After an interview with sound archivist Gordon Hawley, we present Sir Ben Dickinson, speaking in December 1981 at Speech Night in the Dallas Brooks Hall. This was the momentous year that Haileybury first won the APS athletics competition. Sir Ben is introduced, at some length, by the then Council Chairman Bill Butterss.
The next segment is taken from an interview by Bill Waters, Head of Haileybury Heritage and Archives, with Jim Brown in 2012. Jim passed away in August 2018 after 65 years outstanding involvement with the school as a student, teacher and administrator. In this extract Jim talks about the first decade of the Aikman years, from the mid 70s to the mid 80’s. To close we have the opening song from the 1959 production of the Pirates of Penzance.
The opening in 1956 of the Memorial Hall, now the Dickinson Hall, made it possible to stage large musical productions for the first time as the school swelled in size. Pirates was the first of these and the first step in establishing the outstanding Music/Drama tradition which the school celebrates today.