We all know Oundle now; we know the buildings, the classrooms, the boarding Houses; we know the Great Hall, the Chapel, the Sports Centre; we know Trendall’s, Cookies, Beans. But do we know Oundle 100, 200, 467 years ago? Should we know Oundle then, and can we compare it to Oundle now? Can the people from years and years ago be that different to the people now?
I talked to Mrs Langsdale, in her set-up within the Cobthorne Stables, to get a better understanding of what the School Archives really are and how they can influence our lives as members of the Oundle community.
What do you think is the main principle of having the archives?
It is to preserve the history of the School, and to make sure that in a hundred years’ time people know what was happening in the School today; and so that today we can look at the past one hundred years. It’s very important to look outwards, because it’s not just about the School, it’s also about the social history. So we want to know what teenagers were like a hundred years ago, and people will want to know what your life was like in a hundred years. Keeping items brings history alive and also grounds you.
What kind of things are stored here?
We get paper documents, such as letters. We have the business end of the School with prospectuses, communication from the Bursary, the School management, the Head and little things as well. We have correspondence from the 1940s about building World War Two bomb shelters – every House had a bomb shelter that the boys were helping to build. And there was a little note sent to parents saying ‘you will be charged for the materials’. We collect little things like that, and we have letters from pupils, and it really makes the School alive to think of people walking the streets, the same streets you walk, eating different food but some of the same food, doing the same things but slightly different things.
What does your role as the School Archivist fully entail?
It is sorting through boxes of stuff and cataloguing them. It is making sure that the items we have, and the items we find, are preserved and ordered, and they’re kept in a way that we can find them. It’s also allowing people access to the archive, and promoting and showing people within the School and the community that we have these little items that we can use to illustrate various points. These are really good resources to use in teaching, and I am involved with teachers wanting to do projects where the archive items can be of use.
If you could tell the pupils one thing about using the Archives, what would your advice to them be?
Just follow us on Instagram! People think archives are ‘fusty dusty’, but we’re not fusty (we do have dust, but we do try not to!) It’s all about being able to handle them, and being able to come in and explore – it really is that #exploreyourarchive, and it’s relevant to you and it’s relevant to our daily life. As teenagers, if you know that someone fifty years ago was going through the same School life, but going through the Second World War while we’re going through Covid and mental health issues and things like that, it helps.
How do you usually acquire items for the archive?
Old Oundelians will find a box of stuff with letters and others, perhaps in their own house or at their parents’. I find items on eBay and auctions when I’m alerted to them, and so I’ll go out and acquire them for the archive. We can occasionally find items from the School administration or the boarding Houses, and we’ll collect them and catalogue them.
Have there been any projects in recent years that you were really excited about?
With the centenary for the end of the First World War, we had an exhibition in the Yarrow Gallery, and it was available for pupils and members of the community to come and see. It took a lot of pulling together of interesting exhibits, such as stories from the war and photographs from that period, and all of it came from the archive. That was a big project that I was personally proud of because I took it from start to finish, and it was my idea and my inspiration.
There’s so many. I can’t choose, it’s too hard, because every piece has a human story, and you can get quite wrapped up in it when you’re trying to finish jobs. As a mum especially, the letters and the diaries in general are so interesting to read. You get attached to the little things, such as from OO Peter Scott’s time in School House, when two of his mates wrote a book about birding on the Nene, and he did all the artwork and stamps for the illustrations of birds.
It’s important to look backwards. This doesn’t mean get stuck in the past; this simply means we should appreciate it. We should appreciate the struggles of our predecessors, and find the parallels within ourselves; we should appreciate their successes and their daily life, when as teenagers we will similarly prioritise the small things, such as House competitions and daily timetables. We can reflect on those who came before us, in the very place we are now, and still go forward until the day where future generations look back on us, and our letters or photographs or personal belongings become items of history as well.
