SE CHRONICLE 684

39 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

The Warden’s House circa 1880. The rounded annexe at the base of what is now Apsley housed prefects’ study rooms and was known as ‘The Beehive’ due to its distinctive shape. The office in the same location is now James Cope’s and he has readopted the original name

little wretches were untying his bootlaces and pulling off his boots underneath! The senior master at that time was WHA Cowell, who served the School for well over 50 years. I saw much of him, for I shared the Lodge with him. His room was crowded with books, pictures, and little souvenirs of all kinds, and I never could imagine how good Mrs Johnson, who looked after us, ever got it dusted. There he delighted to entertain generations of old St Edward’s boys, and

also present ones, especially on Sundays. In the afternoons there would be a tea party of boys, and after Chapel as many OSE as could get in. The staff, too, were constantly there. At one time we had a society called the S.E.S.M.S.F.R.O.P.O.T.S. (St Edward’s School’s Masters’ Society for the Reading of Plays Other Than Shakespeare’s). We read all kinds of plays, from the lesser known ones of Browning and Tennyson, to modern ones of Pinero and Wilde.

The life of the staff at St Edward’s was very pleasant. On every whole schoolday we took turns in providing tea for the others at 4 o’clock before afternoon school. In the evening there was generally Whist going on in one of the rooms, or we met for conversation; Bridge was then a thing of the future. Now and then I remember we played Nap and Vingt-et-un. Of course there was a great deal of time spent on correcting work and preparing for the next day; but it was not, as far as I was concerned, a very hard existence. I was to be at St Edward’s under four Wardens; in fact, in a speech I made at an Old Boys’ Dinner in the term I left I said that “Four-wardened was Fore-armed” for my new post. After Simeon came TF Hobson, who later went to Rochester, and TW Hudson, who was succeeded by JM Sing. My first term I spent in a small room over that of JOH Carter, the Chaplain, whose geniality I enjoyed. He had been a Choral Demy at Magdalen and sang alto. One of his friends who used to come up from Magdalen to visit was Lascelles “The Magdalen Giant”. He was something approaching 7 feet in height, and he and Carter made a strange pair, as the latter was decidedly short and stout. The organist when I came to St Edward’s was another Carter, Reggie. Reggie had rooms underneath me in the Lodge and was

A carriage full of pupils at the end of term in the 1890s