#downsideschool

The Downside OTC or Officer Training Corps was formed here in 1909 and many of the Old Gregorians who served during the Great War had been involved in this during their time at Downside.

The OTC was a large part of the life at Downside, and still is today under its new guise of the CCF. In 1912 the War Office gave the Downside OTC permission to open a firing range with service ammunition at the lower end of the third cricket field. In 1919, when the boys returned for school they were surprised to find a captured German artillery piece from the Great War mounted in the quad.

When the Prince of Wales visited Downside in 1923, the OTC formed a guard of honour for him as he laid a wreath at the War Memorial. In the photographic archives here we have two wonderful albums of the OTC marching through London in the 1930s.

We have recently been donated by a son of old Gregorian Cyril Wettern some of his old OTC badges, for which we are extremely grateful. Digging into Mr Wettern's old school file we found pictures of his OTC unit from the 1930's which was a fitting reminder of how important the organization has been in Downside's history.

On a recent trip to Dublin, the Activity Manager here at Downside made a visit to Glasnevin cemetery, which holds almost one and a half million burials. More information on the cemetery can be found at www.glasnevinmuseum.ie/ 

The cemetery is also home to a monument to all those who lost their lives during the Easter Rising of April 1916. From research conducted for another project, it was remembered that an Old Gregorian of Downside was one such man who had died in the events in Dublin. A quick search revealed his name on the memorial.

Basil Henry Worsley-Worswick was born in 1881 and came to Downside from 1894-1899. He was the younger brother of Dom Peter Worsley-Worswick, a Downside monk. After leaving Downside, he went to Oxford and then moved to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where he was a farmer, before emigrating to Canada.

He returned from Canada just before the outbreak of the war and enlisted in the army in August 1914. Worsley-Worswick was a 2nd Lieutenant in the 2nd King Edward's Horse which was on reserve in Ireland after months of fighting in France. When the Easter Rising began, the regiment was sent to Dublin to help quell the disturbance. The death of Worsley-Worswick was a result of general confusion in the city over that period.

On the night of April 28th, a detachment of the Dublin Fusiliers was stationed at the malt house of the Guinness brewery. When an officer went to relieve the officer on duty, he was mistaken for an enemy and shot. Worsley-Worswick was in the next picket along and heard the commotion. He asked his officer to be allowed to investigate but was told to wait until morning.

Worsley-Worswick arrived at the malt house at dawn on April 29th and finding that the officer had been killed, his suspicions were aroused and when he was challenged by a sergeant of the Dublin Fusiliers, he knocked the man down. The guards, seeing this, immediately fired upon Worsley-Worswick and killed him instantly. He was 35 years old.

This tragic story highlights the confusion and panic that surrounded the city of Dublin during Easter 1916. The memorial at Glasnevin commemorates everyone who died during the Rising; Republicans, civilians and British soldiers.

Friday 1st July is the centenary of the Battle of the Somme at which over a million men were killed or wounded. Of this number are 18 Downside men, Old Gregorians who had gone to serve their country. Alongside these men, members of the Downside monastic community also served as Military Chaplains. This centenary we will be remembering them all at Downside.

Three boys of the school died on the 1st July, killed in the advances into German trenches which were supposed to be have been blown to pieces by the massive preliminary artillery bombardment, yet which remained well defended. The list of the Downside boys who died between 1st July and 18th November in this battle are listed here.  

2nd Lieutenant Evan Edward Trevor-Jones. 1st July aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Cuthbert A Stonor. 1st July aged 28.

Lieutenant Hugh Gilbert Clifford. 1st July aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Kenneth Callan Macardle. 9th July aged 26.

Lieutenant D'arcy John Joseph Hartley. 14th July aged 26.

2nd Lieutenant Stephen Henry Hewett. 22nd July aged 23.

Captain Noel Cairns Clery MC. 24th July aged 23.

2nd Lieutenant Philip Stephen Koe. 1st August aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Richard Walker. 9th August aged 33.

2nd Lieutenant Patrick Gilbert O'Hara. 14th August aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Cecil William Daly. 18th August aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Hugh Joseph Francis Fleming. 24th August aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Roderick Alan Edward O'Connor. 1st September aged 22.

Major Noel Wilfrid Lawder. 4th September aged 29.

2nd Lieutenant Henry Lubienski Bodenham. 7th September aged 20.

Captain John Oswin Turnbull. 9th September aged 27.

Private William Forster. 7th October aged 24.

2nd Lieutenant Gilbert Austin Turner. 17th November aged 19.

Also on the Western Front during this time were monks of the community here at Downside, who had volunteered as Military Chaplains. One of these, Dom Urban Butler, was heavily involved in the Battle of the Somme, serving with 9th Cheshire Regiment. Although not in the first waves of attacks, the Cheshires were heavily involved in the fighting over the next days and weeks. Dom Urban wrote to his mother of his experiences on 7th July, his first opportunity to write since the 1st.

