Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Can anyone help with info on buckles, please?
I have identified Narrow Buckle, Broadie Buckle and Housecaptain's Buckle - no problems with them. I know what they look like and who wears them. However, I have been told that there are also Travers/Travis (?) and Sacristan Buckles, but nobody seems to know what they are and who wears them - can anyone help, please? Are there any others?

There's a long article about the Travers buckle (and the whole Travers bequest) in The Blue for July 1950, pages 196-200. A short follow-up piece appeared in the December edition, page 54.

Can't help with the Sacristan, I'm afraid.

Foureyes wrote:Can anyone help with info on buckles, please?
I have identified Narrow Buckle, Broadie Buckle and Housecaptain's Buckle - no problems with them. I know what they look like and who wears them. However, I have been told that there are also Travers/Travis (?) and Sacristan Buckles, but nobody seems to know what they are and who wears them - can anyone help, please? Are there any others?

My daughter was awarded the Travers buckle, it is a squarer shape than the broadie buckle and worn in addition to. It is awarded for excellence in maths and I think there is only one ever awarded.

Barnes Mum,
As usual you are a mine of information. Can you suggest to whom I might write/email to get the full rules on the Travers Buckle and, possibly, a photograph, please?
David

Among those of my generation who won the Travers Buckle were Randal Cousins (ThB), Keith Lugton (MidA) and Wynchank (BaA). Are you in contact with any of them?

It was awarded to the best mathematician of the year. I presume at the end of the year immediately preceding the year when one would have bought a Broadie buckle, to obviate the need for buying the latter. It was read out at Prize Giving.

Barnesmum's description suggests it hasn't changed shape, as that is how I remember it.

michael scuffil wrote:Among those of my generation who won the Travers Buckle were Randal Cousins (ThB), Keith Lugton (MidA) and Wynchank (BaA). Are you in contact with any of them?

It was awarded to the best mathematician of the year. I presume at the end of the year immediately preceding the year when one would have bought a Broadie buckle, to obviate the need for buying the latter. It was read out at Prize Giving.

Barnesmum's description suggests it hasn't changed shape, as that is how I remember it.

It's not awarded until further up the school than third form, broadies are given at the start of the LE. I seem to remember my daughter was in Deps when she was awarded hers.
I'll see if I can find out anything further for you David.

I don't know what the sacristan buckle looks like but one of my friends was the sacristan and he did wear a different bucke - I'll see if I can find out!

Long 'Buckles' thread HERE: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1296&hilit=travers

Again --- things have changed --- I was just glad to get my "Broadie" in the UF. I never saw any other "Models"

Apropos "Maths" -- a certain Ivor Cohen, a contemporary of mine in Ba B in the 40s could run his fingers up a four figure column and write the total at the bottom, while the rest of us were struggling, half way !! (No Calculators ! )
I seem to remember that he spent his last Terms, teaching Maths to the Third Form, as CH realised they could only offer "Selected reading" to him
and we were short of Teachers !!

He, of course, finished with his own firm of Chartered Accoutants, but I havn't seen him since the Ba B reunion, some years ago.

In the 80's it had moved to being presented with the maths buttons - Gavin Howard had it in our year. I believe it was solid silver and had to be handed back at end of the year. Gavin went on to read Maths at Cambridge then become an actuary and is now FC of an equity release firm.

NEILL THE NOTORIOUS wrote: Apropos "Maths" -- a certain Ivor Cohen, a contemporary of mine in Ba B in the 40s could run his fingers up a four figure column and write the total at the bottom, while the rest of us were struggling, half way !! (No Calculators ! )

In our local U3A there is a Japanese lady who teaches the use of the soroban in English schools and abroad - I know she was in Cuba recently. She was on Blue Peter a while back with a class from the local primary school with them doing five-figure times five-figure multiplications and divisions just as quickly as she could read the numbers out. It is amazingly easy except that my fingers are a little too big for her sorobans (a type of abacus). Having got children to use the soroban she then teaches them to "see" and operate an imaginary soroban; she had two 12 year olds doing similar sums effectively in their heads and virtually instantaneously (she had them write the answers down and then checked them). Incredible.

After that she got sacked even though she was teaching free of charge - the school was not prepared to allow the pupils a period a week for her lessons!!!!! No wonder the UK educational system is going down the s*** hole.

Does anone know when the buckled shoes were discontinued?

DavidRawlins wrote:Does anone know when the buckled shoes were discontinued?

Even slightly before my time !

Neill the N....... might be able to shed some light !

I vaguely remember a ref to my father (Py B & Col B 1924-32) having buckled shoes, but a photo of him in 1931 shows him in lace-ups. So maybe they went out in the 1920s.

I have recently done quite a lot of research into Housie dress from 1552 to today. I have found neither written nor pictorial evidence to show that buckled shoes were ever worn. There are several remarks in Bluecoat memories over the centuries to the effect that buckled shoes were worn, but always in a previous generation, and nobody ever admits to either having seen them or worn them themselves. All entries that I have seen in the accounts refer to lace-up shoes.
The only possibility that I can think of is that occasionally there have been outbreaks of 'finery' (for want of a better word!) by children of wealthier parents, but this has always been firmly stopped by the governors. Examples I have come across include breeches of less itchy material, bands of finer material, more elkaborate buckles, and unmentionable additions to girls' undergarments. So, it is possible that some pupils may have worn shoes with buckles, but I am 99 percent certain that, if they did, it was very unoffical and lasted for only a short time.
David