Welcome to LWC News
Dear Parents and Guardians,
We head into Exeat after a truly extraordinary week.
The last seven days have seen LWC claim (or successfully defend) titles in canoeing, cross country, rugby and hockey.
We’ve hosted fragments of the Moon and a celebrated artist.
The first snowfall of the academic year arrived and we came together for a glorious student-led celebration of our brilliantly expansive music department.
That calls for a rest…..and we wish you a wonderful Exeat.
As we approach the end of term, you may well be looking ahead to the sports that your child will be playing from January. Please see a guide to required sports kit below.
As always, your comments and contributions to LWC News are very welcome via stories@lordwandsworth.org
Calendar & Sports Schedule
The school calendar can be viewed using the link below:
LWC CalendarThe school sports calendar can be viewed using the link below:
LWC Sports CalendarPlease view the Sports Weekly Schedule here:
Sports Weekly ScheduleHere’s a guide to required kit per sport:
LWC SPORTS KIT LIST
News
The Moon Comes to LWC
We’re no strangers to visitors in the 1200…but travelling more than 230 thousand miles to get here is something else.
This week, genuine moon rocks from the Apollo 15,16 and 17 missions were displayed in Gavin Hall for students, parents and staff to see.
Workshops were laid on to learn about the extraordinary rocks and a selection of meteorite samples.
The Moon rocks are loaned to schools through the STFC Lunar Rocks and Meteorites Loan Scheme and are the property of the US Government.
Comments from students included, “I can’t believe I’m holding part of another planet in my hands.”
LWC’s Dr Esther Haydock added, “These moon rocks are incredibly rare. This was an amazing chance for our students to see a piece of space history up close, sparking their interest in science and space exploration.”
Maybe the Moon rocks will inspire someone to collect some lunar samples of their own one day….
Seven Days of Spellbinding Sport
What a week! Our Marathon Canoe Teams retained the Novice and Experienced Team Trophies, along with the Sprint Novice Title at the National Schools Canoe Championships.
Our U14B Girls Hockey Team won the Hampshire 7’s Trophy.
At the District Cross Country Championships, our U17 Girls Team retained their title at a snowy LWC, with 3rd Former Pippa winning the U15 category.
Meanwhile, our Rugby 1st XV retained the Hampshire Cup to continue their reign as county champions.
LWC Headmaster, Adam Williams added, “This week has been a wonderful reminder of the extraordinary breadth and quality of our sports programme. These performances reflect the energy, talent and team spirit thriving across the school. The best part is that the pupils achieve all of this with a smile on their face and a spring in their step. They don’t fear failure, they love the fact they are there.”
Open Morning
Do you know someone who would be right at home here in the 1200?
Our final Open Event of the year is taking place next Tuesday (26th November) at 9.30am.
It’s an excellent opportunity to explore the 1200, before the deadline for registrations, scholarships and bursary applications.
Spread the word and register here.
A Lasting Legacy
Our Artist in Residence, Mark Spray completes his three-week stay at LWC today and has been reflecting on his time here, working with students and completing a commissioned piece for the College.
“It’s been a joy,” he remarked. “It’s been expansive in all of the right ways. I’ve had the opportunity to get to understand the place, topographically and in terms of the people here. It’s been really delightful.”
Mark’s exhibition, The Long Silences will remain available to view in the Prideaux Gallery until Saturday, 30th November and will be followed soon afterwards by a curated selection of students’ work, developed during Mark’s residency.
“I think it’s expanded their vision and hopefully their confidence,” explained Mark. “The whole practice of drawing outside, of introducing mud pushed them to the point of discomfort….They’ve gone from writing their drawings to really drawing them.”
Mark has previously described feeling a ‘connection’ with LWC and he remains evangelical about the 1200.
“I was talking to students about the red kites here and they’ve kind of taken them for granted! I love red kites. I also picked up some Neolithic flints in a field that we were walking through and explained that this was proof people were here 4000 years ago. I asked them what they would be leaving behind.”
We look forward to seeing the legacy of Mark’s residency around the College soon.
On Manoeuvres
LWC’s Sixth Form Senior CCF Cadets rose to the challenge last week for a Section Night Training Exercise under the cover of darkness.
3rd Form CCF recruits from LWC and Costello in Basingstoke were given basic training in tactical movement, cooking, camouflage and concealment, packing a rucksack and setting up a shelter on campus.
