Stories from the Archives: A Pamphlet in the Gutter

Stories from the Archives: A Pamphlet in the Gutter

In 1979 I was asked if I would be interested in starting a school archive and finding out something about the history of the BSN, in particular the early days. Surprisingly, not much was known. Initially the school had been very small and had moved from one set of rented premises to another. With each move most of the ‘junk’ had been thrown away, and record-keeping in those days was scant anyway; staff and students alike had scattered to the four corners of the globe and taken their memories with them; hardly anyone stayed for long. And of course this was long before the days of the internet.

So, to begin with, progress was slow; but gradually a picture started to emerge, at first just broad outlines but, little by little, in more detail. After a couple of years I felt I had an accurate record of the school ‘s history back to 1948 when it was re-started after the war, but the pre-war period and the founding of the school largely remained a mystery. A final clue which involved obtaining information from the Public Records Office in Auckland, New Zealand, and which had seemed so promising, in fact proved fruitless. I recall going into school on a Monday morning and telling the then Headmaster, Brian Davidson, that our clue had led nowhere. We had to accept defeat. We would never know what had taken place in the 1930s. It was just too far back.

Three days later, on the Thursday of that week, a letter arrived at the school. It had been posted in the small town of Penarth in South Wales and was addressed To whom it may concern.  It came from a certain Mr Packer – and what he said was quite remarkable. He had apparently been out walking his dog a couple of days earlier (probably the day I received the bad news from New Zealand) when he noticed what appeared to be a small pamphlet blowing along in the gutter. Out of curiosity he picked it up and found that it was a twenty-year-old prospectus of an English School in The Hague. What on earth a twenty-year-old prospectus of our school was doing in the gutter of a small town in South Wales is anyone’s guess but the most amazing bit is yet to come. As he read it Mr Packer thought to himself, “I wonder if that’s the school my aunty Olive taught at before the war.” As there were only three or four teachers at the school, the odds against this must be astronomical; but we were indeed the school where she had taught  –  and she was still alive, though well into her eighties.

I got in touch with Olive Bowen (née Jones) immediately, and a few weeks later she flew across to the Netherlands as an honoured guest of the school. She spent a weekend with us and was able to tell us all sorts of fascinating things about the early days of our school. I shall be sharing them with you in future articles. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

It is a remarkable story.

Stories from the Archives is a new Voices Blog series by BSN Archivist Mike Weston.