Help!

 

This area is open to all Sinjuns to ask for help from fellow Sinjuns.
If you would like to post a request for help on this page please e-mail Help@sinjuns.com.

Did You Attend The CCF Camp Weeks?

Help requested by: Chas Foulsham

Chas Foulsham comments in an email: It would be great to hear about some of the old CCF camp weeks and weekends. My last one was in '58 and was at Creiff in Perthshire, along with that tyrant of a "regular", Sgt. Dickie Speakman.

So, does anyone remember these CCF camps, and if so do you have any stories or photos to share?

If so, please send the to Help@Sinjuns.com so we can put them up on this site.

Save Our Football Club

Help requested by: James English

Sinjuns football is at present still around (believe it or not), and we need players, supporters & people to come and drink in our bar otherwise the only part of us will be this web-site!

The address is:

Trinity Playing Fields
Trinity Road
Burntwood Lane
Wandsworth

Near Wandsworth Common & Opposite The Surrey Tavern public house

 

Historical Information Requested

Help requested by: Nicholas Martin

I have some photos for you that I have attached, and I am requesting your help in another matter.

First the photos: My father, R.E.S. Martin (Reginald Ernest Semple, 1901-1967) was at Sinjuns until about 1920, when he won an open scholarship to Keble College, Oxford. (I mention this because Keble is also a Butterfield building and until recently I thought some of the attached photos were of Keble!). We lived in Oxford where he was a lecturer in Chemistry at the Oxford Polytechnic. (I'm a physicist at the University of Kentucky, USA., and I also went to Keble.)

Photo #1: My father is in the middle of the back row of the photo of eight boys. I don't know who any of the others are. My guess would be that it's a photo of Oxbridge scholarship winners. Notice the badges worn by most of the boys (Prefects?).

 

Photo #2: I believe this is of the masters sometime before 1920.

Photos #3 & #4: The latter is labelled in my fathers handwriting.

Photo #5. This is the one that I'm asking your help on.

This is a picture of my great-grandfather James Martin. On the back is written " Taken in 1870 in the School House Gardens. James Martin (father) age 40." (Also in the photo are my great-grandmother Jane Martin, nee Johnson, my grandfather Ernest Martin and his brothers and sister.)

I have some Geometry books by my great-grandfather published in the 1870's where he is described as "James Martin, Head Master of the Endowed School, Wedgwood Institute, Burslem" [now part of Stoke-on-Trent]. Last summer I was looking up some books by him in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Under "James Martin, of the Wedgwood Institute, Burslem" I found a book that when I opened it was by "James Martin, Head Master of Sir Walter St John's School, Battersea"!! Inside the back cover someone had pencilled "of the Wedgwood Institute, Burslem".

At first I thought that someone had made a mistake and that there must have been two different James Martins. But then I looked at his photo and compared it with your web site's picture of the School at the turn of the century. There are certainly similarities - eg the window and the way the drainpipe cuts into the stone moulding. I also have my great uncle's birth certificate of 1864 where the father is James Martin, Schoolmaster, and the address is High St, Battersea.

So I would like your help in confirming that the photo is of Sinjun's Headmasters house (was it bombed in the war?) and that my great-grandfather was in fact the headmaster during the 1860's and early 1870's. If he was I would like any information about him that Sinjun's have (Are there photos of old headmasters? I haven't seen Smallwood's book about the school yet. I will look at it when I come to Oxford this summer). I don't even know who his parents were.

One other oddity is that he also appears in one of the books in the Bodleian catalog as "James Martin, Formerly Normal Master, Training College, Battersea". According to an article I found on the web this was the first ever teacher training college in England.

The biggest puzzle for me is why did my father never mentioned that his grandfather had been headmaster of his school - or am I looking at skeleton's in the closet?

Hoping that you can help me. Nicholas Martin

If you have any information regarding these rare photos and very early part of Sinjuns history please e-mail Help@sinjuns.com and we will post the findings here

Mounted School Badge

Help requested by: David Uttley

I would like to ask for some assistance with a piece of Sinjuns history I was given. It is a school badge mounted in an oval frame with a mount in the school colours. I was given it by a Mr Brown (I am trying to get his first name/initial as our family always knew him as 'Mr Brown' !) who was our local representative for the Co-operative Insurance Society, in about 1973/74. He has since passed away and would probably have been a boy at the school in the early 1920's.

He called on us every weekend and when he heard I was going to Sinjuns said that he had something I might like. He duly arrived the following weekend with the aforementioned mounted badge. I believe that the object was given to him for playing cricket for the school (I could be wrong).

It is a wonderful thing to have and I was and am still touched that he gave it to me. It is displayed with pride in my living room. I would appreciate any help you might be able to give in finding out more about it !

If you have any information regarding this wonderful piece of Sinjuns history please e-mail Help@sinjuns.com and we will post the findings here

School Magazines.

HELP! We need any copies of either "The Sinjun" or "The Gazette". If you have these hidden away in a box, neatly filed in a bookcase, or you know of an archive of these publications, please contact us at Info@Sinjuns.com, or use our upload portal so we can include them on this web site. Of course if you wish to mail them to us that would be great, and once we have scanned them we will gladly return them to you.

Information on Teachers 1976 - 1986.

HELP! We need to fill in the blanks on the Assistant Masters page. We only have records of teachers up to 1976, but the school didn't close until 1986, so does anyone have any information on these last 10 years? So if you have any information please contact us at Help@Sinjuns.com.

Photographs, and other memorabilia.

We need more information for this site! So time to dig through those old boxes, drawers, and albums and find any photos, articles, and anything else that would be of interest to your fellow Sinjuns. Please e-mail them to Info@sinjuns.com, or use our upload portal so we can include them on this web site. Of course if you wish to mail them to us that would be great, and once we have scanned them we will gladly return them to you.

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