The Building of St Edward's School: A Chronology (1870 - 2020)

P AGE N O : 16 could lie full length! For the rest the furniture consisted of a table and chair, bookshelves and ‘decorations to taste’. From the lobby from which these Studies’ doors opened, the Sixth Form was entered; this was the smallest of the three divisions of the Old School Room and the best lit, with two south-facing windows and one facing east. Proceeding westwards down the main corridor, the recess and two small rooms on the left hand were the Matron’s Quarters, though the first room was later used for various purposes, at one time a private study and another a Lending Library, and also used as a Piano Practice Room. The second room was the Matron’s Sitting Room, where she kept her store of medicines and the collars and handkerchiefs of all boys in this building - these last in pigeon-holes in recesses each side of the fireplace. Beyond the Matron’s Room was the Shell Form Room with south-facing windows overlooking the Quadrangle. This had originally been designed for a Library but became the Masters’ Dining Room before it was merged into the enlarged Dining Hall. The original Dining Hall, measuring 50ft by 25ft, occupied the rest of the building as far as the Warden’s House. On the right of the main corridor, with its door opposite the Matron’s Room was a square room with basins around three sides of it which had boot lockers with hinged flaps beyond into the Boot Room. These three rooms looked into the Playground on the north side. The Second and Lower Third Rooms had fixed desks with flaps, receptacles for books and seats around three sides with a stack of lockers, with hinged fronts, on the fourth wall; the Second Form Room had in additional central table and an armchair for the Master. The Lower Third had no table as its classes were held in the Upper Third Room where also some of its older members lived and had their lockers. The Upper Third, Fourth and Shell Form Rooms had a range of desks with lockers above them against their two long walls with a fixed bench in front, tables with moveable forms down the middle and a chair at the head for the Master. Each of these rooms had a chalkboard, maps on rollers of “the World” and “Europe”. The Fourth Form possessed a framed engraving of the Duke of Wellington on horseback. The Shell had long engravings of the meeting of Wellington and Blucher (at Waterloo) and of the battle scenes of H.M.S. Victory at Trafalgar, as well as a Christmas-Number Supplement of Portia in the Merchant of Venice. Each of these three rooms had a bracket to hold Cricket or Rowing Cups and an oak board bearing the names of some successful crews in the Bumping Races. The Sixth Form aspired to more dignity and had a window with curtains. There were a few fixed lockers, moveable forms, an adjustable reading table and a chair for the Master, as well as one or two framed photographs of Greek and Roman antiquities and a bracket for athletic trophies. The Dining Hall had a dais raised by one step along the eastern end with the High Table at which the Masters sat. There were two long tables down each wall, the Prefects (ten in number) sat at a table in the middle of Hall and those Sixth Form boys who were not Prefects had a small table between the dais and the Prefects. With increasing numbers two other tables were introduced at the west end of the Hall. The boys sat in School order with (looking from the Dais) the first table being the Second Form and beyond them the Third Form. Nearest the Dais on the left was the Fifth Form and beyond this the Fourth Form. Between the Fourth and Fifth Tables was a ‘Hot-Plate’ on which the joints were carved, this was opposite the lower of two doors, and through this door across the corridor and straight into the kitchen beyond, was trundled a heavy two-tier table called ‘The Tram’ running on wheels, in grooved metal lines laid in the floor. The first and second floors of the building remained unaltered from the original with four dormitories and the passage. With rooms either side leading to the ‘Combe’ and ‘Keble’ Dormitories. The first room on the left (on each floor) was a Master’s Sitting Room with his bedroom across the passage and the adjoining Bedrooms included a spare room on the first floor and above the second floor was Matron’s Room. The space north of the Ken Dormitory on the first floor was divided up into three bathrooms with fitted baths, and two studies, one of which was occupied by the Senior Prefect. The corresponding rooms on the second floor were a locked storeroom later converted into more bathrooms. There was a W.C. on each floor near the bathrooms. In all there were four dormitories in the School House; ‘Combe’ (Junior Forms) and ‘Ken’ (Shells and Fourth Forms) on the first floor and ‘Keble’ (Junior Forms) and ‘Beauchamp’ (which served as a temporary Chapel 1873-77, then served as sleeping quarters for the Shells and Fourth Forms) on the second floor. There were two Prefects in each dormitory sleeping in corner beds and having the ‘luxury’ of a strip of carpet and a bedside chair together with a table with a table-cloth, collar-box, looking glass and a pair of candle sticks. Every boy had his trunk at the bottom of his bed, containing his suits with a rug folded on the top. Boots were