anne Macdonald (Academic); David Ryan (Pastoral) and Tara O’Reilly (Operations)
• School Captain (head boy) Theo Mama-Kahn, and Senior Vice-Captains Ansh Jassra and Antony Yassa, all of Year 13.

The Duke was shown the charter and Royal Seal, together with original artefacts from the 1932 royal visit drawn from the School’s archives. The materials were introduced by Jenni Blackford, Curator of QE Collections and Head of Library Services, and two Year 13 boys involved in the work with the archives, Ishaan Mehta and Gabriel Gulliford.

The Headmaster then gave a formal welcome to the Duke in front of 100 selected pupils in the Main School Hall. He said: “Your Royal Highness, it is my honour and privilege to offer you the warmest welcome on behalf of the Elizabethan community…2022 has been a year full of accomplishment at the School. We have had our status as an outstanding school confirmed by Ofsted, been named State Secondary School of the Year by The Sunday Times, and opened The Friends’ Recital Hall and Music Rooms – the latest enhancement to our campus, built from the generosity of our School community. You could say it has been our annus mirabilis.”

QE’s Senior Barbershop group sang the hymn Abide with Me while the new School banner was brought into the hall by a representative of the CCF. Commissioned in advance of the 450^th anniversary service being held in Westminster Abbey on 24^th March 2023, the banner was passed to the Duke, who presented it to the Headmaster.

After visiting the Ties through Time photographic installation and enjoying the robotics in the School’s Conference Centre, the royal party headed to the new Music building to watch rehearsals for this Thursday’s Winter Concert under the watchful eye of Director of Music Ruth Partington.

Then it was back to the front of the School before the Duke walked down the drive, lined by Year 7 pupils, stopping close to the gates to plant the anniversary oak tree. It is intended that the tree, which has been marked with a commemorative plaque, will come into full leaf for the first time at the School in the spring of 2023.

The tree will also form part of The Queen’s Green Canopy project inaugurated to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. Senior Vice-Captain Antony Yassa read a short extract from the wording of a new anthem composed for the anniversary year by internationally renowned composer, Howard Goodall, which is to receive its debut performance in Westminster Abbey in March: “Let us fill this place with hope. Face fate and fortune in our stride. That like an oak, we draw our strength from ancient roots spread deep and wide. From ancient roots spread deep and wide.”

Pupil representatives from the School’s Eco Network and its six Houses placed soil at the base of the tree, with the Duke invited to complete the process.

With their impressive and impassioned delivery of Shakespeare’s best-known speeches, finalists in a Year 8 competition gave their classmates a powerful reminder that the bard’s plays were written for the stage, not the classroom.

Twelve young dramatists declaimed some of the most famous passages in the English language in front of their whole year group in the inter-House Performing Shakespeare competition – part of the inaugural QE Shakespeare Festival Week.

Congratulating all the finalists, Headmaster Neil Enright said it was perhaps particularly fitting that the overall individual winner, Soham Sapra, is a member of Leicester House, since that is named after the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley.

“It was Leicester, one of the great figures of the Elizabethan age, a leading patron of the theatre and, of course, a near-contemporary of Shakespeare, who, in 1573, asked Queen Elizabeth I for the Charter to establish Queen Elizabeth’s School,” said Mr Enright. “Thus, our Shakespeare Festival Week in a sense honours his legacy to the arts as we prepare to celebrate the 450^th anniversary of our School next year. We are seeking to build on that legacy today through promoting drama and through the central importance we attach to oracy and verbal communication.”

The troupe of actors known as Leicester’s Men was the first travelling troupe to receive a royal licence under Elizabeth I. Its members included Will Kemp, who was later associated with Shakespeare, and James Burbage, who built The Theatre in Shoreditch, London’s first purpose-built theatre, which gave Leicester’s Men a permanent performance base. The design of the Theatre was very much like the original Globe Theatre, built in 1599 by Shakespeare’s playing company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

The Performing Shakespeare competition began in the second half of the Autumn Term, when all boys in Year 8 were asked to select a Shakespeare speech to learn by heart and perform. This accompanied their curriculum studies of Othello.

For the final, the English department drafted in their own panel of ‘guest’ judges – History and Politics teacher Liam Hargadon, Head of Geography Emily Parry and Mrs Elaine White, retired teacher of drama at QE. The event was hosted by Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter.

The audience and judges heard some of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches, including Hamlet’s “To be or not to be?”, Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger?”, and Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”.

The performers were judged not only on their physical performance and their vocalisation, but on how far their performance suited the speech, and on the extent to which their interpretation of the speech met their artistic intention.

Individual winner Soham chose the famous “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy spoken by the melancholy fool Jaques in As You Like It.

Head of English Robert Hyland said: “Soham gave an impressively accomplished performance, using different physical and vocal mannerisms to present each character in their speech with their own personality, and finished his speech by slowing down the pace of delivery and keeping his audience hooked.

“The overall House winner was Stapylton; Snehal Das gave a powerful empathetic performance as Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, and Nimesh Nirojan seemed like he was speaking to thousands in the Roman forum as he gave Antony’s funeral oration from Julius Caesar.”

The ability to perform Shakespeare’s speeches is integral to pupils’ understanding of the playwright, said Mr Hyland. “They are reminded that Shakespeare’s plays were never meant to be studied in class, but performed in theatres. Learning and performing a speech requires students to make judgements about what a character is saying, and how this will affect things like their movement, their vocal tone, and their interaction with the audience, in a way which analysis in an essay can never do.”

A major new photographic installation charts the history of School photos at QE, as preparations for next year’s 450^th anniversary gather pace.

The carefully curated collection of 232 photos of form groups, year groups, sports teams and prefect teams is displayed along the ground-floor corridor of the Main Building.

The installation, called Ties through Time, spans the decades from 1880 onwards, charting not only changing kits and uniforms, hair styles and even postures, but also the development of photography. It has been made possible by the work that has gone into QE Collections, the School’s free-to-use digital archive, which was launched last year.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “It has been very exciting to have the ground floor of our Main Building transformed with this celebration of continuity and change. The photos are a striking visual representation of our inspiring heritage, showing many thousands of people with this one thing in common: they all attended our School.”

Mr Enright paid tribute to the late Richard Newton (OE 1956-1964), whose vision and financial support made possible the extensive work currently going on to organise and digitise the School’s archive ahead of the 450th anniversary of QE’s founding in 1573.

“One of the sparks for the entire QE Collections project was Richard’s desire to see the preservation of the old group photographs that used to line the top-floor corridor,” he explained. “He has left a great legacy to the Elizabethan community in Barnet and we are indebted to him.”

The new display of photos extends either side of the Main School Hall. When the earliest were taken, photography, which is generally considered to have started in 1839, was still expensive and required specialist knowledge. Following the introduction of the Kodak camera in 1888, however, camera owners no longer had to develop film themselves.

In the years since, camera technology has undergone frequent change, with, for example, the introduction of colour and, more recently, of digital technology, replacing analogue film.

Work on the installation was led by Surya Bowyer (OE 2007–2014), founding Curator of QE Collections, with creative input from John Mgbadiefe and Rachael Simcox at architecture and design firm Bisset Adams.

The photos in the display, and countless other images and documents , can be seen remotely by visiting QE Collections.