Figure 1.--T
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Figure 1.--T |
Ulster being ‘very British’ and a fairly conservative place it has preserved until recently many of the uniform styles that were more common in England a couple of generations ago. Here is a description of the uniform we had when I went to a boy’s grammar school in Dungannon during the 1970s.
I went to a primary school in a rural area. There was no uniform at the school.
Having passed the 11+ exam in 1970 (which I believe Northern Ireland still uses) I was able to go to my local grammar school – the Royal School.
the Royal School (RSD), in Dungannon (in County Tyrone, N. Ireland) was a boys-only direct-grant grammar school which had been established in 1614 (the school website claims ‘oldest school in Ireland’ status) by James I as part of a string of ‘Royal’ schools for educating the sons of settler families from England and Scotland.
My primary school had not had a uniform, so the first thing that struck me was the new uniform which was compulsory for all boys going to RSD and the strictness with which it was enforced. The school colours were ‘chocolate and magenta’ (I don’t know why – brown
may have been the ‘colour’ of the O’Neills who as ‘Kings of Ulster’ had had their capital in Dungannon, before the English colonisation in the reign of Elizabeth I, and magenta / purple for being a ‘royal’ school). This combination sounds awful but actually looked quite smart, especially with a white shirt (only worn on ‘special days’ and for photographs), and very distinctive. Being from a farming community, neither I nor my peers at primary school had
worn short trousers, so it seemed strange to be going ‘up’ to the secondary school, but having to wear ‘small boy’ short trousers. These were all ‘charcoal grey’ but varied considerably in length and width – boys from ‘trendy’ families had very short and tight shorts, almost no leg at all it seemed, while some others, from very conservative families, had baggy knee-length shorts. We wore them all year round in 1st and 2nd forms, but they started to become rarer in our third form. Only some boarders and those from the more conservative families wore them in 4th form, as I
recall. The other thing that was strange for us was having to wear a school cap, something I had never done before. And it was compulsory right up to 4th form. Our cap was brown with the school badge on the front. It made a great weapon for fights on the school bus – as long as there wasn’t a prefect watching. You could get a whacking both for fighting and for not wearing your cap! We were all in the same boat and quickly found out what happened if you didn’t wear them, so just got on with it. In any case, N. Ireland, although very wet, doesn’t get particularly cold. So the short trousers weren’t a big problem and the peak on the cap was useful for keeping the rain off your glasses! The rest of the uniform was fairly standard stuff for a ‘very British’ school of the time: chocolate brown blazer with magenta piping on the pockets and cuffs (on the lapels was termed as having ‘colours’, for distinguished sporting achievement in the 6th form); chocolate and magenta striped tie; plain grey pullover (no piping) in the winter (I wore a magenta one once but was told by the headmaster that I should wear it under my shirt if I wanted to wear it at all!); knee-length plain grey socks (again no matching piping around the turnover, which I now know some English schools had); black or brown shoes (highly polished, of course!).
None of the other schools in the town required boys to wear these items.
A school photograph of 1975 shows most of the first form sitting cross-legged in short trousers, but by the time I left in 1977, shorts were only compulsory for those in the school’s preparatory department and the school cap was only required for the first three forms. The school has now amalgamated with the next-door girl’s High School and I don’t think either caps or shorts are required for the boys now, but the rest remains very similar I believe.
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