Aysgarth School

May I take this opportunity to welcome this year’s school leavers as our newest members of the OAA. It remains imperative to the Aysgarth community that you do keep in touch with us, and we hope that the various OAA communications and activities help you to keep the good friendships you have made at Aysgarth.

Importantly the club aims to maintain an affinity with the school and all that goes on there. Please do let us know what you are up to and continue to inform us of any change in your circumstances so we can keep in touch with you. Aysgarth School remains in good health. Excitingly the school is in the process of redeveloping its website and we hope to make the content of the OAA section much more interesting for you to read and we want to become more proactive with the use of social media. We have set up an OAA LinkedIn group page and I encourage you to sign up on to this so we can keep you up to date with news and events easily.

This year we have had various cricket matches and I am pleased to say the annual fixtures against the Old Bramcotians and the Harrow Wanderers continue. Both games provided a high standard of cricket and thank you to match managers James Bourne-Arton and Gordon MacLelland and to the school for all the hard work in providing extremely good wickets for teams to play cricket on. We are always looking for players, so please let me know if you are keen to play next summer. This year we also held a match in memory of David Milbank, where James and Nicholas Milbank’s team took on the Headmaster’s X1 led by Mark Stroyan.

In October we held an Old Aysgarthian Association lunch at Swinton Park Hotel. My thanks go out to Mark and Felicity Cunliffe-Lister and their team for putting on such an enjoyable event and allowing us to host the lunch at Swinton Park. With regards to future events we are planning a drinks party in London at the Cavalry & Guards Club on 15th May 2012. For those of you wanting to attend please do put this in your diaries and we look forward to catching up with you then. There is also an Aysgarth Foundation dinner dance being planned at Aysgarth on 30th June which will no doubt be a great attraction to those living in the North East. This is a fundraising event on behalf of the Aysgarth Foundation and will no doubt be well attended by Old Aysgarthians.

Finally, a huge thanks to Eileen Harrison-Topham who works tirelessly on behalf of the OAA. For Eileen, the OAA is a labour of love and she has been the backbone of the Association since 1985 for which we are eternally grateful. Thank you to the OAA committee for their continuing support and especially to Hugo Vaux for continuing to take on the role as Treasurer and to Philip Holt for assisting him as Honourary Auditor. Please keep in touch and we hope to see or hear from you soon.

Please contact me or Eileen on the email addresses below or alternatively send me a message through the OAA LinkedIn page.

Nicko Wilson (nicholas.wilson@brewin.co.uk) Eileen Harrison-Topham (cotescue@btinternet.com)

With very best wishes,

Nicko Wilson

2012