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."

Going Back in Time?

Number one son now has a study overlooking Quad. It has been carved out of the old Lawrence dormitory. Of course, as a Hailey boy I had little to do with the Quad Houses, but I did once or twice go into the long dorms, and those with sharp eyes can see in the new arrangements the columns which still support the roof. Originally Wilkins' East India Company College provided university style rooms. I guess one can get an impression of what they were like from Downing College Cambridge, also by Wilkins in the Grecian style, where the students live in almost square high ceilinged rooms with large windows.

That's pretty much what the Lawrence study is like - though it is shared for two. The more senior boys have smaller rooms; but at least some modern Haileyburians live in spaces like those of the Guv'nors of old.

Hair Cut!

It was off to school again today for the young. The last thing to do before setting off was get a hair cut. There were some protests (though not from the young man in the picture who went resignedly to his fate)!

I once went into Hertford to get a 'trim' and was greeted by the barber with the words, "College boy? I know what you will need." He took a razor to my head, and in those days of 80s 'big hair' I was shorn.

LS Milford states that from the foundation of the College to the time of his writing (37 years) Mr Dickins the hairdresser came twice a week. I think there was someone who came in my days in the 80s, but I seem to think that was only for those whose hair had grown beyond the limits tolerated by the rules. I wonder what your recollections are?

The rules now are for boys that your hair must be off the collar and the ears. Girls in the Vths and below must wear their hair tied back. Boys must be clean shaven. That may seem obvious, but the local secondary schools here in London seem to allow their young men to be barbarous if they so choose, as did, of course, the East India College.

Calix Sanguinis Christi

Maundy Thursday is the day on which the church commemorates the Last Supper. It was with great pleasure that I saw the school newsletter Hearts and Wings today, and a piece in it announcing formally that the East India Communion Silver has been returned to the school.

Picture from Hearts and Wings
Archivist Toby Parker and Chaplain Rev Chris Briggs

The set was made by Rundell and Bridge in London in 1815, William Pitts being the craftsman who did the work. After the closure of the Esat India College the plate was passed to Coopers Hill Engineering College.

In his history of Haileybury up to 1909, Haileybury College Past and Present LS Milford tells the story of the set coming to the school.

On February 9, 1907, Mr. Croslegh (a great-grandson of Dr. Batten), whose father was formerly Chaplain at Cooper's Hill, came up to see the Master and suggested to him that he should put in a claim for the Communion Plate which had formerly belonged to the H.E.I.C. at Haileybury, and had been removed to the India Office on the closing of Cooper's Hill. The Master accordingly wrote direct to Mr. John Morley, who most kindly, without any delay, acknowledged the justice of the claim, and sent down the plate. An admirable photograph of it was published in the Haileyburian. Sir John Ottley records on the box that the plate was " made in 1816." 

The vessels were carried in and used for the first time at the Choral Celebration on Easter Day. 

Good News

"You must see this!" The first thing a friend who I have not seen for some time said to me when I saw him at my installtion. With that he thrust a piece of paper into my hand. It was from a catalogue for an auction of silver.

Insurance picture of the EIC Communion Plate

Years ago at dinner I had told him - he is very knowledgable about silver and such things - about the loss of the East India Company Communion Plate which was stolen from the Chapel after a service in the summer of 1996.

Now here was the sale catalogue from an auction house in Sailsbury: and there was a set of East India Company Communion Plate!

"You have GOT to show the authorities at Haileybury," enthused my friend. "They're mainly here!" I replied and forthwith introduced him to the Master and the Chaplain.

It looked promising. But we thought, maybe there was more than one set of EIC silver. Would there have been a set for the military training college at Addiscombe? Maybe they had a set for use in a London church or in India? Were we to be disappointed? My friend Michael to the rescue again. He knows Wynyard Wilkinson, the leading expert on the silver of the British Empire. EIC silver is exceedingly rare. If this is not the Haileybury Silver then it is some unknown set.

The picture from the sale catalogue

Well, now the police are involved. There is no allegation that the auction house has done anything wrong. I for one am not interested in who stole it all. It would just be wonderful to have it back and in use in the Chapel where it belongs. We await news. I had hoped to be able to report that it is on its way back, but not yet. The General Committee last week were delighted and the school were told from the pulpit of chapel on Friday. The chaplain has not stopped grinning, so my spies among the pupils tell me.

Pursuit of Knowledge

This medal was awarded as the Sanskrit prize at Old Haileybury. The inscription reads, in Sanskrit, "The pursuit of knowledge is better than the pursuit of gold."