'Presently we arrived at the communication trenches; the brigade went in and I left them to go to the advanced dressing station in the chateau in the wood of Becourt (a good map of the battlefield ought to show it) some three kilometres east of Albert and just behind our front lines as it was on that famous first of July. The horrors of that place in which I have since spent so many hours will live in my mind till my last day. The heat was overpowering and I could hardly support the awful stench of blood and perspiration.'

Dom Urban spent three days in the basement of the chateau treating wounded men as they came back from the front lines. He wrote 'There were days in the past when men wounded one another in honourable anger, striking at the brow or the breast with clean steel. But these wounds are an outrage against heaven and I will not offend your feelings by describing what I have witnessed. Was man made after God’s image to be torn by hideous machinery and has the world developing upon an utterly false theory of civilisation determined to tear itself to pieces in rage at the sight of its own devil-worship?'

On this 1st July, Downside remembers not just those who fell, but those who served and witnessed the horrors of one of the bloodiest episodes in British history.

This fine replica of the famous locomotive The Flying Scotsman was once an item of great interest and amusement here at Downside. Created by Downside monk, Dom Edmund Lee, this replica was a ride on steam train which used to run around its own tracks on the grounds within Downside school.

Dom Edmund Lee was born in London in 1903 and gained a BSc from Bristol University. He was clothed as a priest at Downside in 1927 and became a priest in 1932. Dom Edmund taught in the school as Housemaster of Smythe 1934-41 and 1945-48. He was Bursar 1948-54 and Parish Priest at Norton St Philip 1934-77.

The replica locomotive was completed by Dom Edmund around 1945 to a very precise set of specifications. The train, we can assume, would have been a work of art, a testament to the technical skill of Dom Edmund.  

The train was never meant to be a working model which sat in a workshop. Dom Edmund had far greater plans. Therefore, a track was created in the school grounds, as demonstrated in the picture above. The engine had a seat for a driver, and could pull either 10 adults or 20 children behind it on the track. Indeed, the track was so refined, a tunnel was also constructed, as below.

Unfortunately, the locomotive was sold, or given away in the mid 1950's and today there is no sign that there was ever a train track here at Downside. The brief period in the late 1940's and early 1950's when a steam train ran around the grounds of Downside is a unique footnote in the history of the site. Yet the memory of it is a testament to the vision and technical expertise of Dom Edmund Lee who died in 1980, leaving behind a wonderful chapter in the history of Downside.

From 31st May to 1st June 1916, the Battle of Jutland was fought between the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy. Although not as decisive as both sides would have wished, the battle has recently been termed 'the battle that won the war' by some historians.

Although losing more ships and men, the Royal Navy claimed a tactical victory as the Imperial German Navy sailed back to harbor and never threatened British supremacy at sea again in the Great War.

One of the ships lost that day was HMS Invincible, the world's first battlecruiser. During the Battle of Jutland she was the flagship of the Third Battlecruiser Squadron. On board HMS Invincible was an Old Gregorian, John Henry Grattan Esmonde, who was one of 1026 men who lost their lives when she sank.

John Henry Grattan Esmonde was the younger son of Sir Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde MP, and was born on 2nd May, 1899. He came to Downside in January 1910 and left in December 1911. He began a period of training at Osborne Naval Training College on the Isle of Wight, before moving to the Britannia Royal Naval Training College at Dartmouth. 

His training was barely completed when war broke out in August 1914, and he was immediately gazetted midshipman and joined HMS Invincible aged just 16. Esmonde was involved in several naval engagements onboard including Heligoland and the Falkland Islands, where Invincible sank the German cruiser Scharnhorst.

Of this battle Esmonde wrote a letter which was published in several newspapers and the Downside Review. Writing of HMS Invincible's battle with Scharnhorst, he wrote, 'We hit again and again. First our left gun sent her big crane spinning over the side. then our right gun blew her funnel to atoms and then another shot from the left gun sent her bridge and part of the forecastle sky high.' Esmonde was stationed in a gun turret, and from his letter, one which operated quite effectively.

'When the smoke cleared, she [Scharnhorst] was on her side, and her propellers were lashing the water round into foam; then she capsized altogether and went to the bottom! So that the German flagship, sank with Admiral von Spee and 900 German sailors, not a man being saved.'

At the Battle of Jutland, HMS Invincible was hit by shells from Lutzow and Derfllinger and she was sunk in 90 seconds after a shell penetrated a magazine and she exploded. A survivor, Commander Hubert Dannreuther, wrote to Esmonde's father, saying 'Death must have been almost instantaneous and painless to your son, and his end was one you may well be proud to think of.'

A naval chaplain also wrote to Esmonde's father. 'He was always on the spot for Confession and Mass, and went to no end of trouble to make arrangements, and to induce his men to come to the Sacraments.'