FINAL MESSAGE FROM THE OUTGOING CHAIRMAN
Following our last AGM in September, we have, as promised, been tidying-up the Association's affairs.
Mike Kilduff has formally deposited our Archive with the Cheshire Record Office, where it is available for consultation. David Murphy has now closed our bank account with the RBS and has sent Fr. Mervyn Williams, the Salesian Provincial Economer, a cheque for the residue of £4,026.86p. Earlier I was in touch with Fr. Williams to indicate that up to £1,000 of this sum is to be available to support the activities of the SOBA group based at Easterhouse, which has been agreed. Keith Dransfield is arranging to freeze our website and to deposit a disc of its contents with the Archive. A catalogue of the Archive is available HERE Henceforward, no more additions will be made to the site.
Thanks on everyone's behalf for your comradeship over many years. We wish each other well!
Peter Roebuck
January 2012
Received via Eric Baggaley
26/12/2011
GREETINGS
Seminario dos Marianos
Rua S. Paulo 2
2495-435 FATIMA
Portugal
Tel (351) 249-531-389
"…This year…I find myself temporarily outside of the States because of my passport reasons to be in Europe…
I wish to send you my BEST WISHES FOR CHRISTMAS AND THE NEW YEAR.
Fr. Walter Gurgul MIC
(As part of his letter Fr. Gurgul recommends that anybody interested in going to Fatima could very well contact the Marian Fathers at the above address, since they have 3-star Hotel accommodation for up to 200 pilgrims. Eric)
Church of Our Lady Help of Christians
310 Landsdowne Road
Landsdowne 7780
Cape Town
SA
Sorry I missed the "final" reunion…still rector and parish priest here - at my age! Give my regards to Joe Lomax and others of our time…
Happy Christmas and best wishes,
Fr. Canice Dooley SDB
From Ted Carless
Received
22/12/2011
Good Morning, Shrigley Old Boys,
Bargain Cruise on the ‘White Nancy’ narrow boat at Bollington - available to book over the next 19 hours - it’s now 10.10 am on 22 December)
Further to my penultimate email (!), I would like to let you know about an attractive offer available today for the next 19 hours (unless it sells out earlier) for a two-hour Narrowboat Lunch Cruise including a Lancashire Hot Pot Lunch or Homemade Vegetable Pie, Dessert and a Beer or Two on the White Nancy Cruising Restaurant on the Bollington Cana. Cruises depart 12.30pm and 3.30pm. This deal for two people for £19.00 is available on the bargain website of Living Social Deals (Manchester version) which you should easily be able to find with Google.
Whether we combine this with Kerridge Ridge can be decided later but maybe it can be a standalone event. Carpe Diem!
Best Wishes and in great haste,
Ted Carless
From Ted Carless
Received
20/12/2011
Dear Shrigley Old Boys,
Only a few days remain before emails will no longer be posted on our excellent Shrigley Association website. So I would like to submit my own final contribution.
Yes, it may be sad that the Shrigley Association has expired but I don’t believe that means it’s the end of Shrigley Old Boys keeping in touch and doing things together socially as and when individuals may so wish.
I cannot properly explain why, in 1996, I felt inclined to organise a reunion to celebrate my time and yours at Shrigley since the time I spent there and indeed my 15 years with the Salesians were far from easy. But in spite of the very real hardships, there was a certain ‘joie de vivre’ that I thought was worth celebrating.
Since 1996, my original feelings may have been somewhat tempered over the years as I have listened to a wide range of views on life at Shrigley. Yet I still feel a strong affection for the indefinable phenomenon that was Shrigley.
So now that we no longer have a structured, formal Shrigley Association we are still free to ‘do our own things’ without the need for all the formalities necessary for such an official organisation. We have been most excellently served by our officers who are well known to us all and to whom we will always be grateful for the enormous success of their enterprises ‘against the odds’ over so many years. But if formal functions were not really your kind of thing, you are now about to come into your own - spontaneous, social gatherings.
So, to come to the point, I hope it will still be possible for those who so wish to continue to celebrate our times together and I would like to ‘set the ball rolling’ with a suggestion or two. I hasten to add, however, that I try to temper my natural optimism with a good dose of realism and so do not expect a massive response to my ‘cry to arms’!
Would anyone like to join me and Ruth in a clamber up White Nancy and a stroll along Kerridge Ridge next spring or summer? I intend to keep the logistics of such an attractive enterprise very simple by merely agreeing a date and time, leaving everyone then free to organise their own accommodation, if required, in a variety of local hostelries - Shrigley Hall Hotel, Savio House (by agreement), Travelodge, Premier Inn, Hollin Hall Hotel, the Church House Inn, etc. With the sophisticated means of communication available to us it should not be too difficult for us to meet at agreed times.
We do, of course, need a database of email addresses in order to communicate with each other for such an event to happen and I shall ask Mike Kilduff for his list of connections since I think his is likely to be the most up-to-date version.
