A Gathering of Alumni

On Saturday, 23rd April, staff and former pupils gathered to celebrate the first ever in-person reunion of  Heritage alumni. 27 alumni from 2016 through 2021 joined together in the Senior School Hall to hear about what has been happening at the school, and to catch up with their former classmates and teachers.

Mr Fletcher opened the event with some school updates—including a look back at recent changes and a look forward to upcoming camps and trips—and Mrs Fletcher shared some encouraging reflections about the resilience built by the pandemic and the importance of gratitude. 

This was followed by a presentation by 2016 Leaver Chloe Chapman, who is currently doing a degree in Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts, and spoke about her designs of curated natural objects and art from the natural world, mentioning how she was inspired by her experiences of nature walks, nature tables and picture studies at Heritage. 

The group also watched a clip from 2016 Leaver Isabelle Taylor, describing her impressive final project of creating fashion from fish skins, as she completes a BA in Fashion and Design from the University of Edinburgh.  

After plenty of socialising, a lingering group of alumni revived the playground tradition of  Foursquare until closing time. It was a lovely time of reconnecting with our alumni, and we are looking forward to the next one already.

Year 7 Pupil Emily Commended in Book Competition

This year, the Classical Association held a nationwide Creative Writing competition for writers and classicists of all ages to celebrate the appointment of actor, broadcaster, narrator and writer Stephen Fry as their Honorary President for 2021-22. They received more than 450 entries inspired by Mr Fry’s books ‘Mythos’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Troy’.

Despite this steep competition, our own Year 7 pupil Emily was recognised with a highly commended award for her story ‘Echo Echo Echo’. 

Emily writes, ‘I’ve always loved Greek myths and I’d just finished reading ‘Mythos’ when I learnt about the competition, so I decided to enter. I chose to write a re-creation of the myth of Echo and Narcissus from the point of view of her sister. I’d only ever heard it in the third person, so I thought it would be interesting to write it in the first person but as a lesser-known character rather than as Echo’. 

Congratulations to Emily for this impressive achievement. You can read her story for yourself here.

New Books from World Book Day

Infants and Juniors raised £91 during last term’s non-uniform day to celebrate World Book Day. 

With their portion of the money raised, Infants purchased books that help reflect the broader society in which we live. They are kept on the classroom bookshelves for the children to enjoy and for teachers and children to share together.

Recent Sports Fixtures

Our pupils have been putting their best foot forward and demonstrating great team spirit in these recent fixtures with other schools. 

Year 5 and 6 Girls Netball

Last Friday the Year 5 and 6 girls were delighted to play their first netball match against St Mary’s. We piled into the minibus and headed to the fantastic St Mary’s facilities on Long Road, the girls all incredibly excited and singing some lively tunes. The Year 6 team played one full 7-a-side match while Year 5 and 6 combined to play two 5-a-side games. It was a lovely experience for all of the girls and the Year 6’s even managed to draw their second match. The highlight of the day was definitely the post-match snacks provided by our hosts.

-Mrs Eastwood

Year 7 and 8 Girls Netball

Last week, Year 7 and 8 girls played netball against St Mary’s in a mini triangular fixture. Both Heritage teams played three short matches against the three St Mary’s teams. The Year 7’s lost to the A and B teams but won their third game against the C team. Heritage Year 8’s did exceptionally well and won all three of their games against the St Mary’s teams, even after rotating players into different positions to balance the competition. I was very impressed with each team member’s hard work and the lovely team spirit demonstrated during the fixture.

Seniors Basketball

In a recent basketball fixture against The Stephen Perse Foundation, a mixed team of boys and girls in the Senior School played well, worked hard for each other and displayed great teamwork. William and Tobi, two of our Year 11 Leavers from 2021, also joined us and were outstanding in warming the team up, working out plays and generally encouraging everyone throughout the match. The two teams were close all the way through the four quarters. Heritage went up by one point with less than a minute to go. The team ran the clock down, but the SPF team managed to get the ball back, run the length of the court and score on the buzzer to win the game 27/26. Although our pupils were disappointed, they felt they put everything out on the court and really enjoyed it. We are hoping to play SPF again in the summer.

-Mr Hulett

A Literary Celebration for Seniors

In the Senior School, World Book Day started with a presentation by the Literary Society, a group of Seniors who meet weekly with Mrs Fletcher to talk about authors, books and different genres of writing. During the assembly, each of the society members gave a short presentation about what they had been discussing this term. Toni (Y9) began by summarising a presentation she had prepared about Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451—one of the Essential Read books for Seniors and so a relevant discussion for all. Betsy (Y9) gave an overview of her talk on Myths and Legends and the role they play in society and culture. Isabella (Y9) then outlined her talk on the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.

The presentations finished with a look at a recent discussion where Betsy (Y9) posed the idea that Austen, was never married but whose books are mostly about love and marriage, is often used as a counter example to the advice ‘write what you know’. Instead of writing what she knew from her own experiences (which were limited in general), she wrote about her observations of others. The conclusion of the discussion was that, rather than writing what you know, you should ‘write what you are interested in’ because you are more likely to do research in that field even if you have never experienced it. Each presenter left the listeners with suggested books to read around each genre or author.

Following the Literary Society presentations was a book quiz led by school Librarian Mrs Pilkington. There were 10 questions in each of the six rounds, which included Children’s Books (Which South American country is Paddington Bear from?), Classics (What was Phileas Fogg challenged to do?), Fantasy and Sci-Fi (Tom Marvolo Riddle is the alter-ego of which evil wizard?), and Film adaptations (John Malkovich and Gary Sinise played which famous duo in the 1992 adaptation of Of Mice and Men?). Additional tests of knowledge included a picture round and lucky dip, so there was plenty of variety to appeal to book lovers of all types, and lots of fun was had by all.