The School

Mary Hare Grammar School is - and has always been - the only grammar school for deaf people in the United Kingdom. When I was there, in the years 1969 to 1976, it consisted of a secondary school based at Arlington Manor near Newbury, Berkshire; nowadays it also caters for primary education at another site in the area, while the Arlington Manor site itself has expanded considerably. For more information, please visit the official Mary Hare website. For a brief history of the school, see Tilak Ratnanather's Mary Hare page; a more detailed retrospective can be found at Kreb's Mary Hare History site, which also hosts an excellent forum for ex-pupils and staff members.

The Weblog (this site)

Thanks to the magpie-like nature of both my parents and myself, I have in my possession a large quantity of written, photographic and other material relating to my school years. Knowing that I had such a wealth of material to draw upon, for many years I have toyed with the idea of writing a book about my time at Mary Hare. However, I have always concluded that the likely readership would be too small in number to make it worth the effort and expenditure. Books have indeed been written about the school, such as Anthony Boyce and Elaine Lavery's excellent Through Eyes Not Ears (ISBN 1-902427-20-3), but their remit is generally much broader than the mere seven-year window I am able to provide.

A few years ago, I became aware of web logs (or "blogs" as we usually refer to them); what caught my interest particularly was an attempt to publish the diaries of Samuel Pepys in blog form (see here). Not only does this contain the writings of Pepys, but it also displays background articles and contributions from readers, which serve to make the whole enterprise much richer and more informative. I was immediately taken with the idea of creating a "historical" blog based on my Mary Hare material, plus (hopefully) contributions from other people connected with the school.

Now I have finally summoned up enough motivation to do the necessary research into blogging, to buy myself a web domain (bigwool.org.uk), and to start typing. I apologize for any factual errors - not only is my memory imperfect, but you can be sure that I was just plain wrong about many things at the time I wrote those letters! I also apologize for the style of the writing. Please bear in mind that my letters at that time were the childish scribblings of a small boy (whereas my recent efforts are the childish scribblings of a middle-aged man...).

In passing, I would like to pay tribute and give thanks to my late parents and brother, whose own letters are used here to provide another perspective to this story. Reading these letters again, I feel their loss more keenly than ever.

If you haven't already done so, I recommend that you read the Frequently Asked Questions page; hopefully it will answer your own questions before you have to ask them (if not, please ).

Anyway, here it is, for better or worse: a genuine snapshot of "bottom up" history, straight from the horse's mouth. Hopefully, with comments and contributions from other people, it will become a living resource, gradually building up to a fuller picture.