Monday, December 31, 2007

Roedean School Shield, Keswick, Cumbria

A photograph of the Roedean School Shield at the Reception of the Keswick Country House Hotel, Keswick.
( Photograph by J. Ritson, December 2007)

This is a photograph of the Roedean School shield. It was presented to the Keswick Country House Hotel, Keswick, Cumbria in 1990 by former pupils and staff of the school during a 50th Anniversary reunion of the school's evacuation to the hotel from its usual home at Brighton, East Sussex.

Roedean, an independent boarding school for girls aged 11 - 16, was based at Keswick Hotel during the Second World War. Between 1940 and 1945 the Hotel was the main building for approximately 350 girls and the staff of Roedean School.

The motto on the shield reads 'Honneur Aulx Dignes' (Honour with dignity). The modern-day motto of the school is 'Education with imagination'.

[Thanks to the management and staff at the Keswick Country House Hotel for their assistance with information about Roedean School at Keswick during WW2].

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

May I suggest other translations for 'Honneur Au(l)x Dignes'?
In Honour of the Worthy
or: Honour the Worthy

Thursday, 03 January, 2008  
Blogger ritsonvaljos said...

I have used the translation of the motto given to me at the hotel. It is supposed to be 'Old French' I gather, hence the odd looking spelling. Words and spellings can change over time, so I have used what the member of staff at the hotel reckoned was the translation. Sometimes phrases, especially for Latin and 'Old French' can have different meanings. I had a look at the Roedean School website but there did not seem to be anything about how they would translate it. Ideally, I would have preferred to have used an official translation used by the school.

Sunday, 13 January, 2008  
Blogger Peter G said...

I would translate that as [All] honour to the worthy.

Aulx
is Old French, and is used in the sense of 'to' or 'belonging to'. It is used in that sense in the 16th century French translation of Andrea Alciato's Emblemata. E.g., here:

Les meurs du Prince obscurs de vice inique
Fors rouge, & blanc d’innocence pudicque.

Le Chameleon petit animal vivant seul-
lement de l’air, & se changeant en tou-
tes couleurs sinon rouge, & blanc: repre-
sente le flateur, qui se conforme aulx
meurs du Prince, Sinon aulx meurs d’in-
nocence, & vergoigne pudicque, vertuz
signifiées par le blanc, & le rouge.

Sunday, 30 March, 2008  

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