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One of the county鈥檚 most historic schools lost more than two hundred old boys and masters to the Great War. Among those commemorated at the Nottingham High School are two who were awarded the Victoria Cross; the Flying Ace Albert Ball and an Army Chaplain, Theodore Bayley Hardy.

They鈥檙e not only remembered on the School War Memorial, but as two of the House names in the Junior Department.

Captain Albert Ball attended the High School for two years from 1907. He joined up at the beginning of the war and went on to become one of the most famous fighter pilots. By his death in 1917, not long before his twenty-first birthday, he had shot down more than forty enemy planes and won the Military Cross for bravery, three Distinguished Service Orders and after his death, the Victoria Cross.

The other VC winner, Theodore Bayley Hardy had been a Master at the school for sixteen years. During his time in Nottingham he was ordained a priest at Southwell Minister and served a curacy in Burton Joyce alongside his teaching job. He was fifty when the war began, but that didn't deter him from volunteering as an army chaplain. When he finally persuaded the authorities to send him to France he won the DSO, the MC and then the VC for acts of bravery as he took great risks giving comfort and support to soldiers on the frontline.

The other two Junior Houses are named after former pupils Lieutenant F Tonkin and Reginald Trease, who both served with distinction in World War One and died of their wounds.

Every year on 11 November, the whole school attends a Remembrance Day service and lays wreaths in front of the School War Memorial, which stands prominently within the grounds.

Location: Nottingham High School, Waverley Mount, Nottingham NG7 4ED
Image: The school then and now, courtesy of Nottingham High School

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