On Friday 23rd May BGS Old Boys met at the East India Club, London, for a dinner hosted by Alistair Burt and David Mills.  It was a convivial evening and both Jo Anderson and Rachel Britton were honoured to have been invited. At the end of the dinner, Ian Round gave a fascinating speech, some of which he remembers below.

For me it was a privilege to be asked; but also a duty to remember ACR and the many other nameless Masters who in 455 years of history have 'offered the key'; in that moment and in that small select company of goodwill I felt a deep spiritual connection to those Masters captured in time on a sunny day in June 1911. I have an intense feeling of peace and well-being that any attempt at a literal, word by word, record would diminish, so there is no precis. 

Using the location of the photograph above, and the fact that Bridge Road runs almost directly north south, as well as the length of shadow cast and the angle of the shadow cast by two masters on the right of the photograph I estimated the time and date to be 2.23pm on the 22nd June 1911.

This was the day of the coronation of King George V; a day that represented high summer; sunshine with no mill smoke to block its rays; as well as the high tide of Britain's Imperial adventure.

In the bottom left is the Ryan Reynolds look-alike, Andrew Chambers Round, known as ACR. ACR was my Great Grandfather, apprenticed at 14 as a pattern maker, he was also secretary of the pattern makers union (a position he held until his death in 1932) as well as a Justice of the Peace, he also owned an open top Citroen Sedan one of the first to roll off the assembly line at Trafford Park in 1922!

In 1906 ACR was appointed by the Reverend Henry Howlett as an 'instructor', subsequently becoming an assistant Master. He joined the staff in 1906 and left in 1924.

ACR had 6 sons, Percy, Fred, Ernest, Edgar, Charlie, Harry, five of whom attended BGS; Percy did not; although Harry's son Alan, also a Clavian, has produced a record of Percy's war time diaries from Gallipoli. Alan's sister Barbara also attended BGS, no doubt there were many other cousins and descendants of ACR that attended.

My grandfather, father and brother all attended; by some symmetry I also ended my varied career as a Master in a Grammar school, a state selective Grammar with entry by the 11+.

When this photograph was taken, ACR was unaware of the anxieties he would soon face as the father of six sons of fighting age; nor was the gentle Reverend Howlett with a look of such serenity on his face aware of the daily, weekly toll of death that was about to unfold.

The other Masters? If you know who they are, they also deserve to be remembered. If you were actually taught by them; my congratulations.

This is nothing like the speech I made at the Old Boys' Dinner recently, but it seems in order to say:

'A toast to the Masters, past and present and the school'