Cambridgeshire Huntingdon & Peterborough Life, January 1970

SOHAM GRAMMAR SCHOOL

by Anne Lewis-Smith

It is difficult, if not impossible, to pin down what makes a school merely a place of learning and what makes it a community of masters and boys. Whatever it is, Soham Grammar School on the edge of the flat fen land is a community which has one of the best atmospheres I have yet found in a boys' school.

In 1686 the School was instituted as a free Grammar School (not a charity) and remained in the High Street until 1926, coming under Cambridgeshire Education Authority ten years before. In the mid-twenties the School moved to Beechurst then a country house on the outskirts of Soham standing in a large wooded garden.

Since then very clever alterations and additions have been made to the original house which remains a nucleus containing several classrooms, the Headmaster's study, the Staffroom and the library. This latter with polished wood floors and the light woods of tables, chairs and bookcases is an amalgamation of three rooms, and when I visited it winter sunlight streamed through the many tall windows. Where the rooms have been joined by open arches exactly matching plaster decorations have edged the arches as elsewhere, the whole library retaining an air of elegance.

The Headmaster, Mr. E. Armitage, M.A. Cantab., B.Sc. (Lond), J.P., has his study directly above one end of the library, both of the rooms having the window-seated circle of the small tower at one corner.


The Headmaster, Mr. E. Armitage, M.A. Cantab., B.Sc. (Lond), J.P.

One of the most give-away things about Mr. Armitage's study was that besides his own desk and chair there was not the usual two, possibly three, other chairs but over ten! Not a man who rules the School as a 'loner' but a man who discusses things with his staff and who obviously puts great importance on this.

Mr. Armitage was a master at King's School, Rochester and then at Bradfield College till 1939 when he joined the R.A.F. and was almost immediately seconded to R.E.M.E. After the war, instead of returning to Bradfield, he came in 1945 to take the Headship of Soham Grammar School which then had only 230 pupils.

Although his main interest and training is in Physics and the Deputy Headmaster's, Chemistry, he told me that there was no bias towards Science. "Though for many years we have had to be careful that the division was as near half and half with Arts as we could make it. Now of course there is a swing towards Arts anway and it is about fifty fifty, perhaps slightly stronger on the Science side."

Mr. E. H. Tabraham, M.Coll.H., F.R.S.A., the Deputy Headmaster who teaches Woodwork and Technical Drawing has been at Soham for twenty three years, so also has Mr. R. A. Taylor, M.A., (a Cambridge Soccer Blue in 1932), who is the Head of the Lower School. Four other Masters have been teaching in the School for between ten to twelve years each but most of the others have come in the last six years, the average age being around thirty. Of the 400 boys at Soham Grammar School fifteen are weekly boarders and live, as does the Headmaster, his wife and family, at The Moat. The catchment area is wide, stretching beyond Newmarket and Ely, eighty boys coming by bus from Cambridge every day.

Stimulant of Governors
In 1951 the then history Master wrote most of the history of the School, unfortunately leaving before finishing. As each succeeding History Master arrives he is asked to finish it - but as yet it remains almost exactly as it was in 1951. The School is very fortunate in having a Board of Governors chaired by Alderman F. H. Jeeps (Chairman of the Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely County Council) who together with Mr. G. D. Edwards, the Chief Education Officer for Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, are in close contact with Mr. Armitage and act as a stimulant for the School rather than a depressant. This is very obvious as one looks at the recent additions to the School, even to the Vending Machine for tea, coffee and milk!

Three new Science Laboratories, an extremely well equipped Gymnasium, Art and Pottery rooms, several classrooms (some of them in temporary buildings) and a magnificent Assembly Hall have been built during the last twenty years. The Assembly Hall is fan shaped with full length windows all along the rose­garden side and steps running the full width of the stage down to the floor ­ it must be the envy of every Headmaster who sees it. Throughout the School are paintings bought by the County Authorities or painted by the boys (often hard to differentiate) and in the rose-garden is a perfectly beautiful bronze of boys peering into a pond by the late Betty Rea.


In the rose-garden three boys in bronze peer into a pond;
a delightful sculpture by the late Betty Rea.

Beside the cloisters stand pieces of pottery and a bas relief made by the boys which were very impressive, as was the high standard of all the pottery and art work I saw - not just the bits on show but the actual work on hand in the artrooms where the Art Master is a practising artist in his own right.

