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

P AGE N O : 42 The School has Apsley Paddox surveyed before purchase by Best & Son, Civil Engineers of Oxford, in June and following a detailed room by room examination the company is able to summarise as follows: - ‘We are pleased to be able to report that the buildings appear well adapted for conversion into a Boarding House in connection with a School, and that the sanitary fittings are of a good type, properly fixed and generally in very good order. The sewage drains at the house are well arranged and on the whole in good order’ (Box 303) A price of £8,000 (£658,400 today), including £5,000 (£411,500 today) on mortgage, is agreed for Apsley Paddox, and in retrospect ‘have shown this to be the finest piece of business ever transacted by the School, particularly when one considers that the road frontage alone was sold for £7,000 (£676,900 today) ten years later’ (Hill, 1963) Electric light fitted to the Main Buildings followed by the Lodge High springboard fitted over the Outdoor Pool Series of alterations to existing buildings, made necessary by the planned conversion of Tutors’ Sets into Boarding Houses - included is ‘the furnishing and adaptation of Apsley Paddox’ (October Chronicle) Reverend Algernon Simeon and his family take up residence in “Pyrton Cottage”, 30 Davenant Road, Oxford The prime need is to modernise the Tutor System, instigated in Warden Hobson’s time. With all the Sets having their members scattered throughout the School, both during the day and overnight, the priority is now felt to centralise these groups into Boarding Houses. Thus - ‘Set E is transferred en masse to the newly acquired Apsley Paddox adopting this residence’s name in the process, with the Warden as their titular Housemaster and Gerry Segar ( replacing Bruce Goldie who had recently left ) as his representative on the spot. The Reverend John W. Griffiths who already lives in Field House found room there for his Set C, adopting the name of Field House as the residence was still called then. In the Main Buildings Tilly’s (Set F) occupy the first floor dormitories, with Cowell’s (Set A) on the floor above. The Day Rooms were apportioned between them and the Sixth-Form Dayroom, at the southeast corner, is transformed for the Housemaster of Cowell’s (Freddie Yorke). The southern block (New Buildings and Memorial Buildings) caters for no less than three Boarding Houses, as a seventh community (Set G - now Menzies’) having been created that term, under the Reverend Kenneth Menzies. Sing’s House (Set B), headed by Philip Whitrow, occupy the lion’s share of the Memorial Buildings, while Macnamara’s (Set D), cared for by the Reverend Arthur Macnamara, share the New Buildings with Menzies House. Each House has a Senior and Junior Day Room with a Prefects’ Study. Now that each unit is, administratively, a separate entity, it becomes possible to appoint two or three House Prefects to each House, thereby decentralising the responsibilities laid on the School Prefects, of whom, as today, there continued to be from eight to ten’ (Hill, 1963) One of the original wooden buildings from the Great War R.A.F. Aerodrome on Port Meadow is re erected as a (now heated) Changing Room with its predecessor becoming a Day-Boys’ Room with the old Day-Boys’ Room in the new Buildings taken over as the Secretary’s office With space now at a premium, ‘Canada’ is turned into a Masters’ Dining Room in the Main Buildings, thus allowing the High-Table space to be given over for more general seating. The inhabitants of ‘Canada’ moved to the southern end of the old Changing Room Excluding the new Memorial Buildings, the costs of all the recent alterations and improvements amount to £10,000 (£823.000), with half being allocated to the new Sanatorium. ‘Such was the new prosperity of the School that all this, in addition to the £18,000 (£1,481,400 today) needed for the new block, was cleared by Christmas 1924, out of the results of the appeal and the working profit’ (Hill, 1963)