An old address. The building pictured above is at Via Salaria and in 2006  November it was the Canadian Embassy!

St. George's English School is located in Rome, Italy. According to some web sites it was established in 1958. It provides education in English and many families working at embassies in Rome have sent their children there.

I attended in September 1961 to June 1962 along with one of my younger brothers (Dave)  and two sisters (Mary and Marjorie). 

Here we are out of uniform and I am on the far left. . I am looking for a photo of us with Peter and his older sister Sue MacDonald (?) , some other Canadian children who also attended.

We wore uniforms which consisted of grey shorts (boys) or skirt (girls), red blazers with the school crest, school ties and little school caps. We practiced cricket in a special practice pitch with netting on the grounds, and took fencing lessons. 

The son of my Headmaster wrote to me: 

03 Oct 2001 08:56:10 - The art teacher was miss Nottridge. The headmaster was my dad! A most interesting web page. Julian Sunley E.Mail is junleyuk@yahoo.com 

I recall making water bombs out of folded paper and dropping them from a balcony. I SEEM to recall that someone filled one with ink (we used fountain pens in those days) and dropped it so that it landed next to the Headmaster, Mr. Sunley. 

We ate lunch in a large hall. Our  prefect sat at the head of the table. Lunch was often a SPAM type of luncheon meat which he would slice up for us. I remember hot, fresh Rosetta buns. Dome shaped, hard on the outside, and hollow. There was a soft bread on the inside of the bun. I have never been able to find these buns since then. :-(

I remember the smell of the freshly washed stone steps inside the school - not a pleasant smell with the anti-septic that the cleaners used.

I joined the British Boy Scouts there and I remember a camping trip to the area near Pisa, Italy. One of the older boys killed a small bird (with a slingshot as I recall) and the scout leader told him that if he killed it, he had to cook and eat it.

It was a good education at St. George's. It was at an accelerated pace compared to the Canadian schools as we discovered when we returned to Canada.

One friend I recall was Konstantine Theile from Chile.  He wanted to run a hotel in Chile I believe. As I recall I only had one other Canadian boy in my class (Michael?) and his birthday was the same as mine - 1951 March 08. I gave him a Hardy Boys book for his birthday - and not being a party animal, I read the whole book during the party! Another boy I recall was a Canadian, born the same day as I was in the same year as well.

The school was located in an old castle and there were catacombs underneath it. In the main hall were fragments of ancient Roman tablets with Latin inscriptions. There were stone steps leading up from the hall to upper levels. In the garden out front was a giant foot, several feet tall as I recall, from an ancient statue.

See also the page on SGES Alumni http://bcoy1cpb.pacdat.net/sges_alumni.htm  and also linked at left of this page with a button

In 2000 November, I finished reading the first four Harry Potter books and I  keep thinking back to my time in "Hogwarts" ... I mean, St. George's English School.  :-)

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