Rhubarb 2021

ST EDWARD’S

style. He understood the public schoolboy and was conservative in the value he set upon games and a competitive spirit while sensing that such schools still had much to offer the nation’s education. He sensed that there had to be a dialogue between the old values and the new emerging post-war ones. He seemed familiar with every facet of school life, knew every boy’s name and was seemingly omnipresent as well as omnipotent. Arguably he kept alive the spirit of the Kendall years while subtly harnessing the School to the post-war bandwagon.

FRANK FORMAN FISHER SEVENTH WARDEN 1954-1966

A former pupil at Repton where his father was headmaster, Fisher returned there as a housemaster after a distinguished war record and study at

FEATURE

Clare College Cambridge. His father became Archbishop of Canterbury but Frank never took holy orders and was therefore the second non-clerical Warden. If Kendall built up the School from within Fisher was, from the start, conscious of the School’s position in the wider post-war world. His reputation was established as much in the wider realms of private education as in his very considerable achievements at St Edward’s. He was a national figure. Improvements were

committed to learning, to history especially, and to literature, producing literary magazines and plays. He was probably the most intellectually active of all theWardens considered so far. Temperamentally, too, he was distinguished by an active social conscience he had acquired from his father who was a Prison Commissioner and Director of Borstals. He was potentially a great innovator. He naturally consulted his staff, a delicate skill he did not always get right. Innovation and consultation can be seen as threatening by those entrenched in their ways, including pupils. He wrote ‘I want to re-affirm that I do not believe education is a matter of clapping pious blinkers on willing horses’. He did not avoid linking his policies to his active Christianity, almost a novelty by now. Shaking up many of the teaching arrangements was due and carried through, and simultaneously he fought and won the battle to stop a spinal road being run across our fields. Student and general teenage angst was a feature of the period but amounted to little in schools but sullenness at what were seen as unnecessary restrictions. Bradley engaged with these incurring the disapproval of a few colleagues and many pupils. Sadly, his private life led first to separation and then divorce and he resigned. He went on to be a most successful headmaster at no less than two prestigious North American schools. I described him in A New History of St Edward’s School as “The Lost Leader?” I stick by the phrase and withdraw the question mark.

RICHARD ALAN BRADLEY EIGHTH WARDEN 1966-1971

Bradley stands out as embodying all the desirable interests and skills for sixties Britain. A committed sportsman (rugby,

continuous, the highlight being the sale of the old Apsley Paddox and the building of two new boarding houses (Sing’s and Field House) on the fields. He took the brave step of raising the fees from £275, still very low, to £305 and a new salary structure was introduced. Managerial changes like these were well planned and thought out. He was outstanding as a planner not least in his steady stress on improving the School’s academic achievements with the appointment of young academically committed staff. His actions were managerial and so was his

hockey and athletics) he had held a commission in the Royal Marines, enjoyed climbing mountains and, at Tonbridge, where he ran the house most in demand, he also commanded the CCF and encouraged Arduous Training. All this would suit St Edward’s. But he had other qualities. He was not just intellectually capable but deeply

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