Ulula at 150: Designs over Time

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Ulula and this is the first in a running series showcasing some of the best bits of the School’s magazine across the years. The majority of the Ulula archive is available to browse here

The Ulula we know and love has changed hugely across a century and half, not least its physical appearance. The initial publication was around 21cm x 14cm in size and this did not change till the 450th anniversary year of 1965, when the size increased to 18.5cm x 25cm. The size increased again in 1983 to the standard A4 size, and remained that way until this year. The 2022 edition of Ulula is American Letter size (21.6cm by 27.9cm).

The front cover of Ulula has evolved too. The initial design persisted until 1933, and since then a dazzling array of different covers have been created. Click below to browse through a gallery of various covers of Ulula in chronological order:

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Ulula at 150 – You read them here first… #2 Alan Garner

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Ulula and this is the first in a running series showcasing some of the best bits of the School’s magazine across the years. The majority of the Ulula archive is available to browse here

From its first edition, Ulula has been a place where boys could publish essays, poetry and other pieces of creative writing. Over the years, the magazine has proved to be a starting point for a number of budding authors who later went on to greater things.

Alan Garner, photographed by OM Sefton Samuels

Alan Garner attended MGS 1946 – 1953. He had a number of pieces published in Ulula alongside regular appearances in the Theatre, Sports Day, Harriers and Athletics sections. Garner’s pieces included Beneath a Silver Birch in August (1951), The Obeslisk (Spring 1952) and Mauldeth Road Station (Summer 1952):

Rain sliding stickily down the sky. Drizzle. Train in half-an-hour perhaps. Who cares? Nobody here, staff died years ago, all dead, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, corpses scratching behind dirty windows. Drip, drip, drip. Who lights the lamps? Always lit, never out, forever and ever. Amen. Roof leaks. walk along the platform, planks rotten; worms and fungus. Mind your step. Count one, two, three, four. Every day count the planks. Five, six, seven, eight. How many nails? Seven hundred and eighty-four planks, not counting level-crossing. Always the same, year in year out. Six nails for each plank. Rust. Everything rust, everything dead. Decayed. Ten past four says the clock. Always the same time. No spring. Perfect clock. Right twice a day. Lewis Carroll. Rain, rain go to Spain. Ten minutes left? Oh, God, let me live! Look up the line. Mist. Cold, damp. Souls of the departed dwell in mist. Odysseus dug a trench in Hell. Sheep’s blood. Mist. The dead drinking. For the blood is the life. Scarlet mist! Wires quiver, the signal creaks. Life! All clear. Green eye of the little yellow god. Who said that? The train is here; black hearse. Nunc dimittis.“

Writing later, in the 1990s, Garner stated that:

“My first published piece was in “Ulula” (without my permission!). It was written cynically, to show that anybody could slew out such rubbish. We had just read “The Waste Land”, and I thought it was tripe. Then we were told to write something of our own for homework. So I wrote “Mauldeth Road Station”, to unmask T.S. Eliot. Now, although there was no English Department, there were fine teachers of English, and one of them, Hepple Mason, was a national figure. He never taught me. But soon after publication of the piece in “Ulula ” I met him in the corridor. He walked faster than a boy could run, and used patrolling prefects to pivot on in order to turn corners without skidding. We would stick our elbow out for him when we saw him coming. But this time, he held on and looked up at me.

“You Garner?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Read ‘Ulula’. Genuine Eliotean overtones.”

And away. We never spoke again. Sixteen years later, one of my books had been awarded two coveted prizes. I was in school with a friend, and we were walking along the corridor. Hepple Mason approached, swiftly as ever, and did not slow down; but, as he passed, he cried out: “What did I tell you?”

Most readers will know that Alan Garner went on to publish several acclaimed novels, short stories and other works. He has won the Carnegie Medal, and in 2022 was the oldest author to be nominated for the Booker Prize for Treacle Walker.

Ulula at 150 – The Beginning

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Ulula and this is the first in a running series showcasing some of the best bits of the School’s magazine across the years. The majority of the Ulula archive is available to browse on MGS Life

The first edition of Ulula was published in July 1873. The choice to publish just as the boys were about to break up for the summer seems odd, but the School can be forgiven for not anticipating the success of our longest running publication. Previous attempts at setting up a school magazine were limited. The “Grammar School Tracts” had been published in 1841, and combined a number of other publications that seem to have been created by various forms. As far as we know, none proved to have any longevity, and were not intended to be representative of the whole School. 

MGS was not alone in starting a magazine during this period. A number of other long-running school magazines can trace their origins to the 1870s including “The Blue” (1870, Christ’s Hospital),  “The Peterite” (St. Peter’s School, York, 1879), “The Cholmeleian” (Highgate School, 1873), “The Ousel” (Bedford School, 1876), “The Felstedians” (Felsted School, 1872) and “The Annals” (Ardingly College, 1871). Harrow School’s “Harrovian” can trace its beginning to the 1820s, with a number of other schools publishing magazines from the 1850s onwards.

Whilst we don’t know what exactly lay behind the creation of Ulula and nothing in the first edition gives us any clues, it does seem that starting a school magazine was in vogue during this decade. The order of the articles in the first edition is curious – a number of scholarly essays on esoteric subjects such as contemporary poetry, walks in Broadbottom and Mottram, glaciers and colour. These are followed by a short collection of poems, a brief section on school news, a round up of activity in the School societies and a set of anonymous correspondence requesting a school cap and more emphasis on music.

The final page gives us the view of the unidentified “Editors” who did not simply include anything that was sent their way:

We beg to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of the following contributions:— 

“An Inaugural Poem,” which we do not consider suitable for insertion. 

“Multiplication of Images,” which we should certainly have inserted but for our inability to furnish it with the woodcuts necessary to render the device intelligible. 

An exceedingly ingenious acrostic, but hardly of sufficient intrinsic merit for publication. 

“Belshazzar’s Feast,” the writer of which may do better things, and will, we hope, send us further contributions. 

We are sorry that we have no space for ” Reminiscences” this month. 

We have lying before us for review ” Jebb’s Translations,” “Symonds’s Studies on Greek Poets,” and ” M. Barbier’s Elementary French Course,” but are unable to notice them this month. 

Our next number will appear on October 1st. We shall be glad to receive contributions of articles, reviews, &c. from past and present members of the School, and letters on matters of school interest from any of our readers. Communications intended to appear in our next number must be sent to “The Editors, Grammar School, Manchester,” by the 15th of September. 

We shall be glad to receive, as soon as possible, the names of those who wish to have the magazine regularly supplied to them. 

Therefore, it was a fairly low-key start to what would become a familiar publication for the whole MGS community.