12 minute read
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Stanley Ridout, aged 10,
Thornford Primary School
When I first saw Stan in action I assumed there’d been a mix-up. His win in the sprinting event was so emphatic that it might have sparked a doping enquiry had it not been a school sports day and Stan only 5 years old.
His trajectory continued on the football pitch where he was recognised by Dean Ritchie, coach at East Coker Cockerels, as a player of potential. This led to Stan joining Exeter City FC’s Performance Centre at the mere age of 7 and was soon invited to attend a 6-week trial with the Under 9’s Academy. He clearly impressed and was offered a contract with the club.
Stan now trains 3 times a week, straight from school, at the Exeter City training ground and travels on Sundays to matches home and away. His commitment to training and the club is astonishing. While his friends make excited plans to meet each other online after school, Stan’s focus lies firmly on the training ground, unfazed by the prospect of another 100-mile round trip to Exeter.
He is tirelessly motivated, even in the classroom where his footballing aspirations appear to present nothing of a barrier to his education. Knowing that you’re due to play against the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool at the weekend might prove a distraction for most 10-year-olds but Stan seems to take it all in his jaunty stride.
And on the subject of stride, this summer Stan joined Yeovil Olympiads Athletic Club, where he has promptly become the 60m and 600m Under 11’s County Champion at the recent Somerset and Avon County Championships. I mean, for goodness’ sake!
Best of luck Stan. The world could well be at your feet… GC
thornford.dorset.sch.uk exetercityfc.co.uk yeovilolympiads.com
Image: Sam Austin Photography
KATHARINE DAVIES
PHOTOGRAPHY
Portrait, lifestyle, PR and editorial commissions
07808 400083 info@katharinedaviesphotography.co.uk www.katharinedaviesphotography.co.uk
Children’s Book Review
by Penny Herbert, aged 11, Leweston School
Pony by R.J. Palacio (Penguin Random House Children’s UK) £12.99 (hardcover)
Sherborne Times reader offer price of £11.99 from Winstone’s Books
Iloved the book Pony for lots of different reasons. To begin with it takes a while to get into and you have to concentrate hard so as not to get confused with all the different things, but by the time you have reached chapter 5 you find that you are engrossed and that you can’t stop! This extraordinary book is full of everything you need for a good story. From mystery and adventure to love and friendship, it has it all. It keeps you wondering right until the very end. Will Silas ever find his Pa? Who are the mysterious three strangers that took him? Why is Silas able to hear strange mutterings and whisperings? And in the end will good triumph over evil? Or will Silas lose his Pa forever?! The only bad thing about this book is that you can’t put it down!
'Independent Bookseller of the Year 2016’
Tricks and treats galore!
HOME FRONT
Jemma Dempsey
I’ll put my hand up – I used to suffer with charity fatigue. That chewing gum on the pavement?: I’d rather stare at that than catch the eye of the volunteer shaking a can desperately trying to raise money down Cheap Street. That locked screen on my phone? I’d pretend to be reading a message rather than engage with someone trying to ask me if I had a few minutes to answer some questions about some organisation or another. Followed of course by the mild pangs of guilt for refusing to enter civil communication, in the way we’d jolly well been brought up to, ‘Speak when you’re spoken to !’ Worse still, the dismissive waft of a hand with the well-rehearsed white lie, ‘Sorry, I’m running late for...’ *the doctors/taking the dog to the vets/picking up my son from school (*delete as appropriate). The human being sure is an artful dodger. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a scrooge, we support a couple of charities each month, but I dislike, and still do, being hounded for money when I’m out in public minding my own business.
But then I got cancer and everything changed. And who did I turn to? Of the various cancer charity websites on offer I landed on the Macmillan one with its oodles of information from personal blogs to where to get help on wills, benefits and how to talk to your children about the disease. And then there is its helpline, staffed by nurses who must surely have hearts of gold and the patience of saints. When you get a cancer diagnosis you are floored; the ground falls from beneath your feet and your ability to string a coherent sentence together leaves you. It’s only when you get home that the questions come, thick and fast. Google is not your friend here; you need a physical person to talk to. Enter the Macmillan nurse. Part physician, part counsellor, their voices exude warmth down the phone, a steadying hand on your shoulder to stop you spiralling out of control. They remind you how to breathe again.
And now that I am in recovery, I find myself wanting to give something back. I’m planning on hosting a Macmillan coffee morning – I make a mean carrot cake – and I want to volunteer at the local hospice or at the cancer ward at Yeovil hospital. It’s quite an urgent need too, like I’ve beaten this bastard (for now at least) so I’ll laugh defiantly in its face and blow raspberries at it in the process. But, more importantly, I know how it feels; I’ve had those dark feelings, lived those terrifying moments so if I can help someone else, even for just a few minutes then I will. Though I do have a tendency to natter. ‘You could talk the leg off a hind donkey – you’re just like your Nana Spurgeon’, my mother always used to say to me, so any recipient of my largesse might be
shooing me away before not too long.
