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

P AGE N O : 40 size as the Dayroom below), a 14 bed dormitory with washing and toilet facilities facing the Quadrangle and across the corridor a ‘Master’s Set’, two other rooms and a bathroom. A continual corridor would go across the top of the entrance hall connecting with the original building. Space would be made available for a ‘Wardrobe Room’ serving 70 boys, a Matron’s Storeroom and a washroom for the (original) Liddon Dormitory. On the second floor would be a 14 bed dormitory plus wash room, a ‘Master’s Set’ and a large Drawing Room; on the third and top floor facing south, a bathroom, yet another Master’s Set, a spare bedroom and a Box Room. A service lift would run up to the top floor, electric light would be provided throughout and the whole building centrally heated with a separate hot water supply to all baths and wash rooms. Within the New Buildings the original open area approached from the basement would be converted to a boiler house and fuel store, providing the heat for both new and old buildings as well as the ‘long range of Laboratories and Class Rooms’ (Rogers). The new buildings were originally due to be ready for occupation in September 1924 (a date that was never met, due mainly to a 5 week builders’ strike) and the first occupants actually only moved in during March 1925, included were a handful of Masters and a few boys who had temporarily been housed in the Armoury - much to the chagrin of their parents! (March 1925 Chronicle) Some disappointment is expressed that in digging the foundations for the Memorial Buildings, no artefacts of a historical interest are uncovered, as had been the case when the New Buildings were dug out in 1882. One reason offered is that these later foundations were not as deep as the former and the new extension had no basement. ‘None of our foundations reach the Oxford clay. That tremendous marine formation, here about 200-300 feet thick, but reaching elsewhere as much as 600 feet, lies beneath us everywhere, but covered by something like 15ft of gravels and sand. A more ideal soil for building purposes there could not be’ (December Chronicle) T.H. Kingerlee & Sons, the builders, asked to tender for the Memorial Buildings, ‘the contract for the foundations already being settled’. They submit a tender for £15,500 (£1,190,400 today). ‘H.S. Rogers charged with engaging a Clerk of Works for the Building’ (Committee Minutes, October 1926) The considerable excavation of the Memorial Buildings site means the moving of the present ‘Laboratory’ wooden huts (‘New Huts’) in a southeasterly direction where the first Segar’s House site would later be located. The move is described as ‘a costly business, as it involved all the elaborate underground arrangements of the Chemical Laboratory’ (Hill, 1963) ‘The levelling of the extension of the Cricket Field reveals bronze age pottery, worked flints, several Roman fragments, and a skull ‘old enough to be interesting’ as the Museum experts put it. Tudor pottery and quite a number of 17 th Century (Carolian) pipe bowls and stems are found, chiefly in the area behind Big School. Are these the relics of the Oxford Royalists who held “Double Ditch” as South Parade was originally named, during the Siege of Oxford 1645-6?’ (December Chronicle) ‘In 1923 accommodation is scanty for the 229 boys then at the School: generous help had been given from outside’ (April 1933 Chronicle) In a Title Deeds listing of January 1923 ‘Field House’ was held under two leases - 1 Acre with house which would expire in September 1978 at a ground rent of £13 six shillings and 8 pence (£10 17.60 today)per annum and ‘A Cottage, Motor House, Stabling etcetera, at a ground rent of £4 (£307,30 today) per annum expiring March 1993. There is power under this lease to build another house’ (Box 303). The leasehold (57 years unexpired) is bought for £2,500 (£192,000 today)(£1,500 (£115,200 today) on mortgage-repaid a year later) and the remainder lent by the War Memorial Fund Electric lighting installed in Big School, the Chapel, the Cloisters and two Class Rooms Work commences on the Sanatorium in what is part of the Chapel Garden. ‘Planned on a generous scale by Thomas Rayson together with Harold Rogers ’ (Hill, 1963). Architect asked to reduce initial estimate of £3,754 (£288,307 today) ‘without impairing the efficiency of the Building’ (Committee Meeting May, 1923)