House System
It is our aim that students feel a sense of belonging to their House and that they take part in House competitions and charity events which are organised throughout the school year.
The House that a student belongs to can be identified by their school tie.
Cavell House
House Colour: Orange
Origin of House Name
Edith Cavell - a British WW1 nurse, executed for saving the lives of soldiers from both sides without distinction
Edith Cavell excelled in her role despite the challenges presented by societal views of women and work at that time. She managed hospitals, nursing homes and schools for nurses, to name but a few and gave lectures to doctors and nurses. On the outbreak of the First World War, Edith was in Norwich. “At a time like this, I am more needed than ever” were the words of Edith before she set off for the Frontline in Belgium.
Edith cared for all the wounded, regardless of nationality. She was greatly criticised by many at the time for assisting the German and Austrian soldiers, when they were fighting against the British. Edith soon began to work with others to smuggle the Allied soldiers that she was caring for, out of the hospital and into neutral Holland. She helped over 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.
When interrogated by the Officials, Edith provided all of the details surrounding the underground and she was sent to trial with 35 others. Most were sentenced to hard labour. Despite international pressure for mercy, she was shot by a German firing squad. Her execution received worldwide condemnation and extensive press coverage.
Franklin House
House Colour: Green
Origin of House Name
Rosalind Franklin - British scientist and the overlooked discoverer of DNA
Rosalind Franklin was a contemporary of Watson and Crick, who were latecomers to the search for DNA’s structure. Building off of others’ works, but without a solid grounding in chemistry, the duo made some early incorrect guesses as to DNA’s structure, which were thoroughly shot down by Franklin.
Wilkins (her partner) secretly handed over some of Franklin’s work to Watson and Crick without her permission. The rest is history. Without her knowledge, Watson and Crick used her work – primarily “Photo 51,” a diffraction result demonstrating the helical nature of DNA – to rush out a paper, and won the Nobel Prize for “the most important scientific discovery of the 20th century.”
Franklin, who had perhaps been three months away from solving the problem herself, remained unaware of their usage of Photo 51 for the rest of her tragically short life. After some brief work on the tobacco mosaic virus, she died of ovarian cancer, possibly brought on from her work with X-rays. She was 39.
Parks House
House Colour: Blue
Origin of House Name
Rosa Parks – Civil Rights Pioneer
By refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus in 1955, black seamstress Rosa Parks (1913 - 2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States.
The leaders of the local black community organized a bus boycott that began the day Parks was convicted of violating the segregation laws. Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott lasted more than a year - during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job - and ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength in the struggle to end entrenched racial segregation.
Turing House
House Colour: Purple
Origin of House Name
Alan Turing – Creator of Modern Computing
Alan Turing was not a well-known figure during his lifetime. However, today he is famous for being an eccentric yet passionate British mathematician who conceived modern computing and played a crucial part in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
During World War II, Turing was a leading participant in wartime code-breaking, particularly that of German ciphers. He worked at Bletchley Park and developed an electromechanical device used to help decipher German Enigma encrypted signals. Turing moved to London in the mid-1940s, and began working for the National Physical Laboratory. Among his most notable contributions while working at the facility, Turing led the design work for the Automatic Computing Engine and ultimately created a groundbreaking blueprint for store-program computers. His work is credited by many in the tech industry as the world’s first personal computer—among other computer models.
He was also a victim of mid-20th Century attitudes to homosexuality – he was chemically castrated before dying at the age of 41. In 2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology for “the appalling way he was treated” and in 2013 Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon.
Winton House
House Colour: Red
Origin of House Name
Nicholas Winton – Humanitarian
Nicholas Winton was a British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport.
Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain. The world found out about his work over 40 years later, in 1988. The British press dubbed him the “British Schindler”. On 28 October 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion (1st class), by Czech President MilošZeman.
Winton died in July 2015 – he was 106 years old.
