The Abbotsholme Star The Abbotsholme five-pointed star


is a powerful ancient symbol which,


it was claimed, protected the bearer from harm. It is King Solomon’s star. Sir Gawain, one of the most noble of King Arthur’s


knights,wore it on his breastplate. It is a star with no beginning and no end, and it is this which gives it its strength.


When he chose it as the emblem for his school,Dr Cecil Reddie, our founding headmaster, saw it as a representation of a human being, ‘with the head aspiring to the spiritual, but rooted in earth, with one arm reaching out to things in creative action and one to fellow human beings, and with one foot in the stream of time, one in the natural world of space’.


For us today, the five points of the star point to the five qualities required of all of Abbotsholme’s pupils and members of staff. These are Honesty, Integrity,Courage, Respect and Humility, and they form the basis of our Behavioural Charter.


The words which are written between the points of the star are the school’s motto, ‘Glad Day, Love and Duty’, a motto which it can be difficult to explain.


The inspiration for these words comes from the artist, poet and visionaryWilliam Blake,whose influence pervades the school. Most significantly, our memorial in Chapel to the fallen ofWorldWar One is based closely on Blake’s ‘Glad Day.’


For Dr Reddie, it was vital that his pupils developed a sense of duty, both to their friends within the small world of Abbotsholme and to the world outside school. They would only do this, however, if they could learn to love other people. As he says in his ‘Aims of the School’, ‘When we have learned to love, we shall strive to hand on to others all we have ourselves attained. And we shall discover the greatest mystery of all, that mathematically as we give away our life, our life grows wider and more intense.’


Glad Day, Love and Duty is a motto for the heart as much as it is for the head.


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