SE CHRONICLE 684

ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE 70

Kenneth Grahame OSE

July saw the 90th anniversary of the death of Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows and one of St Edward’s most celebrated alumni. He was at the School from the Summer Term 1868 (aged 9) to the Winter Term 1875. He survived the School’s somewhat inhospitable original home in New Inn Hall Street (where masters occasionally had to sleep in cupboards for lack of space and there were rats everywhere) and was in the first batch of pupils who transferred to Summertown in the autumn of 1873. He was brilliant scholastically, collecting 20 prizes during his time for a whole variety of subjects, including Classics, Divinity, English and Good Conduct. He played in some of the earliest Teddies Rugby XVs in 1874 and 1875. In his last two years he was

‘Head of Hall’, one of four ‘Head Boy’ posts personally appointed by then Warden Algernon Barrington Simeon. He loved being at the School and always spoke warmly of it afterwards and left some of the best descriptions of the New Inn Hall days we have today. There was little evidence of his later brilliance at writing, though he did occasionally pen short pieces for the Chronicle , including probably his first effort in print, Rivalry , in the fifth edition.

Pictured below is the large mural in the Dining Hall inspired by The Wind in the Willows and commissioned by the School as a memorial to Kenneth Grahame. It was painted in 1997 by Tim Plant OSE (Sing’s, 1957-61) and his wife Ana Maria.