CCF Contingent Commander, Alex Hamilton reflected, “It was a total success and the 3rd Form demonstrated real commitment and engagement with the training. The stars of the show though, were the Sixth Form instructors.”
Bugsy…Coming Soon…
We’re now two months away from our performance of Bugsy Malone at The Haymarket in Basingstoke and tickets will be on sale soon..
Meanwhile, rehearsals are continuing to take place four times a week, alongside photo shoots for the programme.
Watch this space for more information on how you can see the show, which is on from Wednesday 22nd-Thursday 23rd January next year.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Ahead of Thanksgiving being celebrated in the US and elsewhere in the world next Thursday (28th November), we caught up with our resident American, Peter McNeely, Assistant Deputy Head (Teaching and Learning) at LWC.
Mr McNeely is originally from Tacoma, near Seattle and came to the UK to study at St Andrews University. It was there that he met his English wife and in his words, “We’ve slowly moved southward ever since, until arriving to teach at LWC.”
“Thanksgiving in the US is bigger than Easter, and perhaps tied for 2nd Place with the 4th of July,” he explains. “After Christmas, it’s the only holiday for which you would travel a long way to see family.”
He recalls Thanksgiving in 80’s and 90’s America as involving “an extra church service, hosting family and a massive feast. Turkey is standard, but what would stand out compared to an English Christmas dinner is the various sweetened vegetables; sweet potatoes with marshmallows, horrendously unhealthy salads and Jell-O moulds.”
So how does Thanksgiving look when you live in rural North Hampshire? “We still mark it,” he reveals. “Usually on the Saturday after, alongside other ex-pats in our orbit. It’s a great chance to be hospitable and for me, pumpkin pie is essential.”
LWC Lions
Alongside LWC’s success in canoeing, cross country, hockey and rugby this week are some call-ups for our super Junior footballers to the England Prep Schools’ Lions Squad.
The Lions are regarded as featuring some of the most talented independent school footballers from across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey.
Congratulations to 2nd Formers, Reuben (pictured) and Archie who have been selected for the U13A Lions and to 1st Former, Oscar who has made it into the U12A’s.
The Lions’ programme allows players to face academies, other district teams, take part in a training camp and be given the chance to represent England in the Gothia World Youth Cup.
LWC’s Head of Football, Georgia Bowers said, “It’s great to see Reuben, Archie and Oscar excelling in football outside of LWC. Getting into the Lions Prep Squad is a great achievement and we as a school are immensely proud of this and all of the effort they’ve put into sport so far.”
Cabaret Evening
The performances are coming thick and fast for LWC Performing Arts this month.
Last night saw our sold-out, student-led Cabaret Evening enthralling the audience in the Nadine Uppal Theatre. It featured a variety of performances across Music, Drama and Dance and was led by our Performing Arts Student Leadership Team.
Next up is the ever-popular Autumn Term Music Concert next Friday (29th November), which is a showcase of the sheer variety of music being made at LWC. There will be performances from the concert band, choir, ensemble and a selection of soloists.
Tickets are available here.
Christmas Countdown Continues…
There are three weeks to go until our Carols and Christmas Market. Tickets are free and available here.
There will be over 40 stallholders offering artisan gifts including Fiona Shaw-Daniel.
In the second of our stallholder focus pieces, Fiona has been revealing more about her business and the inspiration behind it.
“Fizzy Loves India offers bags, clothing and jewellery sourced in India,” explains Fiona. “The business was the dream of myself and a friend. We had been travelling to Rajasthan for more than 25 years when we worked for airlines and had always loved the shopping.”
Together, they launched an outlet for the products they had sourced in October 2023 and have been going from strength to strength ever since.
“We’ve been on three trips to source Kantha bags, silk and cotton clothing, silver jewellery, block-print make-up and wash bags so far,” continued Fiona . “Our biggest hits are our kimonos. We try and keep our prices down and nearly everything we sell is under £35 so hopefully affordable to all. We’re really looking forward to bringing a little bit of India to LWC.”
A Special Happy Birthday
The Sternian connection is a strong one, which is why we’re keen to wish a very happy landmark birthday to former LWC student, Brian Massey who is 100 years old today.
Brian lost his father when he was 13 as a result of injuries sustained during the First World War and he came to LWC with his brother.
It was here that he developed a love of farming and the great outdoors as he worked the land. He went on to volunteer for the Royal Engineers during the Second World War, helped to design major roads such as the M1 and M50 and was awarded an MBE for services to the community by the late Queen Elizabeth ll.
We’re extremely proud of him.
