I AM amazed and horrified to see that the governors of my old school, Warboys County Primary, are considering changing the school badge. My father, Horace Hyde, was the headmaster who introduced both the uniform and the badge to the school. They helped gi

I AM amazed and horrified to see that the governors of my old school, Warboys County Primary, are considering changing the school badge.

My father, Horace Hyde, was the headmaster who introduced both the uniform and the badge to the school. They helped give the students and the village a clear sense of identity. We were proud of our historical heritage and even prouder that no other school would have an identity as unusual as ours.

History cannot be rewritten, even in these days of political correctness, and the tragedies of the Samuels and Throckmortons can be seen as superstition, not evil.

For the governors of today's school to use the witch as a symbol of evil to justify their failure to attract teachers of the right calibre is a pathetic excuse. Neither can the witch be used to explain why children choose to attend other schools.

I started to attend in1950 and even then some students went to schools in Bury, St Ives and even a few to Cambridge. Parents have the right to choose.

For those who remember him, my father was a keen local historian. He did much of the early research on the Warboys Witches, but his other passion was church history. He was a good, deeply religious man, attending a place of worship all his life. He was organist at the Methodist Church in the village for years, had been choirmaster at St Mary Magdalen before the War, and was a lay-preacher in the Anglican Church.

He knew and could talk and lecture on any of the churches in Huntingdonshire and many others in the Anglia region. He would never have selected the witch for as the emblem for his school if he thought it would harm his beloved village, school or especially the students.

I sincerely hope the school governors will reconsider their decision and allow the witch to ride her broomstick on the school badges of the future.

SUSAN DAVIES

Ealing

London