Lift Up Your Hearts

The news this week has been full of the sorry business at S Paul's Cathedral. That our economic system brings great benefit is true, as is the fact of terrible inequalities. Yesterday evening the Bishop collated and  I inducted the new vicar of S Paul's church in north Tottenham, serving the Northumberland Park ward where youth unemployment is higher than nearly anywhere else in the country. It is less than sixteen miles from Haileybury.

Writing in 1908 Lionel Milford (L 1867; Staff 1879 - 1919) quoted a speech made by Thomas Hughes in Big School in 1880. Hughes was the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and was a friend of Dr Bradby's. Hughes sent his own sons to Haileybury. After making mention of the upheavals in Europe in 1848, Hughes went on:

England has come grandly through that shaking of the nations. But, by all the signs of the time, another great crisis is upon us in these days. How will our country come through it? For myself, I am more and more convinced that that question must be answered in these great Schools. If they are sending out a constant stream of young men, not only of high intelligence because that goes without saying but simple in habits, strong in principle, who have learned that lesson, so hard to learn in this luxurious and self-indulgent time, to say the words 'No' and 'I can't afford,' then I have little fear of our country losing her great place among the nations. If, on the other hand, they are sending out a stream of young men of many wants, hungry for enjoyment of all kinds, greedy of change, without simplicity, without true manliness, then indeed, for my part, I have little hope that the sceptre will not pass as so many say it is already passing from English hands. On which side is Haileybury going to stand ? I hope and believe it will be on that which she has held so staunchly hitherto, during her short life of eighteen years. And how is it to be done ? How is this ground, so well won in the past, to be held well in the future ? Only in one way, only by the old method.  Read your grand motto, which faces you there at the end of this room ' Sursum Corda.' Boys ! Up with your hearts ! Act up to that, be true to that. Lift up your hearts for the strength and help which never fails them who will lift them up honestly and humbly, and you will answer that question in a way which will do honour to your School, and make your country glad and grateful that it has risen up in our midst.

Cars

I still walk quickly because there were only five minutes to get from, for instance, the Art School or the Whatton Block to the Science Labs or Bradby. I have never been good in the mornings either, and the payback for maximising time in bed was the rush to get to breakfast on time from Hailey.

We have learned this week that visionaries are thinking about rocket - planes to cut the travel time from London to Sydney to two hours.

It is noticeable how many cars there are nowadays around Haileybury. There are many more day pupils than once there were, and many of those who, like my boys, board, go home most weekends. Parents come to watch games in large numbers and attend things at school much more than in the days when we were dropped off for eleven weeks of no contact except by post. Many senior pupils have cars. Car parks are springing up: on the corner of XX Acre; on the lawn outside the Batten entrance to the KBM block; by the mini range on the edge of Hailey Field, and anywhere people can park a car.

With the cars come notices and yellow lines and so on. I suppose it is inevitable, but it does seem a shame.

New Guv's Test 4

We have had a dayoff from the test. On Tuesday the question was "Where are the Penthouses at Haileybury?" The Penthouses are grander than they once were. They used to be two bits of corrugated iron forming a sort of metal ridge tent. They still serve the same purpose: to provide a dry place to put your tracksuit and other kit when you are playing sport in the rain. The answer is "On the edge of XX Acre."

I promised that the next question would have a musical flavour. I think this is one which Roger Bass, (HM Hailey 1986) added to the test as he thought that we should be able to answer the query of any bemused visitor who looked at the panel outside the music school and asked what it all meant.

"apta camenis"

The words come from a poem written by EH Bradby and carved in panels round the Bradby Hall. When the new Music School was opened in 1979 the 'Bridge of Sighs' was built to join it to the Bradby. The panel was removed to allow for the bridge.

Your question is: What does the writing on the panel mean?

Take it away Ernie!

Does anyone else remember the school museum? It was in one of the rooms now used by the music department under the Bradby. By and large it was a tedious collection of Roman Pottery, but I remember being shown what I thought then were fascinating exhibits, and now with more adult sensibilities and after thirty years of increasing political correctness, find rather horrifying: two 'shrunken heads.' They may well have been fakes - apparently many if not most are / were; but I wonder what happened to them. Maybe they are in some vault somewhere under the Quad…

There is at least a case of (more interesting than I remember) Greek and Roman artifacts outside the Classics Form Rooms. No shrunken heads though. Here's one.

The Evolution of Dormitories 2

Once the East India College became a school the old single rooms were knocked together to produce the 'long dormitories' which were to be part of Haileybury life from the 1860s to the 1990s. At first each bed was surrounded by a cubicle - 'comparts' as they were known - with high walls.  The hot water of Old Haileybury days was done away with. Dr Bradby, Master from 1868 - 1883, insisted that the wash jugs be filled in the evening to ensure the morning was was always in cold water. It was under Wynne Wilson, Master between 1905 and 1911 that the compart walls were cut down, though in his time curtains were provided around the head of each bed to allow some privacy.

The curtains went in due course, but the old hospital style beds survived until the mid 1980s when new beds were provided with drawers underneath, and the old chests of drawers were removed. In some Houses every other compart wall was removed. The new bed meant that 'lampposting' became impossible as lifting the bed up onto the headboard was now impossible. Maybe this was something only done in Hailey (and Allenby?) as we - being civilized places - had three smaller dormitories rather than one long one. It meant that inter-dormitory raids took place.