102-year-old silver cup back at school

A solid silver cup has been returned to Hulme Grammar School 102 years after it was last won on the athletics field.

The foot-high inscribed trophy was presented to Joel Buckley from Denshaw in 1908 when he was in his final year at the school. And Joel went on to achieve honour on the battlefield and was awarded the Military Cross during the First World War for his bravery in the trenches.

Now his daughter Betty Martindale (84) has returned the cup to the school so it can be presented every year for outstanding achievement in athletics.

Her father, the former head master at Denshaw village school, died when he was 92, and Betty says the cup was always on show. She said: “He was always very sporty, and loved cricket and football, but I am not quite sure what he won the trophy for. I have been thinking for some time that I would like to return it to school.”

Betty, who was also a pupil at Hulme from 1939 to 1947, and lives in Ripponden Road, Denshaw, presented the cup to Angus Hurst, the school’s head of boys’ PE.

He said: “It would be nice to use the trophy for the senior championship on sports day.”

The cup and its original winner have been researched by Oldham Councillor Mike Buckley, who is also a Hulme governor and school archivist.

He has the citation for Joel Buckley’s Military Cross, which described how, as a captain in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in 1918, he led his men through the trenches to a bombed-out dug out, captured a prisoner, and repulsed a counter attack on a communications trench.