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THE NEW TRINITY—1957

The School celebrates its Seventy-Fifth Birthday this year, an occasion of which we are all very proud.

It is a school which has rendered honourable service to the community in which it lives.

Many distinguished people have played a part in its development and many distinguished people have received their education within its walls. It is a school with a fine tradition and a great spirit, as the recent sports showed. Now, in addition, it is revealing a vitality and a flexibility in the face of the challenge of this technological age that is little short of astounding, for it must be remembered that the School has had to labour for years under the yoke of an old and badly designed building, quite inadequate for even a pre-war grammar school.

The School is in the rather exciting position of re-adjusting itself to a curriculum which gives the Sciences and Design their places in the sun along with the Humanities.

New special Advanced Laboratories are shortly to be installed which will put Trinity amongst the foremost grammar schools in the whole London area for facilities of this kind, and indeed for grammar school education as a whole.

Preparation for this new phase in the life of the School has meant a busy and unusual year which has been marked by many interesting events. These included the founding of our Annexe which after a slow start has developed so promisingly, with great credit to both Staff and pupils.

The new Trinity is a school which will give its pupils an education that will take them to the top no matter what their ambition is, and it will encourage them to get to the top., For what is a grammar school for but to provide leaders and loyal members of the community in its manifold tasks.

We at Trinity do not wish to lead through arrogance but through a desire to serve our fellows; we seek achievement based on hard work and self-sacrifice; we seek to be courteous and co-operative in an age where some people forget about such things.

RESIGNATION OF MISS E.W. PARSONS, B.Sc.

There can be few schools in the country with a Senior Mistress better loved than Miss Parsons. Dealing though she may in the classroom with a subject which many scholars perhaps find naturally distasteful to them, and involved though she has had to be by virtue of her position with disciplinary troubles of all kinds, yet no-one, it is a striking statement, but we believe true) among either Staff or pupils has ever doubted her sense of fairness, her devotion to the School, or her essential kindliness. Other Senior Mistresses may be competent, other Senior Mistresses may be kind; but such a combination of competence and kindness as Miss Parsons has shown to be hers must be rare indeed. There is no disguising the fact that her resignation is a grievous loss.

Miss Parsons has taught for twenty-four years in Wood Green, and exactly half that time at this School. She has been Senior Mistress for the last five years. Into all the activities of the School she has thrown herself with vigour, whether -it has been netball-coaching or arranging socials, or whether it has been the much more difficult, and more important, task of arranging the time-table. In everything she has done she has spared no time and no effort to ensure that a high standard was maintained. Not only in her own Department of Mathematics, of which she was Head, but in all the trivial routine tasks of a busy School life was this brisk efficiency shown. We who know her realise that there was always added goodwill and good feeling, and that wherever she was there was an atmosphere of happiness.

She leaves us to become Deputy Head of Bramcote Hills Country Grammar School, Nottingham, a new school in a new building, situated in beautiful surroundings. She takes with her the very good wishes of her colleagues and her former pupils, many of whom, especially those she taught in the Sixth Form, keep in touch with her. Her friends feel it is some mitigation of their sense of loss that she is already being treated at Nottingham with kindness and appreciation. They wish her every happiness there.

RESIGNATION OF MR.E..L. Dean, B.A.

When a home branch of the School was started for two hours a week at Minchenden in November, 1939, the main School being evacuated to Hatfield Peverel in Essex, Mr Dean was attached to us. We liked him, and took him with us when we moved to Wood Green in February, 1940. We still like him, and have always been glad we seized our opportunity seventeen years ago.

Mr Dean is a man of keen, we might almost say passionate, enthusiasms. And with him enthusiasms last for life. His first love is his Modern Language Department. To that he has brought as its Head for so many years an insistence on the value friendly gaiety of spirit which has kept his Department lively and has incidentally made him one of the most popular members of the Staff. As an example of his unwearying enthusiasm, we think of his development of Spanish studies, As no good text-books existed, he simply set to and wrote some ..

His energies have not been confined to the class-room, however. As our" first-aid man" he has treated dozens, perhaps hundreds by now, of our pupils with unfailingly conscientious skill and kindness.

