@abingdon_school @abingdonschool @abingdonschool linkedin.com/school/abingdonschool The Abingdon Foundation, Park Road, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 1DE Edited by Julia Cooke - [email protected] 01235 521563 Lorem ipsum OAs of the Grundy era (William Grundy Head 1913-1947), always looked on him and Miss Florey as the twin pillars of the School: Mr Grundy with his stentorian voice and limp, Miss Florey with her little dog and insistence on good manners. Annie Julia Florey had served as a nurse in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia during the First World War for which she had been mentioned in despatches. She came to Abingdon in 1922 and left in 1947. The boys were never convinced when she told them that she had a brother engaged in very important work until the day in 1945 when Mr Grundy granted them all a half holiday after her brother, Howard Florey, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his role in the development of penicillin. If it were not for Lydia Martha Layng we would have no informal photographs of the School in the years before the First World War. The sister of Thomas Layng, Head 1893-1913, ‘Mattie’ Layng’s album captures social occasions, sporting events, people and places. Miss Mattie, as she was affectionately known, not only acted as housekeeper for School House but also taught German and, during the First World War, French and Geography too. Out of the Past Abingdon Women in our history Desiderius Erasmus by Hans Holbein acquired a copy but it is a significant possession. The Greek inscription comes from Isocrates (388 BC) and reads, ‘if you are a lover of learning you will be learned.’ Erasmus believed that the words were so important they ‘should be painted in gold letters on the title page of your books’. Abingdon School carved them onto the walls of the old schoolroom and they are now on the display case in the entrance to Big School. To Erasmus, the only way to become learned, knowledgeable, was to really engage with the process of learning, to enjoy it, show curiosity, be inquisitive; advice as good today as it was in the days of Isocrates and Erasmus. Abingdon has two connections with the sixteenthcentury humanist Desiderius Erasmus (c1466-1536). One is our copy of The Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the New Testament published in 1548, the other is a Greek inscription ἐὰν ᾖς φιλομαθής, ἔσῃ πολυμαθής. In 1547 Edward VI decreed that The Paraphrase should be translated into English and copies placed in all parish churches. It is not known when the School Erasmus Miss Annie Florey Miss ‘Mattie’ Layng on the Nag’s Head bridge Outside Big School before 1901
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