There are eighty boys in the 6th Form which is divided into six tutorial groups - Arts and Social Studies, Languages, Creative Studies, Natural Sciences, Mathematical Sciences and Technological Studies - no group being more than fifteen, two of them under nine. "One of the reasons we divided the 6th Form into tutorial groups was so that the Masters can be in the nature of tutors such as at Cambridge or Oxford. They know the individual boys, their homes and their background so instead of just being a Form master they become much nearer to the boys."


The Art and Pottery rooms have have
been built within the last 20 years

Over the last six years 25 boys a year have gone on to University or Higher Education, the intake of sixty boys a year at eleven­years old balancing the leavers.

The Headmaster is delighted to hear the 11+ is to be abolished, and would be equally delighted if crew cuts returned to fashion, BUT unlike most Headmasters feels that one has got to live with long hair and "fighting against it is like banging one's head against a brick wall!" This surely is one of the advantages of a Headmaster having three sons, the youngest being only twelve'.

The Mowforth Bequest, given by Mrs. Grace Mowforth in memory of her nephew William Case Morris, a Missionary in Argentina in the 1890s, may be used for anything of a cultural interest. One of the things this means is that transport can often be provided to enable boys who would be precluded from taking part in various activities because of travelling difficulties, and also that subsidies can be provided for theatre trips and other things such as buying the sculpture I saw in the rose-garden.

Each year the School puts on a main production of a play, it is the The Importance of being Earnest this year, A man for all seasons in 1968, and throughout the year many smaller productions take place. There is an Army Cadet Force with an indoor shooting range and a Senior Scout Troop which has had as many as fifteen Queen's Scouts, also a junior Scout Troop and a Driving Course ­all very active. Reading the very well written and edited School Magazine with hilarious articles on a Biology Field Course and last year's Summer Camp it was interesting to note the large amount of space given to the Record Library, School Choir and Chess in comparison with the House news. There are four Houses, Hereward, Ridley, Chicheley and Cromwell and the competition between them in Football, Athletics, Tennis, Cricket and Swimming is very keen, but not unnaturally as the School is a day School the accent on House activities is less than that of a Boarding School.

Lower School "Cushion"
The Forms 1 and 2 have been made into the Lower School which has separate Assembly except for two days a week. The idea behind forming a Lower School is that many boys come from small Primary Schools with perhaps only 50 pupils and being pitch-forked into one 400 boys strong takes a while to settle in - the Lower School therefore acts as a "cushion".

Mr. Tabraham is the Chief Careers Master. "Over the past ten years" the Headmaster told me "his work with careers has grown as much as my administrative work and he now has a careers room and six Masters to help him!" Last year a Careers Convention was held with the 6th and 5th Formers and their parents, masters and Form masters, also the Headmistress and some of the girls from Ely High School: between 25 and 30 'agents' representing different careers open to school leavers were also present.

In an attempt to break away from the traditional Speech Day and to facilitate closer contact between parents, staff and boys the Sixth Form Open Evening was held. "It was hoped that in this way, and within the context of a pleasant social evening, parents would learn more about the School." The Middle and Lower School also had their own Open Days, each year-group having a separate one of basically the same pattern.

Eleven acres of playing fields
The playing fields of 11 acres have a most splendid pavilion and swimming pool in them and adjoin the playing fields belonging to the local Secondary Modern and Village College; they are entered by very simple and beautiful wrought iron memorial gates. There is no long list of names on a plaque but a book containing the names of all those from the School who died in the two wars is kept in the library under glass and a page turned every day.

An Exhibition Hall, once the Assembly Hall, is now a place for notices, displaying pottery and paintings and for sitting and chatting. Old stables have been turned into extremely efficient Woodwork rooms, the results of which are so professional it is difficult to realise they are made by Schoolboys.

"I suppose it is very old fashioned," Mr. Armitage explained, "but I feel it very important that I should not only know every boy's name but know all about him." Is this old fashioned? It is certainly one of the more important facets which makes a Headmaster a man in touch with his pupils and staff rather than the administrator which many others seem in danger of becoming. It is also one of the facets which go to build up that whole which is Soham Grammar School.

source: Mrs May Armitage, 14 Mar 2003