His great interest in music has been placed at the service of the School, and his help in the accompanying, both at piano and organ, of choirs at concerts and Carol Services will not soon be forgotten. His Spanish Choir always gave him special pleasure. Among his many other occupations and hobbies, we will recall only one: his delight and skill in the delicate work of making model ships.

He goes from us to become Head of the Modern Language Department at Downer Grammar School, Edgware, a school in which his abilities will have a wider scope than seems possible here. After so many years at Trinity, he feels the break keenly. Vie hope he will be very happy in his new post, and to help him to that end we assure him that he has the goodwill and good wishes of his friends the members of the Staff and of the very many present and former pupils who will also be proud to be numbered among his friends.

.RESIGNATION OF MR E.J. BRANDON, B.A.

It has long been Mr Brandon's task, as editor of this magazine, to write notes on departing members of Staff; on another page his final note appears, for he is now among those to whom the School is bidding farewell. A graduate in English of University College, London, Mr Brandon joined the Staff in 1925 and has given 32 years service to the school. In those early days of the newly acquired secondary school status, it fell to him to raise the level of English studies, and the maintenance of this standard has been his chief professional responsibility as Head of the English Department. For 30 years he has edited the School magazine and can look back with pride on a series of termly publications, uninterrupted till a year ago--a total of 94 issues. The school library owes its origin to his interest and initiative; he was librarian for seven years. Mr Brandon has been equally active in the field of sport. For some years he was a member of the Old Boys' Hockey Club. There are, alas, few of his colleagues who remember him in former years as organiser of annual School camps and as instructor in a lifesaving class.

In all that he has undertaken Mr Brandon has shown patience, a meticulous attention to detail, and impeccable taste. The magazine has owed much to these qualities. His editorials have shown, too, a keen insight into the prevailing mood of the many-sided life of the School. It was naturally to Mr Brandon that we turned for the arrangement of prize day ceremonies, and we recall also the impressive dignity at the memorial service to King George VI.

The intimacy of daily contact has given a rewarding glimpse of Mr Brandon as a person who is kindly, generous, and unsparing in his efforts to help others. His passion for justice will not allow him to compromise with what offends his own high moral standards. Two years ago he lost his wife, a former member of this staff. This loss he bore with fortitude, sustained by the deep sympathy of his friends and colleagues. By going to Dartford he will be fulfilling a wish to be nearer his family. He will take leave of colleagues who have for him the deepest admiration and affection, and whose good wishes may prove to be some compensation for the sadness he must feel in severing his long association with the School and with Wood Green.

RESIGNATION OF Mr H.L. Peacock, M.A.

Mr Peacock is a versatile man. As a historian he has touched life at many points. 'Believing in the old saying that all history is interesting if it is detailed enough, he has brought from a vast storehouse of learning stories which have entranced his classes. And not only entranced them. They have grown in knowledge, for Mr Peacock's teaching has been based on sound scholarship and wide learning-as his forthcoming textbook on modern history for .sixth Forms will show. His versatility appears in his delight in, and expert knowledge of, old glass, of which he is a very skilled collector, and in his love for old furniture, which he restores with the craftsmanship of an eighteenth-century cabinet-maker. We need not speak here of his prowess in games or· of his accomplishments in other arts, such as painting and glass-etching-. Indeed, he appears to have followed in his life the old Greek ideal of all-round development.

Since his appointment as Senior History Master in 1943, he has taken a vigorous part in the social and athletic life of a big and active School, and he will be missed not only in the classroom. His going will leave a gap in the Masters' Common Room, where his good-natured discussion of questions of the day delighted his colleagues, and his pavonine platitudes puzzled them, for they rarely knew whether he were in earnest. But they were never in any doubt about one thing: the underlying kindness of the man. Whatever he might say, they recognised in him a true liberal, a humanitarian, a lover of his fellow-men. And the Common Room will be the poorer for the loss of his friendship ..

He goes to a very different kind of post, the Headship of Central Park Secondary School, East Ham. We should like to think that he will miss the good fellowship which has existed here and that he will cherish happy memories of Trinity. His new school, we know, will he governed wisely and benevolently. He takes with him the good wishes of us all for his success and happiness.