Former pupils of the Eccles Grammar School are often confused about whether they are "Old Essians" or "Old Essayans". What's the truth ?
The Eccles Secondary School was founded in September 1911. An acronym was quickly brought into use -- ESS, to refer to the School. All who went to the School therefore could be referred to as Essians, and when they left School, as "Old Essians".
Sometime before 1939 an Association had been formed -- the Old Essians' Association. By 1939 it had over 150 members. It was a social organization, and had sub-groups for Badminton, Dramatics, Football, Ladies' Hockey, Play Reading, and Rambling. A goodly number of the School teachers and staff belonged to the Association, too, a few of them original staff members when the School had opened in 1911. A section of our website shows some surviving materials of the Association, starting with the membership booklet of 1939, and the last being a 1953 booklet.
In 1944 the School's name was officially changed to Eccles Grammar School (and, at the same time, entrance fees to attend the School were no longer required). All students who were in the School prior to the name change, and then left, could rightfully call themselves "Old Essians". But what about the students who joined the School after the name change ? (That's just about all of us former pupils who are still living, of course.) It would seem logical to call ourseves "Old EGSians", we suppose -- but perhaps it was so grammatically awkward that it never caught on. The generations who followed continued to use the term "Old Essians", and the Old Essians' Association continued well into the 1950's, after which it then seemed to go moribund.
Now how about the term "Essayan" ? It was the name given to a School magazine, which started to be published in the early 1950's. There had been an earlier journal, the "Eccles Secondary School Review", published during the years of WWI. Its cost was one penny a month ! It concentrated attention on being supportive of members of the School sent to serve in the war. The Journal proved to have a short life. Its much-later successor, the Essayan magazine, flourished in the 1950's and 1960's. Many of us glowed with pride when we sometimes saw our name in print -- for the first ever time for most of us. The magazine name was a play on words, essentially providing a forum for essays written by Essians. On the website the first edition that we have is "No. 4", from December 1953, the last is Spring 1967.
"Essayans", then, refers to copies of the School magazine, NOT former pupils of the School. So there you have it: we are all Old Essians; many of us very old Old Essians. If you discover any copies of old Essayan magazines lying around, please send them to us ! As a further clarification, old Essayans can be electronically scanned and sent on the Internet, old Old Essians would need to be scanned on some kind of X-Ray or MRI equipment; sending them electronically or in person would be greatly more difficult.