With Thanks to the Adamson Family

In 2004 the School received an immensely generous legacy from the Adamson family who held the School in high regard for over 100 years.

Born in 1876 to William and Celina, Florence Elizabeth Young enjoyed a privileged and enlightened childhood. The family firm, Thomas Young & Sons, enjoyed great success supplying napiery to ocean liners at the height of the romantic and remarkable age of ocean travel, servicing great Tyne & Wear built liners such as the RMS Mauretania and Carpathia. Her Mother, Celina Young, was a champion of female education and enrolled her daughter Florence at Central Newcastle High School when it opened on Park Terrace in 1895. She became a stalwart friend of the School, maintaining a vivid and tireless interest in its welfare.

Florence too was devoted to the School. Appointed Head Girl in 1900 she remained very much part of the School community as Secretary of the Old Girls’ Guild and subeditor of the School magazine. Remembered for her sympathy and sweetness as well as her organising power and method and the way she ‘mildly but grimly’ extracted donations of garments for the poor from members of the guild for institutions such as the infirmary and the orphanage.

She vigorously encouraged old girls to join the guild and stand by the School they believed in, its methods and its results, in the friendships established and its ability and commitment to support the needy. Her retirement on marriage to Mr David Adamson in 1913 was greeted with great despondency by Miss Moberly, the in-dominatable Head Mistress upon whose character of integrity, tolerance and generosity the School was built. David and Florence had two children, Yvonne on 5th November 1917 and David Frederic (Fred) on 4th June 1919. Both children were enrolled at Central High Kindergarten, Fred until he turned six and the School became girls only.

Yvonne stayed throughout her School career, winning prizes for her peppermint creams, poetry, botany and swimming and followed in her mother’s footsteps to become Head Girl in 1934. Yvonne was awarded a place to study Modern Languages at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, completing her degree in 1939 just as Fred took up a place at Oxford.

Fred’s career as a student was however short lived. At 11.15am on Sunday 3rd September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared the Outbreak of War

against Germany and by 1941 Fred, now trained and part of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division was sent to North Africa to fight in the Western Desert Campaign.

Between 1941 and 1942 the 50th were stationed in Egypt, Cyprus, Israel, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Lybia where Fred was captured during the first battle of El Alamein by the 21st Panzer Division and remained a POW for the rest of the War.

We are very fortunate to have in our archives a comprehensive collection of Fred’s communications with home during the War. The importance of communication with home for POWs cannot be overstated and is overwhelmingly evident in Fred’s letters. His gratitude for letters, photographs and parcels from home and his deep yearning for his family and his Northumberland home are palpable on every page and postcard. Fred, a much reduced man in both mind and body, (‘a bit of a bag of bones’) was liberated or ‘De-Bagged’ by the 30th American Division of the US Army at 0921 Hours on the 12th April 1945. He returned to his beloved family cottage near Alston and slowly recuperated, at first only able to eat Horlicks granules out of a jar with a teaspoon. The collection is an extraordinary, poignant account of one man’s War, it details the slow inexorable erosion of a young man’s resilience under conditions of cold, constant hunger and unimaginable mental duress, relieved only by letters from home. The collection can be viewed at newcastlehighschoolforgirls. daisy.websds.net

Communication was equally important to Yvonne who by the end of the War in 1945 had established herself as a freelance journalist and was working for the BBC in Newcastle. Yvonne became a highly respected producer, remembered particularly for her pioneering work in developing and using recording in the field.

Travelling to the remotest parts of Northumberland to record the sounds of the country and its people, she felt it both to be a responsibility and a privilege to represent Northumberland and its inhabitants: ‘You know, there isn’t a hamlet nor a remote valley, nor a little farmhouse that hasn’t some living soul in it who has something original, something interesting to write… These are wonderful people’.

Both Fred and Yvonne were interested in people and were loyal, kind and generous but they never overcame the devastation wrought by the War on their lives. They determined to leave their fortune to an institution they believed would teach future generations the skills of communication and the values of tolerance and understanding that would make the world a better, more peaceful place.

The Adamson’s legacy to our School was made in 2004 and supports bursary places for intelligent, determined girls, regardless of financial circumstance, to receive an education from an institution that their family held in high regard for over 100 years. Their legacy funds are invested and their gift will support bursaries here at NHSG in perpetuity. The enduring support and loyalty of Celina, Florence, Fred and Yvonne, three generations of the Adamson family, will continue to support a constant stream of bursary places at NHSG for generations to come. So far their legacy has supported 29 girls through Senior School and those that have completed their education have gone on to become medics, scientific researchers, religious leaders, engineers and historians, amongst other things. Our most recent graduate achieved three A*s at A Level and is studying Biomedical Science at a Russell Group University and a National Centre for Excellence. There are three girls attending NHSG today supported by Fred and Yvonne’s legacy to the School.