4 Before the Brentwoodian The Brentwoodian began in 1892, but the first school magazine came at least 15 years earlier in 1877.We have two surviving issues of Round the Stove, named after the large iron stove in the old schoolroom we know as Old Big School. It is handwritten in a hand almost as uniform as a computer typeface, although it is from schoolboy contributors. Reading andWriting were both specifically on the school curriculum in the late 19th century as well as English composition. In their early years in school boys spent hours each week practising ‘pothooks’ – the kind of uniform loops and curves that figure in Victorian handwriting. It shows in the magazine. Round the Stove was not only beautifully written but superbly illustrated. Brentwood had a full-time drawing master, and again it shows. Our earliest surviving issue, number 5, has a full-page drawing of Midhat Pasha, a constitutional reformer in the Ottoman Empire resplendent in beard and fez, being chased out of power. There is a lot of verse in the magazine. The articles are varied. They include a tale about a boy called ‘mouldy raisin’, the story of a 20 stone woman and ‘The True Legend of Thomas a Becket’. There is a mystery story called ‘The Hole in the Desk’ featuring a school kept by a Mr and Mrs Perkins where ‘Food was plain and the Latin grammar more than usually confusing’ and where ‘Meat was served on Sundays only for health’s sake.’ (This was over 140 years before veganism became fashionable.) Headmasters seem to have run School House together with their wives as a boarding house. Mr Quennell took over as Headmaster in 1870 and married in Spring 1872. But whether the Perkins and their school had any resemblance to Brentwood we can never know. By MikeWillis
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