Editorial: History in the making
OA Bulletin - Spring 2007
Nick Chappin (1975)
Editor, Maybe it’s an age thing. But as I approach my half-century, I find myself taking an increasingly keen interest in my personal history: the people, events and environment that have shaped who I am today. An old friend of mine is an avid amateur genealogist and has been tracing my family tree – or at least my father’s side – during the abundant downtime on the oil rig to which he disappears every other month. The results are fascinating, if unsurprising – like, I suspect, the majority of the population if you go back far enough, I’m descended from a long line of rural peasantry; the only blue blood in my background is the varicose veins in the labourers’ legs from standing around in fields all day. And like most of their contemporaries, my forebears weren’t great travellers. The furthest most of them managed was moving from Harpenden to Redbourn, although one intrepid branch did actually reach the outskirts of St Albans – albeit the Harpenden side.
It was with great interest, therefore, that I began to read an early draft of Membership Secretary Roger Cook’s history of the Old Albanian Club. As he points out in his introduction, there have been Old Albanians since 948 (although nitpickers may suggest that for this to be true these earliest old boys must have left the moment the School was founded rather than waiting until they’d completed the medieval equivalent of GCSEs). “But it is interesting to reflect that Old Albanians probably fought at Hastings, Agincourt and Bannockburn, sailed into battle against the Armada, served under Nelson at Trafalgar and helped pioneer America, Africa and Asia,” he continues. “We also know that an Old Albanian was the only Englishman ever to become Pope. This was Nicholas Breakspear who, from 1054 to 1059, was Pope Adrian IV and after whom one of the School houses was named.”
Thus the history of Britain and its empire must, in some small part at least, have been shaped by former pupils of St Albans School. Concrete evidence, however, has only been available for the last 120 years or so as the Old Albanian Club was not formally organised until the late 19th century, when a number of local old boys decided to form a dinner club. The first recorded committee meeting minutes were dated May 1892, yet a recently unearthed excerpt from the Herts Advertiser of February 1887 (see page 24) shows that informal reunions (and I use the word advisedly given the apparently formal nature of the occasions) were already taking place at least five years earlier. What this does demonstrate, though, is the dearth of reliable information available.
This labour of love is the result of an exhaustive trawl through the committee minutes and other available documentation, but there are inevitably gaps in the narrative and Roger would be delighted to hear of any additional historical sources which may add to our understanding of the origins of the Club. You’ll find his contact details on page 17.
This early dinner at St Albans Town Hall was attended by such luminaries as the Reverend F Willcox (who was to retire in 1902 after 22 years as headmaster) and A H Debenham, another noted OA after whom a School house was also named. The gathering was chaired by Charles Woollam, perhaps the School’s greatest benefactor and the first President of the Old Albanian Club.
Among the other nuggets mined from the committee minutes of subsequent decades are the registering of the Club colours – “a crimson ground with black stripes intercepted by a narrow stripe of gold” – in 1909, and a proposal, put to the AGM in 1912, that the name of the club be changed from old boys club to the Old Albanian Club. The motion was defeated by four votes and it wasn’t until 1919 that the current name was adopted.
Roger Cook’s magnus opus is currently a work in progress, and should be available in all good bookshops (or at least on the OA website) soon. We shall be including extracts from the history in future editions of the Bulletin. In the meantime, Old Albanians are continuing to make an impact in all sorts of spheres across the globe.
One of our most noted former pupils, Professor Stephen Hawking, visited the School last autumn, and the current crop of pupils continue to deliver the highest levels of academic and sporting achievements. We also bid a sad farewell to several Old Albanians, including well-known photographer John Timbers (see obituary on page 19).
On a lighter note, the OA sporting clubs continue to flourish, and the cricket club is looking forward to another highly successful summer. The Annual Dinner on Friday 6th July returns to the Woollams clubhouse after a two-year sojourn at the School pavilion (see the booking form enclosed), followed by Founders’ Day the following day.
It is always a pleasure to hear from Old Albanians of every generation, so please make the effort to contact me either direct or via OAConnect.