Last month a group of my closest girlfriends did their bit by completing the Macmillan Mighty Hike – 26 miles along Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. They were blessed with perfect walking weather and me to greet them at the finish line at Corfe Castle with fizz and a cream tea. Blistered and weary but with huge smiles on their faces they finished in just under 10 hours, raising £2,707 for this most important charity. I cried, again, as we hugged surrounded by other walkers with their friends and families, all no doubt affected by this wicked disease. I still can’t get my head around that statistic that one in two of us will get cancer at some point in our lives. And now Macmillan says the UK nursing shortage has left more than half a million cancer patients without the support they need, predicting a shortfall of almost 4,000 nurses by 2030 unless it gets additional money. So, the fundraising that people like my friends and me (yes, me!) can do becomes even more vital. So now I no longer look at that stubborn piece of chewing gum stuck to the pavement, instead I grope around in my bag for whatever loose change I can find and have a chat with that lonely volunteer.
dempsey@hotmail.com coffee.macmillan.org.uk
COMMUNITY
Annie Gent, Deputy Head (Pastoral), Sherborne Prep School
Definitions of the word community include terms such as ‘sharing a characteristic’, ‘practising common ownership’, ‘a fellowship with others’… Our community is excited about the year ahead; children develop tight-knit friendships and schools provide a unique community where the youngest and the oldest share the joy of being together; they learn from each other and forge positive relationships and lifelong values.
Everyone needs positive role models and school is a vital component for children to start to understand their place in society. Children need to understand that they all can be role models and that an inner strength of character begins when young. Schools have a myriad of opportunities to instil this. The House system enables them to work together, play together, to find a common goal and to look beyond into wider society, giving back and helping others. Our Year 8s love going to play with the little ones; the junior children excitedly rush around with the seniors during break times. They learn so much when together, and they are astute when it comes to reading character. The school council, eco committee and class reps are chosen democratically. Children know who they can look up to, who will be their voice, who can enact positive change.
Every year our senior children step up to the challenges we set them. They are role models for the younger ones who aspire to be these ‘giants’ one day. Never underestimate the value for young children when an older peer shouts ‘hello’, pats them on the back for an achievement, the accompaniment to matron when there is a tumble, the reassuring smile during a House meeting... It is fun to be able to be goofy and play; you certainly hold quite a bit of kudos when you demonstrate kindness and empathy for children who are younger than yourself. The Saturday activity programme the Prep runs reverberates with laughter and chatter as children rub along together, furnishing friendships with those that they would have limited access to in the ‘working’ week. Again, the role model comes in to play:
Image: Katharine Davies
our children are active, industrious, serve to lead and this shines through every week through the encounters and experiences the children share.
We want our children to be able to interact with ease, to understand the nuances of relationships that come through talking with different people, grasping opportunities and observing those who are positive citizens. Our healthy lack of hierarchy sees this happen daily during down time but also through the House events, the community action days, through our burgeoning pupil listener scheme in Year 7 and leadership team in Year 8. Given the chance, children want to play a part in their community; to be the citizens that we all aspire our young people to become.
School is so much more than the classroom, pupils need to have ownership of their school and to play an active role in making it a happy, safe place for those formative years. To have a strong community, with role models throughout: that celebrate others; that have pride in being part of something special gives children a foundation of emotional resilience and wellbeing as it embeds a sense of worth and value, finding happiness in helping and supporting others in their school and wider community.
Images: Josie Sturgess-MIlls
SAVING SHERBORNE’S SHELL HOUSE
Rachel Hassall, School Archivist, Sherborne School
In the garden of one of Sherborne School’s boarding houses stands the rare survival of an eighteenth-century shell house. Thought to have been created around 1750 in a former dovecote, Shell House lay largely forgotten and neglected until 2001 when Olivia Eliot spearheaded a campaign to secure its future. Olivia, whose husband Simon Eliot was then headmaster of Sherborne School, brought together a team of experts to save the building which was beginning to show dangerous signs of deterioration.
Amongst Sherborne School’s alumni are a number of experts in the field of building conservation, two of whom became involved with saving Shell House: architect Michael Carden, MBE, AA dip, RIBAOS, and Adam Daybell, director of Nimbus Conservation Ltd. Between October 2003 and March 2004, Nimbus Conservation undertook essential conservation and consolidation repairs to both the exterior and interior of Shell House, overseen for Sherborne School by Michael Carden. Olivia also enlisted the help of Anne Andrews of the Dorset Gardens Trust to research its history.
Together, they untangled the complex history of Shell House, tracing its ownership back to the lawyer Samuel Foot (1704-1792) who it is believed commissioned the building. Samuel later retired to Berwick St John in Wiltshire where he died in 1792
and was buried. In the local parish church there can be seen a fine memorial to Samuel Foot which celebrates his qualities as a lawyer, husband and friend and concludes with the line, ‘Judge, reader, how valuable he was’. Later, Shell House and garden became the property of the wealthy Pretor and Whitty families who lived in adjoining houses in Long Street (now The Old Bank House and Abbott’s Litten). On the opposite side of Long Street, they created a pleasure garden with a grand entrance (now the site of the Cloisters retirement housing complex) from which a path led north directly to it.
Shell House did not become associated with Sherborne School until the 1870s when Harper House (then known as The Retreat) was opened by the Rev. John Blanch as a privately-run boarding house for boys at the School. The Rev. Blanch purchased the adjoining Shell House garden, using it as a kitchen garden to supply the boys at Harper House with a regular supply of fruit and vegetables. It was thanks to Olivia and Anne’s extensive research, and the evidence uncovered about the structure of the building during the conservation and consolidation repairs, that in 2008 the national importance of Shell House was recognised and it was awarded Grade 1 listed status – this put it on a par with Salisbury Cathedral and Sherborne House.
In the future, it is hoped to reinstate the cupola or lantern on top of the thatched roof, evidence of which was found when the building was re-thatched in 2001. The lantern would have been an important feature of Shell House, illuminating the beautiful interior with its seven niches and domed ceiling panels, all richly decorated with shells from the British Isles.
sherborne.org
Shell House will be open to the public to visit free of charge, as part of Sherborne School’s Open Sherborne event, taking place from 25th–27th October. Please visit sherborne.org/opensherbornefor more details.
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