Rugby’s winning start
In the third article marking the centenary of Cranleigh rugby, we look back at the first full inter-school match when Epsom were well beaten on St Andrew’s. […]
Category: Features
Features
The architect of Cranleigh rugby
The arrival of 26-year-old Welshman Charles Gower at Cranleigh in January 1916 set in motion the switch of Cranleigh from a relative backwater to a respected public school, a change achieved almost entirely through success on the rugby field […]
A history of Cranleigh rugby
A history of Cranleigh School rugby, from its low-key start in 1916 through the glory years of the 1920s, the revival in the 1950s to the remarkable success of the last few years. […]
From tiny acorns …
On September 18, 1866, less than a year after the School had opened, the first formal picture of the boys of the Surrey County School was taken on the South Field after the inaugural Speech Day […]
The bloody month of July
While much has been written about the first day of the Battle of the Somme (July 1, 1916) when there were 19,240 British soldiers killed, the appalling loss of life continued for the remainder of the month. Twenty Old Cranleighans died in July, more than 10% of the total lost in the conflict overall; all but one of those fell in France. […]
A soldier’s story
Lionel ‘Leo’ Last (House 1906) died early on the opening morning of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. It took a hundred years for his name to finally be included on the Cranleigh war memorial […]
Jolyon Palmer: ‘I’m better than my dad’
Jolyon Palmer (North 2009) speaks about the driver who inspired him most, what he would have been had he not gone into racing, and how he is the best in his family […]
Cranleigh’s first match
On Friday, June 8, 1866 the School played its first proper competitive match when the Village doctor, Albert Napper, raised an XI to take on the Surrey County School on the Common. Three days later, on June 11, the first inter-school game was held when a team from Hurstpierpoint came to play […]
Cossetted from the outside world
Ninety years ago this month the country was paralysed for nine days by a General Strike, when almost two million worker, mainly in transport and heavy industries, stopped work in support of more than a million coal miners who were facing wage reductions and deteriorating working conditions […]
The challenge of the Korean War memorial
John Bowler (West 1949) won the Military Cross in the Korean War and was in London for the unveiling of a memorial to those who served in the conflict […]