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

P AGE N O : 45 School Boathouse officially opens in November, handed over to Warden Henry Kendall by Henry Brooke Johnson (O.S.E.), President Elect of the S.E.S. Society. Building costs by T.H. Kingerlee & Sons amount to £242 and 10 Shillings (£20, 055 today). Kingerlee now become the main School builders for a considerable period with seven members of this family attending the School as pupils between 1936-2003 (Box 303) The School Shop ( Harold Rogers design ) and new Armoury completed and in use. The new Armoury releases the old Gymnasium for much needed changing room space and the Carpenters’ Shop returns to its original position from across South Parade Valuation of the School Buildings stand at £107,300 (£8.873,710 today), a sum which encourages Warden Kendall to sever the School’s tie with the Woodard Society (Oxley, 2015) With pupil numbers ‘are soaring to 326’ and nearly 90 sleeping away from the Quad while ‘feeding arrangements verging on the chaotic’. The Dining Hall had been built for 120 souls but by 1925 this rises to over 200. By 1927 there were four separate dining rooms - 90 boys in ‘Canada’, 48 at Apsley Paddox, 43 in the old Box Room and the remainder in the Dining Hall in Main Buildings. This is a manageable but expensive and rather confusing situation’ Showers installed between the Indoor Bath and the Changing Rooms and a Drying-Room above the Engine-House Ground to the south of the Pavilion levelled and sown - allowing nine pitches to be in use by October Seven Masters now sleep in the Southern Block (War Memorial Buildings), two in the Lodge, two in the ‘Hollies’, two at Apsley Paddox while Jack McMichael with his twelve Field House boys remain in Osberton House. This property is owned by Mr. McMichael who is paid £4 per boy housed by the School (Committee Meeting, May 1927) Review of School accommodation as at the end of 1927 states that with a limit of 340 boys now agreed for St. Edward’s, changes need to be made. Originally the School had built enough space for 110 boys. In the New Buildings (Macnamara’s House) the accommodation was planned for a married Master and some 30 boys. The War Memorial Buildings were intended for 32 boys, 4 class rooms (one an Art Room and the other a second library). Apsley Paddox was purchased and now held 48 boys. Corfe House and Osberton House held 40 boys jointly. Thus a total of 260 boys. The overspill of numbers are accommodated by the use of Class Rooms for House purposes as dormitories or Day Rooms. The Class Rooms are augmented by seven wooden huts, two of which are Laboratories. At the time of the Governors’ Meeting of November 1927, there were 4 Class Rooms in the Memorial Buildings (one of which was in the attic and another originally built for a second library), 7 in wooden huts, 4 in Big School (one of which is the Library) and 1 in the Lodge which can only hold 12 boys. This makes a total of 16 class rooms - but in reality only 13 with the other 3 being totally unsuitable for their intended purpose. The express need for more building is not only caused by the ever increasing numbers of pupils but ‘because we are aiming at a higher standard of comfort and efficiency for the boys’ (Warden Kendall at the Governors’ Meeting, November, 1927)) To resolve some of the acute accommodation/teaching/dining problems, decisions are taken to restrict the Memorial Buildings into class rooms only, ten in all and another four in the projected Laboratory Block. Thus would satisfy demand for the present. However, a new Boarding House would have to be built for the 50 boys displaced from the Memorial Buildings. The Dining Room would need to be enlarged by the inclusion of a Masters’ Common Room at the east end and extending bays southwards into the Quad. The Masters would then be housed in Tilly’s Dining Room and the Cowell’s Senior Day Room. The office would move from the Memorial Buildings to the Lodge, freeing up two Day-Rooms for Macnamara’s and Menzies’ respectively. However, the Architect involved, Harold Rogers, in a ‘fit of