Month: September 2020

September 24th 1920

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Mr AE LYNAM (Hum)

The Christmas Term started yesterday with my brother Hum at the helm, following my announcement of semi-retirement at the end of last term.

We now number 192 children with a further 20 in the junior ‘Baby School’ – this compared with under 60 when I took over the running of the School in 1886!

This term sees some changes in the boarding houses. Mr & Mrs Brown have charge of boarders at 10 Charlbury Road. Mr Bye, having been appointed headmaster of Thame Grammar School, Mr Stradling from the Royal Naval College Osborne, has taken on his house for juniors at 12 Bardwell Road. Miss Field is now running a house for ‘Baby School’ boarders and a few sisters – altogether 4 boys and three girls. This meets a serious need. Parents living in India are glad to be able to leave even young children in so homely an atmosphere.

Lastly:

We have decided to revert to the old name of the School, viz, the Dragon School, Oxford, instead of the Oxford Preparatory School. The boys have always been the ‘Dragons,’ but the School has come to be known as ‘Lynams’ or ‘the OPS,’ and we prefer ‘the Dragons.’

 

 

September 19th 1920

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Today is the fourth anniversary of the death of Leslie Eastwood, who on the outbreak of war in 1914 left the OPS staff to join the army. It seems appropriate therefore to post this picture, sent to us earlier in the year, of his grave in Alexandria, where he died on September 19th 1915.

He had been wounded in Gallipoli and his letters indicated he was making a good recovery from what seemed to be relatively minor wounds. What we didn’t know was that he had been suffering from dysentery for quite some time.

It was a couple of days before the start of the school year in 1915 that the news of his death got to us.

We suffered a double blow, as the  day following Leslie’s death his friend and colleague, Higgy (Thomas Higginson), was also a  casualty of the war. We still miss them both and for many, like Kildare Dobbs, who wrote to us last year, the OPS has struggled to be the same without them.

 

The new school year, the first with my brother Hum at the helm, starts next week (September 23rd).