Army Apprentices School, Harrogate - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Army Apprentices School, Harrogate (AAS Harrogate), established in 1947, was sited either side of Penny Pot Lane, outside Harrogate using Uniacke and Hildebrande Barracks. The School was renamed the Army Apprentices College, Harrogate (AAC Harrogate) in 1966 (in line with other such establishments) and thus remained so until its eventual closure after the Final Graduation Parade on 2 August 1996 of intake 94C.

The early years

Trade Training

The trades taught at the school in the 1950s, divided into categories according to which Corps the apprentices would join on completion of their course, (each course usually lasting three years at that time) were:

- ROYAL ARMY SERVICE CORPS
  Royal Army Service Corps
  The Royal Army Service Corps was a corps of the British Army. It was responsible for land, coastal and lake transport; air despatch; supply of food, water, fuel, and general domestic stores such as clothing, furniture and stationery ; administration of...
  
  – Clerks (two year course) (Moved elsewhere in late 1955—certainly by 1970 the ROYAL ARMY ORDNANCE CORPS
  Royal Army Ordnance Corps
  The Royal Army Ordnance Corps was a corps of the British Army. It dealt only with the supply and maintenance of weaponry, munitions and other military equipment until 1965, when it took over most other supply functions, as well as the provision of staff clerks, from the Royal Army Service...
  
  were training All Arms Clerks in their Depot at Deepcut
  Deepcut
  Deepcut is a village in Surrey, situated close to Camberley. It is home to the Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut.Malacologist Major Matthew Connolly lived at the Lock House at Deepcut where he brought up his son the writer and critic Cyril Connolly....
  
  , Camberley
  Camberley
  Camberley is a town in Surrey, England, situated 31 miles southwest of central London, in the corridor between the M3 and M4 motorways. The town lies close to the borders of both Hampshire and Berkshire; the boundaries intersect on the western edge of the town where all three counties...
  
  , Surrey)
- ROYAL ARTILLERY
  Royal Artillery
  The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
  
  – Artillery
  Artillery
  Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
  
  surveyors
- ROYAL ENGINEERS
  Royal Engineers
  The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
  
  – Architectural draughtsmen - Bricklayers – Carpenters and joiners – Electricians – Land surveyors and map makers – Painters and decorators – Plumbers and pipefitters – Quantity surveying assistants
- ROYAL SIGNALS – Mechanics (Line, Radio, Telegraph) – Operators (wireless and line, Keyboard)

Redeployment

The RE Survey wing (Royal Engineers land surveyors and mapmakers) moved from AAS Harrogate to AAS Chepstow

Beachley

Beachley is a village in Gloucestershire, England, near the border with Wales. It is located on a peninsula at the junction between the Rivers Wye and Severn, where the Severn Bridge ends and the smaller secondary bridge for the River Wye begins. The tidal drop here is one of the highest in the UK...

over a period of a year between 1960 and 1961. Survey apprentices were trained there until Chepstow Army Apprentices College

Beachley

(as it had become in 1966) was finally closed in 1994.

After Harrogate
- RASC
  RASC
  RASC may be:* Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing, a specialized reconfigurable computer for high-performance computing* Research and Advocacy Standing Committee, part of the Singapore Children's Society...
  
  apprentices
- RA
  RA
  RA may refer to:- Science :* Right ascension, an astronomical term* Relation algebra, a type of mathematical structure- Medicine :* Relative analgesia machine, a type of sedative* Right atrium, one of the four chambers of the heart...
  
  apprentices
- RE
  Re
  Re, bre, moré is an interjection common to Cypriot Greek, the languages of the Balkans, Turkish, and Venetian, with its "locus... more in the Greek world than elsewhere". It is used in colloquial speech to gain someone's attention, add emphasis, insult, or express surprise or astonishment, like...
  
  all re apprentices moved to Chepstow between 1959 and 1960 except the electricians who were on a three year educational course at Leeds tech.
  - RE Survey apprentices: RE Survey has its own self-contained units within the Royal Engineers and therefore the Army-trained surveyors (including field surveyors, air surveyors, cartographic draughtsmen, printers, and Photo techs), whether they were trained at the Apprentice schools or were direct entry to the School of Military Survey at Hermitage near Newbury
    Newbury, Berkshire
    Newbury is a civil parish and the principal town in the west of the county of Berkshire in England. It is situated on the River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal, and has a town centre containing many 17th century buildings. Newbury is best known for its racecourse and the adjoining former USAF...
    
    , were usually posted to specific survey units after training. This meant that they formed a fairly close-knit community throughout their service, knowing, serving with or hearing of the other surveyors in the community. Many of them have kept in touch with each other since leaving the Army, both through personal contact and by being members of the Royal Engineers Association (REA) and in 1999 the Military Survey (Geographic) Branch of the REA was formed.

