A WAVE – and we’re off to France and Spain... This was the message from boys at Salesian College, the Catholic grammar school in Crescent Road, Cowley, Oxford, in 1959.

The boys, in their smart uniforms, were setting off by minibus on an educational trip to improve their French and Spanish.

They were due to sleep in other Salesian Colleges en route, with occasional nights camping.

The only other detail we know about the trip is that the party was led by the deputy headmaster, the Rev Louis O’Dea.

The first Salesian College in the UK was founded at Battersea, London, in 1895 by a religious order, the Salesians of John Bosco, an Italian priest also known as Don, who dedicated his life to improving children’s education.

His dream was to establish a Salesian presence in Britain so that he could piggyback his principles on to countries in the British Empire.

Foreign trips for pupils at the Oxford college, which opened in 1945, started much earlier than in many other schools.

In 1954, for example, boys travelled to Turin to join celebrations marking the Pope’s canonisation of Dominic Savio, a 14-year-old pupil of Bosco, who died in 1857.

The school’s annual prizegiving at the Town Hall and annual sports on the Morris Motors ground received regular coverage in the Oxford Mail and our sister paper, the Oxford Times.

Stage productions were often praised by the papers’ critics – a performance of Macbeth in 1960, for example, was described as “fast-moving and imaginative”.

In 1965, the school cricket team finished the season unbeaten, thanks to outstanding bowling by pupils Raymond Mallon, of Shrivenham, and Michael Willis, of Begbroke.

Three years later, six pupils – Tony Solomon, John Toporowski, Adam Heller, Mark Loster, Jon Anderson and Tony Cronin – claimed a world record for non-stop table tennis after clocking up 113 hours in aid of charity.

The school’s existence was shortlived. It closed in 1970 after it was found impossible to fit it into the scheme for reorganising Catholic education within the new comprehensive system.

The buildings became a target for vandals and squatters after years of delay in deciding what to do with them. Finally, in 1991, work started on turning them into flats.

Any memories of Salesian College to share with readers? Write and let me know.

Memory Lane

Oxford Mail

Osney Mead

Oxford OX2 0EJ

or email him at http://www.memory.lane @oxfordmail.co.uk