21 Apr 2022
Written By Matthew Eastley
Grainy…..but priceless rare footage from the early 60s
Chris Rickard, who joined in 1961, on a still from some cine footage taken at St Mary’s in the early 1960s
These days, virtually everything is photographed or filmed by the ubiquitous mobile phone, a device that seemed impossible to even imagine when we were at school.
So, to the best of my knowledge, no film exists of St Mary’s. Except, that is, for a few grainy but absolutely priceless images from the early 1960s.
Mike Rickard, who started in 1955, and his younger brother Chris (1961), supplied me with a DVD copied from some old cine film taken in 1962 of a tennis tournament, a cricket match and a school fete.
Anyone recognise these St Mary’s cricketers from the early 60s?
Its sheer rarity makes it a fascinating timepiece containing as it does, flickering, fleeting images of headmaster Fr Leo McIver, his deputy Fr John McKeown, Discipline Master Fr Eric Shorttle and Terry Smith and Ron Hesketh as young men.
Future St Mary’s deputy head and St Mary and St Mary’s Joseph’s head Terry Smith shown umpiring a tennis match in 1962
Sixty years on, the silent footage has a rather ghostly quality but the images of the old school are unmistakeable. The footage was shot just before the departure of the much-admired headmaster Fr Leo McIver, who would be succeeded by Fr Charles Howarth.
The new school is in the background. On the right, it looks like Games Master Ted Robinson, padded up, ready to bat
Anyone recognise this lad?
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