Welcome to the Old Maidstonian website

Welcome to the website of the Old Maidstonian Society, the association of former students and staff of Maidstone Grammar School.

The Old Maidstonian Society was founded in 1884 and currently has over 1,000 members. The function of the Society is to facilitate maintaining contact between former students and staff of Maidstone Grammar School, organising reunions and functions, and to update members on news of the school. It also administers awards for past and present Maidstonians, and has an associated charitable trust.

If you are an Old Maidstonian and are not a member of the Society, then please contact oms@oldmaidstonians.org.uk by e-mail and you will receive all future copies of the Society Newsletter free of charge. There is no subscription fee to join the Society. We would appreciate it if you would please include a telephone contact number in order that we can more easily put members in contact with each other. However, your contact details will remain confidential unless you give permission for them to be released. If you wish to contact old friends then we can supply a list of names of all those who left the school in the same year.

As well as this site, there are Old Maidstonians groups on Facebook, LinkedIn and Friends Reunited which you may wish to join.

RECENT NEWS

Fund-raising event, 29 June 2013

Posted on May 12th, 2013

Fundraiser for the Old Maidstonian Society Award Scheme and Race For Life UK

Remember going to a gig at the School? The loud music, the darkened hall, the coloured lights? That sense of anticipation? The feeling that somehow this must be against School Rules?

Now’s your chance to re-live the glory days as The Muskrats, one of Maidstone Grammar School’s finest bands from the 1960s, make their triumphant return to the School.

Amazingly the band was barred from performing at the School by their then Headmaster who told them to “forget that rock ‘n’ roll nonsense”. Now, some fifty years later, the band will show people what they were missing.

Expect a night of quality rock as The Muskrats play classics including Summertime Blues, Johnny B Goode and I Fought The Law (And The Law Won), all in aid of the Old Maidstonian Society Award Scheme and Race For Life UK. And in the interests of ‘showing them how it’s done’, The Muskrats will be sharing the stage with The Antithesis, one of the current crop of talented School bands.

You can see or download the poster here if you want to display a copy:
Fundraiser poster for 29 June (PDF)

Tickets are £8 in advance (£5 current MGS students), will cost more on the door. Send cash or cheque (Maidstone Grammar School) to:
The Bursars Office
Maidstone Grammar School
Barton Road
MAIDSTONE
Kent ME15 7BT ”

RECENT OBITUARIES

Charlie Bogg – 1976?

Posted on March 8th, 2013

(First posted on previous site on 17/04/11)

The following was in the Downs Mail in March 2011:

A tribute to Charlie Bogg (53) was read out by Maidstone mayor, Eric Hotson at the full council meeting in February. He died of a heart attack the previous month. He joined the council in May 2004 and worked on the IT helpdesk, and then as information management officer in IT services where he was an influential member of the team. He went to Maidstone Grammar School before starting work as an apprentice car mechanis at Dutton Forshaw. Motorbikes were always his passion and he spent a few years in that line of work.

In 1995 he decided he wanted to get into computers though he knew nothing about them. So he read a book on databases and was taken on as a support engineer at Microsoft where he eventually became a team leader. There, he met Chris Woodward, who knows works at Maidstone Council and who later persuaded Charlie to apply for a job. A colleague said “ Charlie had an amazing capacity for learning. It was just not his ability to take in technical detail but his willingness to learn”.

In his spare time Charlie renovated boats, restored bikes, did parachute jumps and enjoyed a drink at his local, The Bell, in Bearsted. He also took part in online gaming, most recently at World of WarCraft using his online name Skitz. His colleague added “we will all remember him for his larger than life character, his capacity for friendship, but most of all his innate cheerfulness and great sense of humour”. Charlie leaves his Mum Dorothy, his grown up children Sam and Sara Jane, and his many friends.