Afternoon Tea, 16th March 2022
For the first time in three years, we were excited to welcome back 110 OMTs and their guests for tours of school and a traditional Afternoon Tea in the Great Hall. Those who left school in 1977 and before, many who hadn't visited for several years, travelled from the UK and as far as Luxembourg to meet up with friends from their year groups and to see what has (and hasn't) changed in the intervening time. This event will always be our opportunity to celebrate the return of our earliest vintage OMTs, and the whole school look forward to entertaining our guests.
A small selection of photographs from the afternoon can be seen below.
Our Upper Sixth JCR car parking attendants and tour guides were Kardo Beck, Jude Collings, Shams Ghaffar, Abtin Hosein, Lawrence Farr, Khem Madra, Aaran Nathwani, Ramy Nawar, Yaash Patel, Kishan Popat, Neil Prabhakar, Raj Shah, Alexander Tillotson, Dominic Tillotson and Harry Williams. Marc Yee (Lower Sixth), Kian Conti (Upper Thirds) and Adam Valabhji (Lower Sixth) played two movements of Haydn's Divertimento in G. We're very fortunate to have such talented musicians.
The Head Master thanked all guests for visiting school on such a wet day and hoped that everyone had enjoyed their tours. He also thanked those benefactors present for the gifts they made at the time of registering for the tea. Their support will go to our bursary fund and to other projects that have an immediate benefit to the lives of the boys at Merchant Taylors'.
The school has been enjoying considerable success in the field of robotics with two teams of boys heading to Dallas later this year for the Vex Robotics World Championships. Vex Robotics is a challenge in which competitors race their own robots around a track performing tasks; it develops coding and design skills as well as team-work.
The Head Master was also pleased to announce the date for the public launch of the Indoor Cricket Centre appeal. The Julian Hill Cricket Centre will be the best of its kind in the country; a cricket centre for the school and the entire community. Players will train in a dedicated five-lane cricket facility on the most advance playing surface available. The facilities will allow every cricket enthusiast to train indoors so that everyone's potential can be realised. The cricket centre will also be available for hire outside school hours to other groups in the community: boys, girls, men and women. The building will have a covered balcony along one side, overlooking the primary hockey pitch, so will have huge benefits for the hockey community too. In addition, the lettings income from the centre will be made available for bursaries and this could provide as much as one bursary in each year of the school - a huge contribution, which makes it an ongoing philanthropic enterprise.