HM Blog

12th July

And so, with the aftershocks of a seismic election and some even more seismic football still rattling around us we have made it to the end of the summer term. Holidays await – travel, relaxation, reading (hopefully) and doing more of what you want to do rather than what you have to do. I have always found it difficult at the start of every term, to remember what being in the classroom is like. My longer-term memory lets me down – it comes back quickly thank goodness but there is a little re-learning to do once I’m back. The same is true of the holidays. Monday morning next week I will still wake up at 6.15 in the morning. Relaxation doesn’t necessarily ensue just because school happens to be closed to you lot. Muscle memory still rules in the short term, but we all will settle into a lower octane routine swiftly.
Summer term has, as usual, been the chance for all of us to ‘branch out’ and try something new or different. School can and should be about much more than just being in a classroom and learning simply refuses to be caged by the artificial barriers imposed by timetables or subjects. We’re all of us here to try to grow intellectually as well as physically. I’m no different – Great Yews with Year 7 and Year 12, The Longford Estate walk with Year 8, DofE and Pencelli with Year 9. With BWS Adventure there were DofE Silver and Gold and Ten Tors too – so let’s do a little test. Please stand up if you’ve been involved in any of those adventurous, outdoor activities this term. It doesn’t matter which year group you’re in, what you did or where you went. If you were involved in some way in BWS Adventure then get up on your feet.
Then there’s music – stand up if you have taken part in choir, orchestra, a concert or tour, a band, house music or Wednesday’s Battle of the Bands…
And sport – stand up if you have taken part in sport outside lessons this term – athletics, cricket, tennis, football or pre-season coaching for rugby or netball, lacrosse or Mr D-Gs marathon effort last Friday.
That is amazing. Trust me if I tried that in another school there wouldn’t be anything like the response. This place is different. Bishop’s is different and it’s made that way by your willingness to do things. Well done.

30th June

That big building next door to the school is probably one of the best-known churches in Europe – one of the very few great cathedrals in Europe – or in the world for that matter – to have been built quickly enough to be all in one style. Early English it began in 1220 and Early English it was finished in 1266, some 46 years later. The only later addition to the 13th century structure is the 14th century spire. But for such a stunning piece of architecture, such an iconic structure for the established church in this country, it is surprising to find that its designer and builder is something of a mystery. A contrast to the modern way of things, where the names of designers of everything – from wobbly bridges to outsize gherkin-shaped office blocks – is plastered everywhere! We actually don’t know that much about the man who designed St Mary’s Cathedral.
We do know his name – Elias of Dereham. We know also that he was head hunted by Bishop Poore in around 1219 to become the guiding hand in a huge project – the moving and reconstruction of a whole cathedral on a new site outside Salisbury. The bishop had probably met Elias in Canterbury, where he had done some building design in the cathedral; Poore was obviously impressed and knew that Elias was the man to do the job in Salisbury.
When Elias first arrived in Salisbury he seems to have become the Bishop’s major domo (or right-hand man). His importance is shown by the fact that he was sent not just one but six copies of the Magna Carta to distribute among the clergy in 1215 – and one of those you can now see on display in the Chapter House today. But it was in 1220 that Elias finally got around to starting the most important job in hand – that of not just building a cathedral, but a cathedral surrounded by a new town – New Sarum.
The pope authorised the moving of the cathedral from Old Sarum in March 1219 – a huge site was selected, and Elias began frantically working on detailed plans for perhaps the most ambitious building project that England had ever experienced – an entirely new cathedral to be built in one go on a very large scale in the latest style. This was really cutting-edge stuff; in every other case that you could think of, cathedrals were based on a rebuild of a church that was already there. Large parts of the old building were usually retained – after all, it made sense to use what was already built – and the shape and size of the build was almost always limited by other buildings nearby. Not in Salisbury, where the ground was flat, open, entirely undeveloped – and in fact rather low-lying and liable to flood. It sounds very much like the type of area being used to build today’s new housing estates.
260 acres (a vast area) were set aside for the new town, with 83 acres occupied by the Cathedral Close. The buildings were set out in straight lines, with open views and with a network of waterways running through. A true vision of a brave new urban work in 13th century England.
An enormous project then – which was also going to be ruinously expensive. The cost of the new cathedral, given in 1266 on completion was put at 42,000 marks. The fact that this money was raised, and funds never ran out was down to vigorous fund raising and donations from local wealthy benefactors. Some things never change! The fact that the cathedral itself took just 46 years to build is a great tribute to the design, drive and determination of Elias, and the support of his Bishop, Richard Poore.
Elias of Dereham never saw the building or the town - which he had laid many of the plans for – finished. When he died in April 1245 his cathedral must have been swathed in scaffold, and his streets still forming on the flood plain of the River Avon. Because of his, and Richard Poore’s vision of a great building dedicated to worship, we have St Mary’s next door. It seems strange that so great an enterprise can be driven by a man about whom history records comparatively little. The lasting memorial to the 13th century architect is the feeling that we can all get viewing the soaring majesty of a cathedral and spire rising over the west wall of the school – a great sign of faith and glory for us all. Elias would have been proud.

