Lift Up Your Hearts

The four roundels or tondi in the pendentives of the chapel dome represent Government, Industry, Learning and the Fine Arts. They are by Sir Charles Wheeler who worked with Sir Herbert Baker on other projects, including the Bank of England and South Africa House.

Government

This Sunday's lectionary readings give as the Gospel Matthew 22, the trap set by the Pharisees and Herodians: is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? It is the great dilemma of all those who would live according to God's Law, or any other set of principles for that matter. Does one follow the Herodians, those who supported the Roman puppet ruler Herod Antipas, and accommodate to the world, follow the dictates of realpolitik and sacrifice one's principles in detail in order to follow them in general? Or is the answer to be scrupulous like the Pharisee: refuse to do anything which compromises the Truth as we understand it, but at the cost of real engagement with the world and the separation into a sect? 

It is a constant struggle to get this right, and the church is guided by her Lord to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." That is, neither to retreat to the false certainties of pure sectarianism, nor to cease to care about the means in the cause of the ends. 

Industry

Haileyburians are influential in Government, Industry, Learning and the Arts. Where they engage in the struggle to balance the demands of Caesar and God they do well; to stand on either extreme of the dilemma posed by the opponents of Christ is to risk ruin: not perhaps material ruin, but spiritual ruin. 

A lovely email from John Homan (ISC E 1941 & K) and Past President (1995 - 1996) who has found the blog. John writes:

I was particularly surprised and pleased when you posted so much about the Imperial Service College. It was well timed to put this on record while still a few of us OISCs are about and able to get nostalgic about 'The Coll'.

    I was at Windsor for just two terms before the two schools amalgamated at Haileybury, so I have little that I can add to your Blog accounts. I will try shortly to put together and post a few personal recollections but for the moment I just want to write that I found the description of the demolition of the school buildings and re-development of the site very sad but enlightening. [That of course is not my work, but from a Windsor Historical Society website -  L] Almost total obliteration, just one building remaining, Camperdown House, and that of no architectural distinction! Visiting the site about ten years ago after a long gap I found it quite unrecognisable and could not even work out where the old buildings had stood. Was it not a shame that, presumably to balance the books in 1942, the whole site had to be sold at its wartime value. That was a small fraction of what could have been achieved if delay had been possible. The sale of the much smaller Clewer Manor site when the Junior School moved to join up with Lambrook showed this and, I believe produced a more substantial, if belated, dowry for the 1942 amalgamation.

   

Indeed the 'dowry' from the amalgamation helped to pay for the building of the new Houses required when the school went co-educational. Lawrence, which recievd the boys from the ISC House of the same name, and Kipling, John's Haileybury House, once Le Bas, but renamed for Rudyard Kipling (USC 1878) remained in their original Haileybury buildings. Melvill and Edmonstone moved to new sites.

Former members of Kipling may like to visit the House Website here. I pinched from it the 1942 - 2011 house photo montage at the top of this post.

Comfy!

You are supposed to call it 'The Health Centre,' but as we all know it is the San. The modern San is pretty much unchanged from when I was at school - even the fading school photos in the waiting area are the same. I rather like that! Of course we all know that Albans was originally the San, and that is a much nicer building (if you happen to like Victorian red brick, which I do) than the low flat roofed modern San built onto the side of Highfield.

That building is still there, but it has now been improved by being obscured. For ages it has been clear that the Lower School girls' boarding facilities were not up to it, and an extension has been built onto the side of Highfield to provide dormitories, a common room and a Tutor's flat. The new building wraps round the San and hides it from view.

The result is a first for Haileybury: a House with accommodation - suitably segregated - for boys and girls. I gather that when the school went fully coeducational it was decided that separate Houses would be necessary. That has always seemed to me a shame. Maybe the new Highfield points the way to a more thorough integration of boys and girls in one school.

Just enough to annoy

On my travels around the archdeaconry there are sometimes links with Haileybury.

I have noted before the (pre amalgamation) Haileybury arms in one of the stained glass windows of S James's church Muswell Hill.

Goodenough College is a hall of residence for graduates in the University of London on my patch. The building is by Sir Herbert Baker who was the designer of the Hall at Haileybury. The tables and benches in the dining hall at Goodenough are by Robert Thompson, signed with the carved mouse, just as at school. It is a strange experience to be in a place which is so similar, but so different.

Baker also worked at Downing College Cambridge where he completed the North Range of the college buildings, which were by William Wilkins, who was responsible for the Quad and Terrace at Haileybury. I know Wikipedia is a dangerous thing, but the article there on Baker reports the unattributed remark that Baker's work at Downing 'changed the original design just enough to annoy.'

All this allows me to quote from what remains my favourite book about Haileybury, Wilfred Blunt's Haileybury Buildings. Blunt tells us that Baker's first plan for the Memorial Dining Hall was for

"a Hall at right angles to the Terrace block at the corner opposite Bradby Hall. His design, although it continued in the Portland stone ionic character of the facade, and performed a useful function by obscuring the Bradby [which Blunt hated], proclaimed its superiority to Wilkins too loudly, and it was wisely decided to use the site behind Clock House."