A poem by Thomas in Lilac with the title “Here I Am With No Escape” has won for St Barnabas School Tunbridge Wells the Jeffery Hale Shield  for 2018-2019 and a £300 cheque.

Four local primary schools - Claremont, the Wells Free School, Kent College Prep and St Barnabas had responded to an invitation by the Friends of Woodbury Park Cemetery  to write poems on the theme “Rich and Poor”.  

Seventeen other poems by pupils from the four schools have also been selected to go into an anthology “Rich and Poor”  to be published by the Friends.
Commenting on the competition, Barbara Ling, one of the judges, said “It was really hard making our choices. We were very impressed by the thoughtfulness and feeling put into their poems by these children whose ages ranged from five to eleven years.  We particularly liked Thomas' poem because he captured so vividly within rhythmic form the despair felt by a child confined in the workhouse”.