On Saturday 13th July, the celebrations to mark Borlase School’s 400th year culminated in the “Birthday Bash”. Here’s a report from the school, with a photo gallery taken by students themselves. Many thanks to Andrew Freedman, Fergus Jenkins and Fraser Hudson for these images – the watermark on photos indicates who took what 🙂
The school was keen to include as many members of the Borlase and Marlow community in our celebrations as possible. The Borlase 400 Birthday Bash brought over 1000 visitors to the school site for a wonderful music festival and party on Colonel’s Meadow organised by Mr Miall, Mr Hartley, Mrs Chislett and the Y12 Technical Theatre students.
Overnight, the field was transformed into a festival environment, with the ‘main stage’ and the ‘encore stage’ all dressed in fairy lights and bunting, ready for the performances to take place. The Technical Theatre students worked incredibly hard to piece together elements for the day, spending any free time painting, rigging and planning their activities for all to enjoy.
Over seven hours, a large number of Borlase bands, ensembles and choirs performed brilliantly across the two stages: the musical programme kicked off with a wonderful set from the Jazz Orchestra and the night ended with a performance from Bucks Battle of the Band winners, The Fundamentals. We were also very pleased to have alumni bands ‘Blankfield’ and ‘These Certain People’ joining us.
Whilst the music entertained, the large crowd attending were also able to take part in karaoke, quizzes, face-painting, henna, penalty shoot-outs and croquet. There were bouncy castles and even a ferris wheel (a first for Colonel’s Meadow in 400 years!), and the Friends of Borlase kindly set up a bar for refreshments all day.
The community element to this event was key and, in that spirit, we were very pleased to invite JAM Theatre to undertake a performance, and a number of local vendors set up stalls. There was a car show featuring cars from members of the local community and we were thrilled that Marlow FM agreed to broadcast the whole festival live.
This was a fitting and really positive end to a summer, and academic year, full of 400 celebrations. We will continue to mark this special anniversary year through all of our normal events in the approaching Autumn Term, culminating in our traditional Family and Alumni Carol Services at All Saints’ Church in December.
