Mystery spoon and goodbye!

Mystery spoon and goodbye!

 Well folks, we are sad to say this is the last archive post that you will ever see from the U5 archive trio!

Goodbye from us!

We encountered an old silver spoon in the archives just before we went on study leave. Donated by former pupil, Maria Thompson, we could make out the engraving ‘Baupaume’ and a crest, which looked more than familiar. 

The spoon in its case

We did not know the significance or meaning behind this spoon; it was a mystery and yet to be solved. Where was Baupaume? Why did it have the Maynard Crest but in reverse (i.e. three right hands as opposed to three right hands of our crest)? And how did it end up in the archives?

A familiar crest in reverse...

The inscription 'Baupaume'

Google revealed that Baupaume is a small town in Northern France, located between Amiens and Arras, names familiar to us from textbooks on the Western Front.

Map of Baupaume

Baupaume today

 Like these two places, Baupaume also saw action during the First World War. Its strategic position meant that it was captured by the Germans in 1914; regained by the British in 1917; before falling one again to the Germans in March 1918. At the Second Battle of Baupaume, British and New Zealander troops successfully broke through German trenches and recaptured the town in August 1918.

Allied Troops in Baupaume, 1917

Ruins of Baupaume, March 1918

After further investigation, we discovered that the spoon is part of a commemoration towards this battle. Hundreds of spoons were made as souvenirs to commemorate such battles, with town and regimental crests at the top. Some of these spoons were made from melted down artillery canons and other wartime memorabilia.  

Similar commemoration spoons

 As mentioned above, the engraving on the spoon had three hands on it, uncannily similar to the crest of the Maynard. We wanted to know the connection with this small French town of Bapaume and The Maynard. With the help of the marketing team, we got in touch with Maria Thompson. Now Maria Whitton and running an auction house near Honiton, she was most helpful, saying that she donated the spoon with her own handwriting when she left the Sixth Form in 1989. She said that she bought and donated it solely for its resemblance to the Maynard crest. Therefore, we were forced to come to the conclusion that the similarities in the crest were pure coincidence.

Ellie, Erin and Georgina

And goodbye from me

Where have the last two years gone? It does not seem like two seconds since I met Mary Ellis for the first time to discuss the possibility of setting up this project over a cup of tea.

 I am off to pastures new in September but would like to thank Mary for all her help and support with setting up Archive Club. She has been unfailingly helpful, sharing both the run of the archive and her expertise over the last six terms. We have had a dozen pupils at different points enjoying all the archive has to offer; long may this continue.

Whether you be pupil, parent, teacher or alumnae, have a wonderful summer!

Mrs Flavelle 

The Bradley Stone by Erin, Ellie and Georgina

The Bradley Stone

 

A photo uncovered in the depths of the archives made us realise recently how many times we have walked past a piece of Maynard School history: the Bradley Hall foundation stone.

 

The stone being laid in 1984

 

Placed on 6th July 1984 by J.M Bradley, a former headmistress of The Maynard School, this stone symbolises the hard work of the students, teachers and members of the school community in raising money to build our Sports Hall, which is still enjoyed by students of all ages thirty plus years later.

 



Erin and Ellie with the stone as it is today



 

When we went to take a proper appreciative look at the stone, we noted that inside the Sports Hall, there are further dedications to J.M Bradley including a portrait on the wall of the first floor and a drawing on the ground floor. The portrait was drawn by G. Richardson, a member of the art department.

 



Photograph of J.M. Bradley

 





Portrait of J.M. Bradley



 

Curious to see what else we could find out, we learned from the 1983/84 school magazine that on the 6th July there was a fête in aid of the Bradley Hall appeal fund, the same day that the stone was laid. As a result of such efforts, the Maynard continues to enjoy a great deal of sporting success in 2017 - including our U14 netball team, and reigning county champions who have recently been shortlisted for 'School Team of the Year' at the upcoming Express and Echo Sports Awards. We, at Archive Club, wish them the very best of luck!

 

U14 netball team 2017

• Were you there at the unveiling of the Bradley Hall foundation stone?
• Did you help fundraise for the building of Bradley Hall?

 

As always, we would love to hear from you with your memories of the school.

 

 

Cornish's Exeter - by Erin, Ellie and Georgie

Cornish's Exeter - by Erin, Ellie and Georgie

This fortnight we found a Maynard School Magazine from the years 1952-53. At the back, an advert was displayed for Cornish's Exeter.

A close up of the 1952-3 advert

 

We decided to do some research on this company and found that it had shut down in 1991 and the building is now used by the store Snappy Snaps on the corner of North Street and Fore Street. 

 The location of Cornish's in Exeter

Cornish’s supplied the school uniform for the Maynard such as blazers for 45 to 63 shillings, which amounts to around £57-£79 in today's money, according to an online inflation calculator. 

They also sold school items such as panama hats and gym tunics which we don't have today; instead, we have leggings and a school shirt for gym, and we wear our own hats for winter.

 Us by Waterloo with some modern P.E. kit and a junior school coat

Another thing we discovered was the telephone number is 4 digits '3392' (very strange to our 2017 ears!). Our school number is '3417', meaning that they set up their telephone before The Maynard did.

 Georgie with the advert


Did you ever visit Cornish's Exeter for your school uniform? 
As always, we'd love to hear from you. 

 

Trangias past... by Ellie, Erin and Georgina

Happy New Year! Our three young archivists are currently embarking on their January Mocks - we wish them the very best of luck with their endeavours! They will be back soon, but before they broke up for Christmas, Georgina, Ellie and Erin put together this post on some strange gold things they found....

Trangias past... by Ellie, Erin and Georgina

Just before Christmas, we discovered a small mystery bag in the Maynard Archives. At first glance, within it was nothing more than a collection of small gold pots. 

Upon further inspection, we found strange symbols imprinted on the lids of these gold pots and the word ‘Trangia’. We suspected that past students used these on Ten Tors and Duke of Edinburgh expeditions – but they were so different to the bulkier trangias that we use today, that we were interested to find out more.

Some basic research online revealed exactly what the strange gold pots were: Trangia spirit burners with screw caps. There were inscriptions on the inside of the trangias written in Swedish, and there was ‘ACHTUNG HEIß’ written on the top, which means ‘Warning Hot’ in German. This further proved that they were definitely old trangias, but we still did not know exactly when Maynard Girls used them in the past.  

  

To try to find an answer to this question, we looked through some old photo albums in the Archive to find pictures of the old trangias in use. We specifically looked in Ten Tors albums because that was when they were most likely to have been in use. Despite spending two lunch time sessions looking through half a dozen hefty albums, we could not find any old photographs of this particular Trangia model. 

 

 Not our trangias....

As far back as the early 1980s, all the trangias in the photographs were of the bulkier version, which are still used today. We can totally understand the change. The small screw cap model is much more of a fuss to get going, as they require alcohol to ignite (see here for a YouTube video of someone trying to light one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYhjiS1aR1I )

The new trangias are also a lot bigger (and consequently much more stable) and although they are more of an inconvenience to carry they provide much more heat and you can fit much larger saucepans on it – and as any Ten Tor participant will tell you: food is fuel.  

• Did you use this type of Trangia when at the Maynard? If so, when? And where? 

As always any ideas are always welcome via our comments or email.