21st June

Text of speech at HM's retirement bash 21 June 2024

3rd June

…the sudden announcement of a UK General Election by the Prime Minister just over a week ago brought the concept of democracy and the right to vote into sharp relief. I remember at the start of this academic year warning the sixth form they needed to their ears and eyes open during this hugely important twelve months or so when roughly half of the global population was going to be voting. That was then though. This is now - as over 50 million in Britain, 700 million in India, 250 million in the states, 50 million in South Africa all get ready to cast their ballot or put a cross in a box. Add to that list Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia and the European Union. Lots of our Year 13 students will be able to take part in an election for the very first time, and the customary BWS election hustings is now scheduled for 25 June in the Sports Hall.

13th May

As usual the top six senior prefects from Bishop’s attended the Annual Salisbury Mayor making at St Thomas’ Church in the heart of the city last Saturday. In my invitation to them for the event I asked them, slightly flippantly, whether they had read any Thomas Hardy – and that if they had them the spectacle that awaited them would have an unnerving familiarity about it. Salisbury (or Melchester in his novels) may be towards the eastern edge of Hardy’s literary world, but on Saturday in glorious May sunshine you could be forgiven for thinking that you had returned to the nineteenth century. The streets were closed, the procession of the great and good included a marching band, robed councillors, judges, members of the public services and armed forces, local politicians and even the Salisbury Giant and Hob-Nob taking up the rear. Morris Men dancing in the city centre and the Charter Market completed the time warp illusion. Lots of 21st century clutter remained of course, but I felt that it was easy to ignore all of that and simply enjoy the spectacle of the day – after all Sven Hocking is reckoned to be the 763rd Mayor of Salisbury. There is some history – especially bearing in mind that Reuben Bracher, first Head at BWS was also Mayor of Salisbury 1923-24...

9th May

Good morning, Year 11.
You’ve made it through to the end of lessons (for the moment anyhow) and study leave is about to begin, so 8th May 2024 has some significance. For most of you, today marks the end of a 5-year road in school at Bishops. Think back. There will be moments of which you will be justifiably proud. Inevitably, there will be other times which you will recall with rather less of a glow. Every road has bumps in it – or, this being Wiltshire, pot-holes – but I really do hope that you can look back over the past years with nostalgia and a good deal of pleasure. Yes, even to those dark days of Year 8 and 9 in Covid times.
I thought I’d read a short extract from a book by the late Malcolm Muggeridge – broadcaster and moral philosopher. It seemed appropriate to me for such a day: inspirational, uplifting language shot through with hope and aspiration. Here is Muggeridge’s short essay ‘Response to Life’.
At its highest level…happiness is the ecstasy which mystics have inadequately described. At more humdrum levels it is human love, the delights and beauties of our dear earth, its colours and shapes and sounds; the enchantment of understanding and laughing, and all other exercises of such faculties as we possess; the marvel of the meaning of everything, fitfully glimpsed, inadequately expounded, but ever-present.
Such is happiness; not compressible into a pill; not translatable into a sensation; lost to whoever would grasp it himself alone; not to be gorged out of a trough, or torn out of another’s body, or paid into a bank, or driven along an autoroute, or fired in gun-salutes, or discovered in the stratosphere. Existing, intangible, in every true response to life, and absent in every false one; propounded through the centuries in every noteworthy word and deed and thought; expressed in art and literature and music; in vast cathedrals and tiny melodies; in everything that is harmonious, and in the unending heroism of imperfect men reaching after perfection.
This is a significant day for every one of you. You’ll probably have mixed feelings – anticipation tinged with some sadness; excitement and a desire to get on with exams tempered by uncertainty about what the future – both short- and long-term – might hold. If you’re anything like me, you won’t really know where exactly you’re heading at present. A-levels and higher education both seemed a distant prospect when I was in Year 11 (or the Fifth Form as it was then!) despite the fact that my older brother and sister had told me what was in store. I didn’t have much idea of what the future might hold or what my part in it might be. Some of you will share that feeling, I’m sure. Don’t panic – it’s quite normal! Others will have set sights on achieving something amazing. Some of you will have planned the summer ahead with military precision. Others are sure to drift from day to day. No matter: after the exams are through, decompression is needed before many of you return here to take on the challenge of A-levels.
Whatever your plans are, I wish you all the good fortune in the world – with your exams and with realising your dreams. I wish you luck and a following wind as you take on that unendingly heroic task of reaching after perfection.

