Page 14 - Abingdon News

14 September 2014
OUT OF THE PAST
Dolgoed
In January 1968 the Abingdonian reported
the acquisition of a farmhouse at Dolgoed in
Montgomeryshire, North Wales, which the
School “hope to use as a place for field study
and ‘outward bound’ work”. The first party of
boys arrived that Easter when “The main work
undertaken was to rehabilitate and extend a
very silted up drainage system round the house
and to level, drain and build up the rough track
– there are two miles of it – to the house”.
The School continued to use the property until
the early 1980s. By that time improvements
meant that, “water comes from a nearby
stream, heat from a voracious Joetul wood-
burning stove, light from portable gas mantles
and sanitation from the remarkable preservative
powers of methanol … Cooking is effected by
a calor gas stove. There are four bedrooms,
with no beds of course …”. As has been said
before, “The past is a foreign country”! n
Abingdon School Boat Club 4 March 1914
Exactly five months before the outbreak of the First World War,
twenty-one past and present members of Abingdon School Boat
Club posed for a photograph during an afternoon of racing on
the River Thames. By the time the war was over four and a half
years later, every person in the photograph had seen military
service, nine were dead and one had been blinded.
Donald Cullen, stroke in the 2nd IV (the boat against the bank) left school that summer and attempted to join up but at 16
was too young. He enlisted in the London Scottish in October 1915 and was killed in August 1918. In the 1st IV (to the left
of the 2nd IV) Alan Eason (stroke) left school in 1915 and died of appendicitis in January 1916 while serving with the Royal
Berkshire Regiment. Frank Lupton (2), having served in Ireland during the Easter Rising, was killed on the Somme a few
months later inAugust 1916, andArthur Davenport (3), servingwith theRoyal TankCorps, was killed inAugust 1918. Coach
HaroldBaker, wearing the pale blazer, was the sciencemaster. He volunteered in 1915 andwas killed in theGerman Spring
Offensive in March 1918. Melville Channing Pearce, another coach, is to the left of him. One of the OA boats was made up
of OA undergraduates at Oxford: Wilfred Williams (Pembroke), Harry Burkett (Hartford), George Woods (Keble) and Cyril
Cook (Pembroke). Theywere all killed. They canbe identified to the right of thephotographby their dark collegeblazers. n
A school working party
painting the exterior of the
farmhouse in 1968
A group of sixth-formers
in April 1969
L to R: Rupert Crane, Ian
Routledge, Vivian Lacey-Johnson,
Richard Leonard, Chris Nicholl,
James Cox, Richard Gyselnck,
John Dyke and Charles Pfeil
The farmhouse in 2009
Part of the track to the
house in 2009