Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPckLmKoi54
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU0tz2eXX-g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcc9MXvdwn0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o6K4buwQNM

Worth a watch.

Thanks, can't say I managed to see my Dad, he may have been in any except St Matthew's Day 1932, he left that summer I think.

Good to see the girls as well in the last one.

Is it just me, or does the band look very young? Was it a Prep School band?

It may be that the band was young, as many more left by their 16th birthday.
Does any one know the tune that was played in the first clip as the Lord Mayor processed into Chapel?
I wonder when the Lord Mayor stopped usin his coach on St Matthew's day.

Katharine, I agree - good to see the girls. Not too clear a picture, but were they wearing the famous 'coatfrocks' which you were recently pining for? If so, they may well have been the same actual garments that were still being passed down when we wore them in the 50s and 60s, by which time they were well steeped in the ammonia that we used for 'dry-cleaning' them!

My father left (from Col B) at the end of the summer term 1932 and so should have been in the first and last clips but I can't see him. He played the euphoinium in the band and I used to have a picture of the band with him in it.

Strange that in the last clip, (1930), there doesn't seem to be a full band - only side-drummers.

......... and I wonder whether the school was taught to break step whilst marching across whichever bridge that was?

Fjgrogan wrote:Katharine, I agree - good to see the girls. Not too clear a picture, but were they wearing the famous 'coatfrocks' which you were recently pining for? If so, they may well have been the same actual garments that were still being passed down when we wore them in the 50s and 60s, by which time they were well steeped in the ammonia that we used for 'dry-cleaning' them!

I think they were wearing coat frocks, but you can't see the yellow piping. They probably were the same garments, possibly different collars! (The 1920s dinner was last week and was great fun)

Seeing these, once again makes me fume at how unfairly the girls were treated, just look how few girls were there compared to the boys. I know that there were probably about three times as many boys being educated as girls but there were far more than three times as many boys as girls in the St Matthew's Day Parades.

I've just looked full screen, and never before thought that the buttons on a Button Grecian's coat can look like a big zip up the front! That is probably sacrilege to those of you who wore them!

In my days (the 50s) we certainly did not break step when crossing a bridge. Presumably the bridges were constructed so well that it was unnecessary.

As for only the drummers being filmed in the 1930 clip, is it possible there was a band at the front and the drummers (2 different sets) were placed further back to maintain a marching rhythm (the step) because there was so much ambient noise around that those at the back could not hear the band at the front?

Re marchers breaking step on bridges, this only applies to suspension bridges. I believe there used to be a notice at each end of London's Albert Bridge warning about this.

3078260061 wrote:Re marchers breaking step on bridges, this only applies to suspension bridges. I believe there used to be a notice at each end of London's Albert Bridge warning about this.

We had to break step when crossing the old London Bridge (which was not a suspension bridge). It's all about harmonics and the different types have different potential instabilities.

The worst thing was trying to get into step afterwards when there were bands in front and behind and the beats arriving at different moments. Generally it was only 300 or so boys with two bands but I think it was 1953 when we had the entire school with perhaps three bands; tough

Only one band for St Matthew's Day (only UF and above went to London) but the whole school went up in the summer of 1953 and there were 2 bands. The Senior Grecian, Johnstone, presented a Loyal Address to HM on the steps of St Pauls and, with the numbers, livery companies like Skinners took up the slack to feed us all afterwards (for St M squash and stickies we were all in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House).

3078260061 wrote:Re marchers breaking step on bridges, this only applies to suspension bridges. I believe there used to be a notice at each end of London's Albert Bridge warning about this.

That was when the Albert Bridge was still a suspension bridge, which it now isn't.

postwarblue wrote:Only one band for St Matthew's Day (only UF and above went to London) but the whole school went up in the summer of 1953 and there were 2 bands. The Senior Grecian, Johnstone, presented a Loyal Address to HM on the steps of St Pauls and, with the numbers, livery companies like Skinners took up the slack to feed us all afterwards (for St M squash and stickies we were all in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House).

By about 1960, only Grecians, the choir and the band went to London on St Matthew's Day. Deps only if the house didn't have many Grecians.

michael scuffil wrote:That was when the Albert Bridge was still a suspension bridge, which it now isn't.

Pedants' corner: it never really was. It has an interesting history (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bridge,_London) and used to have a "twin" in Prague. Last time I saw it, which isn't very recent, it still had those "break step" notices, but I suspect that they are there for nostalgia's sake, or perhaps because the structure is simply very rickety these days.

Curious fact: dunring WW2, there was a spare bridge built just downstream from the Albert Bridge, to take the traffic if any of the regular bridges should be wrecked.