If you haven’t yet added to our good wishes across our LWC socials, we would love you to join in on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.
UK Space Design Challenge
It provided an opportunity to learn about life working in the space industry…
A team from LWC put in a good performance at the UK Space Design Challenge in Oxford last week.
Barnaby, Max, Charlie D, Seb, Thomas and Charlie Y were tasked with pulling together a commercial bid for a mining and manufacturing base on Mars.
Lower Sixth Former, Thomas said, “It was an interesting experience. It gave me the opportunity to work with students in different schools on the same topic and think together about engineering challenges. I gained a lot of new knowledge about space engineering.”
Sweet Success
An impressive £566 was raised for BBC Children in Need, thanks to last week’s cupcake sale.
LWC’s Catering Team were selling the cakes to students and staff during morning break.
Assistant Catering Manager, Agnes Prokopczuk added, “We’re so delighted and grateful to all who donated and helped us to raise the money.”
Burst of Winter
We didn’t quite get the carpet of snow that some would have been hoping for this week…
But LWC did get to see the first snowfall of the academic year and a couple of harsh frosts to boot.
If you have a great photo of the 1200, we’d love to see it via stories@lordwandsworth.org.
Sporting Highs and Lows
As Assistant Director of Sport and Head of Girls’ Sport at LWC, Poppy Lake is a familiar figure at the side of a netball court or a hockey pitch.
She gives little away when it comes to the years that proceeded her arrival at Lord Wandsworth last year.
“I had already qualified for the Commonwealth Games, was due to go to the World Championships and the Olympics was the dream,” she explains. Her discipline was high jump, which was quite the gear change from the original plan.
“I started out as a dancer,” she continued. “I danced from the age of three until around 15 and was a Junior Associate at The Royal Ballet. I thought I was going to be a dancer; on stage, in the West End, on cruise ships.” All of that changed when her PE teacher at secondary school introduced her to the high jump.
“I ended up breaking the school record the first time I tried it,” she points out. “A week later I was competing in the County Championships as a girl called Katie. They were planning to take someone else but couldn’t change the name. I ended up getting her to something like 15th in the UK.”
What followed was a stream of appearances at national and international level, culminating in her arrival at Loughborough University, where she studied part-time alongside her training.
But in 2017, everything changed during a ski trip which was designed to give her some much-needed downtime. “I was standing still, waiting for a friend to come down the mountain and a person who had been drinking skied into me,” she explained. “I ruptured my ACL, MCL, LCL, ruptured my hamstring, tore my calf and tore my meniscus. When I saw the surgeon, he said straight away that I would never jump again. But I didn’t believe that.”
What followed were years of training to rebuild her strength, followed by further injury setbacks. On Halloween, 2020, Poppy’s Achilles snapped in a freak training accident. “At this point they told me I was done,” she continues. “But I still didn’t believe them and so I carried on.” A further Achilles injury after this finally laid her dreams of staging a comeback, to rest. “I lost my sponsorship, my lottery funding,” she reflects. “People say that if you do 10,000 hours, 10 years of working hard, then you’ll make it. I was so close to making it.”
But if nothing else, this experience has taught Poppy to stay resilient and to maintain a sense of perspective, which she now passes on to her students here at LWC. “I think that’s what’s so good about LWC. We really do focus on other things. Students here come out with a good education, lovely friends and good communication skills, as well as being really good sportspeople. They are in a really safe environment and they’re not afraid to make mistakes.”
As for her own health, she admits that sometimes she needs to remind herself to exercise the same patience she requires of her students. “In December of last year, I had an ACL transplant. Someone who was a full body donor was killed in car accident. That’s all I know. It was a 40 year old man and now I’ve got his ACL, which is pretty amazing…..I get frustrated sometimes that I’m not able to do the things I used to do but then I tell myself I got a brand new leg at Christmas last year and I need to be patient with it.”
You can read more of Poppy’s story here.
Need New Uniform?
Schoolblazer is running a flash sale from Monday (25th) – Tuesday (26th November).
There will be 20% off all in-stock items online at schoolblazer.com during the sale period and while stocks last.
Key Dates
Mark Spray Exhibition – The Long Silences, Prideaux Gallery
Continues until Saturday, 30th November
LWC Connect Finance Networking Breakfast, Zanetas
7.45-9am, Thursday 5th December
Whole School Christmas Lunch
Wednesday, 11th December
Carols and Christmas Market
Thursday, 12th December
End of Autumn Term
Noon, Friday, 13th December