St Edward's Rhubarb - 2018

ST EDWARD’S r h u b a r b

15

Field House – a short history

transacted by the school’ by Desmond Hill in A History of St. Edward’s School. Even after adaptation and refurbishment, Apsley Paddox cost only a little over £11,000. In 1935 the sale of the frontages on the Woodstock and Banbury Roads and Squitchey Lane recouped £7,000.’ The sale of the frontages contributed a large part of the cost of the block built for Cowell’s and Segar’s in 1936. Kendall replaced the set system with the house system. Set E, named Apsley but retaining E as its house letter, moved en bloc to the Paddox with the Warden nominally in charge but Gerry Segar as its actual housemaster. Set C moved to Field House (the future K House) with J. W. Griffiths as its housemaster until 1927, when he left to be chaplain to the Bishop of Carlisle. He was succeeded by Walter Dingwall, who had become the first Bursar in 1924 as well as teaching history. In 1931 Apsley moved (with Sing’s) into what we knew as School House but had earlier been called the Main Buildings. Field House/Set C moved from what we knew as K House into Apsley Paddox which was renamed Field House and conveniently

By David Bevir (C, 1952-1957)

Based on a presentation by Dr Nicholas Doggett, the Managing Director of Asset Heritage Consulting Ltd and the two School histories, David Bevir has compiled a short note about Field House for his own benefit and that of his five contemporaries in Field House between 1952 and 1957, Malcolm Axtell, Hugh Privett and Iain Wilkinson, John Cox (who died in 2014) and Philip Darley, to mark the 60th anniversary of his leaving. In particular it has enabled him to solve the nagging query, how his father ( G T Bevir , 1922-1926) could have been in Set E and in Field House! In his covering email David wrote “The particular characteristics of Field House were an important part of my teenage years and undoubtedly contributed to the fact that my contemporaries and I have remained in touch ever since, usually meeting annually for lunch at The Trout in May”.

The description Field House can be confusing, because it was the name of K House when that property was bought by Warden Simeon before 1905. In July 1925, at his first OSE dinner, Warden Kendall announced the purchase of ‘an estate of 10 acres called Apsley Paddox, which includes a house for 50 boys and a ground for 3 football fields’. Apsley Paddox was the name of a Regency mansion and land linking the Woodstock and Banbury Roads. ‘The purchase, achieved in a period of rapid residential building in the area around and north of Summertown, was a masterstroke, a credit to the school’s estate agent, Brooks’. The amount of £9,250 was set aside towards the purchase of the property, which in the event was secured for less. The actual purchase price was £8,000, described as ‘financially, the finest piece of business ever

A R C H I V E S

The terrace and the wall separating the house from the service wing [the dayrooms!] are post-1965