On Friday 24th January, Headmistress Lucy Elphinstone hosted the highly anticipated Burns Night with the support of the Senior School Parents Association.
We welcomed over 80 guests to our glamorous black tie evening to celebrate the life and work of Robert Burns and share the traditions of Scotland with our international parent body.
The evening began with champagne and canapés before Fergus Collington piped in the haggis. Rev. Jamie Haith gave a wonderfully dramatic rendition of Burns Address to the Haggis, culminating in stabbing it with a sword, before the Rev. James Paice blessed our meal with the Selkirk Grace.
The Senior Hall was superbly decorated and a huge thank you must go to Jo Hamlyn, Paolo Feller and Carla Celanzi who led the SSPA Committee and spent all afternoon creating our own Caledonian Club.
We are delighted to announce that the auction in aid of the Katherine Low Settlement was a huge success and raised a fantastic £12,000 in total after being generously match-funded by The Childhood Trust. A special thanks goes to our guest of honour, Laurence Guinness, for making this possible, as well as Aaron Barbour, CEO of KLS, who told us about the great work that they do. We are extremely grateful to all those who sponsored the auction by donating wonderful prizes and to all those who bid and won these items.
We were treated to a beautiful Scottish duet by Jo Hamlyn and Sophie Irving who performed two of Burns best known songs (John Anderson My Jo and My Love is Like a Red Rose). Having hit our fundraising target, we proceeded to the Dashing White Sergeant, Strip the Willow and the Eightsome Reel. The evening was a fantastic celebration of bonnie Scotland and we are proud of our School community who have once again shown such generosity and spirit towards the Katherine Low Settlement, a charity founded in 1924 in memory of FHS alumna, Katherine Low.
