George Mould was a journalist who grew up in Manchester, the son of notable architect James Mould. His book, "Manchester Memories" contains a chapter on MGS, entitled "The Wise Old Owl". Excerpts are reproduced below:
I was growing up. This is not a signal that I am launched on an autobiography. I have started this piece of writing because I want to put on record while it is still in my memory, the portrait of a city I love.
It is very easy to love Manchester. There may be those who laugh at the idea. There are those who that that the country north of Watford is a jungle the inhabitants of which dress in woad and speak in strange tongues.
I love Manchester and I've known many people who loved it. It isn't just because I'm ignorant of other cities. I've surprised a few Londoners by showing them an off bear London they'd never heard of! I'm very fond of London and Dublin and Edinburgh.
But I love Manchester.
After my toy shop days I next met the city when it was decided to send me to Manchester Grammar School. At the ripe age of eleven I started to travel every day by train a distance of nine miles to school. I wore a little dark blue cap with light blue circumferal stripes and a silver owl badge on its front. Life became a great adventure.
The MGS cap
In those days the school had a total of boys running into four figures. The High Master was J.L. Paton. It was said that he could identify every boy in the school by name. Certainly he never failed to identify me by name.
It is thought that we who were at the School in J. L. Paton's day believe that never before or since has the school been so great. Graduates of later regimes accept this school of thought with amused tolerance. Indeed, I have heard a later High Master make witty apology to a gathering of veteran Old Boys because his name was not J .L. Paton.
However, all this may be, I think it is true that in my time at the School it was very much a part of the life of the centre of the city. It would have been strange if boys did not manage to get around in their forty five minute luncheon break.
School was a great adventure.
The building we knew as the "old building" is still there in Long Millgate.
The period of my Manchester schooling was the period of the city's greatness as capital of the cotton textile industry. It was a very cosmopolitan city. Merchants from many countries were established in the city.
It was said that an incomer from overseas could make a fortune dealing in what native Manchester threw away. There were boys of many creeds at the School and one soon learned that many of them were as handy with their fists as anyone with Lancashire roots.
The area best known to us was of course that most adjacent to the School. We were conscious of the immediate proximity of Chetham's Hospital, the blue coat school founded to educate the sons of "poor but industrious parents". We felt that Humphrey Chetham had a worthy charitable aim - oblivious of the fact that Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter had exactly the same intention when he founded the grammar school - indeed that the real grammar school boys were those holding foundation scholarships!
Being incurably inquisitive I explored Chetham's and found that I was not questioned if I climbed the the stairs to the corner where Harrison Ainsworth wrote novels and where Karl Marx sat collating his material for Das Kapital.
The discovery gave me a great idea. By having a hurried lunch I could have time to creep into Chetham's and do my homework for the afternoon classes. Needless to say there came a day when authority spotted what I was up to and I had to change my ways.
There were various places where a boy could have lunch. There was of course an official school lunch with the High Master at the top table and staff on each side of him.
The Dining Room at Long Millgate
In the basement of the school was "Lizzie's". We called her Lizzie and she was very competent in dealing with noisy, hungry boys.
Lizzie stood in the centre of a square of sweet stalls. At the hour of our lunch break there was delivered to her a large container of what was described as hot pot but which was really meat and potato hash. For twopence one could have a very large plate of this dish. I can't say that the digestion of it conduced to wakefulness in the afternoon.
But boys couldn't get too far away from the School. The afternoon session was short - we finished at 3:10pm because so many boys had train journeys home.
The Cathedral of course was our church. We had a Founders' Day service there. Can you imagine the squeaking of wooden chairs on hard stone floors with a congregation of fidgety small boys? In those days I wondered why a Bishop of Exeter should be interested in founding a school in Lancashire. But then of course he was a scion of the Oldham family whose name associates with the town of that name. Oldham was not much of a place in his days, particularly ecclesiastically. Its place of worship was a chapel of ease under the control of the Parish of Prestwich. But the badge of the Bishop and the School and the town has been the owl.
The College of Heralds love a pun, and here is one. Natives of Oldham pronounce the name Ow'dham or Owldem - and they are right! That must have been the ancient pronunciation.
If you have a chance to look at Hugh Oldham's tomb in Exeter Cathedral you will find that it has all its ancient colour and in every possible space is an owl.
The chap we recognise most readily was of course Humphrey Chetham whose effigy still sits in the Cathedral. And with his back to the Cathedral outside stood Oliver Cromwell.
There was an occasion when King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra visited Manchester. They arrived by train, at Exchange Station, and drove in an open carriage to the Town Hall. The carriage was drawn by greys.
An enormous wooden stand was erected to accommodate Grammar School boys. It was a wonderful vantage point. We were marshalled to our seats well in advance of the Royal arrival and there was not a seat vacant. It was years before I realised that buried beneath the load of boys was - Oliver Cromwell!
Manchester was noisy in the period I am writing of. Lorries were noisy, steel shod wheels on granite setts. J. L. Paton drew our attention to the fact that the empty ones made the biggest noise. The trams were noisy, horse-drawn until about 1901.
It was during these Grammar School days that I first made contact with the Free Trade Hall. I put it that way for a reason which will emerge. Once a year we went to the Free Trade Hall for Speech Day, a great occasion at which parents were present and had the opportunity of being proud of their sons if their sons had done anything to be proud of.
We had a preliminary run through which enabled us to find our places in the hall with discipline and good order. There were speeches and we sang. Once it was "Land of Hope and Glory". On other occasions we sang "Gaudeamus Igitur" and "Die Lorelei". Versatile we were.
It was after one of the rehearsals that some of us hid so that we got left behind in the hall. We wanted to explore. It was such a ponderous Victorian magnificence. It was decorated chiefly in pastel shades of blue.
At the back of the hall facing the stage was a row of boxes - like very big theatre boxes. Later in life I occupied one of them officially at a big engineering occasion. To us boys they were a temptation and an invitation. We worked out that with some careful scaling one could climb the pillars and get into one of those boxes.
Now we were alone in the hall and we were going to try it. I was nearly there, just negotiating a slight bulge in the apron of the box when a stern voice from below said "Come down". I risked a peep and there were my pals looking very pale and anxious and there was a burly chap, evidently a member of the staff of the Free Trade Hall.
I wondered what to do. Should I keep on up and risk dodging capture? The voice from below made it clear that if I got into the box I should find the door locked. No exit except by the way I had entered.
Carefully I reluctantly descended. From his Subsequent remarks I gathered that my captor was chiefly concerned about a) any damage I might do to the paintwork and b) any damage I might do to myself. I also gathered that he spoke more in sorrow than in anger and that somewhere in his career he had been a boy himself.
He let me go.
Love it!