In the street across the road from my third-year Christ Church room, sat a pub called The Bear. It marketed itself as Oxford’s oldest inn – as so many of the city’s hostelries do – but it is most famous for its tie collection. More than 4,500 are on display, enclosed in cases around the walls. The collection began in 1952, when the landlord offered half a pint to anyone who would let him snip off a tie end. To qualify, the ties had to indicate membership of some institution: a club, college, regiment, sports team or school. Over the decades, a cornucopia of colours, stripes and logos has been collected. Inspector Morse once enlisted the landlord’s help in identifying one.
The collection is now listed and cannot be altered or added to. I’m rather glad. Half a pint of Hophead wouldn’t have been worth ruining the only tie I could have offered: my old school one.
The school tie is a wonderful thing: a symbol of educational patriotism and of the smartness of the average British pupil compared with mufti-wearing international counterparts. From the grandest public school to the lowliest comp, ties are the essential part of any uniform.
School uniforms date back to the 16th century, when the children attending the school of Christ’s Hospital were given smart blue cloaks and yellow stockings. School ties didn’t emerge until the 1800s. Appropriately, their origins are connected to intra-Oxbridge rivalry. The I Zingari cricket club, formed by a group of Cambridge students, created the first sporting colours in 1845. Cravats – in particular in college colours – were soon adopted by rowing teams. In 1880, the rowing club of Oxford’s Exeter College invented the first sporting tie by removing the ribbon hat bands from their straw boaters and tying them around their necks.
Around the same time, regimental ties became popular, featuring different colours and widths of stripes to indicate affiliation – the martial successor to flags once hoisted on the battlefield. The twin examples spurred their adoption by schools across the land. By the 1920s, the stiff Eton collars worn by some boys in imitation of their educational superiors had been replaced by the increasingly ubiquitous ties.
Ties – and school uniforms more broadly – are enjoying something of a renaissance in Britain. A recent study suggested there had been a 40 per cent increase in the 2010s in the number of schools requiring pupils to dress more formally, defined as blazers and ties. Ties are worn at 85 per cent of academies and 20 per cent of primary schools (although, disappointingly, more than half of schools are thought to choose clip-on ones).
Of course, the enforced formality of the school tie means abusing it can double as a symbol of teenage rebellion. In programmes about modern school life, such as Waterloo Road or The Inbetweeners, the looseness of a character’s neckwear doubles as an indicator of that character’s issues with authority.
The virtue of a tie is its versatility. It can not only be a signifier of a particular institution, but also a reward within one. Ties for being in the First XI. Ties for music prizes. Ties for running History Soc. Some of these may be more glamorous than others, but in the status-orientated world of the teenager, a tie is an outward sign of personal achievement and distinction.
In my time as a pupil at Merchant Taylors’, I was proud to acquire a whole variety of ties. My hopelessness on the sports field and stage was compensated for by the neckwear prizes provided for acts of house devotion. But my favourite school tie is the one I was given upon leaving: a gorgeous gold, magenta and black number that has often adorned my neck over the years.
If the ‘old school tie’ is supposed to act as a privileged pathway to personal advancement, wearing mine has been of little help. In my time, I’ve been mistaken as a member of half a dozen different regiments or clubs, but never as an OMT. Even when I briefly returned to my alma mater to dabble in teaching, the colours elicited few quivers of recognition from the boys and a little derision from my colleagues.
Perhaps it was because wearing the tie indicated a pride I had never really had. My time as a pupil had actually been quite miserable. Parading the colours must have seemed insincere – an over-eager attempt to make amends for past agonies. But even if I hadn’t loved the school, I adored the tie. My unhappiness was a valuable sign that I’d gritted my teeth and survived my seven years.
In short, the old school tie embodies everything a school should be, from the formal pursuit of academic success to the spirited camaraderie of a cohort of pupils locked in a common endeavour.
It should be coveted, protected and displayed. But most importantly, it should be worn.
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