The Abingdon Foundation, Park Road, Abingdon, Oxford OX14 1DE 01235 521563
•
Edited by Jane Warne –
01235 849123
•
Design –
Abingdon
Out of the Past
Copies of the book can be bought
from
price £25 plus £4 p&p.
Keeping it in the Family!
Last year’s Head of Boats, Thomas
Digby, was following in the footsteps
of his great-great-grandfather, Hugh
Mountjoy Digby, who held the post at
Abingdon School one hundred and
thirty four years ago. Thomas won
a silver medal in the GB Four at the
World Rowing Junior Championship
in Rio de Janiero last year to add to
the one he won at Hamburg in 2014.
The family connection came to light
when Thomas’s father, Nick Digby,
Chair of the Friends of Abingdon
School Boat Club, began research on
his fascinating and detailed
The Story
of Abingdon School Boat Club
, which
was published in June.
Forty years ago this September, with no
fanfare and no ceremony, the School began
one of the most momentous changes in its
history: there was no new intake of Direct
Grant pupils that term. This may not sound
very dramatic but it meant that the School had
begun its journey towards full independence.
Forty years ago the School was a very
different place as these photographs show.
Forty Years On
The Court Room was still the venue for
plays, concerts and exams because there
was no Sports Hall and no Amey Theatre
‘Health and safety’ didn’t exist; here the
boys practise abseiling from the roof of
the Science Block.
There were no female members of Common Room –
or at least not in this 1975 MCR photograph
The Dining Hall was brand new –
with significant differences in the
serving arrangements!
Abingdon 1st IV 1882:
Hugh Digby bow
Thomas Digby
