Queen’s birthday honours
We were thrilled to hear the news that Henry and Anne Beaumont both received MBEs in the Queen’s birthday honours list published in June. They have gained their prestigious awards ‘for services to the community of St. Davids’.
Henry and Anne established a holiday home in Pembrokeshire during their time in charge of Dulverton House in the 1960s. It was therefore a natural step for them in the 1990s to move in retirement from their house at Hempsted to their present home in St. Davids. Their daughter, Elisabeth, is married to a dairy farmer on Picton Estate near Haverfordwest and has two children, Jack and Louise. Apart from close ties with their family, Henry and Anne report that their lives have changed remarkably little in exchanging Cathedrals! Anne goes to the local Church primary school on three mornings a week to hear children read and has former pupils in St. Davids who are now grown up. For many years she has also been going by bus to Haverfordwest to work first in the Save the Children shop and more recently in the Cancer Research shop. Henry has become well-known as a Cathedral bell ringer and a member of the Historical Association Committee. He has taught Latin at Ysgol Bro Dewi on a voluntary basis and served as a school governor. He currently has two pupils, a girl chorister who hopes to take GCSE in Latin next summer and a young man whom he put through the GCSE several years ago and is now heading to Lampeter to read Latin and Archaeology.
Henry and Anne are very grateful for the strong support they received from former senior staff and Old Boys of King’s when they were honoured with their MBEs. They have also appreciated the congratulations that continue to arrive. Henry particularly enjoyed being entertained by his old oarsmen of the fifties at Henley in July. All those who have fond memories of Henry and Anne from their many years at King’s will realise how thoroughly well deserved their awards are.
Decoding the Heavens
Featured in a recent book ‘Decoding the Heavens’ by Jo Marchant (pub. Heinemann) is Michael Wright, who taught Physics at King’s in the early 1970s before becoming a curator at the Science Museum in London. The book is about the struggle to understand a two thousand year old Ancient Greek mechanism which was retrieved from a shipwreck off the island of Antikythera in the early 20th century. Researchers are now making sense of the fragments of a corroded complex of gear wheels and inscribed scales. Among them is Michael Wright, who has produced his own beautiful working reproduction which shows that subtle, long term movements of the sun, moon and major planets were known to our cultural ancestors and that they appreciated more about the heavens than was once thought. Michael’s colleague at King’s, David Bowers, adds that pupils from the 1970s might remember Michael as ‘the teacher with two holes in his shaving mirror’!
Former Staff Evensong
Twenty former staff joined other members of the School at a special Cathedral Evensong service in June. All agreed that the choristers of today are doing a splendid job in keeping alive the standards of excellence for which Gloucester has traditionally been known. A reception in Paddock House after the service provided a good opportunity to exchange news.
Sad News
Those who attended Junior School in the 1940s will be saddened to hear of the recent death of Miss Violet Houldey, who taught at King’s shortly after the war. She commemorated her long-standing association with the school by leaving a much appreciated legacy bequest.