Newsletter - 2026-08-22

This week we are going to discuss a reader`s card, because the two weeks I have been chatting about Harrow Schools has resulted in the following scan, of the proper school arms, being sent in by Mr. John Levitt. 

Wills School Arms Harrow

The exciting fact is that this could well be the earliest card ever issued which features Harrow School. It`s from "School Arms" by W.D. & H.O. Wills, and that was issued in November 1906. Though strangely it took until part three of our Wills reference booklets to make an appearance, where it is listed as :

  • 96.  50.  SCHOOL ARMS. Fronts lithographed in colour' backs in grey, with descriptive text. Home issue,1906. The following varieties are known. -

    Differences in text wording - last words of text :- 

      Card No.21
           (a) "Worthy within our gates"
          (b) "poet is exempt from blame"

      Card No.42
         (a) ".... be praised"
         (b)  ".... God bless (the Gift)"

    Differences in subject and description :

       Card No. 48 
         (a) "The Edinburgh Academy"
         (b) "Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perth"

As you can see, the emblem is a lion, possibly referring back to John Lyon, though it is definitely not his armorial bearing as some suggest, and there are some versions of the arms in which the legs are straighter - which you will find Wills uses for the image on their 1933 set "Arms of Public Schools" (card number seven).

The motto "Stet fortuna domus" is Latin and it means "May the fortune of the house endure". 

Strangely it also turns up on the Silver Jubilee Medal of George V, issued in 1935. I know that he, and Queen Mary did visit the school on Saturday, June the 15th, 1912, to attend the annual Speech Day, and that they were presented with a special copy of the school song book by the headmaster, but there seems no other connections with George V and Harrow - except for the fact that there is a George V Avenue in Pinner, otherwise known as the A404, which starts at the Uxbridge Road just before Hatch End and merges with the Pinner Road just after the junction with Headstone Lane. 

The reverse of this card tells of some of the famous boys, but it also includes the following statement, "Number of boys about 600" - and, if you remember, in last week`s edition of this newsletter, we spoke of the fact that "In 1926 another new building arrived, the War Memorial Building, in honour of the six hundred former students who had lost their lives in the First World War."  And that really puts into perspective the scale of that loss.

Something else on the back of this card is the fact that "The Upper School wear dress tail-coats, the Lower School Eton-Jackets.". This is still the case, but now only for chapel and formal wear, on normal days they simply wear a dark blue woollen jacket over light grey trousers, and a waistcoat, specifically coloured to denote their field of excellence or study. And boys under the height of five feet tall get away without wearing the tails, in fear that they will drag along the ground - they are allowed to just wear a truncated version called a Short Coat. 

Another Harrovian tradition is the straw hat or boater. Apparently it started out as a replacement, whilst playing cricket, for the habitual top hat, but it came to be accepted, albeit grudgingly by the older masters, as summer wear on and off the field, on weekdays and Saturdays at least. And it has been relaxed still further, so that today pretty much only the prefects or School Monitors wear top hats. 

Now this seems to be the first time that I have featured this set in any newsletter, and so it will not only duly be added to the index., but, one day, be fully described here.  

This Week`s Events and Meetings : 

Thursday the 3rd of September

  • North East  - from 6.30 p.m. at Dunston U.T.S., Wellington Road, Dunston, Gateshead, NE11 9JL

Saturday the 5th of September

  • Lincolnshire - from 10.30 a.m. at Kirton Leisure, 31a Willington Road, Kirton, Boston PE21 1EP. 

Sunday the 6th of September - two meetings

  • Cotswolds - all day fair - from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. at Uckington Village Hall, The Green, Tewkesbury Road, Uckington, Cheltenham GL51 9SR. We are regularly visited by Paul Lynch, Mike Heard and John Shaw, and there is also lots of swopping and trading between ourselves. And its free admission to all collectors

  • Winchester & Solent - from 1.00 p.m. until 4.00 p.m. at Botley Market Hall, High Street, Botley, near Southampton SO30 2EA. Lots of swapping and selling goes on here and some very unusual cards often turn up. This one is also free admission to all collectors

 

In the mean time...

I have had a really great time working through the back issues of our newsletters this week and adding fifty-six more cards to the index, and that means that this week I have completed the editions for the :

That progress was definitely aided by the fact that most of the cards were not already listed in the index, but there were a few that were, and have been substituted by the following additions : 

actually now I see them all lined up one after the other that seems quite a lot of change to me, for which I must thank all the readers who kindly provided the scans. I will say that I am not updating the text of these, that will only happen once all the cards are indexed.

As for newsletters past which were published around this week, they are as follows : 

And if you have any updates, comments, or suggestions for any of these, do please let us know, by emailing webmaster@card-world.co.uk. 

And so there we must bid farewell to another newsletter, and look forward to a weekend which has just begun. Its a Formula One weekend, the first one after the summer break, though this year has been a very odd and disruptive season - but at least will have lots to listen to and to watch, and that will distract me well from other things which are also going on. 

Thanks for tuning in, and have a great weekend, whatever you are doing..... And I`ll be back next weekend, with a bit more rambling....