Lancashire, current County Champions, will be playing 5 of their matches at Liverpool Cricket Club’s ground at Aigburth next season. I intend to get to as many of these games as possible and would be delighted to buy you a pint at this delightful cricket ground. Fixture dates for these 4-day matches are: commencing 12 April (Sussex), 19 April (Worcestershire), 23 May (Middlesex), 1st August (Somerset), 15 August (Worcestershire).....make sure you’re there for some of these, John Burke, and bring your cousin, Denis Keegan, with you!
Should anyone wish to respond to this message, you can contact me by email (carpe.diem@virgin.net), ‘phone (0151 929 3445), mobile (07973 734392), Twitter (@tedcarless) Facebook, or Website (www.right-angle.org.uk).
Ruth and I look forward to seeing some of you in a few weeks time - yes, spring is not all that far off!
Finally, I have 140 photos taken on the Saturday of our final reunion: please let me know if you are interested in seeing them.
Best Wishes and a Very Happy Christmas!
Ted Carless.
Memories
Just after the Association had closed in September 2011 a sister of David Castle wrote to us asking if anyone remembered David at Shrigley from 1958 onwards. The correspondance which followed has been added to the Memories page not least because it demonstrates some of the good we hope the Association was able to do. It is found as No 25 on the Memories Page
From Eric Baggaley
Dec 3rd
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS AND THANKS...TO - Peter Roebuck, Mike Kilduff, Fr. Albert Carette, Ted Carless, Keith Dransfield, Paul Barnes, John Burke, John Bergin, David Murphy, Bernard O'Neill...
FROM - Eric Baggaley
Good morning, Peter, Mike, Fr.Albert, Ted, Keith, Paul. John Burke, John Bergin, David and Bernard....Greetings!
I have read and re-read the accounts of the Closing 2011 AGM - with great interest - and I wish to add my own congratulations and thanks to you all.
You all made terrific contributions to the Shrigley Reunions, both in and out of Committee involvement, held between 1996 and 2011, most of which - in happier circumstances, I was able to attend and make my contributions.
In this regard, I wish to record my appreciation and thanks to both the Chairman, Peter and the Secretary, Mike, for your generous references made to me in the Minutes of the 2011 closing down AGM.
THE SHRIGLEY ARCHIVES are a major achievement, Mike, greatly aided and abetted by the splendid Publications and also by the reasonably extensive Website. Of these we can all be duly proud, I believe.
On just one other related matter, looking back over the time I worked to make the GALLERY records of Reunions as complete as possible, I wish to here put on record my thanks for the the tremendous contributions in photography made by all the Members who participated but most especially by Ted Carless.
Ted also had the great patience (together with Paul Barnes, John Burke and me) to put as many NAMES as possible to our photographic coverage - which, of course, makes these photographs doubly/trebly more interesting and useful...
Best wishes for the future to you all.
With renewed congratulations and thanks!
Affectionately,
Eric
From Andy Cathcart
Monday 21st November
Hi everyone,
Congratulations for maintaining the spirit of Shrigley for so long – perhaps in the future, there will be another gathering at the Hall for Shrigley Old Boys – my time (1951-53) was memorable and the opportunity to meet again would also be memorable…Hilaire Belloc expresses the thought a little more artfully;
“I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk from the sea
And the men who were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.”
Sincerely
Andy Cathcart (a.k.a. Peanuts)
From Mike Kilduff
Sunday 20th November
Last Monday, 14th November, I delivered the Shrigley Association Archive to the Cheshire Record Office in Chester, where it will be re-catalogued and maintained in good condition.
The catalogue I prepared can be seen on the website HERE
Reports and Minutes of the last Reunion and AGM can also be found HERE. Photographs are currently being prepared and will appear there shortly. We must thank Keith Dransfield for his efforts and for maintaining the site in its frozen state. Things presently displayed will still be available, but no new material or e-mails will be posted.
Our House and Lomas Shields remain at Shrigley. The letter I received from the hotel is reprinted below. The Shrigley Hall Hotel will continue to offer a warm welcome to Shrigley Old Boys.
It remains for me to thank those who have been active and supportive of the association since its formation, and particularly to those who have contributed to the archive.
Mike Kilduff
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Shrigley Hall Hotel letter to Association re Shields |
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Mike Kilduff received this e-mail following the 2011 reunion:
Mike,
Many thanks for providing such a wonderful day last Saturday. The intense mood of friendship and brotherhood revived many pleasant memories of Shrigley schooldays.
The impeccable organisation of each of the day’s events was much appreciated. The ceremony at the cemetery was especially moving - it reconnected me to my Salesian roots.
My son,Chris, felt the warmth and friendliness of all whom he met and the sense of harmony of all associates. He was glad of this insight into the location and atmosphere of his dad’s school - he appreciated the contrast of location from the industrial bleakness of Tyneside and the leafy fields of Cheshire and, of course, the very different atmosphere of a seminary.
In addition, many thanks for the return of the archive material. I appreciate the way it has been catalogued and organised (in your valuable time) - it will be a more meaningful legacy for my family now that my son has visited the location and witnessed the brotherhood of my contemporaries.
I would be grateful if you would pass my thanks to the other members of the committee - Ray.
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