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October 27, 2004
Ceremony of Remembrance
Founders Day at Selborne College has always been a bit on the different side. The day starts with the impressive "Ceremony of the Key", a tradition begun in 1924 when the first "Custodian of the Key", one Charles Prior (later a teacher at the same school), was presented with a large ceremonial key to the "Memory of those who gave their lives in the Great War". It is handed on from one Matriculation Class to the next at Founders Day each year. Since the inception of the ceremony it has had a military flavour (the school has links with the local Regiment - the Kaffrarian Rifles), and the school's Cadet Battalion mounts Guard on the Memorial with the "Old Guard" changing places with the "New Guard" after the Key has been handed to the new Custodian. The Custodians are elected by their classmates in each year.
All the boys taking part in the parade are volunteer members of the Cadet Battalion - a remarkable tribute to the boys' own sense of duty and loyalty to the school and their country.
The New Guard (nearest camera) await the change of sentries, while the Old Guard mount sentry on the cenotaph.
The ceremony takes place within a short service of remembrance and is very moving; those of us who have not seen it since we last took part in it 40 years ago were surprised by the emotions it stirred in us. Probably not least since a few of our number are now in the Roll of Honour read out by the incoming and outgoing Custodians!
The school has grown larger, the political climate has changed, and the pupils are now drawn from the entire community, and it was encouraging to see that the full spectrum was there, and the boys all demonstrated the value they place on the upholding of tradition and in getting it right. A school to be proud of, indeed - and I am privileged to have been a pupil there, even though I probably did not appreciate it at the time!
Posted by The Gray Monk at October 27, 2004 01:05 PM