Victor Thomas Coughtrey
| The dreaded establishment to which I was condemned from September 1954 to the end of 1958 or early 59. As you can tell from the cars, the photo was not taken during that time. In fact it was taken in 2000, while visiting my mother in nearby Barnet General Hospital. The grass in front is the start of Stapylton Field, where each Founder's Day in June, we had to stand to attention while the names of all 400 boys were called out (we had to answer "adsum") and the Royal Charter with which Elizabeth I established the school in 1578 was read by the headmaster from the portico. If the weather was hot a few boys invariably fainted and had to be dragged away out of sight by prefects as quickly as possible. The school moved to this Queen's Road site from the original Tudor building in Wood Street in the 1930s. |