St Edward's 150 Years - by Nicola Hunter

Chapter 3 / Houses

Below left: End of term, 1879. Left: A Common Room, 1890. Below: Aerial view of School from the east, c.1970.

Chapter 3

HOUSES

powerful prefects, there was little to differentiate the boys, other than their being attached to the Senior or Junior Schools: even the Cadet Force did not come into existence until 1909/10. As far as internal competition was concerned, in 1874 there were cricket and rugby matches between ‘the School’ and ‘the Choir’, ‘the 1st XI’ versus the ‘the 2nd XI’, ‘the 1st XI’ versus ‘the XXII’, ‘St Edward’s School’ versus ‘the Masters of the School’, ‘VI Form’ versus ‘the School’ and ‘IV Form’ versus ‘V and III Forms’. Later on there were sporting and scholastic competitions, such as ‘Upper School’ versus ‘Lower School’ and ‘Chapel West Side’ versus ‘Chapel East Side’. Dormitories and dayrooms also played each other regularly, an example being ‘Jamaica’ versus ‘Ceylon’. For the most part, however, just as in Fives or Athletics, the boys were competing for their own individual glory or success, rather than on behalf of any special team or group. These relaxed arrangements changed when Warden Hobson arrived. He waited a term before putting forward the Set Tutorial System, an idea he took from Eton College. He explained the

N early all the research for this chapter was carried out by Chris Nathan, the Archivist.The introductions to Houses by Housemistresses and Housemasters that follow were written by them exactly as they wished, and as one might expect each has a different character.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE HOUSE SYSTEM AT ST EDWARD’S

There were no named boarding houses at St Edward’s until 1925 when Warden Kendall joined the School. The organising of pupils into groups was by Form when the School was in New Inn Hall Street and the system remained in use after the School first moved to Summertown in 1873. In the earliest days the number of pupils was low and the range of ages so wide (8–18) that any more sophisticated system would have been unnecessary. However, once the move had taken place, the number of pupils increased from 80 to 120 between 1873–1900, though varying from term to term, and the need arose to place them into named teams or sets, partly to give the groups an identity and partly to encourage competition, particularly in sport. Once the School was established at its new site, the best sportsmen could be properly organised into rugby and cricket teams, and they played whoever was available, from the workmen still building the School to various teams which existed locally, and teams made up of friends of the School. Apart from sports teams, there were also choir and musical groups, as well as actors involved in the Shakespearian productions that Wilfrid Cowell put on every year. Despite all this, apart from the all-

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