You need gold to win the medal today though. The opening bid for it is at least US$5,700. You can bid for it here.

The description says:

East India College Haileybury, England. Gold Sanskrit Prize Medal. Unsigned by Conrad Heinrich Kuchler, ND (Circa 1806-1810, Possibly made after his death in July 1810). Struck at the Soho Mint.
37 mm; Puddester-948.1.2. Goddess 'India' walking right, flower right, alter left; Rev: In Sanskirt: Pursuit of Knowledge is better than the pursuit of gold. EXTREMELY RARE. Mounted in a broach as a spinner with original jewelry box.


Kuchler made a number of commemorative medals including for the execution of Marie Antionette. 

Garden House

When Dr Henley, first Principal of the East India College, retired the Company refused to 'buy in' his effects. Despite his stipend of £1,000 Henley was hard up and he sold some of his things. Specifically he sold a 'Garden House' to Professor Malthus, who erected it in the Hailey Garden. The garden is described in a letter quoted by Patricia James in her biography of Malthus, and maybe as the weather gets colder again now we can take heart from the beautiful description of Spring in the Hailey Garden:

The House is in a cluster of tall shrubs and young trees, with a little bit of smooth lawn sloping to a bright pond, in which old weeping willows are dipping their hair, and rows of young pear trees admiring their blooming faces… There are young horse-chestnuts with flowers half a yard long, fresh full-clustered white lilacs, tall Guelder roses, broad spreading pear and cherry trees, low thickets off blooming sloe, and crowds of juicy looking detached thorns, quite covered with their blooming May flowers, half open like ivory filigree, and half shut like Indian pears… and resounding with nightingales, and thrushes, and sky-larks, shrilling high up, overhead, among dazzling slow sailing clouds.

No wonder Malthus liked to be outside, and the tradition is that in the 'garden house' he worked through his great theories of population.

Generations of Haileybury swimmers will know the garden house as the "Wings Hut" at the shallow end of the old pool. There it still stands, sadly dilapidated. There is talk of trying to get it fixed up, which would be a good thing. But where then to put it? The Hailey Garden is now mainly lawn and the ponds are gone. Maybe it should go back to the Master and be placed near the Moorhen Pond where still the willows dip their hair in the still waters.

Cloaca

The eldest son having to go to the orthodontist this morning and the Council meeting on Friday together with an ordinary pick up on Saturday means that I feel as though I have been living on the A10 over the last few days. I was pleased at the Haileybury end of one of the trips that the Bradby was open so that I could answer the call of nature.

Not the least shock of going round the new Hailey after the refurbishment to make the House ready for girls was to discover that my former study has been turned into a toilet. I always thought that the infamous White City (demolished in 1961) was just a well intentioned Edwardian mistake. It was built during the rule of Wynne Wilson to remove the need for earth closets in the dormitories. It seems however that even Old Haileybury brought communality to what we moderns think of as a private activity. There were twelve water closets in Wilkin's design, as accepted. The architect had provided for thirty - in three rows of ten. This was positively Roman. I learnt about Roman toilets from a splendid book I was persuaded to buy by my scatological sons (well, it did not take much persuasion in fact) on a trip to Verulamium this year. Latrinae et Foricae, Toilets in the Roman World by Barry Hobson. (See here.)

Latrine on Hadrian's Wall: a Roman White City?

I didn't know that

The sale of the land on which Haileybury was to be built was completed on 23rd October 1805. It was the day of the battle of Trafalgar.

The Evolution of Dormitories 1

Four poster beds were the order of the day at the East India College. The students lived in single rooms, which is why the windows in the Quad don't work with what became dormitories and are now increasigly again beig transformed into rooms. The registrar, The Rev'd Edward Lewton persuaded the College Council to buy new curtains for the four posters in May 1828. Eight dozen pairs were required to replace the worn out ones which had been there since the establishment of the college in 1805. In her book Population Malthus Patricia James describes life in the old college dorm.

'The students remained behind their curtains while man servants brought their bath-water, and female bed-makers, in winter, lit their fires; one, Mrs Draper, boasted that she could get twelve fires going in twenty minutes. She was a motherly and religious spinster [so her title must have been an honorific?], and listened to hear the bath water splashing to make sure her young gentlemen would not be late for chapel; the irreverent were pressed into piety, and saved from an imposition [fine] with the aid of a hot cup of coffee.'