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School Trips Day
Whole School - November
Lessons, games, assemblies – all school, in fact – having been
cancelled for the day, the five year groups were left free to embark on
a variety of interesting trips, accompanied by their teachers.
The juniors remained in Oxford, whilst the
top two years were taken up to London for
the day.
The First Years visited the Oxford
Museum in the Town Hall, taking part in
a workshop about the Romans in Oxford;
their afternoon was spent enjoying the
pantomime,
Jack and the Beanstalk
, in
Macmillan where the boys also hosted
over 100 staff and Year 3 and 4 pupils from
Cutteslowe Primary School. The Second
Years enjoyed a visit to the Story Museum
opposite Christ Church College. They first
did a creative writing workshop and then
looked around the award-winning museum
inspired by classic children’s literature.
They spent the afternoon relaxing at the
Playhouse where there was a production
of
Aladdin
. The Third Years started their
day in the new Salata Pavilion, where
they were given a presentation on the
evolution of earth, produced and arranged
by DCP. Following this, they had a detailed
tour of the Museum of Natural History,
where they explored the impressive
zoological and geological collections,
including huge fossilised Iguanodon and
Tyrannosaurus skeletons, live cockroaches
and spiders and the oldest rock in Britain,
part of the Nantan meteorite. In the
afternoon, they joined the Second Year at
the Playhouse for fun and magic carpets.
At the British Museum the FifthYears’ trip
had a largely classical emphasis and the boys
each pursued a project of their own to write up
back at school.TheTower of London was the
Removes’ destination, where they saw in situ
many aspects of the history they had previously
studied in class. Of course, torture chambers
would have been an added attraction!
Charlie
Aram
writes:
When we arrived at the Tower of London
I was stunned by the immense beauty and
intricate design of theWhite Tower, the
grandness of Traitor’s Gate and the splendour
of the Crown Jewels (my favourite).We started
with the Crown Jewels which were beautiful
– I thought the best object was the Imperial
State Crown.We looked at the Bloody Tower
and the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. This was
very creepy as the bodies of people who were
beheaded on Tower Green were brought in
here afterwards. After lunch we went into the
armoury in theWhite Tower; I loved the swords
and was particularly impressed by a Japanese
diplomacy gift of ancient samurai armour.We
then looked at crude weapons by visiting the
torture chamber; I’d rather not talk about that.
TMLE
Battlefields of France and Belgium
Parents & Sons – October
At the start of Long Leave a
coach full of boys, parents and
staff headed off early in the
morning to cross the Channel
for a three day battlefield tour.
First stop was Agincourt, just two days
short of the 600th anniversary of HenryV’s
famous victory.The party were treated to
TMLE’s version of Shakespeare’s St Crispin’s
Day speech.We then learnt of how, against
all odds, the small English force routed
the French (with the help of someWelsh
archers).A walk across the battlefield brought
images of knights and men-at-arms fighting
bravely for survival. However, it was almost
unimaginable to picture the sky darkened
by the many thousands of arrows launched
against the French.
The evening was spent inYpres where we
were treated to BeefWellington on the eve of
our visit toWaterloo, in the 200th anniversary
year.The battlefield itself proved fascinating.
All could be understood from the panoramic
views atop the massive Lion’s Mound. It was
a much closer-fought battle than Agincourt,
but again one in which the French were
vanquished.A major part ofWellington’s
victory over Napoleon was due to the brave
deeds of the British in holding Hougoumont.
The battle was at is frightening fiercest here
and DRW explained to us to the details of its
brave defence.
Our final activity was to study the
75th anniversary of the retreat to Dunkirk.
By visiting CommonwealthWar Graves
Commission cemeteries we could see how
a number of rear-guard actions helped to
hold up the German advances in 1940,
thus enabling the evacuation of a huge
number of troops from the beaches.We paid
our respects at the graves of several Old
Summerfieldians in the course of this.Two,
previously unvisited by the school, were in
the same small cemetery in Comines. Captain
Alan Steele and Major Alexander Macdonald
were killed in the same action in late May
1940 and are buried just feet apart.
CS
S u m m e r F i e l d s
2 0 1 5 – 2 0 1 6
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