A treasure trove of QVS history
collated by OV Gordon Slater
This Archive is almost complete. With your help, we aim to fill in the remaining gaps. If you have access to any missing editions, please get in touch so we can arrange to obtain a copy. Some of the older issues show signs of damage or missing pages, if you have a more complete copy, we would love to hear from you to.
Creation of the Digital Archive of The Victorian – Gordon Slater – 15 June 2026
The Victorian – Digital Archive A treasure trove of history compiled by Old Victorians with the help of the school. This digital archive of The Victorian magazine is almost complete, rounding off a sixty-year journey.
In 1962-64, the then headmaster, Lt Col Clarke, made an appeal to Old Victorians for past copies of The Victorian. His aim was to produce a duplicate set of bound volumes for the school’s library, to supplement the single archive copy. A couple of duplicate bound volumes were produced (see photo) but they were rapidly worn by regular use and access to them is now very limited.
Digital technology now enables past editions of The Victorian to be made accessible to a much wider audience. During COVID lockdown, Gordon Slater scanned The Victorian editions from his time at QVS (1960-68) and distributed these to his year’s WhatsApp group. These were gratefully received and so the more ambitious idea of creating a complete digital archive of the magazine was born. Unknown to Gordon, the Cunningham House Matron, Caitlin Pitman had a similar idea and was busily scanning copies of the magazine from the school archives.
Meanwhile, another Old Victorian, Jonny Sutherland, had gathered a large collection of paper copies of the magazine, which he has now scanned. Finally, to help launch the current activity, Duncan McDonald scanned his copies of The Victorian and uploaded them to the Old Victorians Facebook Group. The combined efforts of these four enabled Gordon to put together the current digital set of 115 of the first 137 editions. To complete the set, Jonny Sutherland will scan the outstanding 22 editions from the school archive copies, sometime after Grand Day 2026.
Once complete, the digital archive will cover 100 years of The Victorian, from the first edition in 1923. Some of the older issues show signs of damage or missing pages; if you have a better copy we would love to hear from you.