King’s rediscover George H Longrigg OKS

Local resident Margaret Jones has recently donated several delightful books to the School written by George Longrigg OKS with the task of rescuing the writer from oblivion!

Longrigg was born in 1861, attended King’s in the 1870s and died in 1930.

Mrs Jones received the books from a friend, Manxman, Maurice Faragher who found the tomes in the attic of a property situated in Laxey, a village on the east coast of the Isle of Man. The property was previously owned by two ‘maiden’ sisters, the Laxey sisters, who were believed to be relatives of one of Longrigg’s four siblings, Florence C A Longrigg.

Three Longrigg books have been added to our archive collection:

1. Legends of the Dee
2. The Tongue of the Bells. Published 1894.
3. Scholia or Marginal notes on the school-days of some old King’s Schoolboys. Published 1911. Signed by the author.

Legends of the Dee is made up of extracts from another Longrigg work, Sermons in Timber and Stone. The book contains several pen and pencil corrections possibly by Longrigg himself which makes this a particularly special edition to our archives.

Longrigg’s reminiscences of his ‘Victorian’ education at King’s are a fascinating and engaging read. Mrs Jones has noted that the author must have had a “wonderful memory or fanciful imagination” to write in such detail about his boyhood given that by the time of writing his memoirs in 1911, Longrigg would have been 50.

King’s is proud of its history, and the part played by each and every young person and adult through the years in the life of our school. It’s our hope that a pupil or Old King Scholar will seize upon the opportunity to delve into Longrigg’s life and share what they discover with us all.