Updates
- RE
  Re
  Re, bre, moré is an interjection common to Cypriot Greek, the languages of the Balkans, Turkish, and Venetian, with its "locus... more in the Greek world than elsewhere". It is used in colloquial speech to gain someone's attention, add emphasis, insult, or express surprise or astonishment, like...
  - RE Survey apprentices: In January 2006 the Survey Branch REA website www.survey-branch-rea.co.uk was launched and already contains many articles and photographs, contributed mostly by the surveyors themselves, of the history and achievements of British Military surveying, mostly post World War II. The site covers the training units (Apprentice schools at Harrogate and Chepstow and the Royal School of Military Survey
    Royal School of Military Survey
    The Defence College of Intelligence Royal School of Military Survey is ajoint services survey training facility associated with the Corps of Royal Engineers but attached to the United Kingdom Defence Intelligence and Security Centre ....
    
    at the Hermitage
    Hermitage, Berkshire
    Hermitage is a village and civil parish, near to Newbury, in the English county of Berkshire.-Location and communications:The civil parish is made up of a number of settlements: Hermitage village, Little Hungerford and Wellhouse, in 2003 these consisted of some 1,154 people in 444 houses, although...
    
    , Newbury) as well as the production units: 14 Field Survey Squadron (Rath
    Düsseldorf-Rath
    Rath is a borough in northern Düsseldorf District 6, near the airport, with 16,975 inhabitants . It is about 5 km northeast of the city center.-History:...
    
    , Rathigen Germany, opposite the Mannesmann
    Mannesmann
    Mannesmann AG was a German corporation with headquarters in Düsseldorf. The company was founded in 1890 originally to produce seamless steel tubes. It was traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The company had 130,860 employees worldwide and revenues of €23.27 billion.Over time, Mannesmann...
    
    Röhren Gross lager), 13 Field Survey Squadron, 42 Survey Engineer Regiment (Longparish near Andover before moving to Hermitage), consisting of 19 Topographic Squadron, 84 (Field) Survey Squadron, 89 Field Survey Squadron, 1 Air Survey Liaison Section (ASLS), 6 ASLS, 1 Radar Air Survey Liaison Section, 2 Army Field Survey Depot, 47 GHQ Survey Squadron, 135 Survey Engineer Regiment (TA), JARIC
    JARIC
    JARIC - The National Imagery Exploitation Centre, part of the Intelligence Collection Group within United Kingdom Defence Intelligence, is an imagery analysis and intelligence centre based at RAF Brampton near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, and historically known as MI4, by which name it is still...
    
    . These units served in, and in many cases mapped, the following places (post WWII): U.K., Aden Protectorates (now part of Yemen), Cyprus, Egypt, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Malaya, Oman, Sabah, Sarawak, Singapore, United Arab Emirates (Trucial States), Nepal, Norway, as well as sending detachments to Christmas Island in the Pacific and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and other places throughout the world.

Sports

In 1968 under the stewardship of S/Sgt Alan Dobison the AAC Harrogate football team of Scott Sqn became the 1st AAC team to retain the Army AAC's FA Cup. In a thrilling final in 1967 they defeated Phillips Sqn of Harrogate 7 - 6 in a mud bath after being 6 - 1 down at half time. In 1968 they defeated AAC Arborfield 2 - 1 in another exciting final. A feat which was remarkable because Scott Sqn "lost" 8 members of the 1967 team who had passed out from the College.

The classification of squadrons as trade-based occurred in late 1969, before to this the trades were mixed. Prior to the split there were five squadrons; Penney, Philips, Scott, Rawson and the Recruit Squadron. After the reorganisation, Recruit Squadron was disbanded and recruits were trained in their own trade squadron. The initial formations were: Penney (Technicians), Philips (Technicians), Rawson (Tg Ops, A Ops, and Spec Ops), Scott (Tg Ops, A Ops, and Spec Ops), Bradley (B Ops). The reorganisation, together with the welcome change to the Army Catering Corps handling the cookhouse, was done under the new Commandant, Col Johnnie Clinch.

The secondary form of competition but equally as important was the 'Triangular Games', which was an athletics and indoor sports event that was hosted annually (in rotation) by the three co-existing Army Apprentices Colleges of the Royal Corps of Signals, The Royal Engineers and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, respectively.

The Champion Squadron competition was a physically punishing event. Its most feared (in case of selection) was the CBT event where a team of 6–8 squaddies had to do 1.5 miles (in full SOP) around the camp road circuit whilst carrying the equivalent in weight of an injured soldier on a stretcher. This was always measured using three full jerry-cans of water.

Integration

In September 1991, a landmark factual event for the College was that it accepted female new recruits. The Royal Corps of Signals has traditionally - since the 1980s - had a large share of female intake. Previously, all female Royal Signals recruits were put through basic training at Guildford (home of the Womans Royal Army Corps) and then, Catterick, North Yorkshire, UK - home of the Royal Signals until 1993, when it completely shifted operations to Blandford, Dorset.

External links

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The early years

Sports

Integration

See also

External links