Remember remember the 5th of November...

Published by St Peter's School, York on Tuesday 26th of October 2010

Across the nation bonfires will be burning on Friday, many topped with a guy but not at St Peter's School in York.

Why? Because it does not seem fitting to be burning an Old Boy!

No-one is quite sure when this tradition was adopted but an archive photograph taken in c.1913 shows a suffragette, possibly Mrs Pankhurst, atop the school bonfire, at least keeping politics as the theme.

Guy Fawkes, born 1570, is probably the school's most well known or notorious Old Boy. He attended the school in the 1580s when Elizabeth 1 was on the throne and life was very difficult for Catholics. Although born a Protestant, after his father died, his mother married into an important extended Catholic family, many of whom at the time were 'recusants' (Catholics in secret) including the Head Master of the period John Pulleyn.

At school with Guy Fawkes were Christopher Wright and his brother John, both of whom became fellow gunpowder plotters.

After leaving school Guy Fawkes sold land (coincidentally the land the current school is built on) to go to fight for the Spanish army in the religious wars in Europe and it is there that he learnt about explosives.

As one former Head Boy put it 'While we quite like him, we don't regard him as a role model'.