Parents' Handbook 2017-18

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The Abingdon Foundation, Park Road, Abingdon, Oxford OX14 1DE 01235 521563 • Edited by Jane Warne – 01235 849123 • Design –
Abingdon Out of the Past
Remembering Their Friends
A new home has been found for the paving slabs that once graced the area known in
the 1960s as The Precinct, the space between the café and what they called the Court
Room before it became the Geography block (and is soon to be the new Beech Court). In
1960 the OAs of the 1920s offered to pay for paving slabs to smarten up this area. They
decided that, in addition to their own initials, they would inscribe them with those of some
of their friends who had been killed during the 1939-45 War. The stones were taken up
before the building work started on Beech Court and have now been given a permanent
home in the Jekyll Garden.
There are 16 initials on the main
memorial stone; 11 of them belong
to boys who appear in the 1927
photograph – 5 in the section shown:
Dennis Hillier (DJWH), who served
with the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment
and was killed on 29 June 1944,
19 days after the regiment landed
in Normandy; sub-mariners Harry
d’Almaine (HRd’A) and Edmund Hunt
(EGS) based at Valetta on the island
of Malta whose submarines failed to
return to port on 1 May 1941 and 8
January 1943 respectively. Lewis Godwin (LJFG), serving with the RAF and also stationed
on Malta, who was killed in an air raid there on 28 February 1941, and Peter Darbishire
(PO’ND) who served with Bomber Command and was missing presumed killed when his
plane failed to return from a mission over Europe 15/16 December 1940.
Curious Window
Abingdon’s Head
Groundsman, Paul
Robson, died last year
after 17 years with the
School. In appreciation
of his work, the new
all-weather, six-lane
cricket nets on War
Memorial Field have
been named the Robson Wickets
and a bench in his memory placed
overlooking Waste Court Field.
Paul Robson 1959-2016
Curious Window
Hillier
Hunt Godwin Darbishire
d’Almaine
For those still wondering where the curious
window is to be found (April Abingdon News)
it’s to the right of the front door of Park Lodge.
The main memorial stone