World Wars

MGS’s volunteer archivist Jeremy Ward, who taught at MGS from 1974 to 1997 and who has been volunteering with our Archives Team ever since, has published his first ever book. A two-year labour of lov…

The following article was written by OM Jeremy Ward, who is also a member of the MGS Archives team:  In the pantheon of famous Old Mancunians an unscientific survey suggested the present day generati…

Charles Walter Merryweather and Charles Edward Fry both taught at Manchester Grammar School under High Master Paton in the early decades of the twentieth century. What is remarkable about these two m…

The evacuation to Blackpool was a short-lived, if vivid interlude in MGS history. However, at the time, boys did not know that they would only be away for just over a month. Frank Thewlis attended M…

MGS pupils had the privilege of hearing from a survivor of the Nazi death camps who went on to rescue 600 Jewish orphans and captured Nazi war criminals, including the so-called ‘Butcher of Plaszów’ …

The war affected various aspects of school life, including the way that many boys spent their holidays. Norman Davies (OM 1940 – 42) remembers the School encouraging boys to do their bit for the war…

It was always a risk to bring the School back from Blackpool onto a site on the edge of a densely populated area of an industrial city. The School did not escape unscathed. Autumn and Winter 1940 saw…

On this day 80 years ago, MGS boys and staff returned to Manchester after five weeks of evacuation in Manchester. Their return was on condition that the School buildings were furnished with air raid …

This month marks eighty years since the School evacuated to Blackpool, the day before the United Kingdom entered the Second World War. The School had been aware of the possibility of evacuation since…

The MGS Archives are housed at the heart of the School, near main reception in a room that used to be the Junior Library and before that the “cages” of coat pegs. There is plenty of wall space for di…

This September is the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II, and in MGS history, 80 years since the School evacuated to Blackpool. Working with MGS archive material relating to the Great War …

As part of a series of events to mark the centenary of the ending of the Great War, (including an exhibition ) the School unveiled a memorial plaque at St. George’s Church in Ypres this past weekend.…