St Edward's 150 Years - by Nicola Hunter

St Edward’s: 150 Years

Chapter 2 / Wardens

Below: Warden David Christie and the then ForeignSecretary,theRtHon.DouglasHurd,1995. Douglas Hurd came to the School to lecture and an article in the Independent said he gave A-Level pupils an ‘elegant history of the ebb and flow of British political ideas between the 1832 Reform Act and the 1994 Labour Conference’.

Below: Common Room, 1985. Back row (left to right): J.H.W. Quick, D.R. Walker, P.N. Coad, V. Abigail, J. Hughes, P.A. Kitovitz. Third row (left to right): H. W. Blackett, G.D. Carter, N.E. Grimshaw, M.K. Gardiner, J.A.N. Snell, R.McA. Hughes, Revd C.C.S. Neill, P.G. Cave, L.A. Lyne, R.A.L. Anderson, J.W. Gidney, P. A. Ely, M.B. Corrie, R.E. Fletcher. Second row (left to right): G.P. Wells, Revd D.S. Wippell, M.H. Payne, N.R. Quartley, P.G. Badger, I.S. Beveridge, J. Dewes, M.J. Hiner, D.M. Cundy, G.R. Rigault, R.M. Clements, J.E. Bee, A. Stone. First row (left to right): L.P. Morton, S. Taylor, M.J. Rosewell, G.E. Fuzzard, A.D. Tree, J.J. Mcpartlin, D. Drake-Brockman, E.C. Danziger, W.M. Boswell, C. Lane, E.E. Weeks, W.J.D. Sayer, K.N. Jones, N.T. Roberts. Seated (left to right): R.D. Aldred, M.S. Oxley, M.D Peregrine, J.A.S. Donald, F.H. Prichard, J.E. Armstrong, J.C. Phillips (Warden), P.R. Church, R.H.M. Arkell, P.N. Corlett, F.W.J. Pargeter, J.D.Leach, P. Mallalieu.

Above: Warden John Phillips and Pat, his wife. Right: Cooper Quad in 1988. Below: Building the Cooper Quad, 1987–8.

Sciences, and he introduced an A Level in Design. He also argued passionately for a girl Sixth Form entry to the School, and persuaded the Governors to allow it. From the start, he was thinking in terms of establishing an eighth House, though in the event this was to follow later. Top of the building priority list was a new Sports Hall, followed by a Design and Technology centre, and lastly the new House.

The Sports Hall went up behind the outdoor pool and CCF headquarters, and since it included a gymnasium and swimming pool it was decided to make its facilities available to the local community on a commercial basis. It was named the Douglas Bader Sports Centre. The Design and Technology Centre was to include the Art Department and History of Art, and was run by Patrick Morton and Nick Grimshaw. Nick Grimshaw had taken over the Art Department when Chris Ruscombe-King died. The new building had been intended to include Maths classrooms too but the planners insisted that they be separate. It was ready in May 1988. John Phillips created a new post, Director of Studies, given to a scholarly Classicist and OSE, John Leach. This appointment was important as it gave a prominence to academic work and the incumbent would be a leading member of what was initially ‘the Warden’s Committee’, and which came to be known as ‘the Senior Management Team’. In 1982 the first girl, Penelope Burke (E.1982–4), entered the School when there were 524 boys, joining Apsley as a day

pupil in the Lower Sixth. Her brother had been at the School and her mother was the Second Master’s secretary. When the first Sixth Form girls arrived the Warden’s wife, Pat, and Linda Lyne, Classics teacher and Head of Classics from 1986, were responsible for the pastoral care and accommodation of the girls. Full co-education in the School was not achieved until 1997. John Phillips very successfully oversaw the first six years of girls at St Edward’s. Before David Christie became tenth Warden he had been a successful Head of Economics at Winchester. He was a keen golfer who had been educated at Strathclyde and Glasgow Universities. Having taken on a school with pupil numbers in the mid to upper 500s he left it with more than 650. He was the first Warden to move out of the rooms on the upper floors of the Warden’s House on the Quad to 289 Woodstock Road. He first broached the idea of full co-education to his Governors in 1994 and, by 1997, it had become a reality; DAVID CHRISTIE (b.1942), WARDEN 1988–2004

JOHN CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS (1928–2013), WARDEN 1978–88

John Phillips was educated at Malvern and then Magdalen College, Oxford, after National Service. When appointed Warden he had spent the previous 26 years at Charterhouse, latterly as Housemaster of Gownboys, the largest House. His wife Pat was a Modern Linguist who came to teach at the School, and they were both great hosts. John Phillips was Warden at a time when independent boarding schools were being criticised for being too spartan compared with the comforts that teenagers enjoyed at home, and accordingly funds sometimes had to be diverted away from planned projects in favour of making the St Edward’s boarding houses more acceptable to parents. Warden Phillips wanted to promote Design and Technology, which he saw as a bridge between Arts and

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