Today, at the invitation of the incomparable Chris Spurr of the Ulster History Circle I attended the  unveiling of a plaque to Willoughby Weaver at Rockport School. Pupils presented their School Report on the occasion for the BBC  and there were presentations by Chris, the School Principal George Vance and Fran Brearton, Professor of English at the Queen’s University of Belfast. Alan Boyd of the Ulster History Circle has written this appreciation of the poet.

Harry Willoughby Weaving was born on 8th June 1885 in Cutteslowe, a suburb of Oxford  to parents Harry Walker Weaving and Beatrice Anne Armitage. His father was a brewer and maltster by trade and became a successful businessman. Willoughby was the eldest of 7 children, five boys and two girls, and his family lived for many years at Pewet House, Wootton, near Abington.

Willoughby was educated at Abington School and went up to Pembroke College, Oxford in1905, from where  he graduated in1911, reputedly with a double first in classics  and mathematics, receiving his MA in 1912. At Oxford he was mentored by the future Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges who encouraged Weaver’s own gift for writing poetry. His first volume, of 83 poems, was published in 1913 and he went on to publish a further 10 volumes, the last in 1952. Many of these poems  reflected the natural world, but he also wrote a significant number containing his reflections and observations of the First World War. He also became a close friend of the Ulster writer, Richard Rowley, the pen-name of RV Williams.

Weaving began full-time work in his mid-twenties, due to illness, and was appointed a junior Master at Rockport in 1911. When the First World War began in 1914, Weaving applied for a commission in the Royal Irish Rifles, in which he became a Second Lieutenant for a time in 1915. However, due to heart failure, he was evacuated from Dieppe to Dover in September of that year. After a period of recuperation, his resignation on grounds of ill health was approved in November1915, and he soon returned to teach at Rockport.

By 1930, Weaving and his Rockport colleague, Hugh Eric Seth Smith, had decided to establish a preparatory school of their own and set out to locate suitable premises. In due course, after searching widely in the northern counties of Ulster, they came across a property called Elm Park, near the village of Killylea in County Armagh. The estate belonged to the Blacker-Douglas family who had placed it on the market. Seth Smith and Weaving initially arranged a ten-year lease at £350 per year, after which they had the option of purchasing it. And so Elm Park Preparatory School opened its doors in 1921, with Seth Smith (“Putty”) and Weaving(“Willow”) as its two founding Headmasters.

A verse from theRockport School Song written by Weaver in 1918 remembers those who were killed in the First World War..