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Temple
September 2018 heralded the start of another successful and enjoyable year in Temple House. We were joined by Lydia Gill and Rhianna Bunn in the Lower Sixth and by Annabel Kelley in the Fourth Form who returned from Spain to meet up again with her old friends from St Olave’s. We also welcomed a new group of Third Formers and within this group there is some undoubted sporting talent. There are currently three sporting trophies residing in Temple (a record!): the boys’ Inter-House cricket trophy which we were unable to defend due to the poor weather, the junior boys’ Inter-House Hockey Trophy plus the Lower Sixth House Football Trophy which we won this year for the second time since its inauguration. We narrowly missed out on a trophy for the girls with our senior badminton team finishing second overall. Sports day took place for the first time in five years and proved an enjoyable occasion.
Special mention should be made of: Jack Mayfield : Winner of the senior boys’ long jump Marcus Taylor: Winner of the senior boys’ javelin Valentina Cross: Winner of the senior girls’ discus James Harvey: Winner of the junior boys’ 1500m Josh Ellis: Winner of the junior boys 400m Miranda Moulton: Winner of the junior girls’ 1500m Elias Smith: Winner of the junior boys’ discus.
Elias enjoyed further success later in the term when he was selected to play for the Yorkshire County Cricket U14A team, a tremendous achievement.
The creative arts is an area where Temple pupils continue to excel. Highlights of the musical year were Rachael Green’s victory in the U19 Woodwind section of the Harrogate Music Festival which meant that she qualified for the final where I was privileged to watch her win the title of Young Musician of the festival with her piece on the saxophone. This is quite a feat bearing in mind the fact that she is still only 15. The Junior Music Festival brought more success for the young musicians in Temple and was a proud and memorable evening. Charlotte Gee won the overall competition for her cello piece, having already won the Strings and Woodwind sections, James Harvey was joint winner on the electric guitar in the
Guitar section and Charlotte Holliday and Toby Mayfield won the girls’ and boys’ singing respectively.
When it comes to singing, it is probably best not to mention House Singing this year due to our somewhat controversial song choice. Needless to say, if Heaven is a Place on Earth the place certainly wasn’t Temple at that time. Temple has also been well represented in other areas of the creative arts with a number of pupils involved in the school’s production of Beauty and the Beast in November where Felix Fraser-Krauss gave a convincing and humorous performance as the Clock. The Drama Connections play The Sad Club at the start of the summer term was in a very different vein, providing an intensely moving experience and with a number of Temple pupils displaying their acting and musical skills. Two of these were Navami Sangeeth and Charlotte Holliday who later in the term went on to be joint winners of the Dramatic Reading Prize. Flora McDonald- Wilson showed her creative side when winning the Senior Poetry section of the Creative Writing competition and continuing the literary theme, it was great to see the Temple team winning the Library Christmas quiz for the first time. At St Peter’s we always like pupils to challenge themselves and take themselves out of their comfort zones and two such opportunities for this are the House Challenge and the House Debating Competitions. We made it to the semi-final in the Senior House Challenge losing to Clifton and we went one better in the Senior House Debating, reaching the final where we lost narrowly to Queen’s House. We will certainly miss Hugh Whitworth’s own personal debating skills and his nurturing of the skills of others lower down the school. Mrs Jenny Houghton
After a busy year, it is now time to say goodbye to the Upper Sixth who leave us to carry on their education at academic institutions around the country. I will be really sad to see them go. They have been a fantastic group, who have been so easy to work with and it was a privilege to be able to write such glowing references for them earlier in the year. I would particularly like to thank Jack and Lily for their support as Heads of House and congratulate Flora McDonald-Wilson and Lottie McKelvie on being appointed to continue their good work from September. One final goodbye has to go to Miss Crawley who is leaving Temple this term to join Dronfield as the resident assistant. She has been a tutor in Temple since she joined the school and we will miss her cheery presence in House. A final thank you goes to all of the tutors in House: Mr Matkin, Mr Williams, Mr Rohlfing and last but not least Mr Parr, my assistant. I couldn’t do this job without your support and it certainly wouldn’t be as much fun.
