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House Charities Week Highlights: Celebrating Sweet Success!
It is with great pleasure that we share the highlights of our recent House Charities Week at Ditcham Park School. This week was filled with fun, generosity, and a sense of community as we came together to support worthy causes.
One of the standout events of the week was the fabulous Bake-Off competition, where pupils from both the junior and senior schools showcased their baking talents. The delicious treats baked by our students were enjoyed on Wednesday afternoon, and due to popular demand, another sale took place during Thursday break time, much to the delight of our pupils!
The standard of entries in the Bake-Off was exceptional, making it a tough job for our judges to select winners. After much deliberation, we are pleased to announce the following winners:
Bake-Off Junior School Winners:
Theo, for his fantastic cake depicting the DPS logo, which was quickly snapped up by a generous staff member for donation.
Evie V, for her delightful ice-skating-themed cake, which won our Chef Chris’ heart.
Special mention goes to Mia for her Aston Villa cake, which impressed everyone with its creativity.
Bake-Off Senior School Winners:
- James H, for his delicious chocolate cake.
- Sophie S, for her excellent brownies.
- Jude S also deserves special mention for his chocolate and raspberry cake, which was simply irresistible.
Sponge The Teacher!
Another highlight of the week was Sponge the Teacher, a beloved DPS tradition where brave staff members lined up for the pupils to take their annual revenge. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all staff who volunteered for this entertaining event.
Charity Fete
On Thursday, tutor groups from across the senior school ran a charity fete, offering various activities for all pupils to enjoy. Special mentions go to Mrs. Browning’s tutor group 9D for their fantastic ‘mocktails’ and Mrs. Baker’s 10C for their lively auction of Grease production memorabilia, led by the charismatic Kian S.
Throughout the week, pupils ran a tuck shop at break and lunch times, offering a variety of favourites. We commend the entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, and commitment of Zac H in 10B and Elliott W in 9B for their contributions to this effort.
We extend our sincerest thanks to all staff and families from DPS for their support during Charities Week 2024. The Bursar’s office worked hard to count up all the cash and we are utterly delighted to say that we raised a massive £2, 751 for all of our deserving house charities! Well done everyone and thank you for your help and generosity.
Dan Leonard
A history of our school – We love to explore the history of our school but that has mostly been its history since Paddy Holmes established the school in 1976. We recently recieeved a beautiful written memory of the school when it was Douai Junior School – opened in 1948 as a monastic boys boarding school. Whilst we have little information of the school during this time, what is clear is that those who were part of the school had extremely happy memories of halcon days perched on the top of the South Downs. The Headmaster was Father Alphonsus Tierney, who in 1952, returned to Douai as headmaster of the senior school when it expanded its numbers.
During these early years, much of the land around was given over to forests but the lawn in front of the house remained for sports and outdoor pursuits – it was separated from the neighbouring field by a ‘ha-ha’ – the impression of which you can still see from aerial views! Ha-has were ditches used to stop livestock from grazing on formal lawns (often called so because you didn’t see them until you fell into them and hence invoked much laughter from those watching…) but which didn’t spoil the long-reaching view as a fence line would. Moden health and safety would not permit such a thing now! Its also clear that the school had its own vegetable gardens to provide food for the children in those post-war austere times and it would appear that the boys were taught how to shoot fowl and rabbits to provide meat for the table.
Douai School remained until 1975 when it was finally closed and the buildings put on the open market. At that point, Paddy Holmes, our Founder, was able to buy it and turn it into the Ditcham Park we know and love today.
Please enjoy this piece of ‘nostalgia’ as written by Anthony Hepworth-Taylor from his days as a pupil in the 1950s
‘Nostalgia’
Anthony Hepworth-Taylor, Ditcham 1954-1959 (known as Douai School)
In hushed silence, ninety boarding schoolboys peered down from the gallery surrounding the main staircase, eagerly awaiting to hear whether they would be granted a day off lessons. One of us had been dared to knock on the door of the refectory below, where the resident staff of five Benedictine monks were finishing their breakfast. Naturally there had to be a good reason for a day’s holiday, so usually the Feast Day of an obscure Catholic saint was invoked.
Occasionally this ploy worked and with a huge cheer, we would scatter into the summer sunshine, many to play cricket or to cultivate little garden plots or, as in my case, to disappear into the surrounding woods to build camps. A magical path of morning sunlight, illuminating a million tiny cobwebs suspended in the dewy grass, led the way across the lawns. Regrettably, those beloved trees have since been grubbed up by modern agricultural implements capable of tilling the South Downs’ shallow soils.
Today’s health and safety regulations would likely deny what we then enjoyed but that freedom to explore was crucial for our wellbeing. I loathed leaving home at the end of each holiday and the appearance of my trunk, labelled ‘Luggage In Advance’, filled me with dread but the school’s location, splendid food (much from its own walled kitchen garden) and the benign staff eased those transitions.
Every classroom contained wooden desks with hinged lids and seats. Little inkwells had to be filled regularly and each pen was a dowel stick with a metal nib attached. The results of the end-of-year tests determined our rank order and position for the next. We also had to endure unsprung mattresses on iron bedsteads, corporal punishment and writing ‘lines’, because that was the norm. A bell in the chapel tower would summon us to lessons, meals or bedtime but if we were out of earshot having fun and missed the call, we accepted the consequences.
Perched on a hilltop and once a home of the Bonham Carter family, the estate was ideal for a rural Preparatory school and I spent five years there in the 1950s. Transport was either by steam train to Petersfield about nine miles away or by private car. Visitors sometimes underestimated the slope to the south of the entrance and failed to apply the handbrake sufficiently. When a vehicle began to move, a warning shout would alert nearby pupils and we would abandon our games in order to hang on to door handles or the rear bumper to bring it to a halt. Sometimes we failed and the car rolled down the slope, gathering speed, until it tipped into the ha-ha at the bottom of the lawn. This has since been filled, levelled and obscured by sports’ pitches but its trace remains visible on Google maps.
The pursuits of my genial housemaster were also memorable. During our communal showers before bedtime he would play his flute, after which we would gather in his study to hear him read aloud the poems of his old friend Hilaire Belloc. He was often accompanied by his black labrador dog and, just occasionally, would interrupt our lessons on the first floor to shoot a pheasant passing below. The pupil who had scored the highest mark in the last Latin test was permitted to retrieve the bird.
The sights, smells and sounds of Ditcham’s woods have always remained with me. There I developed a great love of nature and consequently, many years later, became a teacher specialising in Environmental Science. During my training at the City of Portsmouth College of Education and Southampton University in the 1970s, one of my lecturers bought Douai Junior School, as it was then styled, and it became Ditcham Park School.
