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

P AGE N O : 57 enough for the whole School’s heating and hot water needs would have to be under one roof behind the Isolation Hut at a cost of £2,800 (£268,800 today). This is later increased to £3,450 (£331,200 today) and agreed at the Governors’ Meeting March, 1936. Despite several planning delays and other last minute changes, including installing ‘silent electric pumps’ so as to appease the neighbours, the new Boiler House is up and working by November (Governors’ Meeting, March 1936) Corfe House, no longer required for accommodation for boys, is now re-fitted for the use of five bachelor Masters - all the work done by the School’s Estate Office staff (Governors’ Meeting March, 1937) St. Edward’s Martyrs formed amalgamating all O.S.E. sport. 1937 - Cowell’s and Segar’s move into their new premises, after the opening ceremony by the Rt. Hon Viscount Sankey, long time School Governor. Cowell’s House move from Corfe House, allowing their former abode to be converted for the accommodation of unmarried Masters (see above), in turn releasing space in both the New and Memorial Buildings. Segar’s, previously residing in two different areas, with one group of sixteen sleeping in the original Keble Dormitory, is now under one roof. Cowell’s take the northern half and Segar’s the south of the new block Corfe House, after several incarnations being called Field House (the original name), now officially designated as the house name Second annexe to the Sanatorium completed at a cost of £564 (£53,805 today). This comprises ‘hutted’ isolation wards comprising 6 bedded ward, 4 single rooms, 2 bathrooms and washrooms, 4 W.C.s, 2 kitchenettes (Jack Tate list 1955) Slip road from the New Houses Block to the Oakthorpe Road completed Electric lighting fitted to the Boathouse, also a ‘Cotswold stone wall’ constructed on the road frontage No 32 Oakthorpe Road purchased by the Chairman of Governors, who rents it back to the School at £40 per year (£3816 today) with the proceeds going to O.S.E. attending St. Edmund Hall, Oxford Walter Dingwall, Housemaster and Bursar, ‘on leaving the School’ bequeaths seats in the Memorial Chapel Within the Memorial Chapel, commemorative windows are erected in memory of Kenneth Grahame and William Weatherley, the Senior Prefect in 1926 who had died of illness in 1930 John Millington Sing, former Warden, donates a piano to Big School Work commences in the School Kitchens (which will take 18 months to complete) with £535 (£34,000) anonymously contributed by five O.S.E. and friends towards the cost, with the School Shop making up the rest The vents for the recently installed heating and hot water systems will be taken up the back of the Chapel steeple ‘and thus be very inconspicuous’ (General Purposes Meeting, February 1937) Offer made for 6 acres of current School property by Messrs. Dickens & Frewin is turned down. Likewise an offer by Morris Motors to purchase a strip of School land is also rejected (Governors’ Meeting, June 1937). The City Motors Company, with premises in the Woodstock Road close by the School, offer to purchase the two cottages in South Parade belonging to the School, an offer again rejected (General Purposes Meeting, July 1937)