9th May

This session where we are all together in our cathedral just shy of exams is significant for you - and for your school too. For the school it’s all about the passing on of a brilliant group of young adults. Our 3rd coeducational year group, both trail blazers and role models. For you all it’s a right of passage. The end of your time here after seven years or just two. The end of the second act and the start of an interval before the next begins.

8th May

Ask a Geologist what is meant by hidden depths, and you could get a very long and technical answer. Geologists (like me) spend most of their time looking at rocks, working out how and why they have formed and then predicting what they cannot see – the vast volume of rocks layers below the earth’s surface. Ask a mining geologist about hidden depths and they will talk about how to find ore deposits, valuable reserves of metals buried deep within the earth. To find the layers of ore, geologists must read the rocks they can see like a detective. Get the answer right and the rewards can be enormous.
Of course, being a Geologist is not all about financial rewards, and prosperity for gold – nor for that matter about digging huge holes in the ground or sitting drilling rigs to discover black gold beneath a serene and unsuspecting landscape. There are other ways in which hidden depths can be discovered, uncovered, chanced upon.
One of the things that caught my imagination when I was young was the experience of breaking open a seemingly rather dull piece of stone to find a perfectly preserved fossil inside. There’s an example – a perfectly preserved ammonite from Lyme Regis. There’s an art to finding them. The ammonites usually occur in concretionary nodules, hard spherical lumps of limestone that have formed around the animal’s shell shortly after death and burial. The nodules form because the ammonite is there as the decay of organic matter causes chemical changes in the newly deposited mud below the sea floor. The trick, of course is to be able to tell where to find the nodules. The reward is tangible and memorable, as opening that rock reveals something that has never been seen by anyone else, an extinct creature that had lived and died in a sub-tropical ocean perhaps 160 million years ago. Quite something - and here am I, happening upon well-hidden ancient treasure, purely by chance.
So yes, Geology is a science and yes, those fossils can be used to date, to correlate and to tell the palaeoecology of that ancient sea – but there’s more to it than that a feeling of surprise, of awe, of excitement.
CS Lewis, the author, wrote this:
“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading a book on Astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures of Godlight in the woods of our experience.”
I understand that completely, I spend most of my time with the mundane, the everyday that tend to occupy my mind all to easily. I don’t have the time to look for deeper meaning very often, to reflect on what’s going on around very often, to reflect on what’s going on around me – but I still like to know – what lies beneath. Like the geologist with a fossil, I am now a different person from the person that bent down to pick up that unpromising rock. Look for those moments – they’re pretty special and they happen to us all.

29th April

Founder’s Day Address 26/4/2024

14th April

It is of course very tempting to make the assumption that William Golding was actually writing about Salisbury school boys instead of a group of youngsters on a tropical island. Look carefully enough today and you could probably identify some suitable characters in the playground at Bishop’s, or at least the seeds of the personality traits are there. Boys, I am sure, have changed comparatively little over the last seven decades, and Golding was still working at the school when the first editions of ‘Lord of the Flies’ appeared in 1954. Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon and Sam ‘n Eric can be found - or parts of them anyway - as the masses emerge from the classrooms to run off some energy at break and lunch.