It is a school group, of course, but the school is the now long-gone Oxenford House, in St Lawrence.
I quote from the St Lawrence Millennium Book, in which the following information is contained: ‘The most important school in St Lawrence was the one known as Oxenford House School, or in latter years as Davey’s, after the family who ran it.
‘An advertisement in the Chroniques de Jersey of 3 January 1849 described it as a “Classical, Mathematical and Commercial Boarding School”.
‘Patrick Neill had joined Hoskins by 1851, and was headmaster when it moved to a bigger site that became Oxenford House Academy in about 1859. John Edwin Peter Davey took over the thriving school before 1871, when there were 28 pupils born in places as far afield as Jamaica and Tasmania, as well as Guernsey and England.
‘Oxenford House had a high reputation locally and overseas, and many leading families of the Island sent their sons to this school. Many day pupils missed full-time education as they were kept away from school during the planting and digging seasons.
‘It provided an excellent academic grounding, and also competed on the sporting field with other schools of a similar size, including Victoria College.
‘Oxenford House was believed to have formed the first school rugby team in the Island.’
The building, I believe, is demolished and its site marked by Oxenford Close, on the west side of the main St Lawrence-St John road, south of Carrefour Selous and north of Three Oaks.
The interest from the CI Great War Study Group is the presumed date of the picture – the early 20th Century. The children could all have been of an age to fight in the First World War.
The group asks whether any reader recognises relatives pictured in the photo. They can be contacted via their interesting website: http://www.greatwarci.net.
