The Lawrence Royal Military School SANAWAR

Welcome! . . .  If you have arrived here by referral or recommendation, you're most probably an Old Sanawarian. If so, you may find something of interest in these pages. You might perhaps come across an early image of yourself, or see a familiar face, scene or event that brings back old school memories. I used to have scores of old black and white photos and negatives from my school days. Regrettably, most of them have gone - inadvertently dumped or somehow misplaced between frequent, (and often hasty) service postings. The few I have remaining are shown here along with others begged, borrowed or "flicked" from Sanawarians  past and present.

In addition to the usual 'snapshots' of our time, I have included the work of a few 19th Century photographers, artists and illustrators - scavenged from various digital libraries, archives, journals and private collections.  In particular, you will find several of the excellent albumen prints of Samuel Bourne who worked from a studio he set up in Simla and spent much of his time photographing in our part of the Siwalik in the 1860's. His early photographs of Sanawar and the surrounding district are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in our School's great history. There are lots of pictures from recent times too. And for these, I am especially indebted to the late Dhiraj Sapru, Old Sanawarian (Himalaya '74-85) - not just for permitting me to use many of the excellent images from his flickr photo stream, but also for letting me edit them to suit the general format and presentation of these pages. Many of his photographs depict old familiar scenes that I'm sure you will immediately recognize. In fact, were it not for the traffic calming bumps, telephone wires and the occasional motor scooter to be seen on the old BD "square", we could be looking at the scenes just as they were all those many years ago.

Unless otherwise attributed, the side-notes, observations and captions you read here are entirely my own - mistakes, goofs, gaffs and all! It's a sad fact, but with the passing of time and a bellyful of "life's stern game",  memories begin to dim and fade. There are also many familiar faces in the photographs whose names I have shamefully forgotten. If you think you can correct any of my bloomers or fill in any of the gaps, please write or email me. Please also visit my Guestbook while you are here. Your comments would be most welcome.

Although these pages have been made as "mobile friendly" as possible, they are best viewed at full screen on a PC monitor or laptop, and at 1024x768 pixels or greater. Download times will depend on the speed and bandwidth of your connection. There are over 300 images in the gallery, so you may have to wait a minute or so for the album to fully load. Please be patient!  Many of the image captions contain links to descriptive side-notes and supplementary texts that appear in separate windows. So if you have not already done so, please enable your browser to accept "popups" while you are here. You will also find the texts separately listed by title and accessible from the Sitemap and Contents page. Finally, the images and data on this site are released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike licence. You are most welcome to copy or download them for your own personal or social use. The usual acknowledgements and courtesies would of course, be appreciated. Please click on the Copyright link in the navigation bar above for the full terms and conditions.

Click here  or on the school badge to view the album. There are also links in the navigation bar above.