On 7th November 2024 OSH CCF was delighted and proud to officially confirm its affiliation with the Intelligence Corps by way of a formal Rebadging Parade.
During the weekend 19-20th October 2024, the OSH senior rugby team participated in the John Fisher School Invitational National State School Rugby Festival.
Today, representatives from the Old Foleyans' Association presented some important OSH rugby memorabilia to the Sports Department.
Students at Old Swinford Hospital are today celebrating a particularly good set of GCSE results, with 40% of all results at Grades 7-9. They are now looking forward to joining the Sixth Form at OSH or continuing their studies at other post-16 institutions.
Sixth Form students at Old Swinford Hospital have today received their A Level and post-sixteen results, and now embark on the next chapter of their lives.
Reflecting on a most extraordinary 2023/24 academic year.
From Paul Kilbride
Headmaster
On Tuesday 9 July the whole of Year 7 came off timetable for a fun, activity-filled, magnificent day called Shakespeare Day.
On the 4th July, OSH held its first ever Culture Day where the whole community celebrated everyone’s cultures and hobbies in a variety of ways.
In this, the 357th anniversary year of the foundation of Old Swinford Hospital, we come together to congratulate and applaud the remarkable achievements of our students for their performance throughout the year at Prizegiving.
The Technology Department hosted 3 STEM days for Year 7 this week. Students were working in teams of 4 or 5 and were challenged to design, make and test their team’s rocket powered car over a distance of 20meters.
This week we have remembered those who fought and died in the summer of 1944, both in Normandy and elsewhere.
Today, our cadets formed a guard of honour for veterans and other dignitaries who laid wreaths at the war memorial here in Stourbridge.
The ‘Great Crusade’, as General Eisenhower put it, is rightly remembered as the greatest amphibious invasion in history, characterised by ingenuity, deception, skill-at-arms, hard graft and luck. Above all else, it is characterised by bravery.
Those few veterans who remain, remind us that they were as scared as the next man or woman but very much resolved to do their bit. Many of us will have family stories to share, and remembering these becomes even more important as the years go by.
We do not believe that any OSH old boys were killed during the Normandy campaign, but they were certainly there, just as they served in the other theatres of war in the summer of 1944. William Charles Hill, of the Green Howards, was killed at Anzio just one week before D-Day. He was 22. A month after D-Day, Commando Norman Bunn was killed during a special forces raid across the Adriatic on German troops stationed in Albania. It is believed that the Albanian partisans he was supporting were compromised, and the Germans were prepared for the assault. He was also 22 years old. Gunner William Downton died in August 1944 when the US Air Force Douglas C-47 Skytrain he was on crashed after an airdrop sortie to Burma. William was 26.
This generation would fight on for another year. Walter Wilde was one of these men, who fell in October 1944. Serving with the Hampshire Regiment, he had been training in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria before crossing into Italy via Sicily. Walter, who was 27, was killed attacking a series of German defences known as the ‘Gothic Line’ as he and his comrades crossed the Rubicon.
His grave lies in the Coriano Ridge cemetary. The personal inscription on his gravestone is familiar to us all. It reads:
Ut prosim vince malum bono.
We will remember them.
Lets all cast our minds back to the night of the 18th of April 2024 where the Foleyan Hall was filled with talent and song as students of OSH took the stage to perform songs from well-known and well-loved musicals such as ‘Six the Musical’, ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘Oliver’.
