Centenary Celebration Book - Canford in 100 Objects

Nisi Dominus Fr ustra

A

Histor y of Canford

in 100 Objects

Richard

Knott

100 y ears of Canford School set in 1000 y ears of Canford Parish

Foreword

Life is full of twists and tur ns and it is cr itical that, both individually and collectively, we remain open minded and willing to embr ace change However, it is equally impor tant that we have aspects of constancy and continuity in our lives as these roots give us strength and reassur ance in times of tur moil. To my mind it is cr itical that education, and schools’ deliver y of that lear ning, is in tune with Plato's vision He refer s to a ‘lear ning society’ where an education is not simply embodied within specific roles or institutions, or encapsulated by educational systems, but is something which flows continually through all we think, say and do - as individuals - and through society on ever y level throughout our lives.

Education needs to star t with a fundamental focus on instilling a mindset in young people which enables them to see oppor tunities r ather than obstacles. It also needs to embed values and develop skills which enable them to step through those open door s, and to push against those which appear to be

closed. To do this they must feel that what they are lear ning has relevance , and they need to be able to make clear connections

within and beyond the different str ands of that lear ning so they can recognise its value and both ar ticulate and apply it effectively in different ways at different times. This wonderful book gives a sense of how continuity and change have shaped the lives of so many people connected to the Canford community over the past centur y, and how the approach to lear ning at Canford has adapted over time as the complex ar r ay of forces in society and the wider wor ld have played out As Deputy Head for twenty year s and then archivist since 2016, Richard Knott knows Canford well and I would like to offer my wholehear ted thanks to him for his amazing wor k in br inging this project to fr uition I hope you enjoy the exper ience of reading it as much as I have .

Ben Vessey

Introduction

This is neither a tr aditional school histor y, nor simply a coffee table book full of beautiful images. It does contain hundreds of photogr aphs and dr awings (most of which are the wor k of pupils), but they are there to suppor t a stor y, r ather than just impress with their beauty.

At one level this is a celebr ation of what is in the school archive , but it is also a collection of 100 essays cover ing the whole of Canford’s histor y from 1023-2023, focusing mainly on the last 100 year s. It should prompt memor ies, r aise eyebrows and, I hope , be enjoyable both for Canfordians and other s.

Neil MacGregor’s ‘A Histor y of the Wor ld in 100 Objects’ for Radio 4 was a br illiant idea

and lends itself to a huge var iety of imitations. He had the luxur y of ‘limiting’ himself to objects that were in the Br itish

Museum My collection of available objects is somewhat smaller, as I have chosen those that can still be seen (near ly all of them at Canford) and that have had a role to play in Canford’s histor y.

The objects are ar r anged into eight groups of twelve (two have four teen to make the total 100); something that required little ar tificial separ ation and should make it easier to read Please for give the occasional repetitions which are inevitable , given the for mat.

Ric hard Knott

Contents

1 ­­The­history­of­Canford­before­1923­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­1­–­12­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­8

2 ­­­Academic­life­in­the­classroom­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­13­–­24­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­30

3 ­­­Academic­life­outside­the­classroom­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­25­–­36­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­50

4 ­­­Co-curricular­life­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­37­–­50­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­70

5 ­­­­Pastoral­life­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­51­–­64­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­92

6 ­­­­Staff­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­65­–76­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­116

7 ­­­­Canford­people­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­77­–88­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­142

8 ­­­­Beyond­Canford­School­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­89­–100­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­160

The History of Canford before 1923

When­Canford­School­opened,­it did­so­under­two­quite­separate influences,­both­of­which­continue to­have­an­effect­on­today’s­school. William­Franklin,­who­founded Combe­Down­School­(and­then later­Clarence­School),­made­it­clear that­Evangelical­Christianity­was­at the­heart­of­his­educational philosophy.­­That­remained­the­case when­Percy­Warrington­purchased the­school­and­it­still­forms­an important­part­of­Canford’s constitution.­­The­other­great influence­was­Canford’s­setting.­It remains­one­of­the­most picturesque­schools­in­the­country; and­buildings­that­stretch­across 1000­years,­such­as­the­parish church,­John­of­Gaunt’s­and­the Manor­House­itself,­are­in­everyday use.­­Without­these­two,­Canford would­be­a­very­different­school.

1 A Saxon window in the parish church

A­history­of­the­parish­church­since­1023­and­its­use­by­the­school

2 Pottery and glass from the original manor house

Canford’s­history­from­1200­–­1600­including­the­building­of­John­of­Gaunt’s

3 The 16th century Flemish bell

The­Webb­family­as­Lords­of­the­Manor­from­1600­–­1800

4 An 1825 painting of the manor

William­Ponsonby­and­the­building­of­the­Blore­Manor­House

5 William Smith’s 1815 geological map

Sir­John­and­Lady­Charlotte­Guest

6 The Pugin fireplace in the Great Hall ­­­­­­­­­­­­The­building­of­the­Barry­Manor­House

7 Letters from Lord Wimborne to Henry Layard ­­­­­­­­­­­­Henry­Layard­and­the­discovery­of­the­Assyrian­frieze

8 Houdon’s bust of Marie Antoinette

Lord­and­Lady­Wimborne

9 A Victorian music baton

William­Franklin­and­setting­up­Combe­Down­School

10 Clarence School’s red blazer The­history­of­Clarence­School

11 Rev Warrington’s letter to the headmaster ­­­­­­­­­­­­Rev­Percy­Warrington­and­the­purchase­of­Canford­Manor

The College of Arms parchment

Canford from 1023 - 1200

The church, which has been a feature of Canford life throughout the school’s histor y, is one of the oldest buildings in Dor set and is cer tainly one of the most interesting. It may be wishful thinking to suggest it was built in 1023, exactly 1000 year s ago, but it had cer tainly been standing for sever al decades before Canford’s Domesday entr y and the or iginal Saxon church now for ms the chancel of the present church Down a few steps from the chancel is the nave , constr ucted as a separ ate building in 1196. The church was gr anted to a pr ior y in Wiltshire to be used by their monks, so a new church for the par ish was built onto the west end of the Saxon church In the 14th

centur y the wall that separ ated the two churches was taken down to create the present nave and chancel, set at a slight angle to each other. Today’s visitor s, therefore , can now see a Gothic arch joining a Saxon and a Nor man building: a delightful architectur al mess

Obser ver s of this on a regular basis have been the staff and

pupils at Canford: pupils on the pews and staff in the chancel, some of whom have to squeeze their adult fr ames into tiny seats designed to accommodate the smaller Guest children in Victor ian times (Did no-one expect them to grow?) For those pupils who are not always focused on the speaker there is a multitude of memor ial plaques to infor m and amuse , r anging from the detailed descr iptions of obscure naval battles, to the junior member of the Guest family whose relations clear ly thought it impor tant that he had died when staying with ‘his fr iend’ the Pr ince of Wales

The purchase of the Manor House in 1922 meant that gover nor s owned the advowson to the church which allowed them to appoint the vicar and ensure he was of the r ight Chr istian

A Saxon window in the parish church.

The parish church in 1923; the walls of the Saxon bu lding are

present chancel.

Architectural drawings for the 1957 vicarage

per suasion They were also instr umental in providing the presentday vicar age , although they had a vested interest in doing so as they intended to use the old vicar age in the village for Fr anklin House . Even today the school helps with the appointment of a new vicar and cer tain expenses.

In the shor t ter m, having a ‘chapel’ already in place was a bonus but the building had to be shared with the local par ish, which was often difficult; and it was barely lar ge enough for a school of near ly 150, let alone one that was expanding r apidly That problem has

been var iously addressed since then by using the Music School, Assembly Hall, John of Gaunt’s, dividing into Senior and Junior Chapels, House Chapels and even, for a shor t time , making chapel voluntar y; but all pupils spend some time in the church. Now that the Assembly Hall can seat the whole school comfor tably, the church is only used dur ing exam per iods, but it remains an impor tant par t of a Canfordian’s exper ience and a link with the par ish’s distant past.

Leav ng chapel n 1970

A conf ir mation ser vice in 1989

A chapel ser v ce in 2022 showing the Guest pews surrounded by the wa ls of the origina Saxon church

Mediaeval Canford 1200 -

1600

These small pieces were recovered when the foundations for the Beaufor t building were being dug in 1928. They include par t of a 13th centur y floor tile , a fr agment of 14th centur y window glass and tiles from the roof, giving us a tantalising glimpse of the or iginal manor house .

Ela (1187-1261), Countess of Salisbur y, was ‘ one of the two tower ing female figures of the mid-13th centur y ’ . As the

only child of the Ear l of Salisbur y she had inher ited his title and then, when only eleven year s old, mar r ied William Longespee , the illegitimate son of King Henr y II and half-brother to King Richard. William and Ela never lived at Canford, but they probably visited it as, in 1218, William was gr anted timber from a royal forest to build (or perhaps rebuild) a manor house at Canford. These remains represent a tangible link to that building and to Ela.

Her car ving, in chestnut, is in the style of a mediaeval br ass and was made by pupils in 1957 under the guidance of Robin Noscoe That of William Longespee , completed a few months ear lier, was almost entirely the wor k of fifteen year-old Richard Newton, with some help from his Fr anklin fr iends in the ear ly stages. Both car vings now sit high up in the wall of John of Gaunt’s Kitchen, the only sur viving par t of the mediaeval manor house .

John of Gaunt’s Kitchen, built in about 1450, was designed as an extension to the main house , par ts of which can still be seen in the older br ickwor k on the east wall of Salisbur y Chamber. It was probably home to Mar garet Beaufor t who dominated Canford dur ing the 15th centur y. She was cer tainly here in 1483 when her son, the future Henr y VII, made his fir st abor tive attempt to seize the English throne . He visited Canford before retreating and then

Remains from the mediaeval manor house.

Richard Newton carv ng Longespee.

launching his successful attack two year s later through Wales. Mar garet is remembered as a scholar and diplomat who founded two Oxford colleges and the gr ammar school in Wimbor ne; her parents, who lived at Canford, are bur ied in Wimbor ne Minster next to the high altar. Although Beaufor tians from before 1995 may disagree , it seems appropr iate that her name now lives on as a gir ls’ house

A 1546 repor t gives a detailed descr iption of the manor house and allows us to dr aw up a fair ly accur ate plan of the building. The following two hundred year s were not kind to the house and an 18th centur y engr aving, dr awn a few year s before most of the building was pulled down in 1765, shows John of Gaunt’s as only having one floor, although its distinctive

chimney is ver y apparent. There is no justification for calling the building after John of Gaunt as he was never the Lord of the Manor, nor even visited it. However, for a school only now

celebr ating its centenar y, the building adds much to pupils’ appreciation of the past, as well as offer ing a delightful place for dinner s, receptions, debates and even exams.

The Manor House short y before most of t was pul ed down n 1765.

Ela, Countess of Salisbury.

The Duke of Beaufort laying the foundation stone for Longspey House in 1930 just outside the main entrance It was never bui t

The Beaufort tomb in Wimborne Minster.

Canford from 1600 - 1800

The lar ge bell that now stands outside the ar t depar tment was moved from the bell tower on the nor th side of the building in 1988 as it was thought too heavy for the stonewor k which had become unsafe . It had been made in 1592 by Pieter van den Ghein, one of a lar ge Flemish family of bell maker s, but it has never been clear whether Sir John Guest built a tower for a bell that was already at Canford, or he bought a lar ge bell to hang in his newly

constr ucted tower. The romantic answer is that it was brought over from the Austr ian Nether lands (now in Belgium) in 1794 by a small group of nuns fleeing per secution; and that is cer tainly the ver sion Chr istopher Dalton gives in his book ‘The bells and belfr ies of Dor set’.

They had been offered Canford as a refuge by John Webb whose Catholic family had been Lords of the Manor for

near ly 200 year s The Webbs began wor k on a new building shor tly after they had purchased Canford in 1611 and it appear s in the background of a 1786 pr int of John of Gaunt’s, from which we can deduce that it stood roughly where the Sunken Lawn is now. Blore did some sketches of it in 1825 before designing a new house , so we know it is of tr aditional Jacobean design: solid but undistinguished In 2013 a sur vey of the Sunken Lawn was unable to find any evidence of the house so, disappointingly, its exact position remains unknown

By the middle of the 18th centur y, Sir John had moved and Canford par ish was barely functioning. The ar r ival of Ralph Willett in 1751, who built Mer ley House on the backs of West Indian slaves, prompted a revival and sever al houses later owned by the schoolThe Old Vicar age , Brook House and Hyghfoldes - were built. The manor house , however, remained empty and so Sir John allowed the Car melite nuns to use the buildings The mother super ior and her ten nuns found them cold and par tially dilapidated but they enjoyed the grounds, kept a few animals, grew vegetables and used John of Gaunt’s as their chapel. Delightfully,

evidence for this can still be seen as, on the arch above the main fireplace , there is a faint but clear mar k of a cross car ved into the stone . Ear ly 19th centur y OS maps still mar ked John of Gaunt’s as a nunner y.

The be l outside the Art Schoo .

Moving the bell.

The Manor House behind John of Gaunt ’ s.

Sir­John’s­only­surviving­legitimate­child, Barbara,­married­a­Protestant,­the­Earl of­Shaftesbury­and­their­story­is­told­in one­of­Thomas­Hardy’s­strangest stories­(Barbara­of­the­House­of Grebe)­in­which­Canford­Manor­makes an­appearance­as­Chene­(now­one­of the­classrooms­in­the­English department)­and­John­of­Gaunt’s­keeps its­original­name.­When­Sir­John­died­in 1797,­he­left­behind­a­labyrinthine­will that­stated­Canford­could­not­be­sold until­after­the­death­of­the Shaftesbury’s­only­child,­another

Barbara,­who­was­only­nine­at­the­time. That­child­married­William­Ponsonby, the­youngest­son­of­the­Earl­of Bessborough­who,­realising­he­would need­to­sell­the­Canford­Estate, decided­to­build­a­more­desirable residence.­­The­nuns­were­forced­to leave­for­Normandy­and­an­unusual episode­in­Canford’s­history­ended.

Attempting to find the Jacobean manor. The cross in John of Gaunt’s Kitchen.

Blore’s sketch ofthe house he pulled down.

4:

The Blore Manor House

This small painting is one of two that hang in an appropr iately small room next to the headmaster’s study. They represent William Ponsonby’s sole contr ibution to the Canford of today as they show Canford Manor shor tly after it was built in 1825, much of which remains in the present building.

Ponsonby was univer sally known as an ‘ ass and a jackanapes’ and the archive has two dr inking bills which show something of this less positive side . One is for almost £53 (£6000 in today’s money) r un up in less than a for tnight in October 1838 by him and his fr iends

Despite being seen as a fool, Ponsonby showed great foresight when hir ing Edward Blore as his architect. Blore later became Sur veyor to Westminster Abbey and completed Buckingham Palace but Canford was his fir st major commission and the south side of the building remains, perhaps, his greatest tr iumph. Ponsonby endeared himself to the par ish by using local builder s and Blore’s under stated style set the tone for Bar r y ’ s changes later.

John of Gaunt’s was retained and used both as a Catholic chapel by Ponsonby’s wife , Barbar a, and as an Anglican chapel by Queen Adelaide

the widow of William IV, who requested shor t leases in the autumns of 1841 and 1842 and occupied rooms that now look over the Sunken Lawn. Barbar a, the daughter of the Ear l of Shaftesbur y, died in 1844 and the

house had to be sold; but, as a pleasant postscr ipt to the family’s link with Canford, Nick Ashley-Cooper, the present Ear l of Shaftesbur y, would later attend the school as a pupil

,

An 1825 pa nting of the house.

The Manor House in 1835

Ponsonby ’ s bar bil

Sir John and Lady Charlotte Guest

In 1846 Canford Manor was bought by Sir John Guest who had built up his family business in Wales to become the leading ironmaster in the wor ld and a ver y r ich man, his iron having produced most of the r ails for the new r ailway industr y. This vast geological map (2 6m x 1 8m), the fir st of its kind in the wor ld and cr ucial to Sir John’s mining interests, is one of fewer than for ty that still exist out of the 400 that were or iginally produced.

Sir John’s much younger wife , Lady Char lotte , was a br illiant woman who, amongst other accomplishments, had set up a school in Dowlais and taught her self Welsh before publishing the fir st complete tr anslation into English of the Mabinogion Their money and her wide interests meant that famous author s, scientists and politicians were regular visitor s. She had previously claimed that ‘Whatever I under take , I must achieve eminence in. I cannot endure anything in the second gr ade’ and she lived up to those claims: her English porcelain collection, for instance , now for ms the basis of the V & A museum ’ s display.

Sir John died shor tly after buying Canford but Lady Char lotte , only just for ty, continued to r un the ironwor ks in Dowlais while also looking after Canford, as their eldest son, Ivor, was only seventeen. She would later mar r y Ivor’s tutor and move to London but her influence on Canford was impor tant Lady Char lotte’s Walk, leading to the new libr ar y, honour s her scholar ship.

Wi liam Smith’s 1815 geo og cal map – owned by Canford but now on loan to the Bodleian Librar y

The Mab nogion was f irst pub ished n seven volumes Charlotte Guest has signed the cover of our Part IV Lady Char otte’s wa k

The Barry Manor House

Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin most famously worked together on the Houses of Parliament. This fireplace in the Great Hall, not now used, is evidence that Pugin was also involved at Canford. The Royal Coat of Arms seems odd, but the impressive andirons are very typical. The carved cupboards in the Long Gallery may also be his design.

The Guests had loved Canford as soon as they saw it in 1846 but wanted to enlarge it to create more space, both for their nine children and for the ballroom Lady Charlotte craved; she hoped it might help their re-entry into society after some had spurned her for marrying into ‘trade’. Edward Blore was still alive but eventually Charles Barry was chosen as their architect. With a strong antipathy to Catholicism, Charlotte probably took great pleasure in converting John of Gaunt’s from a Catholic chapel into the kitchens. The impressive south side was little altered, but a new Great Hall, the Long Gallery, a fine entrance tower and Nineveh Porch were added and the Guests had the house they wanted.

The furnishings inside the building were sumptuous, including the brilliant

19th century stone carvings in the headmaster’s lobby by Salesio Pegrassi as well as the mediaeval carved panels next to what is now the HM’s study.

A new wing was added to the house in 1888 and while the school has changed how the rooms have been used over the last hundred years, the beauty of what the Guests created still remains.

The fireplace in the Great Hall designed by Pugin.

The new Manor House.

The Nineveh Porch added by Barry to house the collection of Assyrian artefacts.

The Great Hall after the 1884 fire.

Henr y Layard

Lord Wimbor ne ’ s letter s were wr itten between 1885 and 1894, by when Henr y Layard had mar r ied Lord Wimbor ne ’ s daughter, Enid, and was living in Venice . They were given to the school by Layard’s niece and detail Lord Wimbor ne ’ s hir ing of Bir aghi to build a new staircase after the fire

Fifty year s ear lier, in 1839, Henr y Layard, when barely twenty, had set out across Asia with ‘plenty of cash and a pair of revolver s ’ , sur viving robber ies, plague and near bankr uptcy to reach Constantinople . He there per suaded the Br itish ambassador to suppor t his quest to find the ancient city of Nimr ud and, in 1845, star ted digging. On the ver y fir st day he found the outlines of a royal palace and soon unear thed huge alabaster wall linings and sculptured panels from the ancient Assyr ian civilisation which until then had only been names in the bible .

When the Br itish Museum wasn’t interested in publishing his findings, Layard tur ned to his cousin, Lady Char lotte Guest. Her mother was a sister of Layard’s father so Char lotte had known ‘little Henr y ’ Layard as a child. She had the wealth, scholar ship and connections he needed, so sponsored his book, much of it wr itten at Canford, which became an instant bestseller In retur n Henr y promised to br ing some Assyr ian antiquities back to Canford from his second expedition in 1849. So many ar r ived that Char les Bar r y was commissioned to design the Nineveh Porch to house them, but no-one could have known the effect of the sculptures 150 year s later.

A letter from Lord Wimbor ne to Henr y Layard about B raghi

The l brar y ’ s copy of Layard ’ s Nineveh

A carving of Layard at the foot of the stairs off the Great Hall.

Lord and Lady Guest

Throughout the school’s histor y this bust of Mar ie Antoinette has stood at the foot of the Gr and Staircase An ear ly entr y in the gover nor s ’ minutes suggests it might be by the French sculptor Houdon but it is likely to be a 19th centur y copy, bought after the 1884 fire when a new staircase was designed for Lord Wimbor ne by Giuseppe Bir aghi.

Sir John’s eldest son, Ivor, mar r ied Cor nelia, the daughter of the Duke of Mar lborough and brother to Randolph Churchill. Together they had a huge

The Houdon bust.

An 1855 Guest product on of The Ri vals

The embosser that added the Guest ’ s te ephone (Wimbor ne 11) to notepaper, ater used by Canford ’ s headmaster

impact on the local area providing the community with Poole Par k, hospitals, churches, schools, housing and much else . They had a passion for politics (although Ivor failed to become an MP) and their nephew, Winston Churchill, was a regular visitor

Cor nelia was said to have ‘ an ir resistible means of getting her own way ’ . She was a regular speaker at r allies, built most of the Lady Wimbor ne Cottages, set up a pr inting press, for med Canford’s own fire br igade and was a powerful force in the temper ance league , closing the local pub and providing a coffee shop

Ivor played cr icket and real tennis, hosted huge shooting weekends and drove car s with a passion. He ar r anged balls on the slightest excuse , an annual event for locals and the family often put on plays together.

The Guests did not lose contact with Canford in 1922 Cor nelia became a gover nor, as did two of her sons, a gr andson and a great-gr andson. A gr andson and great-gr andson were pupils at the school, but their greatest legacy remains the building which still for ms the hear t of the school

A etter from Lady Wimbor ne to the headmaster Rev Macnutt

The Coffee House, now three staff houses

Cricket at Canford Manor 1855

William Fr anklin and Combe Down School

William Fr anklin founded Combe Down School in 1886 and later moved it to Weston-Super-Mare as Clarence School. In 1923 its pupils would for m the core of Canford School

Moving the school from Combe Down to Weston-Super-Mare in 1895 mar ked an impor tant milestone in Fr anklin’s career. The Chr istmas concer t that year was or ganised by the music master, William Taylor, and may well have been the occasion when this baton was presented to him by ‘the pupils of Clarence School’ as he had left by the following year It is the ear liest ar tefact we have that is connected to Fr anklin.

Bor n to the propr ietor s of a coffee shop in Bath long before there was any national system for education, Fr anklin seemed deter mined to better himself. He attended Mr Chir nside’s Competitive School and, as a boy of fifteen, won a ‘handsomely bound’ Greek dictionar y for the best exam results in Bath. Mr Chir nside soon employed William at his school. It was quite common in small pr ivate schools for more able pupils to become pupilteacher s, coaching the younger pupils in retur n for reduced or even free fees for their own education so, by 1871, when William was only eighteen, he had become a Classical Tutor at the

A review of the concert from Dec 1895

W l iam Frank in advertising as a tutor before he started teaching at Monkton Combe.

Combe Down where Frank in f rst opened his school

school.­He­then­registered­for­an external­degree­at­London­University but­seems­not­to­have­passed­his matriculation,­so­never­obtained­a degree.­

In­1874­he­joined­the­staff­of­Monkton Combe,­recently­set­up­to­educate­the children­of­clergy,­and­was­soon running­a­boarding­house­with­a­dozen pupils­in­Combe­Down,­about­a­mile from­the­school.­William­was­described by­one­pupil­as­‘a­very­good­master and­teaches­excellently...very­strict,­but it­is­a­good­thing’.­

He­was­by­now­a­member­of­the Plymouth­Brethren,­a­fundamentalist group­of­Christians­without­clergy­but believing­profoundly­in­the­absolute authority­of­the­bible.­Some­at Monkton­were­uncomfortable­with­this non-conformist­element­so­when­in 1886­William­decided­to­set­up­his own­school,­there­was­some­relief, even­though­the­pupils­living­in­his

house­moved­with­him­to­the new­school.­He­named­it­Combe Down­School­and,­within­five­years,­it had­acquired­a­second­building­and­had over­forty­pupils­from­across­the­globe. It­must­have­been­quite­a­squash: whereas­in­1881­the­houses­had­a­total of­thirteen­people­(two­families­and their­servants),­ten­years­later­they housed­the­Franklin­family,­forty­pupils, four­asst­teachers,­a­matron,­a­pantry boy,­two­servants­and­a­lodger.

The­Plymouth­Brethren­connection and­his­wife’s­contacts­with­some influential­Irish­families­undoubtedly helped­to­establish­the­school. Amongst­the­former­Sir­Robert Anderson,­the­Assistant­Commissioner of­the­Metropolitan­Police­and­Henry Carr,­a­scion­of­the­famous­Carlisle biscuit­firm,­would­both­send­their­sons to­the­school.­Despite­its­small­size,­it must­have­been­a­well-run­school­as former­pupils­went­on­to­considerable success­with­leading­scientists,­the

Chief­Medical­Officer­for­Central­India and­international­rugby­players amongst­their­number.­Franklin’s obituary­said­that­there­was­‘a­touch­of the­austere­about­him’­but­he­had mellowed­in­later­life.­­The­Canford house­which­now­bears­his­name­is­a fitting­tribute­to­his­energy­and­vision.­

A musical baton.

William Franklin shortly before he died.

Walter Warne, one of the first teachers at Combe Down School.

Clarence School

The br ight red of this jacket contr asts shar ply with the muted blues of Canford, but much else of what happened at Clarence would later move across to Dor set in 1923 Unlike Combe Down, which had existed in two conver ted houses, Clarence School was pur pose built. William Fr anklin had stayed in Weston-SuperMare when recover ing from an illness, so he knew that its position next to the newly opened Clarence Par k could be a selling point: ' open to the invigor ating breezes of the Atlantic . The air, impregnated with iodine and ozone is pure and br acing and less humid than that of most seaside places.’

Clarence saw the spir itual development of boys as cr ucial, together with ‘inculcating honour and integr ity’ Religious teaching was ‘str ictly scr iptur al and evangelical’ but it was also stated that ‘Pupils attend Church of England or Non-confor mist ser vices as desired by parents’. Macnutt, joint headmaster after 1913, was an Anglican so, on Sundays, two separ ate crocodiles walked to their different churches, the differences being seen as a strength r ather than, at Monkton Combe , a problem.

Fr anklin’s stated aims for the school appear underwhelming: ‘We desire to fit boys to take their place in the battle

Clarence School sports co ours

The schoo from the front

of life [and] in time , to takes r ank amongst the smaller Public Schools of the countr y ’ Academic progress was expected but of secondar y concer n and younger boys were not nor mally entered for public exams as ’…it is not wise to tax the strength of young growing boys’. Clarence took boys from five year s old, so prepar ing boys for more prestigious schools was included in its adver tising While many did leave at thir teen, other s achieved academic success at Clarence , one even obtaining a degree from London Univer sity while still at school -

somewhat ironic given Fr anklin’s own failure at that univer sity.

Spor t was impor tant but matches were r arely against other schools; and staff, especially Macnutt, would often lead the goal scor ing or wicket taking as they strengthened the side . A healthy outdoor life was encour aged through paper chases, school bathes, walks in the hills and the OTC (CCF) camp, the last also r un by Macnutt with such efficiency that the school held the Lucas-Tooth Trophy for the best OTC in Somer set from 1919-1923

The memor al to the 56 for mer Combe Down and Clarence pup ls who d ed in the Great War It was one of Macnutt ’ s regrets that that Canford was not closer to this tablet

Macnutt leading his award w nning OTC

In addition there were char abanc tr ips to Wells cathedr al, a day spent watching the Austr alian cr icket side play Gloucester and, on one notable occasion in 1912, watching Henr i Salmet land a plane – something most people hadn’t seen - on the Clarence playing fields with the school’s Boy Scouts helping. A r ange of indoor activities existed but music and dr ama perfor mances were low-key and undemanding The school seemed like a prep school with some senior boys helping out with the teaching in retur n

for reduced fees In 1922, with no room to expand, it was an obvious tar get for Rev War r ington when searching for schools to join his Evangelical stable .

The many staff and pupils who moved to Dor set would also take with them the religious ethos and the school motto ‘Nisi Dominus Fr ustr a ’ ; leaver s would remain OCs; and those who won spor ts colour s at Clarence would have them acknowledged at Canford (although not with a red jacket).

Clarence School n 1913.

A science aborator y

Percy War rington and the Purchase of Canford

What is indisputable is that Percy War r ington, ‘the financier in a sur plice’, was a remar kable man, and sever al educational establishments owe their existence to his effor ts. He was not, however, always a likeable man and his methods were questionable . Fanatically intent on increasing the influence of the evangelical Protestant church, in 1923 Canford became the third school owned by the Mar tyr s Memor ial Tr ust

– which he had founded in 1914 – as he attempted to r ival the high church Woodard Schools He had or iginally intended to buy Dr aycot House but, on the day that he and Macnutt were due to visit Dr aycot, one of Macnutt’s staff spotted the adver tisement for the sale of Canford Manor so the plans were changed By the end of the day Canford had been bought.

War r ington dressed immaculately, was chauffeur-dr iven in a Rolls Royce and was a snob. He left school at fifteen but, with the help of a local cler gyman, had gone to college , become ordained and then acquired the living at Monkton Combe At a time when influence and background mattered, this was an impressive achievement. As secretar y of the Church of England Tr ust he set about revitalising it, par tly by buying advowsons which allowed the Tr ust to appoint vicar s to the par ishes they owned. The Tr ustees allowed him his head and provided the money he needed Apar t from the advowsonshe had acquired over 300 within ten year s - he purchased twelve schools and helped found St Peter’s Hall, Oxford and Br istol Theological College . Small wonder one paper dubbed him the ‘ wor ld’s greatest school maker’

Warr ngton ’ s 1930 letter to Canning asking for money for St Peter’s Col ege. Cann ng appears not to have rep ied.

The gover nors minute authoris ng the purchase of Canford

Advertising Canford Manor n Countr y Life

In 1920 he fell out spectacular ly with the Rev Kear ns, headmaster of nearby Monkton Combe , suggesting that Kear ns was a liar and that the Monkton pupils disr upted War r ington’s ser mons. He added that Kear ns couldn’t find a ‘ … little of the spir it of Chr ist … if you looked for it through a magnifying glass’. His financial dealings were similar ly suspect His policy of mor tgaging one school to pay for the next and moving cash from one school to another would eventually lead to bankr uptcy and his ejection from the Tr ust. One teacher, ousted from Canford for taking pupils to AngloCatholic churches (actually a nonreligious tr ip by the school’s archaeological society), told War r ington

that he would sue for wrongful dismissal unless he was paid compensation. A cheque for £150 ar r ived by retur n – enough to buy three small houses in the Wells cathedr al close! On another occasion War r ington offered his financial adviser £100 to change his mind about refusing to sign a document and he left near ly £50k in his will (over a million pounds at 2023 pr ices) which, on a cler gyman ’ s stipend, at least r aises some questions. But without War r ington there would have been no Canford.

He is probably best summed up by the great Roxbur gh, fir st headmaster of Stowe , who said ‘…he was an intoler able Gover nor to wor k under … he went close to r uining the place . Yet I can never for get that without his or iginal effor ts Stowe could not have opened at all. Then again, the disgust and indignation which War r ington more or less continuously provoked are ver y different from the contempt and loathing I came to feel for the mean and treacherous men who profited by all his villainies and would never have had the cour age to commit one of them.’

Cutt ng the first sod for the new Beaufort House

Warrington between Canning and Lord Gisborough

Percy Warrington in 1928.

The Gr ant of Ar ms and Setting up Canford

Canf ord ’ s Coat of Ar ms was designed by John Benson who would lea ve Canf ord in 1927 f ollowing a disag reement with Macnutt. Bef ore that, though, he ran Frank lin House, designed the school f lag and wrote numerous letters to the College of Ar ms which re veal the stor y behind the Canf ord crest.

Accompan ying these letters is a range of possible designs and some notes which show how no one could ag ree on an ything except that there should be an oak tree: something of an iron y since that suggestion is based on a misunderstanding of what ‘Chene’ means (It is likel y to be a cor ruption of Cana, a Saxon chieftain). The Ar ms were needed as par t of War rington ’ s quest to establish Canf ord as a Public School, which also entailed recruiting se veral titled g randees to the gover ning bod y and appointing some Oxbridge g raduates as teachers.

After se veral postponements, on Ma y 15th 1923 a train took pupils from Somerset to Wimbor ne from where a charabanc f er ried them to their ne w school. The staf f accommodation wasn ’t f inished so the y had to sta y at The King’s Head in Wimbor ne; the f eathers in the pillows hadn ’t been

sterilised and had to be replaced; and the g rass on Mountjoy was too long to pla y on. It was also raining, so the polished f loors quick l y became mudd y, but e ver yone seemed impressed by what the y sa w: oak f ur niture, ne w wash basins with polished taps and the beautif ul Park stretching a wa y from the manor house.

Somehow e ver ything was crammed into the main building with onl y the two science classrooms a shor t distance a wa y in what had been the stables. Tuck boxes were piled up in John of Gaunt ’ s, boys helped the horse-dra wn mowers shor ten the g rass f or cricket and, with something of a stutter, the f irst ter m began.

The Grant of Arms

John of Gaunts as a boot room in the 1920s

Some

Academic Life in the Classroom

English

The teaching of English has changed as much as any subject in the last 100 year s, from the days of inter minable par sing of sentences, through the endless routine of comprehension exercises and essay-wr iting, to the heyday of creative wr iting in the 1970s and 1980s Liter ature , too, has seen change , with a whittling down of the liter ar y canon, the inclusion of ever more contempor ar y texts, and the development of an increasingly inter active style of study, evidenced by the Canford English depar tment’s introduction, in the 1990s, of annual tr ips to Cor nwall for Thomas Hardy weekends and to the Cheltenham Liter ature Festival A highlight of the latter came in 1999, when a group of Canford sixth for mer s listened to Nobel Pr ize Winner Seamus Heaney talking about his new ver se tr anslation of Beowulf. A pencil por tr ait of the poet, signed by him, is a pr ized memento of that visit

English lessons will invar iably involve inter action between staff and pupils but, in the 1930s, boys enjoyed the compar ative infor mality of the Liter ar y Society where they could discuss individual books, or questions such as ‘What is poetr y?’ Visiting poets might seem a recent phenomenon, but Louis MacNeice’s stay in 1939 was probably the fir st and proved ver y popular

The liter ar y culture of Canford seems to have provided a par ticular ly r ich seedbed for future wr iter s in the 1960s and ear ly 1970s, producing poet Paul Hyland, liter ar y cr itic Peter Kemp, biogr apher and histor ian Peter Par ker and Booker Pr ize winning novelist Alan Hollinghur st. In an ar ticle he wrote for the OC Magazine in 2009, Hollinghur st recalls that the Common Room contained ‘ a few magnetic and enabling figures, who challenged the prevailing wisdom and changed the lives of numerous boys’ He picks out English teacher Paul Merchant as a

The signed portrait of Seamus Heaney.

An Eng ish tutor al in 1961

The Head of Department risking his neck when teach ng Chaucer during Comic Rel ef in 1993.

A S xth For m essay from 1950 The so e comment ‘Satisfactor y ’ with a mark of 16/30 wou d not pass muster now

par ticular ly powerful influence , identifying him as, ‘since I’ve been a wr iter myself, perhaps the teacher to whom I owe the most valuable lessons of all’

The nature of the subject means that English teacher s have been active in other areas of school life where language and creativity are impor tant. From ver y ear ly days the depar tment has r un wor kshops, liter ar y societies, and

hosted author s as par t of the wider English cur r iculum; but they are heavily involved elsewhere . Discussion groups of a more gener al nature will, more often than not, be chaired by an English teacher ; and, perhaps not sur pr isingly, before the appointment of dr ama teacher s, they had a near monopoly on directing school plays The depar tment’s home for the last fifty year s sits next to Robin Noscoe’s Ar t School and shares its str iking design, which is in star k

contr ast to the Victor ian buildings of Canford Manor. Architectur ally interesting it may be , but the lar ge glass windows amplify the outside temper ature , meaning that teaching is not always comfor table . Hardy is honoured by the classrooms, each named for a location on his map of Wessex, such as Sandbour ne (Bour nemouth) and Chene (Canford itself). Included is the Egdon room with its shar ply r aked rows of benched desks.

Canford’s fir st audio visual room, it is much used by a number of depar tments, but par ticular ly the English Depar tment.

Changes made by successive gover nments over the last few year s have imposed restr ictions on the way the subject is taught, but the wealth of activities offered to pupils ensures that creativity remains as impor tant as syntax.

The Art and Eng ish b ocks in 1974

A 2006 Sixth For m Eng ish class

Mathematics

1 + 1 = 2 is as tr ue now as it has always been with ar ithmetic , algebr a and calculus continuing to for m the basis of Maths lessons. Decimalisation and calculator s, however, have revolutionised the way Maths is taught and examined; slide r ules (and tables), so familiar to pupils before the 1980s, are now long redundant Many pupils were ignor ant of how these tools perfor med their magic , in much the same way that today’s pupils do not under stand the wor kings of a

calculator, but they cer tainly made life easier.

Sadly, geometr y is no longer a staple of the cur r iculum. Always thought too difficult for most Shells, the beautiful constr uctions familiar to boys ear ly on in Canford’s histor y barely feature today It used to be a pleasant diver sion from Canford’s view that Maths was merely an instr ument for later life , but it has now made way for other topics

In the 1960s New Maths was all the vogue Canford did not leap wholly onto the School Mathematics Project bandwagon but bor rowed strongly from it, introducing ideas such as Venn diagr ams, number bases and matr ices. As far as most pupils were concer ned, this was maths for maths’ sake , which didn’t suit ever yone . In fact there are applications for these apparently esoter ic topics but most are beyond a school syllabus.

The 1960s also brought computing to school mathematicians. Sixth for m pupils could use the computer at Flight Refuelling in Wimbor ne as an activity; but they also lear ned about progr amming at school. The hope was that computing would soon be introduced as an A level subject Eventually it was: thir ty-five year s later.

The giant sl de rule used to demonstrate the subt eties of Wi liam Oughtred ’ s invent on to Canford pupi s

The 1927 Maths pr ze

Mechanics has always been taught to senior pupils and, for a few year s around the millennium, pr actical exper iments involving pulleys and water were near ly as common in Maths A levels as they were in Physics. Doing the calculations in kilogr ams, metres and newtons is significantly easier than completing the same sor t of problem in pounds, yards and ‘poundals’ but the concepts remain unchanged.

Statistics was a later ar r ival Now so ubiquitous, it is difficult to believe it wasn’t always there , but the ar r ival of computer s has made the analysis of data much easier and more impor tant Some sor t of noisy analysis was possible on mechanical devices in the 1970s and ear lier, but the exam room is a quieter place now Today’s calculator s are powerful enough to solve high level calculus questions, so both the teaching and exam questions have had to change so that pupils under stand the answer s they produce (and can show that they do).

Maths teacher s teach it because they enjoy it The two are not mutually exclusive but Maths, like other subjects, now has ‘fun’ on the menu: visiting speaker s like Simon Singh; fiddle tables where 3-D Maths puzzles can be done; a ser ies of lectures under the title ‘Take maths to the limit’; the Maths Olympiad; and much more The syllabus continues to change: modelling and algor ithms would leave yester year ’ s Canfordians bewildered. But the usefulness (and occasionally love) of Maths means that it remains the most popular choice at A level for Canfordians, by some way.

One of the mathematical photos round the department taken by pupi s

A ex Be los deli vering a maths ecture n 2017

The Sciences

Made in the 1920s this piece of appar atus wor ks as well now as it did then and is still used occasionally in the Physics dept

When Canford fir st opened there were only two Science classrooms, one each for Chemistr y and Physics (Biology did not appear on the cur r iculum until the 1930s) They were housed in the for mer stables which were based on the souther n side of what is now the Biology cour tyard; the only subjects not taught in the main building. Despite its limited facilities Science was a popular and successful option In many schools the br ightest pupils were expected to choose Classics and never studied Science beyond the basics, but no such tr adition existed at Canford. The results can be seen most clear ly by looking at the Open Scholar ships won by Canfordians to Oxford and Cambr idge: in the year s up to the war, vir tually half were in Science and only one in Classics.

The lack of facilities meant that sever al boys who wanted to study Science couldn’t – fr ustr ating for the boys and for those who had to teach the unwilling member s of their class In 1957 the Industr ial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education in

Schools came to the rescue . It had just been established by the science industr y and only contr ibuted to those schools not helped by Gover nment ie Direct Gr ant and Independent Schools. It built two new classrooms for Chemistr y and Physics to supplement the old rooms but their ar r ival made it clear how poor the old ones were . Providence was on hand: three months after the new block was finished the old classrooms bur ned down – the cause was never established – and Tate & Lyle stepped in to replace the classrooms with a new building named for a for mer gover nor, Leonard Lyle In his speech on the day the labor ator ies were opened the headmaster said that ‘No-one except those who tr ied to teach or to lear n in our old labor ator ies could have known how deplor able they were . As conver ted stables he said they belonged to the age of the ‘hor se and buggy’ whereas the school was now in ‘the age of combustion’

The result was that, within two year s, the propor tion doing Science at A level moved from 50% to 62% and ever y boy studied all three Sciences to O level.

Number s continued to increase and other subjects began to complain about Science teaching nudging into their classrooms.

An ear y spectroscope

One of the original Science abs

New Physics classrooms were built in 1982, opened by Pr incess Anne , and the Sciences continued to dominate the Oxbr idge entr ies A well-oiled system sent scores of pupils off to read Medicine and related subjects, although there were a few gr umbles from other depar tments that the playing fields were not level.

As the school moved into the new millennium there was a recognition that not ever y pupil should study all three Sciences and the requirement was dropped to two, but Science continued to be a popular and successful subject. With the extr a classrooms in the John Lever building and the Biology extension they now have the facilities they need.

The Sc ence Upper Vth in 1951 in the old labs

Sam Bridge teaching Chemistry in 1959 n the new laboratories.

The new Physics classrooms n 1982 a lowed much of the subject to be practical based

The aquaria and exhibits n the foyer of the remodel ed and extended Bio ogy dept

The brass plaque that used to be on the door.

Moder n Languages

This tatty textbook, published by Larousse in 1928, has done ster ling ser vice in the Moder n Languages depar tment. Designed to tar get young French children the text will have been more suitable for Canfordians than the pictures were , although one pupil has enjoyed colour ing in some of the latter. Possibly innovative when RGF Mills had it from new, it has been through sever al hands and was still being used through the war

Initially three languages were offered to pupils, with Spanish being added to the French and Ger man studied at Clarence School, although it appear s to have been a Society initially r ather than a timetabled subject By 1938 Spanish had become fir mly

established so, when the popular teacher retur ned to Spain, the headmaster repor ted to the Gover ning Body with some concer n that ‘the only man in Bour nemouth who can teach Spanish has a full timetable’ How times change A year later it was the Ger man depar tment’s tur n to face an unexpected problem as the assistant had to leave because he wasn’t allowed to live within the restr icted war zone

From the beginning there was clear ly a strong emphasis on speaking the languages, r ather than just reading them. One pupil from the 1920s remember s being made to look in a mir ror as he spoke the French word ‘tu’ so that he could see that his lips

An early French textbook

A 1930 programme for Le Bourgeo s Gent lhomme

made a small circle More significantly, though, within a few year s of Canford opening, French, Ger man and Spanish each put on regular plays in the or iginal language The cast of the 1930

production of Le Bour geois Gentilhomme included twenty pupils and only two adults (one of whom was standing in at the last minute to cover an illness), even if the Canfordian was less

than complimentar y about some of the accents. With such ambition it is not sur pr ising that three of the four teen open scholar ships won at Oxford and Cambr idge before the war were for Moder n Languages. The depar tment was disr upted dur ing the war when the Head of Depar tment left to fight, although Ger man suffered the additional problem of losing Yvone Kir kpatr ick at times so that he could inter rogate Ger man pr isoner s, but those problems were probably fair ly low on their list at the time .

Despite the unstoppable r ise of English as the wor ld’s lingua fr anca, pupils continued to study languages in lar ge number s. Spanish, once the poor relation, star ted to challenge the popular ity of French but other s were being added as well In 1968 a new

classroom block included Canford’s fir st language labor ator y which, together with the introduction of Russian in the Shell cur r iculum (as an alter native to Latin), allowed for new possibilities

Nowadays, with inter national pupils wanting qualifications in their native tongue , up to thir teen different languages are taken in public exams; and small group teaching is offered in Mandar in Chinese and six European languages. The depar tment is a mass of inter national poster s and photos showing that, at Canford at least, there is no evidence that we think ever yone in the wor ld should speak English.

An O eve exerc se book from 1963 There is more marking than forty years earl er, but not ver y d fferent from forty years later

The new y opened language laborator y n 1968

Geog r aphy

Donated in the 1980s by a parent stationed on Ascension Island, this volcanic bomb remains a discussion point for pupils, although it is ver y heavy and not easy to pass round a classroom. It seems appropr iate that this molten rock should come from a Br itish Ter r itor y that featured in Br itain’s histor y as recently as the Falklands War as, when Canford star ted, Wor ld Geogr aphy centred on the Br itish Empire . As ear ly as the 1920s a pupil claimed that Geogr aphy was no longer simply a case of memor ising the English counties and their capitals, but was more about lear ning what forces had shaped those towns. And in 1928 the Canfordian boasted that the Geogr aphy room in the newly built Beaufor t building was ‘the finest which any Public School possesses ’ so new approaches were accompanied by new accommodation.

For younger pupils there was a clear emphasis on Physical Geogr aphy and, in the 1960s, the Shell exam still focused exclusively on wor ld climate and far ming Pupils going on to Cr anwell or Sandhur st were expected to study Geogr aphy in the Sixth For m and Political Geogr aphy featured br iefly when discussing the for mation of nation states.

The nature of Geogr aphy encour ages pupils to look outside the classroom. By the 1970s, field tr ips were the nor m with the Dor set coast an obvious and enviable destination. Urban projects were common and the Geogr aphy Society was extending pupils’ hor izons even fur ther. Geogr aphy has always been a synthesis of other subjects, including Economics, Sociology and Science but, more than ever, it now looks at things synoptically r ather than in isolation.

A volcan c bomb from Ascension Island

Old Canf ordians cannot ha ve f ought in the 1st World War, but OCs in the f or m of Old Clarencians cer tainl y did and the memorial in Weston-SuperMare is testimon y to that. These ar tef acts from the French battlef ields were all f ound on trips to the trenches (which had taken place e ver y year since 1988 until Covid inter vened) and send out a powerf ul message as the y are passed round a histor y classroom.

When Canf ord opened, man y pupils would ha ve expected to pla y their par t

in maintaining Britain ’ s place in the world, and par t of the Histor y syllabus in the 1950s was designed f or those entering the Ci vil Ser vice. The possibility that the British Empire might star t to disinteg rate within twenty-f i ve years would ha ve seemed as absurd as it would to a 4th centur y Roman centurion think ing of his own empire.

As Britain changed, so did the teaching of Histor y which centred less on the leaders and more on the people, although the f ocus remained on British Histor y.

The ad vent of GCSEs in the 1980s, although unpopular because subjects were spread more thinl y, did allow 20th centur y world histor y to be studied. At the same time Shells were introduced to historical methods through stud ying local histor y ( par ticularl y Canf ord itself ). Later A le vel courses opened up wider choices and ha ve led to US Ci vil Rights becoming a popular topic .

Pupils ha ve experienced ‘Li ving Histor y ’ from at least 1954 when boys

took par t in a BBC prog ramme demonstrating how stones were dragged from Wales to build Stonehenge. In the 1970s some pupils were taken to Ci vil War re-enactment g roups but now the y are more likel y to dress up at the annual La yard Society dinner where intellectual discussion is combined with good f ood; and historical costume is required.

A shell case, spade and other objects from the 1st WW battlefields. Dragging stones for the BBC in 1954

An informal 6th form history lesson in 1967.

19: Classics

It would not have been possible to study Latin or Greek without lear ning something about Classical Civilisation, but the subject didn’t become an A level until 2008. It had been a GCSE and par t of the Shell cur r iculum for fifteen year s, but its introduction gave the Classics depar tment a fillip and was popular with pupils. These masks were wor n in a production of Odysseus, staged in the pavilion theatre dur ing the 2008 Spir it of Place , and involved sever al pupils who weren’t studying the subject, but were given a taste of Greek culture . It proved to be a fitting finale to two long ser ving Classics teacher s who were leaving that year. In contr ast, Latin has been par t of the cur r iculum for a hundred year s and, at the star t, almost all pupils would have ar r ived with some knowledge of it: an ear ly edition of the Canfordian published a Latin poem in the apparently cer tain knowledge that most people would recognise what it was when tr anslated

Shor tly after the war an outr aged pupil complained that ‘O come all ye faithful’ had to be sung in Latin at the carol ser vice , but the subject retained its attr action for other s In 1966 a small group of Canfordians entered the Latin and Greek Reading Competition in

Salisbur y and retur ned with the two top pr izes.

Latin and Greek have never had the pr ivileges they had at most independent schools, where the br ightest and best were expected to study those subjects. As a result, number s studying them have waxed and waned according to the times and staff. They have , never theless, retained their place in the cur r iculum as a bellwether for Canford’s intellectual status, even if Greek is now only a r are voluntar y subject.

A mask from the 2008 product on of Odysseus

Only a Latin teacher would name his House teams Latin and Barbaros

A 1959 Latin esson.

20: Extending the Choice

School Cer tif icate required pupils to pass in a range of subjects if the y were to achie ve the a ward. Like the Inter national Baccalaureate, it suited the allrounder but didn ’t allow, sa y, a scientist to f ocus on what he enjoyed. All pupils essentiall y f ollowed the same cur riculum but at dif f erent speeds. That changed f or some in 1929 when the headmaster announced that those boys who had ‘not responded to the ordinar y school cur riculum’ would f ollow a reduced timetable which included eight hours in the engineering workshop a week. A parent paid f or the ne w equipment and was publicl y thanked, so there appeared to be no disg race in choosing this option.

The introduction of A and O le vels in 1951 meant that pupils opted f or a scientif ic or humanities route, but choice was still limited. As late as 1987 subjects were allocated to f our g roups and pupils were expected to choose three (or, occasionall y, f our) subjects from separate g roups, so se veral sensible combinations were not possible if two choices were in the same g roup

In 1980 Mar tin Mar riott broadened the cur riculum, extolling the vir tues of practical pursuits and criticising those who sa w them as separate from scholarship. Economics and Politics were alread y options at A le vel, but others soon f ollowed: some alread y on the cur riculum but not examined (Design Technolog y, Ph ysical Education, Drama and Religious Studies) and others which required a more practical approach. Business Studies, f or instance, of f ered the chance to run a small business.

Added to this choice was the realisation that some pupils, such as those with d yslexia, needed specialist suppor t First of f ered from a tin y room in a cor ner of the Eng lish depar tment, the Suppor t f or Lear ning depar tment ’ s of f ice now has an adjacent classroom, with three smaller rooms next door, all at the hear t of the teaching area. With a slightl y modif ied cur riculum a vailable, all pupils can now make choices suited to their interests and needs.

John Bridgman’s 1932 School Certificate

Selling Canford coffee as part of the Business Stud es Social Enterprise project

The Wang 600 was a progr ammable computer produced in the 1970s and designed as a cheaper alter native to the 700 Ser ies. It is ver y heavy but, with a removable cassette tape , a small inter nal pr inter and a neon tube display, was pretty sophisticated Computer s at this time were expensive items – the Commodore computer bought for the bur sar y in

1981 cost £3281-81p (well over £10k at today’s pr ices) and would have been consider ably less capable than the cheapest calculator now.

As far back as 1942 a Canford teacher, who had just moved to de Havillands, wrote to the headmaster talking about a calculating machine there ‘whereby one can multiply one ten-figure

number by another by pressing buttons, and add or subtr act the results of sever al such calculations. It really seems to make many of my effor ts to teach such elementar y processes superfluous’. This must have been a mechanical device and it was well over twenty year s before computer s became par t of any Canfordian’s exper ience with the slide r ule or tables being the prefer red way of avoiding long division or wor king out square roots

In 1967 the headmaster spoke in his Speech Day address about mathematicians being introduced to ‘the myster ies of the computer’ which, at that time , meant tr avelling to Winfr ith, or Flight Refuelling, just down the road in Wimbor ne . This was really only an option for 6th for m pupils as an activity on a Wednesday after noon when they were allowed to use the precious machines under super vision They also lear ned about progr amming at school, over thir ty year s before Computing became an A-level option As in vir tually all other schools, it was IT and the use of computer s that took off, r ather than progr amming itself so, throughout the 1980s, computing and calculator s became much more mainstream. In 1988 Canford was

invited to visit Russia by Quest who sold computer s in Russia and were only the four th Br itish company to be allowed to set up an office in Moscow

A group of 14-16 year olds tr avelled out to the Black Sea car r ying ten BBC

A Wang computer.

The Atomic Energy Estab ishment at Winfrith in the 1960s; home to the KDF 9 computer

Using BBC computers n the 1980s

computer s which were then donated to their Russian counter par ts. The following year the Soviet students visited Canford, with cultur al tr ips such as a visit to London and Top of the Pops included amongst the chat about computing and perestroika In retur n for the computer s Quest, Canford School and Mar garet Thatcher were

the lucky recipients of three huge oil paintings.

At the time of the tr ip Canfordians were also using BBCs at school, but they were already seen as dated and in 1991 they were replaced with Apple Macs. Pupils were amazed at the ‘ var iety of fonts, sizes and letter styles

and a facility for checking spelling’ to say nothing of the word processing and scanning that were now available . Suddenly the refurbished computer room was the place to be and no longer only for the IT geeks. It also meant that the Canfordian could be produced in-house .

Since then, of cour se , Canford has joined the rest of the wor ld with technology being updated almost as soon as it is produced Present school life cannot be imagined without IT –see the piece on Covid for instance –although there are many who wish emails had never been invented.

Canfordians heading off to Russ a

IT n 2023 – how many years (or even months) before this looks dated?

… and one of the bags that went w th them.

Cross-cur ricular Activities

Discover y and Invention

This lar ge mur al was painted to commemor ate Pr incess Anne’s visit to open the new Science building in 1982 It represents a collabor ation between Ar t and Science that was repeated thir ty year s later when a number of Shells, with some help from Sixth For m pupils, completed the mosaic that now hangs in the Chemistr y depar tment. Giving each academic depar tment its own dedicated area in the school is desir able for a number of reasons, but it can exagger ate the separ ate nature of each subject. Most research shows that pupils who can tr ansfer the skills they lear n in one subject to other areas of life will thr ive . In the last twenty year s there has been a dr ive to ensure that depar tments do wor k together

Initially Shell cross-cur r icular days were or ganised by the Geogr aphy, Histor y and English depar tments They took all the Shells to Dorchester where the activities offered aspects of all three subjects, but also included some ar t and Classical Civilisation The success of the days meant that cross-cur r icular activities are now embedded in the Shell cur r iculum across all subjects. Four separ ate projects (Landscapes; Propaganda; Happiness; Robots) teach them eight contr asting skills including cr itical thinking, communication and global awareness

Once pupils have star ted GCSEs it is harder to do the same unless the timetable is suspended Events such as

SLAM and Spir it of Place (see Object 35) enable this to continue , although there have been other events such as when 4th for m scholar s wor ked together on a single topic . The most recent was ‘Water’, which offered oppor tunities for ever yone , with Handel giving the Music depar tment an obvious outlet.

And, in 2011, the fir st Lower Sixth Symposium was held. Entitled ‘Par adigm Shift’ pupils examined a r ange of topics from plate tectonics to postModer nism The day was an excellent adver tisement for the skills they had lear ned ear lier in their academic career.

The 2013 mosaic

The Shel s working together in Dorchester in 2004

23: Academic Success

Walls lined with lists of names are rarel y ver y attracti ve but, like most schools, Canf ord was keen to trumpet its success. Earl y on there were m yriad wa ys in which Canf ordians could be accepted by Oxf ord and Cambridge –man y of whom f ailed to complete their deg rees! – but these open scholarships were not won lightl y.

Canf ord has al wa ys had some ver y able pupils whose academic abilities would ha ve g raced an y school in the countr y but, f or man y years, it was obliged to take boys whose intellectual limitations had pre vented their being accepted else where. John Hardie led the f irst assault on academic standards, as he belie ved that a thri ving Sixth For m was a sine qua non of an ywhere wor th its salt. Entr y standards were tightened and boys were expected to move through the school based primaril y on age rather than ability The Satis( f ecit) card, still used to encourage the less moti vated, had been introduced by 1948 and e ver yone kne w that what went on in the classroom was now more impor tant than what happened on the rugby pitch.

Standards continued to improve, helped by the occasional visit from school inspectors. Then, in 1992, the gover nment introduced league tables f or public exams. It was a crude measure that said more about a school’s intake than its teaching, but it cer tainl y af f ected how subjects were taught. Canf ord ’ s g radual climb up the tables was clear to e ver yone and in 2013 its results made it the highest placed co-educational boarding school in the countr y.

The school continues to f oster intellectual curiosity and the majority of its pupil go on to stud y at Russell Group uni versities, although there is a recognition that exam success is not e ver ything.

One of the many boards detail ng the Oxbridge scholarships. Note how many were for science.

A Sat s card from 1993

The 2014 A level results trophy.

This edition of Tennyson’s Mor te d’Ar thur, pr inted on the Canford Press in 1867, was par t of the libr ar y inher ited by the school from the Guests in 1923. Their bequest included books that had no r ight to be in a school libr ar y, such as a 1410 manuscr ipt copy of Higden’s Polychronicon, one of only ten in the wor ld; and a thir teenth centur y copy of the Gospels. Most have since been sold to r aise money for new books, although those with a direct connection to the Guests remain.

The Guest legacy was generous but unsuitable for pupils and the stock desper ately needed updating. Pleas to staff, leaver s and other s elicited some classic 19th centur y novels, including one from Anthony Blunt, the for mer spy (although no-one knew it at the

time) who had been a pupil under headmaster Canning at Mar lborough. The fir st Libr ar y Bulletin, pr inted in 1931, included an ar ticle by WC Sellar who had just published his humorous ‘1066 And All That’ while teaching histor y at Canford He ur ged ever yone to use the libr ar y and added that ‘ many of the chair s are so comfor table that it is possible to fall asleep in them without the slightest effor t’ –something that boys should not be ashamed about as ‘it would allow them to dream’. In addition to the ar ticles the libr ar ian was not afr aid to appeal to more basic instincts in his attempts to get adolescent boys into the libr ar y so pr inted tables showing how many books each House had bor rowed each ter m and which boy had ‘read’ the most books.

Tennyson ’ Morte d ’Arthur

Rescuing books from the 1930 f re

Dur ing the war the shor tage of paper meant that books were precious and pupils were advised that ‘consider ably gentler treatment of books is needed’ From the star t, while the master-inchar ge ordered new books, the day-today r unning of the libr ar y, such as putting books back on the shelves and chasing unretur ned books, was the boys’ responsibility. This meant the libr ar y was r arely quiet and bor rowing, with little super vision, was far from foolproof. For many year s it ser ved as wor kroom; meeting place; a venue for guest speaker s, debates and gover nor s ’ meetings; the bar for OC dinner s; and a refreshment room dur ing school dances

In 1992 Sue Aher n became the fir st

professional libr ar ian and, with the help of a bequest, the libr ar y was extended into a School House common room and 1000 new books were bought.

There was now an area for wor k stations, the libr ar ian’s desk, display areas, per iodicals, some reference books and, impor tantly, a separ ate entr ance from outside which avoided having to use the Great Hall

The Dewey system was introduced and the main room hosted an increasing r ange of events, such as Wor ld Book Day and visiting poets. Dur ing Theme Weeks and other times when the cur r iculum was suspended the libr ar y was perfectly sited; but it was still

desper ate for more space . Pressure on dining space was even more acute so a decision was taken to restore the Old Libr ar y before using it as an extension to the Great Hall, and a new libr ar y was built where the CCF building stood A few were outr aged over the desecr ation of the one room that had remained unchanged for over 150 year s and pictured food being thrown at the or nate Victor ian wall cover ings, but people underestimated pupil behaviour and the move has proved successful

The new libr ar y has all the facilities that pupils need and continues to be a hub of academic activity

John of Gaunt’s as a junior l brary.

Andrew Motion at a poetry reading.

Mount oy ink made from oak gal s – one of the many events in the ibrar y

The new ibrar y

Academic Life outside the Classroom

The line between what takes place in the classroom and elsewhere is often hard to dr aw. Dr ama, Music and Ar t are , of cour se , examined academic subjects like any other ; but, after the Shell year, for most pupils they are co-cur r icular activities. To a lesser extent, the same is tr ue for other subjects, especially English, where a number of societies offer the chance to debate , discuss, wr ite or just listen to those who are professional wr iter s. All subjects allow pupils to look beyond the syllabus and develop their interests And an increasing number of subjects now take pupils on tr ips to exper ience what they can only hear about second-hand in lessons. Too often schools are judged solely by their exam results, but Canford still sees the impor tance of looking at the wider picture . Theme Weeks, the Festival of Ideas, SLAM, Spir it of Place and the cultur al visits offered postGCSE are some of the many events where for mal lessons are stopped and pupils are invited to look at ideas that will require them to think differently and question their beliefs

Dr ama (Early)

Derek Jar man ’ s fir st stage set design was for Julius Caesar, the school play in 1960. In 1968, a few year s after leaving Canford, he received his fir st commissions from Sadler s Wells and Covent Garden. This is a costume he designed for the ballet, Jazz Calendar, at Covent Garden. Together with a design for Don Giovanni (the ver y fir st Sadler s Wells production at the Coliseum) it was given to the school in 1970 to hang in the outdoor theatre . It is now in the Layard theatre , providing a link between the pre- and postpavilion theatre er as.

For year s, Canfordian thespians were ver y limited by where they could perfor m The Great Hall was the only lar ge space and dr ama had to compete with all the other activities queueing up to remove the dining tables and use the room. Individual scenes from wellknown plays were put on and, weather per mitting, there were a few outside productions, including Richard III in 1933.

The ar r ival of Gisborough Hall offered new oppor tunities, although the competing demands of music , spor t, assemblies, exams and other activities, meant that time was still limited. The hall itself was hardly ideal, with poor

acoustics and pr imitive backstage facilities for the cast. Never theless some excellent productions were put on and the r ange of groups perfor ming was impressive , even if the quality didn’t always match. Staff, prefects, houses, moder n language societies and dr ama groups were amongst those enter taining the pupils. Women and gir ls, often the wives and daughter s of staff, had acted in school productions from ver y ear ly on, but young boys were still playing female par ts as late as the 1960s.

In 1954 a house dr ama festival had been tr ied, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that it became a regular event. By then

dr ama had been introduced as an option for boys choosing Adventure Tr aining, and an ambitious ‘Folio’ ser ies of Shakespeare plays was star ted in the 1960s. This was begun in Gisborough, but will forever be linked with the pavilion theatre where the Shakespeare production became an annual summer event, with thir ty-four different plays staged Being outside meant spectator s often shivered in the Br itish summer, but only four perfor mances were cancelled in thir ty year s. The location also gave producer s a freedom that wasn’t possible inside , such as using hor ses, flooding the floor and using the natur al sur roundings to impressive effect.

One of Derek Jar man ’ s designs for Jazz Calendar

A hand painted programme from 1925

The Munj chaps perfor ming outs de in the 1920s

In 1973, to celebr ate the school’s 50th anniver sar y, the pavilion theatre was replaced by the Manor House itself Robin Whicker’s pageant used the building as a backdrop and involved most of the school community as they told the stor y of Canford Manor and school.

Even after 1968, Chr istmas ter m productions were always indoor s. Although Gisborough was the usual venue , there were some notable exceptions, such as Murder in the Cathedr al which was put on in Wimbor ne Minster Venues such as the par ish church, John of Gaunt’s and the ar t shack were also used by enter pr ising producer s, but they all involved shar ing space with other s with consequent wasted time as rooms were cleared of one activity and prepared for another. As Canford’s golden jubilee was celebr ated, a dedicated theatre was still twenty-five year s away

Jarman’s 1960 design for Julius Caesar.

The 1973 pageant

Rob n Wright as Beckett n 1969.

‘W th ears that sweep away the mor ning dew’ – three of the stars in A Midsummer

N ght ’ s Dream, the f irst p ay n the pavil on theatre

Dr ama (Moder n)

Stap es of the costume department for over thirty years

These two costumes have been wor n by Canfordians in a var iety of per iod productions across more than thir ty year s Out of necessity, costumes are stored in var ious cor ner s of the campus, but the depar tment is one of the unsung heroes of most productions: ever yone expects the shows to look good and they do.

The fir st innovation of the 1970s was the House Dr ama Festival. Standards were mixed, but it gave lar ge number s of Canfordians the exper ience of acting. It lasted for sever al year s and was br iefly revived in the 1990s, but nowadays houses prefer to put on

lar ger scale productions which can make use of the Layard’s facilities.

The 1970s also saw the Tuesday Dr ama Group put on regular small scale plays in nearby homes and hospitals; and local dr ama festivals were entered (and often won). Staff involvement was pr imar ily as producer s, but they invar iably took roles in musicals and the occasional staff revue was well received. In 1985 an ar ticle in the Canfordian admired the state of school dr ama but looked with envy at the facilities enjoyed by ar t and music Dr ama, it ar gued, was just as impor tant as the other creative ar ts and yet there was no dr ama teacher, no proper theatre and no enthusiasm from the school to spend any money on something that was doing pretty well with what it had

Co-education had made a real difference to dr ama and the following twenty year s had produced some memor able moments on stage , but some major changes came in the 1990s The introduction of Dr ama lessons in the Shell cur r iculum and the inclusion of Dr ama as a GCSE (and later an A level) choice , led to the appointment of dedicated Dr ama teacher s. The English depar tment were still involved, but the pressure on them

A retur n for A Midsummer Night ’ s Dream Th s one was from 1983

was reduced. And, in 1998, the Layard theatre opened; dr ama had a per manent home at last Centr ally sited, with excellent facilities, it was a well-propor tioned theatre , r ather than a box squeezed into a cor ner.

Suddenly ever yone wanted to use it and, while it remains a popular venue for lectures, films and meetings, dr ama has pr ior ity. Fitting round the main production each ter m (the play, musical and junior play) are a host of house plays, sixth for m plays, GCSE and A level productions, as well as some tour ing professional shows

The last fifty year s have shown that good acting can take place anywhere , but the Layard has undoubtedly tr ansfor med Canford dr ama – both for those staging productions, but also for ever yone else . The theatre is a par t of ever yone ’ s life; and so is dr ama

One of the notebooks/d aries Robin Whicker kept for each of his p ays Th s is the 1995 Two Gent emen of Verona

‘B ood Wedd ng ’ n 1998; the f rst play in the Layard Theatre.

‘Ev ta’ in 2017: one of the stunning sets bui t by the technical staff . In 2014 the unior ‘play ’ was ‘Ol ver ’ .

The Music master who came from Clarence School (‘a fussy man ’ who looked much older than his thir ty year s) lasted only a ter m; but the next two Heads of Music stayed for for ty-five year s between them Music had a fair ly lowly place in the cur r iculum when Stuar t Leonard (1924-51) was appointed, so he was also asked to set up the OTC (CCF)! These notes from 1943, found hiding amongst the many plays he wrote for the boys, are for one of his less talented pupils.

With vir tually non-existent facilities, he star ted from a low base Sunday concer ts were held in the Great Hall (once the tables had been moved) and he was

suppor ted by headmaster Canning who hosted the Music Society in his own dr awing room Leonard somehow per suaded the BBC to broadcast a concer t of folk songs from the school in 1928 and other s followed. It helped that his wife was a professional singer and the progr ammes cer tainly spread Canford’s name . His main aim was to get pupils playing something that resembled classical music , so he would often re-score well known music to fit his meagre playing resources, without entirely destroying the composer ’ s or iginal intentions. He also wrote small scale oper as (and plays) for the pupils to perfor m.

In 1951 Antony Brown ar r ived. Not only was his wife also a professional musician (playing violin in the BSO), but all four of his children would become professionals as well He had a slightly different philosophy, wanting the school musicians to hear and, if good enough, exper ience music of the highest quality. Other BSO player s began teaching at Canford and often played in the school concer ts. These took place in Gisborough –var ious positions in the hall were tr ied for the orchestr a– and, although some of the concer ts received adver se cr iticism in The Canfordian, standards rose . His time here produced some of the

Stuart Leonard ’ s war t me notes for a young piano player

Antony Brown conduct ng in 1953. H s daughter, Iona, s on second desk. Is this the f rst photo of her play ng in an orchestra?

The jazz band in 1934

best musicians Canford has seen, including Simon Preston; and, from 1955 to 1965, there was always at least one Canfordian in the National Youth Orchestr a. He also increased the number s playing instr uments and singing chor al wor ks.

Facilities remained dire: the Music Depar tment was a damp, leaky hut next to the r iver. When Leonard’s successor, Bev Manning, was appointed in 1968, he was asked what he wanted for the Music School and replied ‘To have one ’ . In 1973, he got one , with David Willocks invited to conduct the inaugur al concer t The new building did not come without a fight as, even when agreed, one gover nor said that he would prefer ‘to see hor ses ’ heads looking out of the window,

not boys playing the violin’. That was not the major ity view, though, and Music , which until now didn’t feature on the cur r iculum, star ted to grow r apidly.

Another slight change of emphasis meant that fewer professionals played in the orchestr a but, with increasing number s of pupils lear ning instr uments, that soon became less of an issue

A regular choir was for med and subscr iption concer ts were introduced, br inging high quality professional music to Canford Music had always been a refuge for some who disliked the emphasis on spor t elsewhere , but now it was officially par t of the school cur r iculum

The Riverside Stompers in the 60s

Bev Manning rehearsing in the new Music School.

The 1977 Mikado with staff singing most of the major roles

Music (Moder n)

The Middle Easter n r ugs that hang from the walls of the Music School are wor ks of ar t in themselves, but also help to improve the acoustics of the concer t hall. Since 1973, the new building had provided much needed space , but the demand from increasing number s of musicians had outstr ipped

the facilities it provided almost as soon as it was opened.

If timetabling lessons and rehear sals was a problem, the lar ger number of musicians did mean that the orchestr a began to rely less on exter nal professionals for the main concer ts.

As Head of Music , David Warwick still wanted Canfordians to exper ience playing high quality music; but using outsider s became unnecessar y after a while . The bands for the musicals, too, compr ised Canford musicians only, even though some of the best player s were singing on stage . Musicals offered singer s an outlet for their talents, but the lack of a chapel limited the possibilities for the choir. A new emphasis on taking music outside Canford addressed this by singing ser vices in nearby cathedr als, although tr ips to London to sing at Westminster Abbey, or even abroad, became regular events as well.

The number s studying music at GCSE and A level were quite small, but gr ades were invar iably high; and Canfordians were ear ly user s of the Sibelius music progr am on computer s squeezed into a small teaching room. Most of those lear ning musical instr uments, though, were not studying Academic Music . However, a policy of requir ing ever yone to play in at least one ensemble if they lear ned an instr ument, gave pupils the exper ience of perfor ming with other musicians and lear ning more about the wider impor tance of music .

Number s continued to r ise under Chr istopher Spar khall and the Chapel Choir reached over seventy at times. There are now three regular singing groups, with the Chamber Choir and Cantabile providing oppor tunities for the best singer s and junior gir ls respectively. Annual musicals are often ambitious, but invar iably hugely successful Whereas the G & S musicals of the 1970s needed exper ienced staff voices, in 2004 the school ‘musical’ was Mozar t’s The Mar r iage of Figaro, with only pupils on stage and in the pit. The policy of putting on concer ts outside Canford continued, especially for the major annual concer t. The Lighthouse , home to the BSO, was a regular venue , as was Chr istchurch Pr ior y, both of which could cater for a

The choir tr p to Jersey in 1994

One of the wall hangings in the Music Schoo

lar ger audience as well as inspire the musicians. And, in 2016, the concer t was held in St John’s, Smith Square: a convenient site for the London based parents and OCs and cer tainly inspir ational; but something of a logistical nightmare for the Music Depar tment.

The depar tment has embr aced new media and has a Youtube channel which should be the envy of many other schools. Pupils had fir st suggested that the House Music Competition, where there were always more people

wanting to attend than was physically possible , should be live streamed. Now all concer ts are streamed and kept in a vir tual libr ar y.

Such familiar ity with technology meant that the restr ictions imposed by Covid were less than they might have been.

Choir s and musical groups continued to be rehear sed; and online perfor mances were also possible .

The quality of Canford music is special

Given the lack of space , one wonder s what might be possible once the Music School is extended

The Marr age of Figaro in 2004

Ear y Music Technology

Rehearsing the orchestra during Covid

St John ’ s, Sm th Square

t and Design (Early)

This sculpture has withstood the Br itish climate for seventy year s and is also clear ly visible in the photo of the 1952 Ar t Exhibition It mar ks the star t of a new er a in Canford Ar t.

When Canford opened there was no space to do Ar t, so no Ar t master The ar r ival of the ar t loving Cannings in 1927 made it inevitable that things would change . By 1929 the Ar t Society had been for med, one of the five

societies under the umbrella of the Canford Athenaeum. It met in the headmaster’s house but would also ar r ange visits to galler ies. A local ar tist was soon appointed as a par t-time teacher and, in 1934, Canning announced on Speech Day that ‘ we have built for Mr Ar thur Bell…a palace in which he may teach his subjects’. Presumably this was said with tongue in cheek, as the palace was actually a wooden shed leaning against the back of the fives cour ts, containing broken fur niture and an old coke stove Nicknamed the ‘Ar t Shack’, it would become the centre of school life for many. At about the same time , a Geometr ical and Mechanical Dr awing wor kshop was star ted. For most pupils this meant metalwor k, r ather than creative design and, when the teacher left in 1948, it gr adually faded from the cur r iculum.

In 1937, Ian Fleming-Williams, recognised nationally as an exper t on Constable , was appointed as Head of Ar t; and William Coldstream, later pr incipal of the Slade School of Ar t, was a regular visitor from London to teach the boys. When they left, Nell Todd became the fir st female Head of Depar tment in Canford’s histor y. She

in tur n, was replaced by Robin Noscoe , who became a major influence on a lar ge number of pupils.

With ver y limited resources, in an uninspir ing building, Canford ar t began to blossom. In 1956, together with some pupils, Noscoe built a small

extension which allowed potter y to take place When a new kiln ar r ived, ‘fir ing par ties’ were appointed. Boys would obtain over night leave from their houses and then sit up all night, using logs from The Par k to keep the fire going. Small wonder that this proved popular with some The fives cour ts, next door, housed annual Ar t exhibitions; and the unused bomb shelter s became much needed stor age . Set slightly apar t from the rest of the school, the Ar t Shack became a sanctuar y for ar t lover s, but also those who found spor t and the hear tiness of school life somewhat over power ing

Phi ip Cooper’s 1952 scu pture of two heads.

The engineer ng workshop n the 1930s

The Art Shack.

Once the new pavilion had been built, Noscoe focused on providing better facilities for Ar t. The new ar t school, now at the centre of the school, was opened in 1971. Architectur ally it bor rowed from the pavilion nearby, but the lar ge glass windows made painting a pleasure .

Noscoe retired in 1978 and his legacy can be seen, not only in the pupils he inspired to develop their ar tistic talents, but in the huge r ange of buildings and car vings that are still spread across the campus

Working inside the Art Shack.

The 1952 art exh bition

Working inside the new Art School in the 70s

The Art exhibition outside the new theatre in the 1970s.

Ar t and Design (Moder n)

Initially nicknamed the ‘Shack Palette’ this trophy has been awarded to the winner s of the House Ar t competition since the 1990s. The competition has been ver y successful at encour aging pupils who don’t study Ar t to get involved and, in some year s, liter ally the whole of a house has par ticipated in its submission.

The 1971 building had given ar t some much needed space , but things were fur ther improved when Pr incess Anne opened the Ar t & Design Centre in 1982 Two major additions in the

following year s – a new Design Technology Centre in 1994 and a significant extension to the Ar t School in 1996 – gave these subjects the room they needed Both were now examined subjects, but they offered co-cur r icular oppor tunities as well.

For some , being an academic subject like any other was a two-edged sword.

In 1983, the Head of Ar t wrote that ‘too much academic justification can obscure the ther apeutic aspects of ar t and design’ Ar t was, of cour se , an academic subject, but he felt that letting

your feelings out through paint could be a ver y useful skill, especially in a boarding school.

Throughout this time the Ar t Society remained strong. As ear lier, staff and pupils would have an animated discussion following a talk. And, as in the 1930s, (‘plus ca change…’ ) there were still staff happy to belittle what they saw as Moder n Ar t. The quality of the ar t and design remained high, and the Speech Day exhibition was always a highlight of the year.

New Heads of Depar tment brought new ideas. James Cockbur n ’ s love of Fr ance saw regular ar t tr ips there in the 1990s while , at the same time , pupils in the Design Technology depar tment had star ted winning Ar kwr ight scholar ships for their innovative designs.

The introduction of Spir it of Place , when the usual timetable was suspended, allowed Ar t (and, to a lesser extent, DT) to involve lar ge number of pupils and discover hidden ar tistic talents. Wor ks of ar t and architectur al sculptures exploded across the campus, so that The Par k, r ather than the depar tments, became the exhibition hall.

The house art trophy.

Working in what was st ll called the engineering workshop in the 1970s.

New facil t es in 1994 and 1996 offered new opportunities for pupils

2005 saw the fir st of sever al ‘Assembly’ exhibitions, clever ly timed so that the audience for the school play could admire the ar t in the inter val; and the creation of the Coldstream Galler y in the Ar t School allowed pupils and other s to have a per manent display area, with break-time coffee and brownies often accompanying the ar twor ks. 2005 also saw Richard Entwisle’s design for a wheelchair win him an inter national pr ize in the USA, having become Br itish Young Engineer of the Year a few months ear lier Computer s and 3D pr inter s have changed the way many pupils wor k, but the paint and wood of 2023 is much the same as that in 1923. Whatever the medium, Canfordians continue to produce ar t and design of the highest quality.

Richard Entwisle with his pr ze winning adaptat on of a wheelchair in 2005

Pa

The 1920s and 30s were an exciting time for film lover s - the fir st ‘talkie’ movie did not appear until 1927 – and Canfordians joined the fun by making their own films. These small boxes contain one of the two we still have from those days.

Canford had been given a cinematogr aph, an ear ly projector, in 1925 and boys had been excited by the film of Gener al Allenby fighting in Palestine Once Gisborough Hall had opened, a Cinematogr aphic Society, with a new projector, meant that films became a regular feature in the calendar Pupils were responsible for all

aspects of showing the films and those in the Oper ations Room (later the ‘O Room’) offered tour s of the equipment to interested pupils. The pupil who headed the O Room was thanked by the headmaster on Speech Day in 1936 for looking after the ‘two big talking machines’ and he added that ‘The Bar nes twins are doing really promising wor k’ lower down the school. Those Bar nes brother s made the other film we have from the 1930s (now housed in the Br ighton Museum) and went on to achieve inter national impor tance as film maker s and histor ians.

Making films became popular again in the 1960s, with shor t comic films, such as ‘Smoker s Glor y ’ , made alongside more pastor al ones, such as ‘Four Seasons’. They were screened to groups of over a hundred pupils before being re-shown on Speech Day, and then again, over ten year s later, in an Ar t Society retrospective .

The advent of video and smar tphones made film-making accessible to ever yone Some of the ear ly excitement may now have disappeared, but it still provides an ideal medium for a r ange of activities from spoof house films to ar t installations and mar keting

One of the f i ms produced by Canford ans in the 1930s.

Canford cricket in 1937 through the eyes of the Bar nes brothers.

A still from the 1963 ‘Four Seasons’ showing pupils preparing to show a film from the O Room.

32: The Spoken Word

If it is true that schools like Canf ord teach pupils to be conf ident and selfreliant, then the John of Gaunt ’ s Society (and similar g roups) must take some of the credit It is probabl y the oldest society at Canf ord and this bell, used to call speakers to account, was gi ven by Enid Canning, the headmaster’s wif e, to celebrate the 100th meeting.

Debates encourage par ticipants to think and speak clearl y, but the y do not ha ve a monopol y on this. Pupils wanting stimulating discussion without the g ladiatorial element ha ve been able to join a discussion g roup since the earl y da ys. Dr Reid, soon to be sacked f or his apparent Catholic

tendencies, had star ted the Canf ord Athenaeum in 1927. Initiall y it discussed archaeolog y, but soon incorporated the Literar y, Ar t, Natural Histor y and Photog raph y Societies. The presentation of a paper would be f ollowed by a discussion, but topics were clearl y limited.

Similar discussion g roups continued to of f er pupils the chance to discuss subjects that interested them, but e ven in the questioning 1960s the y still tended to be f ocused on par ticular areas: the War ren centred its papers on philosoph y, politics and religion, while the J Group, which included scientists as well, had a wider brief , but literar y themes dominated. The War ren had the added attraction of occasionall y in viting girls from Godolphin to attend

For the last thir ty years, the principal discussion g roup has been Heretics. It f ollows the same f or mat as other g roups, with par ticipants recommended by all staf f; but no subject is of f limits. Howe ver, a range of societies, such as SMAC f or the sciences, ensures that all interested pupils can f ind a home some where; and similar g roups f or younger pupils should mean that there are al wa ys Canf ordians who enjoy an animated discussion.

A JoG debate held in the library in 1987

The John of Gaunt s bell

A JoG debate in the Great Hall n 1938.

The Written Word

Desktop publishing has meant that pr inting presses like this one are now only used for niche wor ks, where ‘Hand pr inted’ car r ies some cachet. Before that Canford has had a proud histor y of producing books, star ting with the Guest family, whose Canford Press was responsible for some beautiful editions.

Wr iting can be a solitar y occupation but having one ’ s oeuvre in pr int can act as an incentive , and pupils have produced poems and ar ticles for publication since Canford star ted The Canfordian was an obvious outlet for creativity, but scores of school and house magazines, of var ying quality,

have rolled off the school presses.

Mountjoy Press, star ted in a classroom but based in the cellar s from 1953, was r un by pupils. It suffered at the hands of damp on occasions, but produced a lar ge par t of the school’s pr inting for decades, such as progr ammes and cards.

In 1970/1 an ambitious group of pupils, whose number s included sever al who would later wr ite for a living, produced some volumes of their own poems, but also per suaded three of the Liver pool poets, including Roger McGough, to wr ite for them. The 70s was also when jour nalism star ted, with Cabbage

offer ing some scur r ilous thoughts, before it was followed by In Focus and countless other paper s, including the Amoebaean and the present day Blue Bubble .

Outside English lessons, groups such as Goat Herder s, star ted in 1997, have encour aged creative wr iting, as have wr iting tr ips, Spir it of Place and other events which offer pupils the chance to be inspired by their sur roundings. And if the end product is a beautiful booklet, pr inted at school, that is a bonus.

A pr nting press that is st l used by pupils for smal sca e projects

The Stour Review had f i ve ed t ons in 1925 but Vo ume 2 never materialised

Mount oy press n 1959

Some of the pupi publ cations from the 1970s and 1980s

Science Outside the Classroom

Canford has al ways been very successf ul in Science. Helped initiall y by the lack of any historical focus on Classics (unlike many older schools) and helped f urther, some would say, by the requirement for all pupils to study three Sciences to GCSE for many years, this was perhaps unsurprising. This model, designed to help women required to carry water for long distances in drought stricken parts of the world, was created as part of the STEM (Science, Technolog y, Engineering, Maths) co-curricular prog ramme for girls. Some of the most successf ul earl y societies at Canford were based round scientif ic topics, such as

electronics, radio and the Science Society itself. By 1950 the Canfordian was complaining about the low numbers turning up to Science Society meetings, unless a f ilm was shown when over 200 often attended

In 1978 a revitalised and reformed society arranged weekl y meetings which included visits outside Canford as well as an impressi ve series of speakers at Canford on topics as di verse as cryogenics, nuclear waste, genetics, lasers and a ‘ very amusing’ one on neutrinos! Talks have remained the lifeblood of the society since, whether gi ven by

outside speakers or pupils themselves. As SMAC (Science, Maths and Computing), the society has broadened its remit slightl y, but the importance of science remains high.

STEM acti vities range from the lighthearted rocket car races, to the more daunting dissection skills in the Shell carousel; but, unlike their forebears, Shells no longer have to produce their own ‘victims’ for dissection.

A competition design for a water carrier.

A membership card for the revamped society

The 2006 rocket car competition.

Shells learning to dissect m ce.

Suspending the Cur riculum

Spir it of Place was launched in 2005 to ener gise the end of the summer ter m. The str uggle of post-exam lessons was replaced by pupils constr ucting and rehear sing ideas that could be showcased on Speech Day itself. As far as possible , senior pupils led the younger ones and many of the ar t projects were inspired by Canford itself Both the trebuchet and dr umming were ear ly examples of that

Much ear lier, the annual Gener al Knowledge quiz ended the Easter ter m The questions, many of which would fr ighten today’s pupils (and staff!) showed that a wide r ange of knowledge was assumed; but the 1957 Canfordian made it clear that pupils had an ‘individual responsibility’ to widen their per spectives by reading, visiting libr ar ies and watching films.

A Gener al Studies progr amme was introduced for the L6th in 1973. In addition, many staff used that year to teach topics beyond the for mal syllabus, but that was given a blow in 1989 when AS (Advanced Subsidiar y) levels were introduced by the gover nment. The Gener al Studies progr amme was revamped, but that tar geted only one year group so, in 1993, Theme Weeks were begun, where lectures took the place of lessons for ever yone . The for mat has since been tweaked and renamed the Festival of Ideas, but the concept remains the same .

For sever al year s, SLAM offered the 4th for m the chance to stop lessons for three days and take a cross-cur r icular look at some big topics. Some staff complain that exam pressures make it difficult to per suade pupils to look at the wider picture , but it must be r are for anyone to be unaffected by what is on offer here .

The trebuchet, f rst bu lt dur ng Sp r t of Place, but used severa t mes since

General knowledge papers from 1943 and 1962

T-shirts for Mi lennium, America, and Man & the Ocean Theme Weeks.

Academic Trips

The boundar y between academic trips and those ar ranged purel y f or pleasure, is dif f icult to dra w In 1925 Canf ordians f or med par t of the par ty of f ifty who sailed up the Norwegian fjords. Undoubtedl y the y lear ned a g reat deal about another culture, but it was not sold as that This coral was f ound in the Channel on one of the di ving trips organised by the Biolog y depar tment. Di ving was the principal aim, but the g roup established that the coral g re w much f ur ther east than had pre viousl y been thought, so the academic credentials of the trip were be yond doubt

For some subjects, such as Geog raph y, f ield trips ha ve been a necessar y par t of the cur riculum from earl y on. Biolog y, too, f ound that trips to the Welsh coast were f ar more producti ve than sta ying at home. Moder n Language teachers know that pupils lear n best when required to speak in the target language, so trips to the continent were popular.

The Histor y trip to the 1st World War trenches has been a regular f ixture on the calendar since 1988, and nowada ys it is a rare depar tment that doesn ’t organise an outing. Business Studies pupils visit successf ul companies, the Eng lish depar tment makes an annual trip to the Cheltenham Festi val and the Ph ysics depar tment organise one of the most popular da ys out to Thorpe Park If the c ynics think this is just a joll y, the prog ramme the depar tment designed f or the L6th pupils is now par t of Thorpe Park’s educational prog ramme and is used by other schools.

Some Dorset coral.

About to enjoy the pleasures of a German market in Koln

A banner for the Cheltenham festival now hangs in the English department.

Canford physicists learning about centripeta acceleration at Thorpe Park.

Rome 2022

Co-cur ricular Life

For many year s spor t dominated the pages of The Canfordian and few things were deemed more impor tant than excellence at games That obsession has gone , but spor t remains a significant par t of most pupils’ lives and there are oppor tunities to par ticipate and improve at all levels and ages. Most Canfordians are also regular visitor s to the Outdoor Centre through the CCF, Duke of Edinbur gh Award or other or ganised tr ips

Riding is no longer a Canford activity but, for many year s, it r anked near ly as highly as r ugby, hockey and cr icket. It cer tainly helped establish Canford’s name even if it became something of an albatross later. Other activities and societies, however, continue to flour ish. Shell pupils are encour aged to tr y almost ever ything in the hope that all pupils will find something they can enjoy at Canford and afterwards.

Iain Campbell, probably the best spor tsman ever to have come through Canford, excelled at any game he tr ied He captained the Public Schools cr icket XI (and stood in for Godfrey Evans when he couldn’t play for Kent), was badly injured in the final Scottish r ugby tr ial and played hockey for England Despite all his other spor ting achievements, he is probably best remembered at Canford for the double centur y he scored against Downside in 1945 This scorebook records that innings

Cr icket has been played on Mountjoy since at least the 1860s when member s of the Guest family played for the I Zingar i

club. As soon as the school ar r ived there were complaints that three trees on the edge of Mountjoy were interfer ing with play. In 1924 the gover nor s gave per mission for the small chestnut and lime to be removed but not the ‘handsome cedar tree’. Complaints continued, but now, r ather like the oak at Canterbur y, it is seen as one of Canford’s idiosyncr asies. In 1925 Will Reeves became Canford’s fir st professional coach on £225pa, a house and commission (more than a young teacher). His sense of humour as an inter national umpire was well-known; but one hopes he wasn’t responsible for the advice to bowler s in the 1928 Canfordian to ‘keep a good length and keep plodding on ’ .

Old Canfordians can ar gue as to which er a of school cr icket was the strongest, but Canfordians have regular ly gone on to play county cr icket and that remains the case , with two OCs now playing for Hampshire and a third in the England U19s. In 1995 Canford became the fir st English school to win the Sir Garfield Sober s inter national competition in Barbados. Perhaps gir ls will be following in their tr acks soon. Until recently teams tended to compr ise the few gir ls who played boys’ cr icket and other s with a good eye for a ball, but there is now a thr iving and successful gir ls’ club which plays cr icket regular ly.

The scorebook where Iain Campbel ’ s doub e hundred s recorded

The brochure for the S r Garf ield Sobers compet t on

The I Zingari team at Canford.

A cricket match on Mountjoy in 1966

Boys Only: Rugby and Football

In the 19th centur y boys at Rugby School wore caps with tassels when the y pla yed. To the moder n e ye it seems an unsuitable f or m of dress, but most rugby caps since then ha ve f ollowed the same tradition, e ven if the y are no longer wor n to pla y. Keen to establish itself as an or thodox Public School, Canf ord ’ s rugby caps f ollowed that tradition; no other Canf ord cap has a tassel

With the recent success of the Eng land women ’ s f ootball and rugby sides, Canf ord girls ma y soon want to pla y these spor ts seriousl y but, apar t from the occasional inf or mal game, the y remain boys’ spor ts. To begin

success In 1997 the 7s team won the National competition at Rossl yn Park and se veral OCs ha ve gone on to pla y prof essional rugby since, with two mak ing their debut f or Bath in 2021 Gi ven the concer ns about longer ter m injur y, the wider question is whether school rugby will go the same wa y as boxing, although the present club thri ves, both in ter ms of numbers and results.

with rugby suf f ered less from the lack of numbers in the Sixth For m that would ha ve been thought. The 1923 side contained nine boys who had pla yed f or the Clarence 1st XV the pre vious year (although there had been a distinct lack of choice there as well) and, in 1925, all ele ven matches were won The results f lattered to decei ve and were not approached f or years

A pre vious histor y suggested that Canf ordians lacked the k iller instinct to make them ver y successf ul at rugby, but that has proved wrong Admittedl y it did take ninety years bef ore a f ull strength Sherbor ne team was beaten a wa y, but there has been plenty of

Heading apar t, the same questions do not arise in f ootball, a f airl y ne w spor t as f ar as Canf ord is concer ned. Wor ries as to whether Canf ord is large enough to suppor t f ootball alongside rugby and hocke y meant that onl y those who couldn ’t (or wouldn ’t) pla y rugby could opt f or ‘non-squad ’ f ootball. That all changed

in 2005 when some inf or mal matches were ar ranged and the genie was out Now more boys pla y f ootball than rugby in the Sixth For m and, with rugby remaining strong, there ma y soon be two main Christmas Ter m spor ts.

The national 7s trophy from 1997.

A recent match against C ayesmore.

1st XV colours from 1936.

Girls Only: Netball and Lacrosse

Nowadays lacrosse sticks, like tennis rackets, hockey sticks and most other sporting equipment, are usuall y made from metal or a composite material; but, in the 1970s, they were invariabl y wooden. This one, used by Canfordians, onl y survi ves because it forms part of the House Lacrosse Troph y

Initiall y girls at Canford had no competiti ve sport: they could choose to play sociall y but there were too few girls to form teams In 1974 the f irst hockey match was arranged and, a few years later, both tennis and lacrosse teams were playing matches and having team photos taken. Women’s lacrosse – aways more popular than the men ’ s version in this country – does not allow some of the excesses seen in the male game, but remains an exciting sport When f ull co-education arri ved in 1995, it was replaced by netball (because there

were more readil y available coaches); but, by 2009, the clamour from the nonnetballers brought lacrosse’s return. Now that hockey is rarel y played on g rass, lacrosse games take pride of place on the hallowed turf of Mountjoy.

Netball started in 1995 and, with onl y a few weeks’ practice, the Canford 1st VII beat Bryanston, the South-West champions, in a Dorset tournament. Success has not al ways been so straightforward, as the local competition is f ierce, but the 1st VII won the Dorset County competition in 2003 and several times since. Sometimes belittled by the boys as basketball-lite, netball is as much about anticipation and movement off the ball as it is about passing. A girls’ team recentl y proved a point to their denig rators by thrashing them in a ‘friendl y ’ game.

An early Canford lacrosse stick

A netball match in 2008

A lacrosse match n 2013 on Mountjoy

Spor ts in Water

As it r uns through Canford, the Stour is nar row and full of bends, hardly the ideal place to row. However, the appointment of Jack Collins, a huge rowing Blue , as the chaplain led to its introduction. Together with Tom Nash, he for med a boat club in 1933 Pair s and sculls were bought from Eton, dead trees and old bikes were removed from the r iver and soon the school was enter ing regattas. This cup was given to each of the Canford crew who won the Public Schools IVs regatta at Mar low in 1950, the school’s fir st major success.

Wor k by the River Board dur ing the 1950s meant that VIIIs could row on the Stour and by 1960 the club could boast over a hundred member s and sent its fir st crew to Henley. The boys’ crews have been Head of the River more than once and were Henley finalists in 1997. A gir ls’ VIII was 2nd at the Head of the River as ear ly as 1994 and, in 2011/12, the gir ls’ IV dominated schools rowing. Canfordian rower s continue to represent GB at all levels

Sailing can claim to be the only tr uly co-educational spor t, where gir ls and boys compete on equal ter ms and sail together in the same boats. Pupils had been able to sail a 16’ yacht in Weymouth harbour for sever al year s before the war, but the sailing club did not really take off until 1950. A fleet of Porchester Ducks (and later Fireflies and 420s) used Poole harbour for many year s, and the club won the National Schools’ Championships in 1964, with a new Firefly as a pr ize .

Swimming has been par t of the cur r iculum since Canford opened. Hatch Hole , outside the mill, provided the facilities and the sluice gates had to be adjusted to make sure there was enough depth for diving. By the 1950s the Stour was too polluted to allow

swimming but an outside pool was built in 1955 and an all-weather plastic bubble later allowed year-round swimming Now the impressive indoor facilities mean that talented Canfordians can swim with the outside clubs who use the pool

Canfordians no longer kayak down the salmon leap but kayaking remains an activity and pupils have often competed in the Devizes-Westminster r ace .

A winner’s cup from the 1950 Marlow Regatta

Rowing at Henley against Eton n 2011

Sa lors in 1999.

Di ving in the new pool in 1956.

This stick comes from a time when Canford was r arely beaten by another school, sever al boys represented England and the strength of the school’s hockey was widely recognised The quality of the playing surface on Mountjoy and the presence of inter national player s on the staff meant that, from the 1930s, the school’s best results were in hockey; but this success

at the top of the school was not reflected elsewhere in the school where the system was somewhat haphazard

An open letter in 1934 bemoaned a situation where , unlike in r ugby and cr icket, there was no regular coach for the Colts (who had only one school match anyway). For even younger

pupils there were no or ganised teams at all, with boys relying on the disor ganised nature of house hockey if they wanted to play or be coached.

Hockey matches continued through the war, even if the opponents changed. When ‘Hoppy’ (Fr ank Hopkinson) left to join up there was no-one to coach the 1st XI so, in 1942 and 1943, the responsibility fell to the captain - with no apparent effect on the good results! Later the coaching was led by ‘Hank’ (John Hankinson) who had never played the spor t himself, but would soon add ‘Hockey for Schools’ to his ever increasing list of spor ts coaching guides

By the 1950s there were as many fixtures against other schools as against clubs, although the latter, such as the Dor set team, often provided the strongest opposition As well as their regular matches, the Oxford Schools’ Hockey Festival became a regular event allowing Canford to play (and beat) four or five different schools from across the countr y.

How hockey was coached and played changed significantly when the fir st Astro was laid down in 1973 The ar r ival of the second one in 1999,

A ‘Canford ’ hockey stick from the 1950s

Mountjoy was good enough to host the England trial n 1939

Hockey on Mountjoy in the 1950s.

together with some r adical changes in the shape and mater ial of hockey sticks means that hockey is now a significantly different game from the one that gr aced Mountjoy for so long. Floodlights have also meant that pupils can play for longer

Hockey also played a significant par t in the success of full co-education In 1999, only four year s after the fir st Shell gir l had ar r ived, a ver y young, but ver y talented, group won the National Schools U16 title . They won it again the following year and, with many gir ls still in the team from 1999, probably should have won it again in 2001 but lost the final. Since then there has never been any question that gir ls’ hockey at Canford is at least as strong as the boys’ hockey. Boys’ sides have

ar r anged inter national tour s since the 1980s, but the gir ls have two regular inter national fixtures. Ever y two year s a strong team from Cr aighouse School in Chile visits; and, after 1st XI tour s in the ear ly nineties had established links with some clubs, an annual Shell tr ip to the Nether lands (with a retur n visit in the summer) has been r unning for near ly twenty-five year s

Despite the attr actions of other spor ts such as football and lacrosse , gir ls’ and boys’ hockey remains ver y strong.

County championships are won ever y year and in 2016/7 the school won all three age groups for both gir ls and boys. There is also regular success at regional and national level

Playing Stowe at Lords in 1983 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of both schools A few months later the team toured Hong Kong

Canford girls w nning the national U16 t t e in 1999, together with a w nner ’ s medal

In 1974 Bryanston were the opponents in the f rst girls’ match.

Real Tennis and other Racket Spor ts

This ancient r acket now hangs behind the dedans in the real tennis cour t It may have been Lord Wimbor ne ’ s but more probably it ar r ived with Mr Mar shall of Seacour t Club who used to play Canford in the 1930s

Lord Ivor Guest built the cour t in 1879 (together with a r ackets cour t) although it was not the fir st at Canford as a 1541 document refer s to a tennis cour t close to where John of Gaunt’s stands He so loved the spor t that a por tr ait of him

holding a r acket hung above the fireplace in the libr ar y

When Canford inher ited the cour ts, they were not in good condition Thir teen schools then had r ackets cour ts and none had a real tennis cour t but Canford chose to restore the tennis cour t as it was in better condition In 1927 a letter to The Canfordian suggested that ‘ we have consider ably more than the shell of a Rackets Cour t in our midst’ and ur ged the school

Our oldest tenn s racket

Lord Ivor Guest, the tenn s player

The roof of the rackets court is c early visible to the left of the real tenn s court.

to br ing the building back to life but the request failed and squash cour ts were built within its walls a few year s later. There were complaints that they flooded easily and were far too hot in war m weather but the fir st match took place in 1933 and the club has never looked back For many year s the cr icket professional looked after real tennis as well but the situation now, where dedicated professionals r un the facilities, which are shared between the school and an outside club, wor ks well.

Apar t from the real tennis cour t, there were also two hard lawn tennis cour ts ready for use in 1923 and for ty boys star ted playing that summer. The spor t was given a fillip in 1936 when Canford beat Mar lborough in the final of the Public Schools competition at Queen’s Club, although the repor t in the Daily Express was far from flatter ing when it said the schools ‘ … gave an admir able lesson in lawn tennis by demonstr ating how doubles should not be played Canford won simply because one school had to’. Nowadays six hard and twenty-four Astro cour ts cater for pupils who want to play tennis dur ing the summer, a hundred year s after the fir st pupils played

If lawn tennis was the fir st r acket spor t to be played at Canford, badminton is the newest A leaver in 1942 claimed to have been in the Badminton Club, but that must have been ver y infor mal as, in 1956, a pupil found some equipment under the stage and asked to play badminton in the gym. He was tur ned down as the space was fully booked and told that ‘There are probably more recreation and leisure-time activities at Canford than at any other school’ It must have been

galling, therefore , to find a cour t mar ked out later that could only be used by staff families By 1972 a small amount of badminton had crept into the Minor Spor ts progr amme but the new Spor ts Centre

changed ever ything. The club now oper ates throughout the year, has matches against other schools, joins in a local league; and is par ticular popular with some over seas pupils.

Players in 1925

1984 girls’ squash team Badminton p ayers in 2011

Tennis in 1962

Spor ts that Haven’t Sur vived

David Wilson, who didn’t enjoy his time at Canford, wrote in his autobiogr aphy: ‘On the fir st night we were gathered in one of the lar ge classrooms and Hoppy or ganised a compulsor y boxing match. The introduction to my new school fr iends was not with handshake but a punch’. That was in 1958, at about the time these gloves were being used by Monteacutians; and when some at Canford were star ting to question whether boxing be continued.

The fir st house boxing competition had been held less than a year after Canford opened and may well have taken place in an impromptu r ing outside on the lawn next to the main buildings as it did six year s later. Boxing was tr aditionally supposed to teach self-confidence , self-control, cour age , toler ance and mutual respect and those reasons were still being advanced in 1965 when the master in char ge was inter viewed for The Canfordian. The

spor t was taken ser iously by Canfordians and their coach, in 1953, was accused by Winchester of wanting to win too much. In the same year, John Hardie wrote to his opposite number at Sherbor ne suppor ting boxing as ‘Canford has never been remar kable for its toughness, [and] there is no doubt that boxing has helped the spir it of the place’. By 1962 boxing was optional; the following year many schools banned boxing for those over 11 stone and in 1964 a parent refused to allow his son to box in matches In a Canfordian inter view it was ar gued that there was ‘ a lot of uninfor med and emotional cr iticism about boxing from a minor ity who adopt a pseudo-psychological approach’ but the wr iting was on the wall. In 1971 the match against Winchester was cancelled as Canford

no longer had a tr ainer, and the spor t didn’t make another appear ance in the magazine .

Fencing had a compar atively br ief place in the sun. The fencing cup had been donated in 1923, but that was an act of faith r ather than a reflection of its popular ity as no evidence for its having been done at Canford exists until 1949 when a suitably qualified member of staff ar r ived at the school. Matches were ar r anged almost immediately and the club flour ished throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The club’s repor t in 1979 war ned that the loss of their best fencer s would lead to a per iod of rebuilding but there is r adio silence after 1980, except for the successes of individual pupils who ar r anged their own tr aining

Monteacute’s boxing gloves

Boxing on the Franklin Lawn in 1929.

The fives cour ts were officially opened in 1928 with the fir st match ar r anged in 1931 as the game became more popular. In the 1960s sever al matches were played dur ing the year but in 1965 the club complained about a shor tage of good player s and teams star ted to lose badly It remained an activity for sever al year s but the last recorded match in 1971 was a heavy defeat against Sherbor ne When the teacher r unning the spor t left in 1973 that was the death knell for anything except recreational games By the star t of the 1990s the cour ts were used as a stor age area for recycling and in 1995 they suffered the ultimate fate when they were flattened to make room for the new Spor ts Centre .

Success in the 1955 box ng and fenc ng tour nament

Fencing in 1964

Gisborough and the f ves courts prov ding a backdrop to riding in 1929

Col n Akers being coached by Gerald Brodribb in 1950

Some Other Spor ts

Ed ward Ewar t won this Victor Ludorum cup in each of the f irst three years of Canf ord ’ s existence and his spor ting credentials (he was also captain of the 1st XV) were such that he was employed as a junior spor ts coach after he had left the school. Presenting the cup at the f irst Spor ts

Da y, on a g lorious summer ’ s da y, was Lad y Wimbor ne but, after the e vent moved to March, it lost some of its spark le There ha ve been other excellent athletes at Canf ord, but the y tend to hide their light under a bushel.

The dismantling of the much hit bridge that allowed Canf ordians to run across to the heath has meant that crosscountr y races are now held within The Park or of f-site. The weather (and spectators being unable to watch the whole race) means that this is a less g lamorous spor t than most, but it remains one of the f e w where most of the school (to sa y nothing of se veral staf f ) compete in the house competition.

Canf ord is still one of the f e w schools to ha ve its own golf course. There were plans to build one in the 1920s and f und-raising e vents were held, but the y came to nothing. An idiosyncratic course was laid out on Tadmoors during the polio epidemic but, in 1984, an excellent nine hole course was built within the g rounds

Now golf can claim to be the second trul y co-educational spor t (tee positions apar t) with boys and girls competing in the same team.

Unsurprising l y, these f acilities, together with the ad vent of the Terence Pike golf scholarship, ha ve brought success, and the school is a regular f inalist in national school competitions

Ewart’s Victor Ludorum cup from 1925.

Sports Day 1937.

An inter-school cross-country race in The Park in 1966

The go f team practising before a match at the Racing C ub de Paris in 2005.

Tug of War 1929

From OTC, through JTC, to CCF

For many year s, near ly ever y pupil was a member of the Officer Tr aining Cor ps. Although the hor ror s of the 1st Wor ld War were ver y recent, pupils knew that they had an empire to defend and threw themselves into lear ning about soldier ing. The band was an impor tant par t of the OTC from ver y ear ly on and this dr um major sash, embroidered with real gold thread, was wor n in par ades.

The OTC had been for med within a year of Canford star ting and pupils were attending Tidwor th camp, a six hour dr ive away, by 1924 Soon afterwards the ar mour y and shooting r ange became the school’s fir st new building. It opened in 1926 and the popular ity of shooting led to almost immediate success in sever al national competitions, including winning the Public School pair s at Bisley in 1932.

Until the war, the OTC (and later the Junior Tr aining Cor ps) was essentially about lear ning ar my skills, but changes in funding (and name; it became the CCF in 1949), together with John Hardie’s desire to br ighten up what the CCF did, led to the creation of a RN and RAF section which quickly became popular, with pupils wanting to sail or gain their gliding ‘wings’

The CCF was not immune to the anti-author ity feelings at the end of the 1960s and, in 1969, the CCF became optional. The number of pupils joining dropped by about 75% and some people wondered whether having a CCF at all had become anachronistic . Those with concer ns need not have wor r ied; the phoenix would soon r ise as the CCF’s popular ity retur ned

Tidworth camp in 1928.

The drum ma or sash

The CCF band in 1967.

CCF signal ers.

Pupil power propel ing the gl der n the early days of the RAF sect on

The CCF since 1970

The popular ity of today’s CCF is in mar ked contr ast to the number s in the ear ly 1970s. It is still voluntar y, but most pupils now choose to join for at least two year s and many stay on to become NCOs in the sixth for m. This field gun is designed for schools, to mimic the classic field gun r ace , par t of the Royal Tour nament until 1999.

Few pupils have ever enjoyed marching, and inspections will probably never again have the precision of yester year Most pupils see it as a necessar y evil, while they anticipate what else is on offer : getting dir ty

dur ing mock battles, tr ips to the Norwegian snowfields, Ten Tor s expeditions and dr iving tanks.

Cadets in the 1980s and 1990s were given an autonomy that is not possible nowadays, but it encour aged

Canfordians to be adventurous New regulations mean that staff have to wor k hard to ensure today’s Canfordians still face challenges A wide var iety of activities continues to teach them soft skills that are hard to acquire elsewhere

Canford was only the th rd school in the countr y to have a pair of f ie d guns.

Preparing for a night in a Norwegian snowho e in 2010

A 1971 CCF record book. Launch ng an attack n the 1980s.

Outdoor Activities

Cooking using a Tr angia remains the default system for cooking on camping tr ips. Food still sticks to the surface , but the inherent danger of using meths as a fuel has meant there is now a moder n gas ver sion.

For most of Canford’s histor y there has been an alter native to the CCF, especially for younger pupils. For a few br ief year s in the 1930s, scouting was offered for about fifty boys, but it was axed in 1939 as it was thought ‘unsuitable to the Canford conditions’

After the war, the fir st year in the CCF was seen as an introduction to what was to follow; but, in 1965 a separ ate group was set up (soon to be called Ter r ier s) where Shells lear ned the basics of fieldcr aft without the

marching Their Whole Day Enter pr ise tasks, designed to test their ingenuity, would send shiver s down the spine of today’s safety conscious staff. In 1966 each group was given 30/- (£1 50) and a list of tasks which took them up to 35 miles from the school under their own steam

More senior pupils had to rely on the CCF for expeditions, unless they were one of the few selected to go on the Br itish Schools Explor ing Society’s tr ips to Norway, Labr ador, Sweden and Iceland between 1949 and 1960.

Adventure Tr aining, star ted in 1968, was designed to encour age self-reliance and, for many year s, their tr ips offered more challenge than was possible in the CCF. More recently, the Duke of

Edinbur gh Award scheme , recognised throughout the wor ld, has become the means through which many pupils, including some in the CCF, take par t in expeditions. Canford is an accredited

centre and up to 35 pupils now complete the gold award ever y year

A Trangia from the 1970s

Scouts in 1935 There were 36 juniors, 9 seniors and 3 staff, almost all of whom are in the photo.

A Go d D of E exhibition group on top of Pen-Y-Fan, the h ghest po nt n the Brecon Beacons, in 2014

Using the Trang a in 1987 in the Brecon Beacons

‘1928 Wimbor ne ’ is the fir st entr y on the Macnutt trophy, presented by Canford’s fir st headmaster as a pr ize for the house r iding competition. It soon became the four th most prestigious after r ugby, hockey and cr icket; perhaps not that sur pr ising given that over sixty boys had signed up to the activity within the fir st few months, with the number closing in on a hundred not long afterwards. It was a

small tr iumph for the Cannings, keen r ider s themselves, who had only ar r ived at Canford in 1927 br inging their hor ses with them. The limited time they had available for r iding meant that they encour aged pupils to help exercise their hor ses and, later, to br ing in their own. Instr uction was taken ver y ser iously with ex-cavalr y instr uctor s acknowledged as full member s of the Master s ’ Common Room.

In 1928 the open-air r iding school was opened and Speech Day contained the fir st annual display, full of jumping over fences, musical chair s – the mind boggles - and the popular tr ick r iding. Hear ing of Canford’s prowess, the Olympia Selection Committee visited the school ‘in the wor st possible weather’ but, impressed by the skills and the pupils pr actising for a week in the holidays, extended an invitation. As repor ted in The Field, for ‘the fir st time in the long histor y of the Inter national Hor se Show a boys’ public school will enter the arena. Most proper ly this honour has fallen to Canford School, the pioneer r iding school in England’.

Olympia was an exciting one-off but the quotidian r iding continued to blossom, with regular gymkhanas and matches against other schools. One OC , wr iting from Oxford in 1939, recalled ‘the cold wind of a gallop in one ’ s face and the view of Poole from the Moor s ’ when out for an ear ly mor ning r ide , so the simple pleasures were enjoyed as much as the gr and events. One wonder s how many pieces of paper and Risk Assessments would be needed for such outings nowadays. That letter, perhaps, represented the highpoint of Canford r iding as the war meant that events had to be scaled back. In 1941 Capt Goldingham, the

The Macnutt trophy

The feeding record for the horses

r iding instr uctor, joined the ar my and a long ter m replacement was never found. At one stage there were ‘seventy-two r ider s and only three hor ses ’ and, even with help from the Canning daughter s, r iding’s slow decline seemed inevitable .

As late as 1949 there was still a Speech Day display and the House competition was r unning in 1958; but later that year r iding was stopped No-one complained and discussion centred on the future use of the r iding school. One letter suggested an all-weather pr actice area for hockey and cr icket; but the headmaster had his eyes on making it into a gymnasium, once a benefactor could be found. The timing of r iding’s demise had a cer tain irony to it as, in the

school at the time , were the Cecil twins, Henr y and David, whose career s would involve hor ses more than that of any other OC

In 1995 full co-education led to the reintroduction of r iding at local stables but total number s were nearer a half dozen r ather than the eighty or ninety of the halcyon days. The standard was often high and Canford’s name still occasionally appeared on the national r iding stage as when four gir ls rode at the Windsor Hor se Show in 2015; but that was more a flag of convenience than an indication of any significant stir r ings back at school. And then the r iding school closed and Canford’s link with r iding was over

The r ding school painted by a pupil.

The r ding display on Speech Day

R ding n 2016

Huntin’, Shootin’ and Fishin’

The Angling Club’s ‘Big Fish Book’ records all the main catches that pupils have taken in the Stour between Feb 1968 and Sep 1989 (including a 32lb salmon and a 19lb pike) but fishing had been a popular activity for many year s before the book was star ted

Clifford Canning, the second headmaster, was a keen fisher man from 1927 onwards, using it as an oppor tunity to get away from the pressures of r unning a school; and the Fishing Society was one of the fir st clubs to be star ted The sizes of the fish have changed over the year s but salmon continue to leap the weir on

their jour ney upstream, and the area outside the old mill remains one of the best places to catch a specimen fish.

The Guests probably fished but were cer tainly keen shots and used to r un huge shooting weekends both at Canford and in Scotland The number of birds they bagged is difficult to believe with one three day shoot in 1888 including 2400 pheasants, 800 duck and lar ge number s of other assor ted animals. Their shooting par ties always included the great and the good (the Pr ince of Wales once stayed at Canford and took par t in the shoot), but Lord Wimbor ne also r an r abbit

The front page of the Big Fish Book w th Jo Guest ’ s nstruct ons

Ed Ho loway with an impress

shooting par ties for his tenants When Canford was sold the shooting stopped, much to the disappointment of countr y pur suits magazines who bemoaned the loss of one of the ‘greatest shoots in the countr y ’ .

For most pupils the only shooting allowed was on the r ifle r ange or at Bisley, as par t of the OTC , where Canford had some ear ly success However, one or two pr ivileged pupils were given per mission to shoot wildlife in the grounds dur ing the holidays as long as they passed on what they shot to staff. Nicholas Br ay, the fir st Head of Salisbur y, was allowed to shoot r abbits and hares but, at the height of the meat r ationing dur ing the war, shot a lar ge cygnet on the Stour and smuggled it home where it officially became a goose and was eaten for Chr istmas lunch.

A little ear lier, a four teen year-old Michael Toosey was allowed to take his 12 bore shotgun round the grounds and heath as long as the gun was kept locked in his housemaster’s study between shoots. He ensured a regular supply of duck, pigeon, hares and r abbits for the meat-star ved staff, although one kill ended in his falling in the r iver and having to hold a dead duck in his mouth as he swam to the bank

Whereas fishing thr ives and shooting sur vives, if only in a ver y regulated for m, hunting has not been seen at Canford since the 1930s. For sever al year s the Por tman Hunt was a regular visitor to the school with some pupils joining the r ide and many other s following on foot Canning himself would sometimes join the hunt and, on one occasion was presented with the ‘br ush’ from the dead fox, the whole chase then detailed in The Canfordian. The Por tman Hunt still exists but any connection with Canford is long gone .

A 1947 Bisley shoot ng badge

Lord Wimbor ne at a hunt

The Portman Hunt at Canford

The Portman Hunt at Canford

Societies and Activities

In 1945 the recently enobled Lord Br abazon of Tar a handed out the pr izes on Speech Day. In 1909 he had been the fir st Englishman to fly an air plane , but he chose to commemor ate his visit through chess Pupils had competed for chess pr izes since at least 1931, but this cup (one of two he presented) is now one of Canford’s oldest sur viving cups

More than anything else , the popular ity of societies waxes and wanes according to the enthusiasm of those r unning them. They offer the chance for pupils to find new interests and can ser ve as an oasis from the frenetic life of a boarding school. The Histor ical and Archaeological Society was so successful that, following a talk from the head of the Egyptian section at the Br itish Museum, Canford was one of the schools selected to receive sever al ar tefacts found on a Br itish excavation in Egypt Sadly they have disappeared without tr ace .

The John of Gaunt’s Society, founded in October 1923, has always claimed precedence , but societies for fishing, music , photogr aphy and the wireless were near contempor ar ies, if not older The BBC had only star ted six months before Canford, so the Wireless Society allowed pupils to listen to the chimes of Big Ben and then re-set the

The House chess trophy

The Tel el-Amana artefacts G ven to the school in 1934 but long since ost

Listening to a ham radio in the 1930s

school clocks! In 1933 a member of the Wireless Society, Ted CookeYarborough, built a shor t wave tr ansmitter and sold two to the Yeovil fire br igade At Harwell, he later helped put together what is now the wor ld’s oldest wor king digital computer. Those suppor ting the need for school societies rest their case .

After the war, building glider s and other wor king models became popular. For many year s the school’s r ailway layout used the standard 00 gauge It sur vived until the 1980s but was then replaced by the smaller N gauge system,

following a generous gift from a parent who r an the family fir m, Gr aham Far ish, in Poole which had made the smaller models since the 1970s The damp Canford cellar s were never the ideal home for a tr ain set, but the society is waiting for a revival of interest in steam tr ains

Antipathy amongst societies was the subject of a long ar ticle in the Canfordian in 1966. It presented the oft repeated case that too many societies had become mor ibund and needed a reboot. Twenty-four societies were listed in the Blue Book, but only

three (they claimed) were wholly successful. Some , including the Contr act Br idge Club and Stamp Club, were hanging by a thread and other s, such as the Auto-Engineer ing Society appeared to have breathed their last. Var ious causes were suggested for the decline , but the author suggested that the pr incipal reason was apathy amongst the senior boys who were too ‘aloof ’ or indifferent to encour age younger pupils. The ar ticle appeared to fall on deaf ear s as the situation remained much the same for decades, even if the par ticular societies involved changed. Nowadays the prevailing

thought is that pupils should be encour aged to tr y sever al activities that they might otherwise not engage with, so that they can then make their own choices The Shell Carousel offer s a contr asting r ange which has included campanology, etiquette , shooting and electronics Thereafter it is down to Darwin: societies and activities flour ish or die according to what pupils want to do For tunately most are thr iving

Bu ld ng g iders in the 1950s

The Farish N-gauge train set

Pastor al Life

Although the life of a boarder has changed significantly since Canford’s foundation, other areas of today’s school have much in common with those in previous gener ations.

These objects represent the day-today life of pupils outside the classroom. Mostly they reflect the quotidian concer ns such as food, health and behaviour ; but the bigger issues of death, war and epidemics feature as well.

51 Ten year-old Henr y Vellacott’s arithmetic prep Problems in the fir st few year s 52 An oak bedside table from a dormitor y Boarding (ear ly) 53 The house cooking prize Boarding (moder n) 54 A Salisbur y House games shir t from the 1950s Day pupils

55 A parent’s letter to Ian Wallace Co-education 56 The Head of School’s medal Prefects and Pupil Leader s 57 The Kittermaster cup Good and bad behaviour 58 The Gilhooly quaich In memor iam – remember ing Canford staff and pupils who died 59 Embroidered collection bags The Chr istian life 60 A Polynesian skull Equality, Diver sity and Inclusion 61 Dr Kaye Le Fleming’s medical kit Health 62 A Canford Covid mask Coping with epidemics

A 1930s crested vegetable dish

The plaque on old Cour t House Coping with the war

Problems in the Early Year s

This scr ap of paper, dated Nov 10th [1923], is the fir st page of an ar ithmetic prep where the questions are fair ly str aightforward so long as you know that there are twelve pennies in a shilling (Q1: how much does one egg cost if ten eggs cost 1/3d?). It belonged to Humphrey Vellacott, the youngest boy in the school, who had entered Canford when he was only ten year s old. Another young pupil, Br ian Thwaites, barely ten weeks older than Vellacott, remained at Canford for twenty-five ter ms until he was

nineteen, becoming Head Boy and captaining most of the school teams; no-one stays for more than fifteen ter ms now.

Their ages represent one of the many ways in which Canford did not really begin until Macnutt, the fir st headmaster, left In 1923 for mer Clarence pupils outnumbered new pupils and saw Canford as a continuation of life in Somer set The fir st r ugby fixture card listed the old colour s from 1921 and 1922 and familiar

Vel acott ’ s maths prep

The 1923 rugby team included three f ifteen year-o ds

Canford in 1923. The science classrooms were in the building to the eft of the main bui ding.

faces elsewhere suggested a school moving r ather than being tr ansfor med. A huge imbalance in the ages of the boys meant that there were more boys under twelve than those over sixteen, with only ten in the Sixth For m. The lack of competition meant that talented boys could be promoted r apidly: when MD Milman left in 1933 he had been head of Beaufor t for two year s, Head Boy for another year and captained all the teams

Despite gover nor s buying near ly all the houses in the village for staff, overcrowding in the main building was always an issue . In September 1923, apar t from the Sixth For m teacher and new music teacher, there were only eight staff, so a r atio of pupils to staff of 20:1 made life ver y difficult. Within two year s pupil number s had topped 200 and the school was forced to conver t Cour t far mhouse into a four th boarding house and, shor tly afterwards, to use a lar ge house in the village (later to become the school sanator ium) as an annexe All rooms were multi-functional, with

classrooms becoming common rooms later in the day and staff using the headmaster’s secretar y ’ s room for a for mal ser ved dinner in the evening

The few fixtures against other schools were often lost badly but spor t was ever ywhere: r ugby, hockey, cr icket, tennis on the two cour ts left by the Guests, swimming in the Hatch Hole in front of the old mill, boxing, cross countr y and, once the cour t had been repaired, real tennis. Ear ly societies included debating, fishing, music and the wireless club. Dr ama or musical perfor mances in the Great Hall required the dining tables to be moved but were regular occur rences from 1925. And from 1924 the OTC with its annual camp at Tidwor th, was impor tant: Canford’s fir st new building was a shooting r ange , opened on Canford’s inaugur al Speech Day in 1926.

Despite improvements to the kitchens, plumbing and wir ing, facilities were unreliable . One evening the r iver flooded and the turbines failed, plunging the school

into dar kness until hundreds of candles could be found. Money was shor t; but, perhaps more impor tantly, the academic results remained poor for sever al year s. Near ly a quar ter of boys left before they were sixteen and over half failed to pass their School Cer tificate Staff r arely stayed for long

While its sister school, Stowe , was blossoming under the char ismatic Roxbur gh, Canford r ather stumbled through its fir st year s; but it had made a star t and would later thr ive .

In 1927 these were the last staff and pupils to have been at Clarence School

Court House in 1925.

Canford’s first new building – the armoury and rifle range

Early Boarding

Even when space was at a premium, the quality of the fixtures and fittings in houses was often ver y good. Until fitted fur niture became the nor m in the 1980s, bedside tables, desks and other fur niture were often made in oak, this one coming from the prestigious fir m of War ing and Gillow.

Initially Canford’s boarding policy seemed to be to squeeze as many

pupils into a dor mitor y as possible .

The whole school was housed in the main building so, while some pupils were in gr and rooms, other s were pushed into the cor ner s of the old ser vants’ quar ter s. In 1929 the headmaster complained to the gover nor s that two of the Fr anklin dor mitor ies were ‘quite unsuitable’.

They were bur ned in a fire shor tly afterwards, but in 1934 he was making

the same complaint and space remained an issue for decades. Many common rooms doubled up as classrooms, causing inconvenience to both user s; and it wasn’t until new classrooms were built in 1967 that shar ing stopped

Lodges and common rooms were places to relax, but boys had to remain in unifor m all day except after games on Saturdays and after chapel on Sundays. And, while many of the facilities were available for boys to use at weekends, it was up to the pupils to create their own amusement If that took place in The Par k, at least they were away from the all-seeing eyes of the prefects; although, by the 1960s, the day-to-day r unning of houses was falling less on the prefect’s shoulder s and more on the staff.

An oak bedside tab e which most boys used until the 1980s

A SH dor mitor y from the 1920s with the Guest ’ s wal paper on the wall Pupi s in the 1950s using their free t me w se y by reading qual ty newspapers

Moder n Boarding

Canf ord ’ s polic y of not ha ving week l y boarding and requiring pupils to spend at least half their weekends at school means that pupils li ving abroad do not f eel abandoned on a Frida y e vening.

The three par t di vision of a school into da y pupils, week l y boarders and those who can ’t go home during ter m, has been a voided at Canf ord. The polic y appears to work well; but it does mean that a range of acti vities

needs to be of f ered at weekends. The house cook ing competition, held on a Sunda y, is one such e vent and is suf f icentl y popular f or da y house teams to enter as well.

Changes over the last f ifty years ha ve been g radual rather than dramatic .

Moder n pupils might look en viousl y at the pre-war Canf ordians who could ride horses across the heath bef ore

breakf ast, but the y are f ar less restricted by the petty rules that blighted those earl y pupils. Large dor mitories, headed by a senior pupil, were discarded in f a vour of smaller units and the Upper Sixth star ted to ha ve their own lodges.

When girls ar ri ved in 1969, the y had to board with f amilies; but that changed when Oak le y House was

acquired. The f acilities in the f irst girls’ boarding houses, parental expectations, and the need to let out the buildings in the holida ys all accelerated the change else where.

Sixth For m pupils would do well not to expect the same standard when the y ar ri ve at uni versity.

The trophy for the house cooking competit on.

Beaufort house in 1996. The standard of the girls’ houses meant that all boarding facilit es were improved considerably.

A School House kitchen from 2007. The dangling wires of the 1970s and earlier have long since gone. Fame Academy, started in 2002, was one of the

This spor ts shir t, in the red colour it had ‘bor rowed’ from Wimbor ne dur ing the war, but with a bishop’s mitre r ather than a sword (which Wimbor ne had managed to reclaim), comes from about 1950, when Salisbur y dominated house spor t.

Its bir th had been more low-key Most Public Schools saw themselves exclusively as boarding schools and Canford tur ned down a request from a parent in 1938 to allow his two sons to attend as day pupils. The war, however, forced their hand as applications to Canford plummeted A r adical plan meant that the six boarding Houses were soon to become four ; but just before that happened, at the star t of the Summer Ter m 1941, five Shells ar r ived in

Wimbor ne House as Canford’s fir st day pupils. Making a vir tue out of a necessity, the school prospectus announced it would take day pupils ‘…to meet a war-time need. The fees will be £25 per ter m, including lunch A separ ate House for day-boys, limited to 50, has been for med.

Joining the or iginal five boys from Wimbor ne were eight other s, either new to the school or tr ansfer r ing from boarding houses, so thir teen names appeared on the fir st house list Nicholas Br ay, who had moved across from Beaufor t, became the fir st Head of House although, as he was still young, he had to be called ‘Head of Common Room’ for the fir st year. In the next few year s sever al Dor set Scholar s, paid for by the local gover nment, would also join; the

A Sal sbur y House games shirt from 1950

The f rst house ist from 1941.

The Salisbury MCR outs de the corrugated iron shack that was their home in 1953.

decision to take day pupils had clear ly been r ight. For the next thir ty year s Salisbur y was Canford’s Odysseus, wander ing across the campus in search of its home . From the Beaufor t building it moved to John of Gaunt’s and Salisbur y Chamber, before being banished to a cor r ugated iron hut near the Ar t Shack, divided into three common rooms, with no insulation and only a stove (‘Little Willy’) for heat. The housemaster, still based in Salisbur y Chamber, wrote ‘It is only fair that we who are only here dur ing the day should be the House ready to make this sacr ifice . In time we shall have our own colony’ Such a hope was still some way off as the house next took over what is now par t of the staff common room, then two more classrooms before , finally, following extensive renovations, the photogenic old mill which became their base for fifty year s.

Increasing number s led to a second house (Lancaster) in 1993 and a third (Wimbor ne) three year s later, no easy thing to accomplish in ter ms of house mor ale

Canford also faced the balancing act of wanting to be seen as a tr ue boarding school while recognising that near ly a third of its pupils would be going home ever y evening, so the day was restr uctured. At the same time , day pupils showed themselves happy to come in on Sundays if they wanted to be in school plays, the choir or attend specialised spor ts coaching. For many day pupils ‘Boarding without beds’ was an apt descr iption of how much time they spent at school dur ing the week.

In the ear ly days, sever al day pupils felt they were not full member s of the school unless they stayed until late in the evening and exper ienced something of boarding life but that isn’t tr ue now More tr uly coeducational than boarding houses and with a house spir it matching that of any boarding house , soon all day houses will be based in the main building, no longer in a tin shack on the edges, but at the hear t of the school in ever y sense .

W mbor ne House back n the main bu ld ng – although this house room was origina ly in School House

Sal sbur y House in 1963

In 1992/3 there were 106 pupi s n Sa isbur y wh ch s why Lancaster was created

In 1968 Ian Wallace wrote a letter to parents asking two quite separ ate questions: should Canford have gir ls in the 6th for m and should boys be allowed longer hair? Parents were divided about hair length but near ly ever yone suppor ted limited co-education, including this letter wr iter despite wor r ies that ‘ a bevy of really good looking gir ls might put some boys off from concentr ating’

For ty year s ear lier the Rev Macnutt had said: ‘At Canford we per mit boys to cor respond with gir lfr iends, but the letter wr iting must be known to the parents on both sides, and the gir l must be of the same social status as the boy’ One suspects that the official line was not what actually happened; but oppor tunities to mix with gir ls were cer tainly r are

Gir ls were involved in dr ama and music from the 1930s including Mar ianne Booth, the bur sar ’ s daughter, who also attended science lessons for a year from September 1940 before reading medicine at Oxford. As she had been in at least two plays her involvement in school life was as much as some of the boys.

Shor tly after the war school dances were introduced. Initially for mal they gr adually became more relaxed so that by the 1960s, some staff were descr ibing the visits to gir ls’ schools as ‘ter r ible things’ and something of a nightmare to r un. The boys probably thought differently.

And then, in 1969, only twelve months after Mar lborough had blazed a tr ail, four gir ls joined the L6th, and a fifth became an Oxbr idge

One of the letters from parents

A 1953 dance w th Talbot Heath.

The 1937 product on of The R va s, one of the f irst to have girls in t Rose Canning, the headmaster’s daughter s f ifth from the right

candidate The Headmaster had made it clear that ‘full-blooded 50% co-education would of cour se r aise all sor ts of problems’ but a star t had been made Inter viewed in 1972 the Chair man of Gover nor s said that sever al gover nor s didn’t want gir ls at all, although most wanted about thir ty if the facilities could be improved. Asked about scholar ships he replied: ‘We have just increased the scholar ship money available , but we didn't think of the gir ls.’ Clear ly co-education still had some way to go

Gir ls had no unifor m, weren’t in houses and didn’t play or ganised spor t but slowly things changed. They joined boys’ boarding houses, with prefects doing evening duties, and their accommodation improved with the purchase of Oakley House , a half-mile minibus r ide away The ‘Master in char ge of gir ls’ activities’ ensured gir ls could play sever al spor ts and 1974 saw the inaugur al hockey match against Br yanston.

By 1981 there were fifty gir ls in the school, a quar ter of the 6th for m, but no plans to introduce full co-education. That changed with John Lever’s ar r ival in 1992 At the end of his fir st year he appointed Natalie Collison as the fir st female Head of School; and, in 1995, twenty four Shell gir ls ar r ived The sale of the Assyr ian Fr ieze led to a second gir ls’ boarding house and number s rose r apidly Other schools had suffered a high drop-out in the fir st year s of coeducation but most gir ls here made it through to the U6th even if the r ituals

and behaviour showed that Canford remained a boys’ school in many ways Gr adually bar r ier s were broken down: gir ls played in cr icket and golf teams; captained sailing; became head of a mixed house; led the Royal Mar ines and, shor tly afterwards, the whole CCF.

Nowadays half the teaching staff, a third of gover nor s, half the hsms, sever al Heads of Depar tment and the senior Deputy Head are women and Canford hasn’t felt like a boys’ school for year s. We are fully co-educational at last.

G r s re axing in 1981

The madr gal cho r in 1976

Sa l ng is the only true co-educational sport The 1997/8 contained two g r s

Prefects and Pupil Leader s

So impor tant were the Heads of School that, for sever al year s, gover nor s presented each of them with a silver medal for their effor ts. These included or ganising and super vising a number of activities and events, usually without any help from staff Being a prefect was seen as one of the ways pupils could be taught to use power and influence effectively and

that was even more tr ue for the Heads of School

Initially Canford was keen to emulate the tr aditions of other Public Schools, although as ear ly as 1940 one ‘eccentr ic’ prefect would give miscreants a ‘long lecture on conduct unbecoming of a citizen of the Br itish Empire’ despite younger pupils agreeing

that ‘six of the best would have been infinitely prefer able to these long mor al lectures’.

Change was slow but house minutes in the 1960s show regular discussions on how punishments should fit the cr ime so, before many schools, and long before they were required to do so, Canford abolished cor por al punishment.

More impor tant has been the gr adual dismantling of the hyper-hier archical system that was present in most schools, including Canford While some enjoyed and many accepted this str ucture , some Canfordians found it insensitive , unkind and cr ushing In 1945 the Rev Canning had published a list of

Canning’s list of pri vi eges

The gover nors ’ Head of Schoo medal from 1937.

School Prefects ‘The Caput’ in 1927.

23 pr ivileges for prefects and spor ting star s which r anged from the reasonable (wor king alone , using bicycles) to the fr ankly tr ivial (colour of handkerchiefs and putting your hands in your pockets); but it under lined a str ict ladder that star ted with one ter m ’ s senior ity amongst the Shells and finished with the Head of School, with each group jealous of their own par ticular pr ivileges.

More enlightened times meant that punishments involving ‘hard labour’, or which benefited the prefect giving the punishment, were stopped and removal of free time or pr ivileges became a standard response to poor behaviour. All of this, together with the increasingly positive relationship between different year groups, made it harder to be a prefect as pupils no longer always reacted to an order and

relationships became more impor tant than r ank Pupils recognise good leader ship and will respond to those they respect and so eventually all prefects were elected by their peer s Some pr ivileges remained, but those that made it harder for other pupils, such as the use of par ticular stair s or paths, were removed

Oppor tunities for leader ship were not limited to being a prefect – the games field and CCF being two obvious examples – but the same boys and gir ls often dominated the different spheres. In addition it was recognised that teaching the skills of leader ship should not be restr icted to a few. And so Pupil Leader s were introduced whose r aison d’etre was to offer a wider focus across school life , using per sonal skills and relationships r ather than controlling other s through fear. They continue to be elected by their peer s, following a for mal application and inter view, but take on responsibilities suited to their strengths and interests. Those areas r ange from the more tr aditional spor t and creative ar ts to environmental sustainability, equality & inclusion, wellbeing and philanthropy They may not be the feared demi-gods of yester year but are expected to influence change .

An early prefect ’ s acket. Schoo Prefects with Martin Marriott n 1979.

Pup l Leader badge.

Good and Bad Behaviour

The Kittermaster cup

In his 1929 Speech Da y address the Headmaster recalled the good ad vice he had been gi ven when f irst appointed to Marlborough: ‘How much g reater a f orce in education was praise, rather than blame’. This cup, f irst presented when Frank lin moved into its present building, li ves up to that ad vice. It is a warded annuall y to the member of the House who has made the ‘ g reatest ad vancement in the de velopment of their personality ’ . The truth is that most Canf ordians beha ve well and are a f orce f or good: witness those who win the Holf ord and Sophie Johnson prizes on Speech Da y f or their contributions to school lif e Howe ver, it is probabl y those who break the rules who stick longest in the memor y

Pace Canning’s thoughts at the star t of this piece, all schools ha ve an ar mour y of tools to combat transg ressors, with a response to match e ver y crime.

Most pupils will ha ve suf f ered the incon venience of a gating card, with its requirement to be in set places at set times. Higher up the scale of misdeeds are the ubiquitous crimes of smok ing and drink ing which ne ver go a wa y but wax and wane according to the zeitgeist.

There are also crimes that no-one likes, such as bull ying and theft; but staf f often secretl y admire those incidents which hur t no-one, lea ve no per manent damage and in volve a little wit. Fl ying a banner on the Wellingtonia next to the pa vilion in 1992 (out of reach of the f ire brigade), or creating a mini-Stonehenge to g reet the Speech Da y breakf asters, are two which still raise a smile.

Early rule breakers from the 1950s

A Gating Card from 1971

‘Stonehenge’ in 1972.

In Memoriam

The War Memor ial is the most visible reminder of Canfordians who have died young, but this quaich – given in memor y of a young teacher who died in 2002 – is one of many smaller memor ials round the school. Even in Macnutt’s shor t tenure , two boys died of pneumonia, one his own nephew and the other remembered through a chalice and paten that are still used for communions

A more tr agic case happened in 1933, when a pupil killed himself with the ar senic he had been given to conduct a medical pr actical. The only memor ials to him were the headlines

splashed across the national press because his father was a leading jour nalist and had, ironically, set up the fir st public relations agency in the countr y. Other pupils and staff have memor ials on the walls of their houses, in the church, next to trees in

The Par k or are remembered when pr izes given in their name are read out on Speech Day.

If any good can from such tr agedies, it is because they dr aw the community together. When Emily Bor nor died of cancer in 2000 a Whole School Walk was or ganised in her memor y Her popular ity ensured

that many of her year group retur ned to take par t and over £50,000 was r aised for the Teenage Cancer Tr ust which planned to open a specialist ward at Southampton hospital (and has since done so). More recently a similar event was or ganised for the Louis Ross Foundation, a char ity set up in his name which continues to help local young people facing difficulties Whole School Walks are , painful feet apar t, enjoyable events where those who are being remembered can be talked about with a smile and the focus can be on the happiness they have brought people

The Gilhooly Quaich for computing

The school gathers round the War Memoria ever y Remembrance Sunday.

The Ross memoria garden near the Lovel bui ding

The Christian Life

Nowadays these pur ses are only brought out for major ser vices, such as the Carol Ser vice and Confir mation, and their days are increasingly numbered as we r apidly become a cashless society. For decades, however, these beautifully embroidered bags would have been passed along the rows to receive pupils’ and staff offer ings

The Rev War r ington was ver y clear about his Chr istian aims when he founded Canford A new agreement,

dr awn up in 1977 for all the Allied Schools, continued to emphasise that ‘…the religious life and instr uction [should be] in accordance with the Protestant and Evangelical teaching and pr inciples of the Church of England’ with the pr incipal, headmaster or headmistress in accord with this. That remains tr ue today and headmaster s, wherever their per sonal beliefs lie on the spectr um, have always suppor ted the founder’s wishes, even as they and the chaplains have become more accommodating of other beliefs and

religions Before the war, whether led by the headmaster (the fir st two being ordained) or the vicar of Canford Magna (who, between 1932 and 1948 was also required to be the school chaplain) a for mal chapel ser vice was held almost ever y day As the school expanded, the junior s star ted holding their s in John of Gaunt’s, but space was always an issue in the par ish church, so quiet contemplation was not always easy. Pupils sat by houses with Beaufor t and Monteacute , the newest houses, forced to squeeze in near the altar

from where they could see nothing except each other. Their few seats were the subject of fierce competition but, with str ict r ules on when pupils could enter the church grounds and with prefects watching out for anyone who broke into a r un, chapel star ted with the somewhat unedifying spectacle of pupils walking as fast as they could along the paths with their thoughts fir mly fixed on whether they would get a seat, r ather than the ser mon they were about to hear

Embro dered collection bags

The 1955 BBC Ch ldren ’ s Ser vice broadcast from Canford

In 1981 the Lent Miss on team from Nottingham included Henr y Orombi, the future Archbishop of Uganda

A pupil at Canford soon after the war, who later became ordained, thought Chr istian wor ship remained for mal and uninteresting His open expression of faith was seen as odd and his over t enthusiasm as positively dangerous. He was advised to curb his excesses and keep them pr ivate: confor mity was the order of the day. Confir mation was usual, with one boy being told he was letting his house down by not being confir med.

By the ear ly 1960s little had changed with limited var iety in the daily ser vices, but the voluntar y ser vices on some evenings were popular with those seeking a more spir itual atmosphere . There were , however, significant changes from the mid-60s with many more ser vices becoming voluntar y and a Chr istian Union star ting in 1964.

Change continued as pupils became more involved in the ser vices, par ticular ly house ser vices From the 1970s Sunday ser vices in the Music

School lent a more infor mal atmosphere , and the 1980s brought the introduction of off-site retreats. Lent Missions, where an outside team visits the school for sever al days, have been a feature for decades, with the evening talks invar iably well attended Sixth For m discussion groups would often tackle the meatier theological issues with atheists happy to join in School chaplains wor k hard to overcome the lethar gy of most teenager s, facing down the char ges from some of indoctr ination, balancing

the needs of the committed with those of the unsure and the unwilling, as well as having a key pastor al role . They have been the public face of Canford Chr istianity but the Chr istian dimension in the wider life of the school has remained an impor tant influence , even if not always recognised at the time .

One of the Christian camps run by the Chair man of Gover nors, the Bishop of Portsmouth, in the 1960s and 70s He is s x from the left in the front row

Senior Bib e Group at the chaplain ’ s house n 2022

Changing Social Attitudes

Given to the Biology depar tment in 1975 by an Old Canfordian, this is believed to be the skull of a 50 yearold Polynesian male , possibly dating back sever al thousand year s. For decades it was used, alongside the complete skeleton that the depar tment also owns, to show pupils features of the human body. Most skeletons are acquired legally but the use of such objects for educational reasons has been questioned, especially as excellent copies are now available . This skull has not been shown in the Biology depar tment for over ten year s, as there is a need to show more respect to the per son involved, especially when the provenance is not fully clear. Whether it should even be in the archive is being discussed and it is likely to find a more suitable home shor tly. This change is just one of many areas, as diver se as r ace , gender, sexual equality, and nationality, where moder n attitudes differ significantly from those in the past

For much of Canford’s histor y, the staff and pupil body has not been ver y diver se , and attitudes towards equality, diver sity and inclusivity (EDI) have reflected the views of society as a whole . Individuals, such as the Black

Amer ican GIs based at Canford dur ing the war, were welcomed, but some pupils who came from diver se ethnic backgrounds may have exper ienced attitudes and behaviour which are now r ightly challenged. Canford’s oldest sur viving teacher is a Jamaican, whose views on this topic would be interesting: Probyn Mar sh spent a ter m here in 1951, as a recent Cambr idge gr aduate , teaching Geogr aphy while tr aining. He would later become Jamaica’s ambassador to Fr ance and Hardie , who had been a headmaster in Jamaica, wrote him a war m and positive testimonial when he left

In time there were changes but, until ver y recently, schools like Canford tended to be reactive r ather than push forward an inclusive agenda That is no longer tr ue . An active EDI committee , together with wor king par ties of pupils and staff, have produced an EDI Char ter, displayed in ever y classroom, which demonstr ates a major shift in attitudes Anti-r acism now for ms an impor tant par t of the cur r iculum: Black Histor y Month each year ; a r ange of activities suppor ting wor ld events such as Chinese New Year ; and inter national pupils encour aged to speak publicly about their own culture and

A Polynes an sku l

Probyn Marsh when at Canford

A range of acti vities in Long Gal er y celebrat ng the Chinese New Year

exper ience for m par t of an ongoing and wide r anging EDI progr amme . The BBMC group (Beautiful Black Mixed Children – a name chosen by the group member s) meet to reflect and share their ideas on how to build greater awareness and under standing within our school community.

In 1945 female teacher s were not allowed in the staff common room; and gender inequality is always an issue when a boys’ school becomes coeducational. Most of the over t aspects of sexism have now been removed, but

there is a continuous progr amme to r aise greater awareness of sexism and sexual or ientation. One small but tangible example can be seen in the naming of classrooms. Near ly ever y classroom was already called after a relevant histor ical figure (which caused problems to new pupils looking for Pascal or Lavoisier in the Moder n Languages depar tment!), and the biogr aphies were interesting for those waiting. Now, following a request from a recent Head Gir l, some have been renamed and there is par ity between the sexes (even if finding a classroom is no easier).

Sexual or ientation has also seen significant changes. LGBT+ month is celebr ated ever y year and what, for many pupils and staff, was r arely discussed or was hidden behind vehement proclamations of heterosexuality, is now something which is freely discussed. Gay Pr ide flags ador n classroom walls and member s of the community feel more comfor table in openly stating their sexual or ientation. There is always more to be done , but the school is a happier place for its increasing openness.

A poster advert sing events dur ng LGBT+ month

One of the renamed c assrooms in maths

For a man who spent a long time assembling staff and gover nor s who would impress all the r ight people , Percy War r ington must have been delighted that Sir Kaye le Fleming was the local doctor in Wimbor ne . The outstanding GP of his gener ation, he would later become Chair man of the Br itish Medical Association and be knighted for his ser vices to medicine .

He could seem a little overbear ing to an ill pupil, but there was no doubting his influence on Canford and his

affection for the school. He drew up the school’s diet sheets, pushed the impor tance of physical exercise and even investigated airflow in dor mitor ies. He helped appoint Tony Shor land-Ball to r un Physical Tr aining and together with him and Ar thur Ober g, a Swedish professor in nutr ition and exercise at Canford for a couple of year s, or ganised a holiday cour se in 1938 on the impor tance of Physical Education attended by teacher s and headmaster s from other schools. The speaker s included Lord Penn, doctor to the Royal

Family, who later admitted to ‘killing’ Geor ge V with a dose of cocaine as he lay dying.

Le Fleming died in 1946 and his pr actice has continued to provide the school doctor s since then. Suppor ting the doctor s have been both school and house nur ses, the for mer based in the Sanator ium, later renamed the Health Centre The San, based in a lar ge house in the village for sixty-five year s - it’s position and layout were far from ideal – is about to move , for the third time

Dr Kaye Le Fleming’s case of med ca instruments

Tony Shorland-Ba l, Arthur Oberg, Lord Penn and Dr Le Kaye F eming at the 1938 Easter course

Bought originally as an extension to Court House, th s bu lding served as the San from 1928 until 1995

into­a­former­staff­house.With­the­Mill Streamrunning­past­the­windows­it­will­be­a­quiet cornerright­at­the­centre­of­a­vibrant­school.

Nowadays­those­nurses­have­been­joined­by physios­and­counsellors,­as­mental­issues­can often­be­more­damaging­than­physical­ones. Fortunately­today’s­pupils­seem­more­ready­to discuss­their­problems­than­in­the­past;­and emotional­health­and­well-being­have­become part­of­the­curriculum.­The­focus­may­have changed,­but­the­need­for­medical­staff­remainsas­strong­as­ever.

A PE display from 1938.

Thermometers used until at least the 1980s, one marked ‘oral’ and one ‘rectal’.

The Health Centre in 2022.

Treating a pupil in 1959.

Coping with Epidemics

Issued­to­everyone­at­the­start­of­the­Covid pandemic,­this­is­a­reminder­that­epidemics­will­never disappear.­Before­antibiotics­and­inoculations­school life­was­significantly­disrupted­every­few­years.­Flu­was always­(and­remains)­the­main­cause,­but­mumps, chicken­pox­and­German­measles­have­played­their part.­In­the­1930s­Dr­Le­Fleming­persuaded­six teachers­who­had­previously­had­measles­to­donate blood,­from­which­he­manufactured­a­serum­for measles­inoculation­to­give­the­pupils;­but­it­was­a rare­success.

None­of­these­epidemics­required­Canford­to­close or­change­its­modus­operandi­completely,­but­the arrival­of­polio­in­1949­had­a­much­larger­impact.­A pupil­had­arrived­from­his­home­in­Scotland,­unaware that­he­had­the­virus,­and­seven­others­then­caught­it.

Several­had­long­term­problems­but­the­only­one whose­life­was­changed­completely­was­the­original case­who­was­partially­paralysed­and­had­to­leave Canford.­About­a­third­of­the­school­went­home­and contact­sport­was­banned,­although­some­games continued,­including­a­mixture­of­netball,­football­and rugby,­introduced­by­the­headmaster,­which­had­to­be banned­as­it­was­so­violent!­Tadmoors­Golf,­however, which­involved­chipping­balls­through­rugby­posts, became­very­popular.­Pupils­also­filled­their­time­with mock­trials,­Brains­Trust,­debates­and­(for­lucky­Court) redecorating­the­real­tennis­court.­­

No­other­epidemic­had­such­a­devastating­effect­until 2021­when­Covid­arrived.­­This­time,­everyone­went home­and­lessons­were­taught­remotely.­Canford­set out­to­replicate­its­whole­programme­online­and­its

inventive­approach­won­plaudits­from­pupils,­parents and­in­a­parliamentary­Education­Select­Committee, where­its­offering­was­described­as­‘…the­best­I­have come­across­and­…­an­example­of­what­can­be provided’.­Some­of­the­changes­made­were­so successful­they­have­been­kept­on.

A Canford Covid mask.

An open air service in 1949 during a flu epidemic.

Covid testing in Gisborough Hall.

Canf ord has al wa ys produced excellent f easts and this vegetable dish, inscribed with the Canf ord crest, will ha ve g raced man y of them There is less ag reement as to whether the dail y of f ering from the k itchens has al wa ys been as good.

Originall y it was intended that Canf ord should be self-suf f icient, with vegetables from the k itchen gardens, and bacon and eggs from the pig and poultr y f ar ms. The system worked reasonabl y well and, on one occasion, the Re v War rington instructed the manager to take a lor r y to Stowe in a snow blizzard and bring back all their hens as, unlike at Canf ord, their f ar m was running at a loss. In 1930, howe ver, there were complaints that meals were not properl y cooked and the housekeeper was sacked.

One pupil from the 1960s still can ’t eat li ver after the trauma of seeing ‘dried out lumps f loating in a dark f luid ’ . And yet there were man y others who said that the f ood was ne ver that bad.

During the war, when rationing meant

that por tions of butter and sugar were guarded jealousl y, most people thought the diet ‘adequate’. Pupils were encouraged to g row their own vegetables, such as lettuce, radishes and potatoes, with var ying deg rees of success. R ationing ma y ha ve been behind the ad verse comments immediatel y after the war, although the housekeeper said that the problems were to do with poor equipment, not poor ing redients

Since then the k itchens ha ve been ref itted on se veral occasions and the move to self-ser vice allowed the choice to be extended. Nowada ys the f easts remain excellent and the k itchens are also required to cater f or range of allergies and diets. Complaints about the dail y f are, howe ver, are rarel y heard.

Part of a crockery service from the 1930s

The catering team in the newly refitted kitchens of the 1960s.

with War

US troops stayed in Cour t House from 1944, prepar ing for D-Day, their ar r ival adding a new dimension to school life Canfordians joined in softball games and athletics, but were also given Lucky Str ike cigarettes and enr iched their vocabular y in ways that might not have pleased their parents. The presence of Black soldier s was new and caused problems when inter actions with the pupils tr ampled on US segregation r ules

In September 1940 Poole became a defence area, so only per manent residents could enter. Pupils at Canford were per mitted access

(although they needed a pass to cross the br idge into Wimbor ne), but their parents were not The Headmaster was resisting pressure for Canford to move elsewhere and there was concer n that Poole would be a tar get for bomber s. One boy wrote home in October 1940 that ‘Jer r y has been over here quite a lot at night time and now and again in the day time but he hasn’t dropped any presents around here’.

Ten master s left in the fir st year of the war to fight and their places were taken by retired teacher s or women, many of whom (although not all) proved to be admir able replacements.

Some maintenance staff also joined up, including the two groundsmen, and other s left to find better paid wor k The result was that pupils were required to do more for themselves: making their own beds; ser ving out food; and, for a while , washing up after meals in four lead-lined wooden sinks based in a dar k, smelly cor ner near the Great Hall: ‘ a foretaste of hell’ said one pupil. Following the withdr awal of a petrol allowance in 1943, four volunteer pupils even offered to hand mow the lawns.

Black out cur tains were in place from September 1939; air r aid shelter s had

been dug in the grounds; and there were regular tr ips there for pr actice or dur ing a ‘red’ air r aid war ning Pupils remember the miser y of leaving a war m bed in their pyjamas to spend the night in a bitter ly cold shelter where water dr ipped down the br ick walls. Ever yone was expected to be ready to evacuate at shor t notice , so day clothes, bikes and gas masks were always kept available .

A few staff and pupils joined the Home Guard; other s became air r aid wardens or fire watcher s, which sometimes involved staying up all night in the room at the top of the tower. The

Commemorating the US troops at Canford from 1944-5

The 50th ann versar y ceremony can just be seen in the ref lection.

Air ra d practice

OTC (still dressed in WW1 puttees and gold buttons) taught a few to put out incendiar y bombs In gener al pupils were suppor tive and ever yone mucked in, believing that they were doing their bit to win the war

In June 1944 boys were playing infor mal hockey on the uncut gr ass of Beaufor t Lawn when they heard a hum coming from the direction of Wimbor ne Soon the sky was filled with B52 Dakotas pulling glider s, all painted in black and white str ipes. They had just taken off from Tar r ant Rushton, so Canfordians were some of

the fir st witnesses to the D-Day landing forces heading to Pegasus Br idge The end of the war, later celebr ated with an explosion of loo rolls being thrown from the tower, was some way off; but 1944 was a tur ning point for ever yone as the defence restr ictions were lifted and Canford was able to expand r apidly

Fire pract ce

Part of the Canford Home Guard – it was commanded by Yvon K rkpatrick who is not in the photo

Richard Wa ker’s sketch of mil tar y train ng n 1942 Th s one involved b owing up a bridge at Little Canford

A French gas mask, ssued to an unknown member of staff or pupil dur ng the war

Despite­the­obvious­changes­that have­taken­place­over­the­last hundred­years,­a­common­belief­is that­the­essence­of­what­makes Canford­special­has­remained constant.­­That­is­true­to­an­extent, but­there­are­six­or­seven­people who­have­influenced­Canford­more than­anyone­else:­the­headmasters. While­remaining­true­to­what Canford­stands­for,­the­school­under their­leadership­has­necessarily reflected­some­of­their­beliefs­and priorities.

Putting­those­beliefs­into­practice are­the­other­staff.­Some­have­had more­important­parts­to­play­than others,­but­all­are­necessary­to­keep Canford­the­special­place­it­is.

65 A 90th birthday present: a silver cup

66 A painting of cricket match on Mountjoy

67 A carved wooden prayer book

68 A silver bowl

69 Three carved elephants

70 A fountain pen

71 A statue of Winston Churchill

72 An academic gown

73 A silver communion plate donated to the parish by a retiring housemaster

74 Derek Shackleton’s MCC sweater

75 The 1931 wages book

76 A model Ford van

That Canford should hold a dinner to commemor ate John Macnutt’s 90th bir thday, over for ty year s after he had resigned as headmaster, shows the affection that staff and pupils had for him Given that he had been somewhat overwhelmed by his four year s in char ge , this relationship seems unexpected, but there was no doubting his humanity and desire to do well for the pupils.

When Macnutt was ver y young, his eccentr ic father (Baptist minister, doctor and inventor) had taken the family from England to New Yor k, then

across land to San Fr ancisco on their way to Melbour ne in Austr alia His education was, therefore , unconventional, but he had attended two schools in Melbour ne r un along English lines so, when the family retur ned to England, Combe Down School would have felt familiar. It also helped that Emily Fr anklin, the headmaster’s wife , was his mother’s sister. At Clarence School he moved from pupil to pupil-teacher and then to full teacher, following a well-trodden route of receiving a free place at the school in retur n for helping out with the younger pupils.

John Macnutt

Macnutt ’ s 90th birthday present from OCs.

90th b rthday celebrations at Canford.

Refereeing the 1927 OC rugby match Some p ayers would have been with him at Clarence

He was an able spor tsman, playing hockey for Somer set, with a natur al enthusiasm and a keen interest in the boys’ welfare , so seemed ideally suited to being a schoolmaster. He star red in all the school teams; r an a r ange of activities, including the CCF and Boy Scouts; or ganised all the big events; and enjoyed giving lanter n lectures such as ‘A tr ip round the wor ld’ where he relived the route he had followed as a boy. Despite his busy progr amme , he managed to become ordained and acquire a postal degree from Tr inity College , Dublin, although he never saw himself as an academic . In 1913 he

became joint headmaster but Fr anklin’s failing health meant that Macnutt was effectively in char ge . In the same year he attended the Eugenics Education Conference on sex education where when he made his own views clear :

(i) Cur iosity, when once aroused, must be satisfied, at whatever cost

(ii) The boy must be shown that if he wished to attain success and distinction in the physical wor ld, whether in games or otherwise , he must abstain from the vices which had been spoken of

At Canford he was no longer able to enjoy the same direct involvement in school life and he did not like the insistent demands on his time , par ticular ly from Percy War r ington. His obituar y in The Canfordian, said that ‘An unusually str ict upbr inging had left him with a cer tain nar rowness and r igidity of mind. [He] insisted upon super vising per sonally too many tr ivial details of the or ganization over which he presided: this made him not the easiest of men to wor k with or for. On the other hand his unquestionable integr ity and generous and sympathetic nature attr acted a lifelong war mth of feeling in many with whom he came in contact ’ Officially he resigned for health reasons as the var ious pressures had caused a par tial breakdown Gover nor s found him a less onerous headship at Seaford College before he enjoyed many year s as a par ish pr iest He retained fond memor ies of Canford and held no gr udge for the manner of his leaving. He may not have been the ideal Public School headmaster but he was more than just a decent man and it is fitting that his success at Clarence and his undoubted human qualities are remembered more than his troubles.

Surrounded by his schoo at Canford.

Under the same tower but with his car

Clifford Canning

Canning was a ‘visually liter ate headmaster’ with an or iginal Utr illo hanging in his study; and was a talented ar tist himself as this painting shows. Nepotism may have played a par t in his appointment, as his father-in-law, Cyr il Norwood, one of the most eminent headmaster s of his time , had recommended him to the gover nor s. Canning had been a housemaster under him at Mar lborough and then mar r ied his daughter, but Norwood’s recommendation was a good one .

Canning enjoyed spor t – he had won a half-blue at Cambr idge for lacrosse – but believed that the beauty in ar t and liter ature had a greater effect on boys than the r ugby pitch He had ‘ a unique gift for br inging out the best in the

conventional schoolboy and making the unconventional feel that his contr ibution to the community could be valuable’. Both he and Enid were ver y involved with the school’s societies, often hosting them in his study or at home and their many eminent fr iends would regular ly visit Canford to speak.

In his ear ly days the major ity of boys ar r ived at four teen having failed to get into their fir stchoice school, but Canning didn’t see this as a problem Wr iting to a prep school headmaster in 1929 he welcomed ‘ … boys of char acter who may be prevented by slow development from satisfying the high demand made by other schools’ and anticipated the calls of heads from

Cann ng ’ s pa nting of cricket on Mountjoy.

Cann ng talk ng to Prince George on another Speech Day.

much later by adding that ‘If I could substitute a per sonal inter view at the age of 9 or 10 for the stereotyped Common Entr ance Examination at the age of 13.5 we should be doing a great thing for education’

The pupils’ enjoyment of hunting and fishing which led Canford to be nicknamed the Countr y Club had stemmed from Canning’s own love of those pur suits He joined in hunts and was often found fishing in the Stour, a good place to get away from the pressures of r unning the school and never better demonstr ated than dur ing the war when four men from the ministr y, ar r iving at his front door intent on per suading him to move Canford to a safer place , were told by the maid that ‘the headmaster is down

by the weir pool fishing for salmon trout’. They left but Poole was designated a defence area and only those with per manent residences could come in.

In par ticular parents could not visit their sons. A plan put forward by senior staff allowed Canford to sur vive the r apid decrease in number s, but Canning himself was deeply affected by the war, par ticular ly deaths of for mer pupils A collection of letter s shows the close relationship he clear ly had with many OCs

To the mother of one who had been killed he said that ‘he was as much our son as any boy could be’ but the letter s also showed Canning’s humour which he often used to diffuse difficult situations or meet cr ises.

In one he congr atulated an OC at Oxford who had found some entr ance paper s for the school by saying ‘Not Her acles, nor David, nor Per seus has ever

accomplished anything finer than you have in getting an Examination Paper out of an Oxford Don’

In 1947 it was time for a change . Canning swapped roles with Enid as she set up and then r an Hanford prep school nearby, with their educational philosophy visible to all. They left behind twenty year s ’ of Canfordians gr ateful for their love and approach

Cann ng at his desk. The Utri lo is ust out of sight. The Cannings entertaining the Caput to tea. The headmaster is tak ng the photograph, but h s boi ed egg is visible! Co dstream’s portrait of Cann ng –sadly owned by Hanford School not Canford School.

John Hardie

Car ved from local wood and or iginally given to his father when Archbishop of the West Indies, this pr ayer book sat on John Hardie’s desk to remind him of his own strong faith and Jamaica, where he had previously been a headmaster Back in England, he taught at Blundells and Uppingham but had previously wor ked in boys’ clubs in the East End of London and South Wales, so had a lifelong concer n for the under pr ivileged.

He was an excellent spor tsman, par ticular ly in hockey, captaining both Cambr idge and Wales, but spor t was not his top pr ior ity. In his fir st Speech Day he had said that ‘the fir st, main and daily duty at school is academic wor k’ and he lived by that statement throughout his time at Canford. He was only thir ty-five when he ar r ived, still Canford’s youngest headmaster by sever al year s. The school was in something of a mess: both money and space were in shor t supply; number s and

academic standards had dropped dur ing the war and the post-war influx of boys had caused administr ative problems; but, as Tom Nash would also later say, ‘It would have been difficult to find a Headmaster better suited to the needs of the school than Mr. Hardie . His outstanding administr ative ability, imposing presence and strong deter mination made an immediate impression on the school He was himself an indefatigable wor ker and he made it clear that he would not toler ate idleness or shoddy wor k in other s ’ Some weak staff were sent packing, including one whose only method of keeping discipline was to pay a prefect to sit in his class.

Some resented the change of style , but Hardie was deter mined that Canford should lose its countr y club image This involved r aising the academic profile while winning over local headmaster s and prospective parents. He visited prep schools; ser ved on HMC committees, r aising Canford’s profile; and

Hard e ’ s ignum prayer book P ay ng for the staff hockey team n 1953 He is standing on the far right

Every inch the Headmaster.

used his undoubted char m on parents, one of whom claimed that wives ‘would swoon in front of his dar k, penetr ating eyes and good looks!’

In 1947, when Hardie ar r ived many boys didn’t reach the Sixth For m which was so small that the timetable was not wr itten until after the school year had star ted. Hardie thought the “Sixth For m tr adition is envied by the rest of the wor ld. To study some

subject systematically in depth,… to lear n to think and not just to acquire knowledge , this is the tr adition’. And so he axed the slow stream, r aised the entr ance standard and expected ever yone to go through the Sixth For m. Lar gely a leap of faith, he was proved r ight and the propor tion in the Sixth For m moved from one in seven to near ly 40%.

Hardie had a lively sense of humour but adopted a pose to push through

changes. An imposing presence and imper ious manner led to his being nicknamed Yahweh by the school. He was in command and made decisions quickly but he also had the gift of making ever yone feel they had a par t to play.

By 1960 he had ‘brought Canford to matur ity’ so accepted the challenge of r unning a new school in Ir an along Br itish lines Sadly the school tur ned out to be a chimer a with too much

gover nment interference and cor r uption for a man of Hardie’s char acter, so he withdrew. He then faced a few difficult year s, but ended his teaching career as Pr incipal of Loughborough College of Education. His contr ibution to Canford had been significant and it is a tr ibute to his r aising of standards that in 2010 some new academic pr izes presented on Speech Day were named after him

Hard e ’ s Complete Concordance, used when preparing ser mons

Inspecting the CCF

Saying grace

Ian Wallace

This silver bowl was given to Ian Wallace by the Old Canfordians when he retired in 1976 The guest speaker at his last Speech Day refer red to him as a ‘great headmaster’, a descr iption the Chair man of Gover nor s thought histor y would prove r ight, but it was then too ear ly to be cer tain. Fifty year s later can we now say he was r ight?

Three year s before becoming Headmaster Wallace had been par alysed by polio, unable to feed

himself; but he had fought back to compar ative good health and brought an impressive CV to Canford. His style was in complete contr ast to Hardie: whereas Hardie took decisions quickly and by himself, Wallace prefer red to consult before deciding, or allow people to sor t out their own problems. He was approachable and happy to listen to what people said, but sever al staff remember taking something to Wallace to be told that, yes, there was an issue , but he was sure they could sor t it out. Which, of cour se ,

they did. His time in office coincided with a social revolution when it was difficult for anyone to be a teacher, let alone a headmaster who needed to seek a balance between concession and repression. The perceived lack of discipline amongst the pupils led some staff to complain to the gover nor s, but they were given shor t shr ift

Counter ing this suggestion that he wasn’t the ‘great headmaster’ the Chair man of Gover nor s descr ibed, is the fact that he presided over some of the most r adical changes in Canford’s histor y. He introduced gir ls in 1969, only a year after Mar lborough had done so; a restr uctured timetable allowed pupils a much wider choice of A levels; cafeter ia style meals meant junior boys no longer had to ser ve (and could now be sure that they would get some food!); and he attempted to set up both a Canford prep school and a house where Amer ican students could spend a year at Canford between school and univer sity. These are huge ideas and not things that could possibly come from a headmaster who was not on top of his game . On a more prosaic level he ensured that classrooms no

longer had to double up as house common rooms by per suading the Industr ial Fund to build some science rooms, presided over a huge building progr amme , increased the size of the school, r aised the academic standards still fur ther, and, when the fuel cr isis

The si ver bow from OCs.

Inspecting the CCF in 1961

Ian and Janet Wal ace w th the Second Master, Lesl e Gay

threatened to br ing the school to its feet, avoided any teaching redundancies (although requir ing boys to make their own beds and help in the kitchen received a mixed reception).

Wallace himself was difficult to read at times, but his sense of humour was evident to ever yone and his waggish comments were a constant source of delight. He would make outr ageous statements without any hint that he wasn’t being ser ious and it would take a minute or two before the prefects or staff would convulse into laughter. Sometimes

people wondered whether he realised what he was saying - some of his double-entendres have become the stuff of legends - and no-one could ever be sure whether to take what he said at face value , but he was cer tainly a funny man; and a man who cared. When they left, the Chair man of Gover nor s said that Janet and Ian Wallace had ‘ no hint of pr iggishness’ and ‘their faith and quiet assur ance made themselves obvious to the whole community’. He left Canford a better place than when he ar r ived and that is probably all one can ask of any headmaster.

On his ast Speech Day in 1976.

an Wa lace in 1973

Princess Margaret ’ s visit in 1966

Wallace, on the left, with his successor and predecessor.

Regular visitor s to Mar tin Mar r iott’s study will have been ver y familiar with a par ticular fixture on his desk: a small group of elephants. It would grow, over the year s, into quite a herd The or igins of this tr ademar k feature are interesting. Mar tin had come to Canford in 1976 from Haileybur y where , following the sudden death of the Master, Bill Stewar t, he had been promoted from Second Master to acting Master When the time came for him to leave , Mar tin was invited by Bill’s

widow to take whatever he wanted from his predecessor’s desk. Amongst what he took was a wooden elephant. ‘It was so lovely,’ Mar tin recalls, ‘that I later car ved one of my own, and so the herd gr adually grew, either by my own acquisition or by people giving me ones. ’

It is entirely appropr iate that Mar tin’s defining animal is the mighty elephant At 6’61/2”, a tower ing presence in ever y sense , visible to all when addressing staff in the

Common Room and a commanding figure on the side-lines of any games pitch A pupil’s-eye view of him was captured beautifully by Alex WebbPeploe (F88), a car toon of him which featured alongside June Mendoza’s por tr ait the Canfordian’s valete to Mar tin in the 1992.

The son of the Bishop of Newfoundland, Mar tin’s education in this countr y did not star t until he entered Lancing College at the age of sixteen, which was followed by New

College , Oxford. By the time he gr aduated, he was clear he wanted to teach and, after his stint as Master at Haileybur y, that he knew that he wanted to r un a school of his own. This, of cour se , would tur n out to be Canford. On his appointment, his for mer housemaster at Lancing wrote to the gover nor s to say, ‘You are ver y, ver y lucky to get him.’ And so it tur ned out.

It could have been said that ‘You are ver y, ver y lucky to get them’, for by his side always was Judith, whose views he always valued when he discussed school issues with her. ‘We were a team,’ he once said, and it is difficult to over state her contr ibution to Canford. This r anged from her powerful promotion of its music to

Three of the e ephants that found a home on the Marr ott desk

A pupi ’ s view of his headmaster.

Host ng Princess Anne in 1982

her active concer n for the well-being of the whole community through her care and her legendar y hostessing. Mar tin’s temper amental qualities of optimism and enthusiasm were complemented by his openmindedness, judgment and vision, beneath all of which lay a steely toughness that enabled him to take the school forward in times that were not always easy. He initiated an Appeal in 1980 which resulted in significant building progr amme . In his 16 year s at the school, new buildings (and a nine-goal golf cour se) popped up all over the campus, with a new Ar t block, the Lovell classroom block, a pur pose-built Fr anklin House , a new Physics Block, opened by Pr incess Anne on 5th May, 1982 and,

finally – completed the year after his retirement – Mar r iotts, the fir st gir ls’ house .

The reputation of the school grew steadily under his leader ship, becoming increasingly well known and regarded. This would culminate in Mar tin’s election as Chair man of the Headmaster’s Conference in 1988. In the year of his election, a feature on him entitled ‘Master of an Independent Mind’ appeared in the Daily Telegr aph, which descr ibed him as ‘the ver y model of a moder n headmaster’. He was keen, he told the Telegr aph’s education cor respondent, to broaden the r ange of pupils attending Canford by providing fewer scholar ships – ‘buying

in br ains’, he suggested – and instead offer ing more bur sar ies for poorer parents. Many year s later, the per manent appeal to fund bur sar ies is, appropr iately, the Mar tin Mar r iott Foundation.

The Marr otts with al the Heads of School in his t me

Speak ng at a d nner to ra se money for the MMM Foundat on. June Mendozo’s portrait of Marin Marriott on his retirement.

70:

John Lever

When gover nor s gave John Lever an iPad it r aised a smile and stimulated his late entr y into 21st centur y communication but didn’t change his mind that wr iting in ink is more per sonal. He regular ly mocked his lack of abilities with technology but, as with other areas of school life where he was the master of selfdeprecation, he knew their impor tance , appointed the r ight people , and over saw major advances on all fronts.

He had ar r ived from Winchester College and wanted to foster some of their intellectual inquisitiveness at Canford. He saw success at spor t and in the ar ts as impor tant but ever yone knew where his pr ior ity lay He wanted academic ambition to be seen as nor mal by ever yone , even the weakest; and his regular exhor tations in assemblies made that ver y clear.

Changes happened quickly: the libr ar y was remodelled; a registr ar with some clout was appointed to help him win over the prep schools; and full co-education was proposed and enthusiastically endor sed by ever yone . Plans were given a massive fillip when the Assyr ian fr ieze was sold and the ‘eye-water ingly wor se

contingency plans’ were avoided. Noone was prepared for the media frenzy that followed the hammer coming down but for tunately the only thing John committed himself to on national television was buying ever y pupil a Mar s bar.

He put down much of his success to making good appointments but that under played his own role . His deter mination to overcome obstacles –spending three year s in the Cambr idge rowing squad before finally moving from Goldie to the winning Blue Boat proved that – and his attention to detail in all areas of school life stayed with him always. He could be won over by per suasive

ar gument but was prepared to take on even the gover ning body if something was impor tant to him

He expected a great deal of his staff because the pupils deser ved to be given ever y oppor tunity to thr ive . Some of his toughness was a bluffhe could be soft, even sentimental; enjoyed chatting to a pupil about a Commended Wor k; and the occasional recidivist didn’t stop him promoting some pupils who had changed their ways– but his ambition for the school was always evident.

He had a way with words that few could match. His school repor ts were never bland and his few pithy words

DL’s pen conta ning his d st nct ve b ack nk.

Putt ng the pen to good use

At the boathouse n 2007 with ev dence of past glor es round h s neck

usually said more than the par agr aphs other s had wr itten. The enjoyable extended metaphor s that star ted his speeches became something of a tr ademar k and his farewell comments on staff showed how well he knew them. Whether speaking publicly, wr iting or just chatting, his wit was never far away

His wife , Alisoun, not only hosted the myr iad dinner s and events expected of spouses but was a constant and unfailing suppor t for what John did Walking was impor tant to both of them whether in the mountains or taking the dogs round The Par k (probably retur ning with some dr ink cans found in a far cor ner). Walking round Mountjoy also proved a great de-stresser after a difficult decision or meeting had dr ained him emotionally and physically.

He undoubtedly r aised Canford’s academic profile but may have enjoyed more the comment by a teacher retur ning for John’s farewell dinner who said ‘It tur ns out that I don’t remember Canford with rose tinted glasses; it really is a lovely school with a remar kably war m and sincere atmosphere ’

Leading a Tuesday assembly

A good day at the office

80% of the Lever fam ly at OC drinks.

Ben Vessey

Ben Vessey came from Chr ist’s Hospital where he had been the Senior Deputy Head. Having also been a Housemaster and Head of Depar tment in other schools, he probably had a wider exper ience than any previous Canford Headmaster and was cer tainly the fir st to have an MB A

His per sonal qualities are clear : put him in a room with fifty people he has never met and he will emer ge an hour later knowing all their names, their children’s names and probably their pets’ names as well. It is a valuable gift and means that he can stop anyone round the school and talk about things that matter to them. He is also relentlessly positive , pr aising the mediocre near ly as much as the excellent if there has been effor t and thought behind it.

His smar tphone was his most visible tool and, on more than one occasion, his facility with technology has eased a difficult situation. His wor k ethic is second to none and staff often receive emails ver y ear ly in the mor ning when he is on his exercise bike , although for tunately he doesn’t expect a reply by retur n His other ear ly mor ning habitat is the golf cour se: living 100m from the fir st tee it has become a place to let off steam, sor t out the school’s problems and discuss issues with his par tner s.

At inter view he had outlined his ver sion of the three Rs: ‘reaffir m, reassure and review’ and quickly set up a ser ies of discussion groups, with

suppor t staff as well as the teacher s, before a new str ucture for management was introduced. He under stands mar keting and isn’t afr aid to use moder n jar gon to get his message across but his relaxed appear ance hides a deep commitment to equality, safeguarding and life skills.

Noses were put out of joint when he promoted those he considered talented ahead of those with more exper ience; and he sees no conflict between leading a Chr istian school and respecting equal r ights in all areas of life . He didn’t want to lose Canford’s excellent academic record but believed pupils’ futures depended as much on skills such as communication, empathy and awareness of the wider wor ld. A third

The newly appointed Headmaster.

deputy head was appointed to r un the co-cur r icular progr amme , alongside the pastor al and academic deputies, and within five year s his entire SLT of bur sar, three deputies and two assistant heads were people he had appointed, engender ing a strong feeling of unity.

The John Lever building had already removed the pressure on classroom space but the Great Hall was far too small to feed over 1000 people; and, separ ately, it was becoming increasingly difficult to per suade inspector s that School House pupils stayed above the

kitchens. The solution prompted the lar gest building progr amme in Canford’s histor y which included a new libr ar y and, shor tly, the innovative Upper Sixth College (see Object 100 for details). All this took place against the background of the Covid epidemic and must have tested even Ben’s optimism. The project is now near ing its end and the gains, both educational, financial and social, can soon be reaped.

By nature , both he and Har r iet are joiner s-in and were the fir st to send

their children to Canford. Apar t from hosting the usual ar r ay of dinner s and events, Har r iet also helps in the libr ar y and they tur n up to ever ything (where he will cer tainly par ticipate if he can, such as in the Yellow Hour). At the centenar y he will have completed ten year s at Canford - something ever y headmaster at Canford and Clarence since 1886 has done - and has made his mar k on the school as much as any of them.

Keep ng pupi s happy w th some spare doughnuts.

Laying the f irst stone n Lady Char otte’s Wa k.

The 2018 Summer Ba l – f i ve years at Canford for each of them

Taking part n the House cross-countr y

72: Teaching Staff

The gown has been the most identifiable piece of a teacher’s dress since time immemor ial and it was unthinkable that, when Canford opened, teacher s should not wear them to teach This remained the case for decades, but nowadays they are only wor n on for mal occasions, such as Speech Day and end of ter m assemblies

The Rev War r ington was keen to establish Canford as a Public School, so his fir st appointments were all from Oxford or Cambr idge , the applicant’s alma mater being at least as impor tant as his teaching skills. That remained the case for some time , along with a few gr aduates from Tr inity College , Dublin who

A Canford teacher’s gown from 1982, a though t cou d have been from any age

Staff eaving assembly in 2009 Only the HM is wearing a gown

Staff tak ng a bow at the end of a staff p ay n the 1950s. It is diff

were deemed of equal standing Along with their Oxbr idge degrees came an obligator y nickname . Now something of a r ar ity, a pupil’s photo album from 1927 shows all the staff accompanied by such names as ‘Toad’, ‘Daddy’, ‘Crow’, ‘T’, and the somewhat obscure ‘Tomba’ and ‘Lobbylud’

For much of Canford’s histor y, teacher s needed to be all-rounder s Their pr incipal task was to teach, but they were also expected to contr ibute to the co-cur r icular life of the school as tutor s, spor ts coaches and suppor ter s of societies. Often a member of staff ’ s

enthusiasm might lead to a spor t or activity having a br ief moment of fame; but even those with little spor ting pretension would be expected to take a whistle out to a junior game Knowing the laws precisely was of secondar y impor tance to keeping the boys active .

Nowadays the pr imar y requirement is to teach well. Games loving teacher s still play an impor tant par t in the coaching str ucture , but they are now under the guidance of the relevant director of that spor t; and no-one with two left feet is expected to make their lack of spor ting prowess public .

Teacher s are better paid than they used to be . In 1931 the maximum salar y was r aised to £700 In real ter ms, they can now ear n twice that amount, although

it is still not a profession one enter s for the money And teaching in a boarding school is also not for all. Fewer families now live in The Par k and more spouses have career s of their own, so the sense of living one ’ s whole life at and for Canford might not be as strong as in the past, but the community feeling

remains strong. It is a r are per son who is not char med by the beauty of the sur roundings, the mutual suppor t from other s and the sense of fun that per vades both the staff and the teaching itself

A sur v vor from the era when virtua ly ever y teacher used an O(ver) H(ead) P(ro ector).

The staff rugby team in 1974 Not long afterwards, games between staff and pup ls were banned for H & S reasons

HsMs and Senior Staff

Given to the par ish church in 1937 by a member of staff who was leaving to become a prep school headmaster, this silver dish r aises interesting questions about how humans behave in different situations. Judged by his time at Canford, he was a much respected teacher and Housemaster ; but his time as a Headmaster was not a happy one

HsMs – Housemaster s and Housemistresses – are , for most pupils, the centr al people in their lives at Canford and probably the key role in a boarding school Canford opened with three Houses (School, Wimbor ne and Fr anklin), but growing number s led to Cour t being opened in 1925 The new Housemaster was Harold Rober ts and, in a letter to another Housemaster, he wor r ied that there may be gossip in the

village as he , a bachelor, would be under the same roof as the matron

The role of the HsM may have changed more than any other position at Canford. For decades the day-to-day r unning of the house was done by the prefects who had an almost unhealthy control over the lives of the other boys in the house , although HsMs remained the final arbiter in ser ious matter s. That shar ing of responsibility is now unthinkable .

As late as 1970 the headmaster told his HsMs that junior boys must be ‘ordered’ to say their pr ayer s ever y night, but today’s HsMs are much more concer ned with secular matter s. HsMs have , in var ious degrees, always taken the care of their char ges ser iously but,

Si ver p ate gi ven to the par sh church by a Housemaster

Part of the etter from the new Court hsm referring to ‘ a sk rted be ng ’ .

Three HsMs and an ex-hsm relaxing with their families in 1953 –were those easier times?

the 1989 Children Act put legal requirements in place that prompted a re-think of how Canford oper ated; the ar r ival of gir ls and Housemistresses added to that. With at least two resident staff in each house and str ict r ules on the relationship between staff and pupils, HsMs now spend more time on pastor al matter s than on their teaching.

Higher up the food chain, in theor y, although perhaps not as impor tant in pupils’ and parents’ minds, are the senior staff A 1995 char t lists only two senior staff: the Deputy Head (then called the Second Master) and the Director of Studies, with the latter given only three per iods’ allowance to do his job! Twenty-five year s later there are now three Deputy Heads and three Assistant Heads, helped by two secretar ies and other teacher s with var ious responsibilities, each with significant time allowances in their teaching. The pressures on moder n teacher s continue to increase . If Heads take final responsibility for what happens, the

advice from senior staff can often be cr itical. Rarely can that have been more tr ue than in 1941 when the school was financially unviable and faced imminent closure . The solution, proposed by three senior staff, headed by Tom Nash, was to cut the six houses to four, all based in the centr al buildings; and for the teaching staff to take a salar y cut. This allowed Cour t House , the sanator ium and the staff houses at the souther n end of the par k to be requisitioned by the gover nment and ensured Canford’s sur vival. The plan

was effective and the rebuilt staff room has been named in his honour as the Tom Nash building.

In fact it was not until 1944 that he was officially called the Second Master ; and 1972 before the school roll recorded the fir st Director of Studies Today’s tr iumvir ate has been tr ied twice before , not always successfully, but the present division into pastor al, academic and co-cur r icular wor ks well and seems set to stay.

Ru es for HsMs concer ning prayers in 1970.

Tom Nash at his desk in 1960.

Hsms and some sen or staff in 2022 at their week y pastoral break meet ng

Coaches and Peripatetics

Both Derek Shackleton and his predecessor as professional, Malcolm Taylor, were expected to do a great deal more than coach cr icket. Both had to r un real tennis, although neither had any exper ience of the game before coming to Canford, and their other tasks included being a por ter, a r unner for the Headmaster and cleaning the Music School.

For many year s the cr icket/real tennis professional was the only salar ied spor ts coach In other areas the teacher s were expected to shoulder responsibility and

Headmaster s would sometimes appoint staff as much for their prowess on the games field as for their teaching ability.

Canford has been for tunate to have a succession of inter national hockey player s, Oxbr idge Blues and other spor ting star s; but all teacher s were expected to put on their games kit and help out. Pupils and parents were less demanding then: if the master taking the lowest r ugby game didn’t know all the laws but still had to super vise over thir ty of the less talented boys, it didn’t matter as there were no school matches at that level. This all changed as

more pupils wanted the oppor tunity to represent the school and to be coached by someone who knew what they were doing, so B , C , D and even E teams were added to the fixture list

In the 1990s the coaching issue was eased by employing ‘gappies’, school leaver s, mainly from Austr alia, who were talented spor ts player s wanting to spend a year in the UK Most were excellent, but a few str uggled with the responsibilities the role required. So ‘gappies’ became ‘ gr addies’, UK univer sity leaver s who were thinking about

teaching, or just wanted to do something while making up their minds about career s. There are now six or seven ever y year, some of whom move on to become teacher s at Canford, so it is a system that wor ks well for ever yone . In recent year s there has been another change: teacher s no longer r un r ugby, hockey, rowing, netball, tennis, and athletics. The professionals who do, all repor t to a Director of Spor t, who is assisted by an Asst Director of Spor t and a Spor ts Co-ordinator. Top

Derek Shackleton ’ s MCC umper which he wore when coaching.

Ma colm Taylor just before h s ret rement.

Several of the coach ng books wr tten by John Hankinson whi e at Canford

professional spor ts player s are also regular visitor s. The age of specialisation means that some talented pupils are linked to outside academies and expect to tr ain throughout the year. Is all this good for the spor t or the individual? The jur y is out, but it is a fact of life .

Away from the pitches, two other groups of teacher s are the language assistants and the per ipatetic music staff The latter only see the few pupils they teach, but those pupils are getting one-to-one attention from some of the best musicians in the area, such as member s of the BSO. Language assistants have also been at Canford since 1923 and

many go on to national prominence in their own countr ies. Those here in the 1930s included Michel Bouts who later r an a school in Fr ance along Br itish lines; and Roger Asselineau who became a professor at the Par is-Sorbonne . Walter Ber ger, here in 1940, was required to stay with Rev Macnutt, the for mer headmaster, as Austr ians were not allowed to live within ten miles of Canford as it was in a defence area

Their successor s have maintained the same levels of excellence and commitment and offer pupils an alter native view of the wor ld, as well as help with their lear ning.

O ympic gold medallist, Susannah Townsend, coaching the girls The PE department, including the heads of various sports.

Despite this cert f icate granting Walter Berger refugee status, he was stil required to move out of the Bour nemouth YMCA.

One of the recent teachers from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

Suppor t Staff (Early)

The fir st entr y in this book is dated 28th Feb 1931 and shows Gladys Smith, aged 23, signing for £3 4s 8d as her monthly wage . Most of the other s on the page are ear ning less than that and their wages don’t appear to have gone up much ten year s later, judging by the entr ies at the end of the book The list is almost entirely women and, although their occupations are not shown, compar ison with the 1939 census shows that they include cooks, laundr y wor ker s and dor mitor y maids – the last ear ning an annual salar y of £22. Entered elsewhere must be the gardener s, waiter s, car penter s, chauffeur s and other men. Most would also have been given staff accommodation, some in houses along Oakley Road, with other s at the top of the Manor House or in staff dor mitor ies in the old mill.

Low salar ies, but cheap or free accommodation, for the ‘blue collar’ staff remained the nor m for much of Canford’s histor y (causing problems when those staff were later given the

oppor tunity to buy their houses cheaply)

Mechanisation and the war (when sever al staff left to join up or get wor k elsewhere) led to the demise of sever al posts, including waiter s and dor mitor y maids; but other skills have always been needed at Canford.

Looking after 250 acres of the arboretum, as well as an increasing number of playing surfaces, requires manpower as well as knowledge The fir st Head Groundsman, Ar thur Wren, who had wor ked br iefly for Lady Wimbor ne (following in his father’s footsteps) remained at Canford for another 44 year s. He is the only member of the suppor t staff to have a building named after him, although other s have ser ved even longer

Car penter s, plumber s, electr icians and builder s have also been per manent fixtures at the school, although today’s tr adesmen are r ather more effective than the fir st car penter, ‘Old Or gan ’ , a local man in his seventies, whose speed of wor king was thought more suitable to being an

The earl est wages book in the archi ve

Flat caps seem to be de rigeur for the ground staff in the 1930s Arthur Wren s smok ng a pipe

An ear y setback A m nute from 1924 showing gover nors offering to contr bute £10 towards the cost of a funeral for a pantr y boy who drowned swimming in the Stour

ar tist’s model by one ear ly histor ian of the school.

Who managed the suppor t staff was a cause of fr iction between John Macnutt and the gover nor s, the latter making it clear that the Bur sar was responsible . Much of the financial side of the school was controlled centr ally by the Allied Schools accountant, so there weren’t many administr ative posts at Canford That didn’t mean there weren’t problems: an ear ly Bur sar

was sacked for ‘keeping the books badly’ but claimed that he was ‘the victim of per sonal malice’ He , the Bur sar, had admonished the School Dame (who happened to be the accountant’s sister-in-law) and had, in tur n, been chastised by the Headmaster for repor ting her to the gover nor s

For tunately most relationships between staff were more cordial, even if the ‘them and us ’ feeling continued for some year s.

Glyn Thomas getting the send off in 1994 that 50 years ’ ser vice deser ves

The staff cricket team (The Outcasts) was one of the few places where support staff and teachers were of equal status Only six in this 1939 group were teachers.

Miss Jackson ’ s appointment letter as Housekeeper. Her ski ls ensured the catering throughout the war remained good.

Suppor t Staff (Moder n)

The increased professionalism expected by today’s consumer s means that sever al areas of school that were either done by teacher s, in addition to their other responsibilities, or not done at all, are now the responsibility of professionally tr ained exper ts Mar keting is one of those areas.

Gover nor s expect the school to be full and, while the quality of education provided is key, spreading the message needs a little more skill than just sticking a Canford crest on the side of this toy van

Professionals have taken over from the amateur s in two other areas:

Admissions and Development

Whereas once Common Entr ance (or a scholar ship) was the default means of getting into Canford, now a r ange of different routes, together with an ar r ay of visits by prospective pupils and prep school heads, needs a team to keep all the balls in the air. In addition, the relationship between the school and other interested par ties, such as OCs and parents, often taken for gr anted –except when money as needed – is now the concer n of another team who ensure that ever yone remains par t of the Canford Community for as long as they want.

When School Inspector s used to call, the main concer n was whether the lessons would be good enough. Now the quality of the teaching is almost taken for gr anted and the wor r y is whether all the r ight protocols have been followed with regard to employment law, safety and pastor al care . In addition to those that apply to all schools, there are now over 400 additional regulations just for boarding schools. Safeguarding issues are a pr ior ity ever ywhere but, that means all staff are spending a great deal of time on paperwor k, suppor ted by the exper ts in the HR depar tment. All this has led to a significant increase in the

size of the bur sar y which will soon occupy the old mill house (again) and the ground floor of the West Wing.

Promot ng Canford n 1990.

The Rathbones runn ng the bookshop in the r semi-ret rement in the 1970s.

Canford ’ s crest, fourth from the left on the top row, sits amongst those from more famous schoo s such as Eton and Charterhouse

The shop is no longer in Nineveh, but it still provides most of the books and all the unifor m for pupils and depar tments. Once upon a time having Canford’s crest on the cover of a Har rod’s brochure , amongst the other more illustr ious schools, might have helped; but that expensive route is no longer needed

Other depar tments remain similar ly unchanged. The laundr y ’ s wor kload doubled when pupils star ted wear ing casual clothes more regular ly and they, and other depar tments, also faced fur ther pressure from the increasing size of the school More pupils mean more buildings and more pitches, all needing maintenance . Canford’s setting, both the architecture and The Par k, is

one of its glor ies; but it does not stay that way by accident.

Perhaps the biggest change , though, is the relationship between the teaching staff and the suppor t staff. There has always been an acknowledgement that ever yone is wor king towards the same goals, but that has now been recognised in concrete . When the Common Room was extended in 2017 and renamed the Nash Building, it was for all staff For pr actical reasons, the teacher s use it more often, but there are no r aised eyebrows if other s are having a coffee or a meeting The school is a better place for it.

By 2007 each department at Canford had the r own co our Green seems ver y suitable for the groundstaff

The newly moder nised aundr y n the 1960s when only schoo unifor m was washed

Support staff say ng farewel to Martin Marriott n 1992 Nowadays this wou d be a joint occas on with the teach ng staff

Canford People

The­Canford­Community­includes­a range­of­people­who­don’t­work­at the­school,­such­as­Old­Canfordians, governors­and­parents.­Most­of these­will­have­had­a­long­(and continuing)­relationship­with­the school.­Visiting­speakers,­couples getting­married,­filmmakers,­and others­using­the­school’s­facilities may­have­had­only­a­brief­stay­here, but­cannot­fail­to­have­been­affected by­the­beauty­of­The­Park.

77 The sculpture outside the Sports Centre

78 A piece of the Berlin wall ­­­­­­­­­­­­Old­Canfordians­in­1989

79 Alan Murphy’s medals ­­­­­­­­­­­­Old­Canfordians­in­the­war

80 The climbing wall ­­­­­­­­­­­­Benefactors

81 A copy of the Assyrian frieze ­­­­­­­­­­­­Professor­John­Russell­and­the­Assyrian­frieze

82 Newton’s cradle

83 Governors’ Minutes, Volume 1

84 The crown in The Crown Room

85 The Canford flag

86 The score of ‘Speech Day’ by Antony Hopkins

87 An old oboe

88 The Fiji team’s rugby 7s shirt ­­­­­­­­­­­­Outside­use­of­Canford

Old Canfordians

Canford themed objects have been sold since the school opened, so it is safe to assume that many OCs are happy to be reminded of their time at school. OCs of both hues (Old Clarencians and Old Canfordians) have always enjoyed coming back to their alma mater, meeting old fr iends and wr iting in to let other s know how their lives are progressing Even those who did not enjoy their time at school are usually happy to get together, talk through shared exper iences and accept that the school has changed. For some that is enough. Other s, though,

continue to be actively involved as staff, gover nor s, parents and invited guests.

Sending your child to your for mer school is an obvious vote of confidence . There are now sever al families where three gener ations have become Canfordians, and one where the great-gr anddaughter of one of the ear liest Canfordians is now an OC her self. One suspects that many more could have been added to this list had not the real cost of a Canford education increased by a factor of about ten.

OCs still retur n to play spor t against the pupils, although r ugby matches between adults and pupils have been illegal for some time Meetings between pupils and OCs, however, are far more frequent when they are on opposite sides of a desk or stage , r ather than a games field. Some of the best school lectures are given by for mer pupils, and OCs volunteer in impressive number s to help at career s conventions.

At the time of wr iting, there are ten OCs on the staff, seven of whom are

teacher s; and six gover nor s, sever al of whom can tick the ‘Canford Parent’ box as well OCs also for m the major ity of benefactor s to the school: a vote of thanks as well as a lifeline for those who could not afford to come to Canford without a bur sar y

The real test of an education, though, is the nature of those who have had a Canford education. Is there something that makes Canfordians stand out? A lar ge number of those leaving Clarence School became missionar ies (perhaps not sur pr ising given the Chr istian

Canfordiana from the 1920s

The OC rugby match n 1955.

OCs helping to gi ve advice to pupils at the 2019 Careers Symposium.

nature­of­the­school)­and­Canfordians continue­to­enter­the­church.­However, along­with­the­smattering­of­MPs,­QCs, senior­members­of­the­armed­forces and­leaders­in­education,­you­would expect­that­from­a­school­such­as Canford.­In­the­days­when­it­mattered which­school­you­attended,­Canford­did not­carry­the­social­cachet­of­some­of

the­more­established­schools,­which might­have­affected­OCs’­success,­but there­are­areas­where­Canford­punches above­its­weight.­

The­quality­of­the­sporting­facilities means­that­OCs­feature­regularly­in­the ranks­of­professional­sports­players,­with both­men­and­women­have­played

international­sport­recently­at­hockey, rugby­and,­particularly,­rowing.­Large numbers­of­pupils­leave­to­read medicine,­so­it­is­not­surprising­that­a number­of­outstanding­medics­feature. More­surprisingly,­perhaps,­OCs­have made­a­significant­mark­in­music,­theatre, art,­photojournalism­and­writing;­not obvious­areas­of­strength­at­Canford

when­they­were­here.­­The­truth­is,­we can’t­generalise,­except­to­say­that Canfordians­are­often­all-rounders­with­a lack­of­pretension,­that­reflects­well­on the­school.­Canford­has­changed­a­great deal­over­the­years­but­it­hasn’t­lost­the essential­spirit­that­causes­so­many­OCs to­want­to­give­something­back­to society­and­their­school.

50 Not Out. A reunion in 2020 for all those who had left Canford before 1970.

OC drinks at the Houses of Parliament.

Enjoying a lesson at a reunion after over sixty years since the last one! A gift from OCs, serendipitously close to the site of the old art shack.

OCs in 1989

This­reminder­of­the­world­changing event­was­donated­by­Air­MarshalSir­Roger­Palin­(SH57),­the Commander­in­Chief­of­RAF Germany­at­the­time.­Remarkably another­OC,­General­Sir­Brian­Kenny (M52),­was­Commander­in­Chief­of the­British­Army­of­the­Rhine­and had­just­been­appointed­to­be Deputy­Supreme­Allied­Commander Europe,­so­the­most­senior­officers­in Germany­in­the­British­army­and­air force­at­this­crucial­moment­in history­were­both­Canfordians.­

They­represent­what­the­Canford­at that­time­set­out­to­produce:­highly successful­schoolboys­who­went­on to­similar­success­in­their­careers.

Having­become­a­traditional­Public School,­and­long­since­a­member­of HMC,­Canford­would­expect­many of­its­pupils­to­make­an­impact­in­the world.­In­1989,­exactly­two-thirds­of the­way­through­its­history, Canfordians­were­doing­just­that,­in­a range­of­contrasting­activities.­In sport­Henry­Cecil­(F60)­had­just been­Champion­Trainer­for­the eighth­time;­in­business­Derek Hornby­(S46)­running­Xerox­was knighted­and­Ronnie­Hempel­(C50) at­ICI­would­soon­follow;­and­Honor Prentice­(nee­Gautby)­(S70),­the­first female­OC,­was­teaching­at­Lund University­in­Sweden­and­about­to become­a­professor­there.­Hector Monro­(C41),­MP­for­Dumfries,­was­

receiving­plaudits­from­all­sides­of­the house­for­his­compassion­in­the aftermath­of­the­Lockerbie­air disaster­which­had­just­occurred­in his­constituency;­but­arguably­–­and perhaps­surprisingly­–­the­area­where Canfordians­were­having­the­most impact­in­1989­was­in­the­Arts.

Simon­Preston­(F56),­the­world’s­best organist,­recorded­Bach’s­famous Toccata­and­Fugue­BMV­565­for Deutsche­Grammophon;­John Drummond­(B52),­Controller­of Radio­3­organised­the­Proms­festival in­the­Albert­Hall;­Alan­Hollinghurst (B71),­was­winning­major­awards­for The Swimming Pool Library,­‘surely­the best­book­about­gay­life­yet­written by­an­English­author’;­Anthony­Eyton (B41),­a­Royal­Academician,­had recently­won­the­Charles­Wollaston Award­for­the­most­prestigious painting­in­the­Summer­Exhibition; and­Michael­Medwin­(W41)­was filming­another­TV­series.­And­on­the Kent­coast­Derek­Jarman­(M60)­was creating­his­now­famous­shingle garden­by­the­sea,­directing­the­Pet Shop­Boys’­spectacular­tour­of­Japan and­persuading­Sir­Laurence­Olivier to­come­out­of­retirement­for­his­last­

Part of the Berlin wall.

Steve Cauthen winning the French Derby for Henry Cecil in 1989.

role­in­Jarman’s­film­War­Requiem.There­were,­of­course,­hundreds­of other­unsung­OCs­achieving elsewhere­but­the­interesting question­is­whether­this­success came­because­of,­or­in­spite­of,­aCanford­education.­Michael Medwin,­school­prefect­and­in several­first­teams,­followed­a traditional­path;­but­that­was­less true­for­others­despite­most enjoying­their­time­at­the­school.­In addition,­peer­pressure­would­have made­it­(nearly)­impossible­for­any of­them­to­admit­what­later­they would­celebrate:­that­many­of them­were­gay.­Indeed­Jarman­was a­vocal­campaigner­for­gay­rights throughout­most­of­his­life­and,­in

1990,­would­direct­a­film­which focused­on­non-binary­gender identities­years­long­before­his views­became­acceptable.No-one­would­dispute­that Canford­in­their­time­was­an orthodox­public­school,­but­what can­also­be­said­is­that­there­were some­excellent­teachers­who presided­over­corners­of­the school­where­the­non-conformists could­flourish.­And­did.

Simon Preston in 1989.

John Drummond and Brian Kenny in 2004, fifteen years after their very different successes in 1989.

A still from the BBC’s ‘Building Sights’ series when Derek Jarmanvisited the house designed by his former art teacher, Robin Noscoe.

Alan Hollinghurst in 1989.

in the War

Alan ‘Sticky’ Mur phy, DSO and bar, DFC , Croix de Guer re with plume , was the most decor ated Canfordian in the war. In 1941 he joined the Special Duties Flight and his hazardous oper ations included being hit in the neck but managing to fly his aircr aft home , as well as picking up a Polish gener al in Fr ance having pioneered the ar t of shor t take-offs and landings He found all this ‘the greatest fun ever ’ and his laughter, leader ship and love of life made him a legend in his squadron He died in 1943 bombing a br idge .

Another highly decor ated air man was Clive Mayer s who had made visits back to Canford in his plane , on one occasion cr ash landing on Speech Day Awarded the DSO and DFC and bar, he once landed dur ing a battle to pick up a colleague whose plane had been shot down, dr agging him to his own plane seat as enemy vehicles approached, before flying home . He was later captured and died in captivity.

Jack Bar nard, in Bur ma as par t of the Special Oper ations Executive , ear ned his MC by par achuting behind enemy

lines and leading a group of twelve men who destroyed br idges and buildings along thir ty miles of r ailway. The exploits of those suffer ing in the heat and at the hands of the Japanese are less well-known than the European actions. Ten Canfordians were captured by the Japanese and, remar kably, all sur vived the war, with one refer r ing to ‘the inspir ation that Canford often was to him dur ing the ter r ible year s in the pr ison camp ’ .

Stuar t Mawson, a doctor, was dropped under fire at Ar nhem where a soldier had gangrene in his leg. The

senior sur geon thought it ‘ a good oppor tunity to test all they have claimed for this [untr ied] penicillin stuff ’ . Mawson injected the penicillin and then waited It wor ked Another OC at Ar nhem was less for tunate . Adolph Bleichroder entered School House in 1936 as a Jewish refugee from Ger many, becoming a prefect and winning a cup for rowing. In 1940 he was shipped off to an inter nment camp in Austr alia as an alien and descr ibed the cr uel, inhumane jour ney on board HMS Duner a in a letter back to his housemaster. After six months he retur ned to the UK

Murphy ’ s DSO, DFC and CdG

Mayers unsuccessful vis t to Canford in 1930

and became a par atrooper, before being captured by Ger mans at Ar nhem and killed.

Char les Cholmondeley’s stor y is now a major film, Oper ation Mincemeat. As a counter-intelligence officer in MI5, he deceived the Ger mans into believing the Br itish would not invade Italy. A dead tr amp was dressed as an officer (not without problems as his frozen feet meant that Cholmondeley str uggled to get boots on him) and taken to the Spanish coast where the body was found by local fisher man The paperwor k on him made its way to the Ger mans and, much later, Churchill received a telegr am saying ‘Mincemeat swallowed

rod, line and sinker they look like acting on it’.

Over 800 Canfordians ser ved in the war of whom 139 are commemor ated on the war memor ial. They retained their sense of humour in difficult circumstances: one OC in a POW camp with twelve other OCs wrote ‘Unlike most educational establishments, this one is a ver y easy one to get into but singular ly hard to get out of!’

Most of those 800 men have stor ies to tell and many were awarded medals for their br aver y; these few are their representatives.

Jack Bernard Capt Mawson RAMC

Cholmondeley and Montague mid-operation

Wimbor ne Junior Lodge in 1933 Murphy s on the extreme right and Mawson second from the left Four of the seven d ed in the war nclud ng Samuel War ng DSO, MC and bar.

Benefactor s

The dedication on the climbing tower is to Molly McBr ide , who came to Canford as a fifteen yearold to be the bur sar ’ s secretar y and mar r ied him five year s later. She attended 62 consecutive Speech Days and those who knew her say that she would be ver y amused to know that her bequest had paid for a climbing tower, something that she was entirely unsuited to using

Another gift from an unexpected quar ter came in 1989 when Sam Wolstenhulme left a significant sum which still helps young OCs who want to tr avel. He star ted wor king in the kitchens in 1959 when he was already 55 year s old, but soon became a popular and wisecr acking por ter. His enjoyment of those few year s now car r ies on through recent Canfordians who benefit ever y year from his gift

Scholar ships, Speech Day pr izes and plaques across the school campus testify to the generous nature of OCs, parents and fr iends throughout the last hundred year s. Some benefactor s like to be remembered in name , but other s prefer to be anonymous Schools in the USA rely on benefactor s to fund ever y new and refurbished building and that tr adition is slowly percolating across the pond, as the recent naming of new rooms at Canford has demonstr ated

However, the major ity of donations (and cer tainly the focus of the Development office) is not buildings, but bur sar ies. In an ideal wor ld, exper iencing a Canford education would not depend on a family’s wealth Such a dream is still some way off, but scores of recent Canfordians can thank benefactor s for the oppor tunty they have been given

V sits from the Br tten Sinfon a, here rehears ng with pupi s, were sponsored by an OC

A Masquerade Gala D nner to ra se money for bursar es

81: John Russell and the Assyrian Frie ze

In 1991 John Russell, a prof essor at Columbia Uni versity, researching in London, read about a La yard frieze that he didn ’t recognise. He and Dr Julian Reade from the British Museum visited Canf ord and thought the relief in the g rubber, assumed to be a plaster cast copy, was genuine. It had been hanging close to a dar tboard and small holes could be seen on one f igure A stone exper t conf ir med their suspicions that the stone was ‘Slab 6 from Room C of Assur nasirpal’s palace at Nimrud.’

In 1959 some smaller Assyrian pieces had been sold after the y had been f ound by a visiting prof essor ‘ par tl y hidden under packets of cereals and piles of cricket shir ts.’ The Headmaster wrote to parents explaining that the reliefs ‘ were thought to be mere plaster copies like the big one near the door in the right ’ . How dif f erent lif e might ha ve been had an yone realised the true wor th of that ‘big one ’ .

In 1993 gover nors now looked f orward to ha ving an unexpected windf all, just as the y were about to go f ull y co-educational. The auction was held on 6th Jul y 1994 and the frieze was bought f or £7,000,000, to hang in the Miho Museum in Kyoto, J apan.

otherwise af f ord Canf ord ’ s f ees.

Canf ord ’ s £6,000,000 (after the commission had been taken of f ) was spent wisel y. Although the y did build a Spor ts Hall (which is open to the public) and a girls’ boarding house, half was in vested and is used to provide bursaries f or pupils who could not

Three years later the school was able to build a ne w theatre and, rightl y, it has been named the La yard theatre to honour the man who made it all possible.

The Miho Museum n Japan

Ken Uprichard, Dr Julian Reade and Prof John Russell examine the frieze n the grubber in May 1992.

A copy of the Assyrian frieze hanging exactly where the original hung for over 100 years

The auction at Christie s

Donated to the Physics depar tment, this must be one of the most unusual presents a parent has ever given to the school A ver y lar ge Newton’s cr adle , it needs to be locked when not used so that inquisitive finger s aren’t squashed between the heavy metal spheres, but it never theless demonstr ates ‘ conser vation of momentum’ just as desktop ver sions do.

For many year s parents were expected to hand over their sons at the star t of ter m, pick them up at the end and pay the bill in between times. Involvement dur ing ter m was not par t of the deal. Gr adually that relationship has become more of a par tner ship, most successful when each par ty recognises that neither has all the answer s Parental

views have usually been sought before big decisions are taken, such as coeducation in 1969, and the introduction of fixed exeats in the 1990s; but now (par ticular ly since the ar r ival of emails) near ly ever ything is discussed

There are numerous parents on the staff and on the gover ning body but, for most parents, their involvement with Canford, outside their children’s interests, is through the Canford Community The Canford School Society had been founded as ear ly as 1942 with the express aim of acting as a link between the school and ‘all who are interested in its welfare’. They held a few social events and r aised money for school projects This lasted for over

seventy year s with events expanded to include speaker s, golf tour naments and dinner s. Alongside this society, groups such as the Fr iends of Canford Rowing and the Fr iends of Canford Music allowed parents with par ticular interests to become more involved, often by r unning the events Recently, these groups have come together under the Fr iends of Canford umbrella, which takes a three pronged approach: ‘Have a go ’ (tr y some of the Canford facilities); ‘Did you know’ (tour s and lectures) and ‘Get together’ (social events). Their fundr aising is focused on sever al community projects, par ticular ly City Reach in Southampton but, equally impor tant, they allow parents to meet each other and play a par t in the school’s development

Newton ’ s cradle.

The annual jazz night. Lunch

Gover nor s

Were f lames about to engulf the archi ve and there was onl y time to take one item, this ma y well be the one that I sa ved. Gover nors ’ Minutes are not entirel y objecti ve, but the y do gi ve the vie w from the top, explaining man y decisions and showing which voices car r y the most clout.

Gover nors ha ve al wa ys taken the big decisions (e ven when the y are simpl y ag reeing with a proposal from the headmaster), but how the y come to those decisions has changed signif icantl y Originall y the Re v War rington needed gover nors who would impress possible parents, so some were names onl y, rarel y visiting the school In f act, f or most gover nors, their knowledge of the school was secondhand, lear ned via the headmaster or bursar.

As the school prog ressed, more of the gover nors had direct links with the school: the y had sent children to Canf ord, or had been pupils there themselves. The y, theref ore, kne w more about the school and had a signif icant interest in its doing well As a Mar tyrs Memorial Trust school, there were al wa ys a signif icant number of gover nors appointed by that g roup, whose mission was to make sure that the Evangelical f ocus of the school did not wa ver. After the school had been bailed out by Legal and General in 1934, the number was reduced; but the y remained a signif icant voice. Usuall y Gover ning Bod y meetings would be preceded by a meeting of the MMT gover nors who would then come to the main meeting with a block vote.

That has long since stopped; and gover nors now ha ve impor tant legal responsibilities Gover ning bodies must include those with a range of par ticular sk ills and being a gover nor takes considerable commitment.

Regular visits to school where gover nors meet staf f , go into lessons and look at the school operating on a da y-to-da y basis, allow e ver yone to f eel that decisions are now taken with a good understanding of the situation.

Governors used to be rarely seen by pupils. Here the Chairman of Governors, Sir Charles King Harman, opens the new boathouse in 1933.

Governors m nutes 1922-48

Canford’s flag was designed by John Benson, the Housemaster of Fr anklin, and sewn by Clive Chancellor’s wife , Mar ger y. Flags fr ay over time and this is one of sever al that have flown from Bar r y ’ s tower and been witnessed by visitor s. It is one of the great pr ivileges of wor king in a school such as Canford that so many distinguished men and women are happy to come and talk to pupils and staff.

There were , of cour se , VIPs who came dur ing Macnutt’s tenure , such as Mr Hall Caine , the MP for East

Dor set; but it is Canning who impressed with his contacts, per suading well-known per sonalities from all areas of life to visit a school that few people had heard about –yet. Great names from the Ar ts, such as John Betjeman and Augustus John would frequently stay at the Headmaster’s house , where they would often meet pupils who would then remember the event for the rest of their lives.

Other Headmaster s might not have had such an impressive list of fr iends and acquaintances, but continued to

br ing excellent speaker s into Canford The pianist, Ger ald Moore , was one of those included in Hardie’s lecture ser ies; and the for mer pr ime minster, Sir Alec Douglas-Home , spoke on Speech Day in 1968. Other famous names, such as Roy Jenkins, David Attenborough and Jane Goodall came to speak in the following year s.

By then it was not just the school inviting guests in: depar tments, spor t and societies were also hosting events. Of cour se , the well-known figures were not always guar anteed

The cest at the centre of one of the school f lags.

The Lord Mayor, S r Phene Neal, with Schoo Prefects, after open ng the Canford-Poole Boys C ub in 1931

The ver y dapper Bour nemouth MP and his wife presenting the sports prizes in 1925

to be inspir ational and many of the best talks came from those who were compar atively unknown; but it was the people in the news who drew the biggest crowds

The introduction of Theme Weeks and other occasions where the timetable was suspended, so that pupils could look at the wider picture , meant more lectures and more outside speaker s. A few speaker s left as soon as they had finished, but many, including some of the most famous, chatted to pupils and showed their ordinar iness

A few wor r y that Canfordians will become blasé about listening to those at the top of their field, but there is no sign of that yet. There may be an expectation that such figures will continue to visit Canford, but ever yone knows they are for tunate to have that oppor tunity and ever yone gains from hear ing outside views.

Sir A ec Douglas Home meeting the Head of School n 1968. The Headmaster and Cha r man of Gover nors look on.

Kate Ad e ser v ng unch dur ng ‘Conf ict Week’ in 1994.

Sir Garf e d Sobers speaking to cr cketers in John of Gaunt ’ s in 2009.

Dal it Nagra reading his poetr y n the l brar y, one of a long list of ce ebrated poets to v sit Canford.

Royal Visitor s

Ne ver ones to hide their friendship with the f uture King Ed ward VII, Lord and Lad y Wimbor ne placed this crown above the bed the Prince of Wales used on his se veral visits The bedroom was also one of the rooms pre viousl y used by Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, so has strong royal connections. Once par t of School House, it is now a meeting room with spectacular vie ws across The Park.

In mediae val times se veral reigning monarchs came to Canf ord Manor but, unless one counts the visit of Queen Elizabeth in Ma y 1940, none has been here in the last f e w hundred years. She had come to inspect the Queen ’ s Ba ys as the y left to f ight in France, and lunched with the Cannings, so will ha ve seen the pupils who cheered her on.

The prince’s sister, the Princess Royal, visited The Park a f e w years later, as it was hosting a large Girl Guide rall y, an organisation the princess suppor ted.

There ha ve been three other royal visits. In 1966 Princess Margaret un veiled Geof fre y Clarke’s sculpture over the entrance to the open air theatre; and in 1982, Princess Anne opened the ne w Ph ysics classrooms. These were f or mal visits where pupils lined the roa yl routes through the school. The latest visit, though, was a much less f or mal occasion, when Prince Ed ward pla yed real tennis on the school cour t. It f or med par t of his tour of all the real tennis cour ts in the countr y to raise a wareness of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, and he later met gold a ward winners from Canf ord and The Bour ne Academ y

Canning was renowned f or his social contacts but he, or a gover nor, did well to persuade Prince George, younger brother of the f uture King George VI, to visit on Speech Da y 1932 His plane landed on the other side of the ri ver from the school bef ore he joined in the celebrations A f e w months earlier Canf ord had been in vited to join the HMC (Headmaster’s Conf erence), conf ir ming their status as a Public School, so 1932 was a signif icant year in Canf ord ’ s histor y

The restored crown in the Crown meeting room

Royal autographs record the visits of Pr ncesses Margaret and Anne

Prince George awarding Treffey h s spurs for his contribution to school riding

In 1981 Antony Hopkins, the composer and BBC presenter, gave a disappointing talk to the Canford Music Society. However, this clear ly wasn’t held against him as, a year later, he was commissioned to wr ite a piece of music for choir and orchestr a to celebr ate the school’s diamond jubilee He conducted the piece himself and this is his score .

The Rev Macnutt did not feel Canford was ready for its fir st Speech Day until 1926 but, since then, it has been the ‘Ascot’ of Canford’s year. Parents, staff, pupils, OCs and other s come together, dressed in their finer y, ready to celebr ate the year that is just finishing. In fact, for sixty year s, Speech Day was not held at the end of the

summer ter m; but it moved there in 1985 where it seems better suited.

Or iginally held in the Great Hall, the action moved outside after a few year s, and then into a marquee . The marquee was dropped for a while but, after the wind and r ain of 1983, it was decided that suffer ing the heat of a marquee when it was too hot was better than facing the elements, so Headmaster s, visiting speaker s and pr ize winner s could always be applauded in the dr y.

As the new millennium approached, Speech Day was given a makeover as attendance at the Commemor ation Ser vice had dropped and the displays had become less popular. The ser vice

was stopped, the displays were revamped, post speech dr inks on the Sunken Lawn (grouped by house) were introduced, and the Canford Gallop made its fir st appear ance , whereby those with dr inks in their hands could watch pupils r ace round the edge of the Lawn with the music from Char iots of Fire in the background.

Changes introduced dur ing Covid, with most of the school coming together on the penultimate day and the last day of ter m reser ved for leaver s and their parents, proved so successful that the model has been retained. Whatever the for m, though, it remains an excellent send-off for the Upper Sixth leaver s

The orig nal score for Speech Day.

Speech Day 1930.

A PE disp ay from the 1960s.

Dr nks on the Sunken Lawn

The Canford Summer School of Music

A silver nameplate on this oboe case allows us to be reasonably confident that it was left behind after a CSSM cour se . The owner was a local oboe teacher who would have been a par ticipant when oboists of the stature of Evelyn Rothwell (Barbirolli) and Janet Cr axton were teaching there .

For many people outside Canford the summer music cour se was better known than the school

The br ainchild of Noel Hale , a local music teacher, it star ted in 1952 when the weekly char ge was nine guineas (£9 45) to include tuition, concer ts, meals and accommodation Non-residents could have ‘dinner with ser vice’ for 3s (15p) – pr ices that made the or ganiser s wor r y that no-one could afford to come They needn’t have been concer ned: for over fifty year s the cour se provided musicians of var ying standards with a r ange of musical activities sur rounded by the beauty of The Par k.

Unsur pr isingly there were some tensions Canford residents who had looked forward to the quiet of the summer holidays didn’t enjoy the company of so many musicians who felt they were on holiday. Complaints about tr umpets playing at 1am and discos in the small hour s of the mor ning were common. However, for most of those who lived in The Par k, the cour se was a positive exper ience and prefer able to the alter native Schools need to let out their buildings dur ing the holidays and the CSSM was a better tenant than some of the language schools

In 2004 the school needed to do some major wor k dur ing the summer break, so the CSSM was forced to move to Sherbor ne where it continued to use the Canford name All par ties then agreed that the move should be per manent and, much to Sherbor ne ’ s relief, the name was changed.

The abandoned oboe

Excellent publicity for the CSSM in a 1956 Il ustrated London News

P ant ng a tree at Canford to ce ebrate the 50th anni versar y of the f irst course

Outside use of Canford

With impressi ve f acilities and a beautif ul en vironment, it is not surprising that Canf ord is some where people want to hire. The Fiji rugby 7s pla yers, coached by OC Ben Gollings, were the most recent team to train here while preparing f or the 2022 Common wealth Games in Bir mingham.

The y f ollowed in the f ootsteps of AFC Bour nemouth who used Canf ord as their training g round f or se veral years. At the time the y were in the lower two di visions of Eng lish f ootball so enjoyed better training f acilities than an y of their opponents. The relationship worked well as the y pla yed in the mor ning when pupils were in lessons and the onl y conf lict centred on large black cars dri ving too f ast through The Park. After some years a wa y, the y bought the golf course next to Canf ord in 2017 where the y are building impressi ve f acilities f or all their

teams, so the y will soon join the Bour nemouth Symphon y Orchestra and Bour nemouth Uni versity as Bour nemouth g roups who are actuall y based in Poole

Se veral f ilm companies ha ve used Canf ord as a backdrop, including the Ger man TV channel who ha ve f ilmed all Rosamunde Pilcher’s novels Ger mans trek to Cor n wall in their thousands e ver y year, as that is the usual setting f or her novels but, in 2000 ,‘Call of the Past ’ used Canf ord as their school

While f ilms and spor ting stars create more interest, language schools and weddings f or m the staple diet of lettings With the ser vice in the parish church or Long Galler y, the wedding breakf ast in the Great Hall and photos taken by the ri ver and Sunken La wn, it is dif f icult to imagine a more picturesque star t to mar ried lif e.

A shirt worn by the Fi i team at the Commonwealth Games; the team training at Canford.

AFC Bournemouth.

A shot from the Rosamonde Pilcher film ‘Ruf der Vergangenheit’. Canford

Canford Park and Beyond

The Park: Arboretum

Whatever the for tunes of the school, there has always been one constant: the beauty of The Par k. The trees stand at the hear t of this space and have , for tunately, been well looked after by Canford’s tenants. That care is represented by these two tree plates, which were par t of sur veys car r ied out in 1923 and 1959

Trees have been collected for as long as there have been explorer s, but arboretums became par ticular ly popular in England just as Sir John Guest was buying Canford. He had inher ited some pr ize specimens from the 17th centur y (and ear lier), including the sweet chestnut which, for many year s, was listed as the broadest tree in England with a gir th of 14m. It has recently been shown to have been in the grounds since at least the 12th centur y Sir John’s own

additions included tulip trees, blue cedar s, avenues of limes and the Wellingtonia which still dominates the cr icket ground. He also ensured that Canford is now home to the national collection of both walnut and katsur a trees.

One tree he didn’t plant was the Mountjoy oak whose name may have come from an apocr yphal legend about Lady Mountjoy. Recognised as ancient in the 16th centur y, it came to a sad end in the 1950s

Having been set on fire in 1948 by boys attempting to smoke out some honey bees, it was finished off a few year s later by other boys letting off firewor ks The remains of its stump can still be seen, but it sur vives as Canford’s pr incipal emblem, and for ms par t of the school crest.

Tree plates from 1923 ( Judas tree) and 1959 (rhododendron).

A double rainbow adding to the beauty of The Park.

One of the Spanish chestnuts in 1802, although not the one that st ll stands

To create space for the Beaufor t building in the 1930s, a lar ge cedar was moved r ather than cut down. Sadly, strong winds blew it over shor tly afterwards, but similar respect for the trees has been shown since , with new specimens being added all the time . In 1960 a Dawn Redwood was planted and, much more recently, a Wollemi Pine Both had been thought extinct, but now thr ive at Canford

Nature has not always been kind to the trees. Great stor ms in 1987 and 1990 did huge damage; var ious diseases have hit the hor se chestnuts, oaks, elms and other s; and squir rels eating bar k are always pests. Despite this, though, The Par k remains a beacon of excellence . Three long ser ving ‘Master s in char ge of trees’, together with specialists on the ground staff have ensured that the arboretum remains a ver y special place Their involvement of pupils in related activities has also meant that Canfordians continue to be aware of how lucky they are to live here .

The Mount oy oak before its dem se.

Mov ng the cedar tree in 1929.

The ancient sweet chestnut prov des a suitab e place for pup ls to hear about the arboretum

The effect of Dutch e m d sease in the 1970s Now the ashes are threatened

The Park: Wildlife

Thanks to the record keeping of keen or nithologists on the staff, we know more about the birds at Canford than any other animal As long ago as 1929, the Headmaster was able to tell parents that the boys had agreed that the 300 acres of grounds should become a bird sanctuar y, and no eggs should be taken except for collections! In 1954, the Protection of Birds Act meant that no-one was allowed to take the eggs of wild birds; and birds have since been encour aged to nest here by up to eighty birdboxes of var ious designs. This one has been standing since the 1990s

The birdboxes and nets have meant that, for instance , more than 10,000 blue tits have been r inged over the last few year s; but there have been r are sightings as well, such as a firecrest and a wr yneck. What has also been clear is the dr amatic decline in number s for some birds: in the 1960s and 70s there were about twenty pair s of spotted flycatcher s but, until a pair was spotted in 2017, none had been seen since 2009. On the other hand, the number of birds of prey is increasing. The popular ity of falconr y, such as in the 1960s and 80s, has meant that hawks, kestrels and other s have been kept on site , but buzzards are now often seen wheeling overhead

In gener al, the birds do little damage; but that cannot be said for many of the other animals A 1933 repor t listed twenty-one mammals that lived in the school grounds, and complained about the damage that squir rels were doing to trees, especially young saplings Nothing has changed, except the type of squir rels doing the damage . Red squir rels, now pretty much confined to Brownsea Island, were then plentiful, with one dr ay in the Round Garden. The ar ticle looked forward to the day when the r are ‘Amer ican Tree Rat’ (grey squir rel) would be er adicated; how wrong could you be? One mammal that the ar ticle didn’t mention was the badger. Now quite common, the setts they have dug under the bluebell walk that r uns along the side of Tadmoor s have made it unsafe . There is no longer a path to the heath there , but the route of the house cross-countr y r ace has had to be changed.

The heath is one of the few places in the UK that is home to all six native reptiles, so it is not sur pr ising that snakes are seen in The Par k Increasing in number s, too, are the otter s, which may not please the fisher men (or the fish) Foxes regular ly inter r upt play on the golf cour se , deer damage the trees; but hares – mentioned in the 1933 repor t – are not seen now.

There have also been other animals living in The Par k – hor ses for many year s, when r iding was popular, and even a pig which was kept on the Spit (an appropr iate place!) next to the old mill. Like those , honey bees are not really wildlife , but there have been hives at Canford since 1977 Not only has bee keeping been a popular activity since that time , but over 40kg of Canford honey is produced in a good year

A batch of mandarin eggs. This is far too many for one female so probably invo ved three using the same nest! This birdbox has

Badgers causing havoc

A snake in 1928 and one of its relati ves near y 100 years later

Otters are becoming ncreasingly common in the Stour

sow

The Park: the Buildings

This maquette is one of sever al made by Geoffrey Clar ke as he designed a sculpture for the pavilion theatre . It is slightly different from the final design, which was erected by pupils, under the direction of Robin Noscoe , before being opened by Pr incess Mar garet in 1966 The pavilion theatre has its detr actor s, but most think it an excellent example of 1960s architecture . However, its main claim to impor tance is that it was built by staff and pupils to Noscoe’s design. Can any other school claim to have done the same? Since ever yone involved was doing this in their free time – even if a cer tain amount of ar m twisting was

involved – progress was slow. However, some of those involved are amazed that their handiwor k is still standing. It is an impressive achievement by anyone ’ s standards The Civic Tr ust wrote that the bold design ‘ comes off with conviction’; and that the ‘ wor kmanship is often cr ude , but ever ywhere seems to exude the exuber ance of those who executed it’. The Manor House , of cour se , is the dominant building in The Par k Many prefer Blore’s or iginal design to Bar r y ’ s improvements, but the quality of both is clear. The view from Mountjoy of the south side of the building has always been (and will always be) the classic view of the

The Geoffrey Clarke maquette.

The back of the theatre in 2022, showing the recent y restored sculpture.

school, favoured by ar tists and photogr apher s since it was built. However, its familiar ity does not take away its attr activeness

John of Gaunt’s, an extension to the mediaeval building, before becoming a chapel and then a kitchen, is the school’s oldest building. It has a cer tain char m when you enter it, but the changes made to the building in 1926 do it no favour s. The school had inher ited a building where the fir st floor had long since disappeared. Rather than restore it to a two-storey building, the windows were deepened

to allow in more light, so making it impossible to replace the or iginal floor.

The main room is still a pleasant place for events, but the propor tions of Salisbur y Chamber are completely wrong.

A much better re-wor king of a building has been achieved in Gisborough.

Exter nally it remains the village hall it always was, but the inter ior has been re-modelled extensively. Moder n regulations had made it impossible for the whole school to meet there , so the focal point has been moved to the middle of the nor th wall, with balconies

at each end For the fir st time , ever yone can meet for assemblies and chapel, with the AV facilities and connection to the new libr ar y and cater ing areas a bonus.

If there was a vote for the most picturesque building in The Par k, the Victor ian mill house would probably win Re-built after a fire in 1894, its setting next to the Stour makes it a popular spot for wedding photogr aphs. Inter nally, it has probably been changed more than any other building, par tly to counter act the regular flooding, but mainly because of its changing use

Or iginally it housed the bur sar y and dor mitor ies for some suppor t staff. For near ly fifty year s, from 1976, it was then home to Salisbur y House , with its everchanging needs; but they have now moved into the main building and the mill house is soon to become the bur sar y again. In the future , it may yet have a new use; but, if even if it doesn’t, the changing nature of a school is sure to require modifications to buildings elsewhere .

The c assic view from Mount oy John of Gaunt s by David P ested (B67) in 2000

The new Assembly Hal from the balcony at the west end

The Victorian mil house

The school tr ain mar ked the beginning and end of ter m for many Canfordians, until Wimbor ne station became one of Beeching’s ear ly casualties and was closed to passenger s in 1964. When today’s pupils walk into Wimbor ne they still pass under Sir John Guest’s splendid br idge that used to car r y the r ailway line , but it stands as a monument to his impor tance in the manufacture of r ailways and has no pr actical use now.

Wimbor ne , however, shows little sign of decline and remains a popular destination for pupils, who now have much more freedom to go there than in the past. As well as a place to spend free time , there are a number of more for mal links between the school and town Pupils have helped out in char ity shops, retirement homes and

pr imar y schools for as almost as long as the community ser vice progr amme has oper ated Now, however, they are also involved in two of Wimbor ne ’ s major attr actions: the model village and the Minster itself.

The latter still plays a significant par t in school life Apar t from the gener al help offered on Monday after noons, there is a long r unning collabor ation in ar t (Canfordians regular ly display their wor k in the building) and the Minster hosts two of the impor tant events in the school calendar. The Leaver s ’ Ser vice has only been r unning for a few year s, but the Carol Ser vice was moved there some time ago. Although it is now a voluntar y ser vice , in pr actice most Shells and U6th attend and Minster officials see it as one of the musical highlights of their year.

Luggage labels from the 1930s and 1950s

The school train in 1961 Three years later it would stop running

On Minster Green after the Leavers’ Ser v ce.

The Green Agenda

Despite the occasional cry that the youth of today don’t have the passion of their predecessors, the truth is that pupils are often in the vanguard when it comes to environmental issues. This Youth Environmental Award for 2016, competed for by schools in Bristol, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire, is one of many awards that Canfordians have won.

With his coal-f ired f urnaces belching out f umes in Merth yr Tydf il, Sir John Guest cannot be accused of being g reen; but in one area he was. In 1890,

to celebrate the visit of the Prince of Wales, he installed h ydro-electric turbines near the mill house, which powered the chandeliers in the Great Hall. When Canford School opened, it continued to produce its own electricity so that, in the particularl y cold weather of February 1947, the Headmaster was able to assure the school that ‘ as we generate our own electricity there is at present no need for restriction’.

Several times since then, the school has looked seriousl y at whether the mill stream could again be used to generate electricity. Plans were put forward in 1984 and, in 2006, a major effort was nearl y successf ul. A Volvo environmental prize won by Charles Chalkl y-Maber f unded initial research into the viability and, some months later, after extensi ve input from consultants, he and Ed Steele made a presentation to governors. Sadl y the project (along with more recent attempts) was turned down on f inancial g rounds; but the possibility remains li ve as technolog y improves.Smaller scale projects have been run since at least 1990 when the f irst recycling option

was set up; and the present day Environmental Group makes regular suggestions. Large scale school projects, such as photo-voltaic panels on the roof of the John Lever building, and g round source pumps for the proposed U6th college, sit alongside smaller ones, such as the environmental QR codes around the school that allow everyone to raise environmental concerns.

2016 Environmental Award

Early green in tiatives: recycling in 1990

Canford Poole Boys’ Club and Nor tham

Clifford Canning had wor ked with the poor in London and was always conscious of the pr ivileges a Canford education allowed In 1929, shor tly after being made Headmaster, he approached var ious people in Wimbor ne with a view to star ting a joint youth club but no-one was interested. However, the Rector of St James in Poole was keen and offered rooms in Church House allowing the Canford-Poole Boys Club to r un on three nights a week until it was able to move into a more per manent home in 1931. For nine year s a peppercor n rent,

a Canford master in char ge and being staffed entirely by volunteer s meant that Canford could cover the cost of any expenses beyond the £140 annual gr ant from the Rotar y Club. Canford pupils visited regular ly to help and were the mainstay of the Summer Camps, and Poole boys would visit Canford to use its facilities.

In 1939 increased funding allowed the appointment of a full-time Warden which, together with the outbreak of war and the need to move again, brought the Borough in as an equal par tner. Canfordians found it increasingly hard to visit dur ing the war and the balance of control continued to shift away from the school. In 1959 the club moved again, becoming the Oakley-Poole Boys Club and OCs r aised £500 to cover the cost, encour aged by a letter from Char les Beresford who had been the fir st teacher in char ge and was still on the management committee thir ty year s later. Thir ty year s later again, in 1989, he was still a Vice Patron of the appeal that r aised £300,000 to build new premises Canford’s involvement was now restr icted to the big occasions: hosting a ball to launch the appeal; another, in 1990, to celebr ate the opening of the new building; and, in 2011, a recreation

of the 1988 ball and a celebr ation lunch Sixth For m pupils still visited regular ly; but the club, now called Limelights, was

just one of many schools and or ganisations where Canford pupils assisted on a Monday after noon

Advert sing a ba l to raise money for the Canford Poole Boys C ub

Summer Camp n the 30s and 40s

In 2002 the Canford Society wanted to fund a long ter m inner city project. Realistically that meant looking in Southampton where Jer r y Or me set up a link with a newly re-constituted youth club on the Nor tham Estate . Youngster s from the club visited Canford for activity days but the distance to Southampton

meant that it couldn’t be par t of the weekly progr amme . Instead volunteer Sixth For m pupils would give up evenings or weekends to tr avel to Nor tham where they would help. The highlights of the year, though, would be the annual Chr istmas par ty at Canford and the summer camp in the Canford

grounds where tents would be set up along the edge of Tadmoor s and the children would be enter tained throughout the weekend by Canfordians.

The most ambitious project to date has been the joint tr ip to Tanzania with some

of the older teenager s at Nor tham; but the relationship with the club, now called City Reach, is still ver y strong after more than twenty year s Canford pupils complete the route of the Whole School Walk ever y year, r aising thousands of pounds and the Canford Society remains actively involved

ohn Hard e and other staff with their wi ves at a ba l n the 1950s to ra se money for the CPBC Charles Beresford in glasses s half h dden.

The o nt Canford-Northam tr p to Tanzan a

2004: an early adventure camp

Northam camp ng at Canford

The Bour ne Academy

This ‘magnificent’ trophy is awarded to the winner s of the annual golf match between The Bour ne Academy staff and the Canford staff A similar trophy represents supremacy on the cr icket pitch. The games may be played for fun, but the relationship behind the schools has become an impor tant one

In 2007 a School Commissioner visited Canford wanting to ‘tap into our culture of excellence’ by asking us to sponsor an academy. This involved no financial commitment but did require us to gover n the school and provide other

help We were per suaded that we had something to offer and wrote a Vision based on our house system; specialisms of engineer ing and English to offer something for the talented as well as those with liter acy and numer acy needs; and, cr ucially, the requirement that the academy was for the Kinson community, r aising expectations in the local area, not a school that cher r y picked the talented

Ever yone was slightly war y of what all this entailed but Canford gover nor s gave their approval and John Lever asked me to set it up. After two year s of Byzantine paperwor k, the academy opened in 2010 under the char ismatic leader ship of Jackie Steel whom John had appointed against the advice of the gover nment’s advisor. She was sometimes controver sial but always inspir ational and, with the best of the staff from the predecessor school, the academy quickly became a popular choice for local parents We had been promised a complete rebuild but a change of gover nment put paid to that. However, a significant building progr amme offered much better facilities, matching the ever-improving exam results After five year s Jackie resigned to concentr ate on her ar t, and Mar k Avoth was appointed as the new

pr incipal. He , too, had attended an independent school but taught in state schools and proved to be the perfect successor, dealing with the omnipresent financial pressures and making the

academy a genuine alter native to the gr ammar schools in the area

The academy has undoubtedly been a huge success Canford has, of cour se ,

The TBA v Canford go f trophy

Steve F etcher from AFC Bour nemouth opens the new academy

The TBA staff cr cket team at Canford

played its par t providing the major ity of the gover ning body and helping in areas such as science and the introduction of A levels. However, alongside the duties of being a sponsor, a par allel relationship has developed between two contr asting schools. Apar t from the cr icket and golf matches, staff have held joint Inset days; young staff doing a for mal teaching qualification do some of their pr actice in the other school; a Shell/Year 9 Book Club meets regular ly; Year 10 pupils spend a mor ning at each other’s schools; pupils have built F24 r acing car s together ; older pupils from both schools have jointly crewed a lar ge sailing ship; Canford pupils help in TBA

lessons on Monday after noons as par t of our Enter pr ises progr amme; and Bour ne Scholar s from Year s 7 and 8 attend a cour se at Canford on Wednesdays for cultur al and educational enr ichment.

Canford parents are now increasingly involved as gover nor s and over a dozen academy students have won places in Canford’s Sixth For m and more than justified their selection If you walk round The Bour ne Academy you cannot fail to be impressed by the quiet ambition and the increasing selfconfidence; we have differ ing strengths but much in common and the

relationship continues to grow. It is still unusual for an independent school to be the sole sponsor of an academy and Canford has done it for longer than anyone else We continue to give no

financial help and are deter mined to r un a model that could be replicated elsewhere , Ever yone is now delighted that Canford was prepared to take that fir st step in 2007

TBA Go d Duke of Edinburgh winners meet ng the Earl of Wessex at Canford

TBA’s F24 team at Silverstone

Mark Avoth and Bour ne Leaders n 2005

Community Action and Charity Work

This slightly tatty, but colourful, scarf was knitted in the two days leading up to Speech Day in 2012. A national campaign required teams to r aise money by completing 2012 km by any means. At Canford, each house divided into five teams to cover fifty different events between them, each contr ibuting a small amount towards the total. The scarf contr ibuted only about 3m, and required sever al pupils to have knitting lessons before the event so that they could compete . I’m sure they appreciated lear ning a new skill.

Before the war, the Canford-Poole Boys’ Club was the main way in which Canford helped the community, and dur ing the war the focus was on helping local far mer s. In 1955 the school sent two Sixth For m pupils to

the Stepney Conference where the aim was to teach pr ivileged children more about life in post-war East London. Each year pupils met inspir ational speaker s and local people , such as the small West Indian community, the Ber nherd Baron Jewish Settlement and tr ade union leader s Canfordians were par ticular ly shocked by the secondar y schools where all the pupils left at fifteen before they had obtained any qualifications, with one of the 1961 pupils sneer ing at Pr ime Minister Macmillan’s recent claim that ‘ you have never had it so good’. By the end of the 1950s the Per sonal Ser vice Scheme had been set up whereby pupils did var ious jobs for locals, nor mally the elder ly. This was usually ar r anged through houses who were each responsible for a few households. The scheme was gr adually extended

The Gold Challenge scarf

A group of Schoo House boys setting off to work on a far m in 1940

Having fun in a break at Stewart’s Nursery during the 1960s.

to include some old people’s homes and then renamed Community Ser vice in 1966. Following a sur vey, a group of Sixth For m boys decided the scheme needed another revamp so, in 1973, the Fr iendly Action Group was established Still entirely voluntar y, there were now oppor tunities for pupils to help other s on sever al days a week. Money was r aised, fir st through a bazaar and then, much more ambitiously, via a whole school walk, to set up a headquar ter s and buy a minibus. FAG was still oper ating into the 1990s, although only on one day a week Visiting the elder ly and doi

chores remained the main activity, but there were other options, such as helping to look after the children of single mother s at a local group so that they could have a br ief respite .

By 1996 pupils were helping in twelve schools (eight fir st schools, one middle and three special schools), as well as half a dozen char ity shops and elsewhere . Within a few year s there was an expectation that any Sixth For m pupil not in the CCF would spend at least one ter m doing some sor t of community r k; and,

perhaps more impor tantly, once a pupil had agreed to help with a par ticular or ganisation, that activity would take precedence over ever ything else This pr inciple has never gone and, together with the r ange of activities, makes it one of Canford’s jewels; indeed, Canford was pr aised at the Headmaster s ’ Conference (HMC) for its outstanding wor k

The link with City Reach (Nor tham) is about to celebr ate its twentieth anniver sar y; and the SHINE project, whereby pupils from three Fir st Schools in depr ived areas come to

Canford on Saturday mor nings for a r ange of academic activities, including dissection of frogs, robot building and composition, is ten year s old On Mondays pupils assist at fifteen schools and, while visiting individuals is now r are , they also help at a dozen homes and char ity shops. More unusually they are involved with projects at the Minster and Wimbor ne Model Town

The Schools Together website lists over seventy projects where Canford is involved, and the joy is that ever yone gains from all these ar r angements.

Canford Par tner ships

When the Assyr ian fr ieze was sold, the money was split roughly equally between new buildings (the Spor ts Centre and Beaufor t House) and establishing a fund for bur sar ies A smaller, but significant, sum was also ear mar ked for char itable wor k, both locally and abroad. In 1996, following a staff visit the previous year, the fir st group of Canfordians tr avelled to Goodwill Children’s Home in Tamil Nadu, a state in souther n India Twenty-seven year s later the relationship between Canford and the home remains as strong as ever. This representation of three major religions (Chr istianity, Hinduism and Islam) is one of the many gifts given to Canford dur ing those visits.

From the beginning, the aim of the Canford Par tner ship was to build long-ter m relationships, r ather than just pay fleeting visits. Groups of Canfordians would visit annually, r aising money beforehand, and then divide their time there between pr actical help on the buildings, and teaching and enter taining the children. On their fir st visit to India, pupils put in solar panels and dug toilets, as well as inter acting with the children Since then, projects have always been those requested by the host – this is a partnership – which has thanked the visitor s by naming one of the new rooms ‘The Canford Room’. Help has now been extended into the local community, and this will expand

After three year s Canford decided to star t a second par tner ship and Mwega Pr imar y School in Gilgil, Kenya was chosen. The inaugur al visit in 2000 gave the school its fir st stone building and, over the next few year s, near ly all the remaining wood and mud buildings were replaced By 2009 the political situation was causing some unrest and, as Canford had done all that was realistically possible at the school, the project was replaced by the ‘Light in Afr ica’ or phanage in Tanzania, which had fir st been visited by a Canford-Nor tham tr ip in 2008.

In 2003, despite possible language difficulties, a third Par tner ship star ted in Ar gentina: the Hogar el Alba children’s home in the shanty suburb of Buenos Aires Building suitable accommodation was again was at the core of the help offered, although the annual fête , or ganised by Canford, to which all the children in the neighbourhood were invited, became an instant hit. The effect that Canford’s visits had on this community was such that, in 2010, the owner of the home said that their 85-year histor y should now be divided into ‘before Canford’ and ‘after Canford’

The latest project, to Ghana, was star ted in 2015 and replaced Tanzania The AwutuWinton School is a ver y r are phenomenon in the countr y: a free secondar y school. Teaching for ms a much more impor tant role than in other par tner ships and Canfordians often br ing equipment, such as chemistr y appar atus, when

A present from Tamil Nadu.

Team teaching on one of the two trips to India n 2001.

Animal car v ngs; a present from Kenya.

they come Given that it is a secondar y school, a different sor t of relationship is star ting to develop (see Object 98).

The wish to involve more pupils meant that new destinations were always being sought No European venues showed any interest, but a possibility emer ged in Cambodia until the outbreak of Covid meant that they withdrew It also prompted a rethink as Covid, the increasing costs and, par ticular ly, the carbon footpr int created by all these long flights suggested that a new approach was needed. Now, all aspects of a tr ip are scr utinised as to whether they could be better done remotely; and par tner ships must benefit more Canfordians than just those on the tr ips. The online debates or ganised with Ghana are an example of the sor t of changes being introduced

Canfordians in Kenya during 2009.

The 2007 Argentina trip

Teach ng in Ghana in 2014

98: The Canford Group

By the 1980s a number of schools had for med themselves into cluster s, the most well-known being the Eton Group and Rugby Group, whose thir ty schools included the most famous in the countr y. Canford was already one of the Allied Schools, but that was a small group, spread out across England, so somewhat impr actical and didn’t have anything like the cohesion of the lar ger Woodard group of High Church Anglican schools. Mar tin Mar r iott was keen for Canford to join a group but, as

other s didn’t want to add to their number, he for med his own and the Canford Group was bor n Initially there were twelve schools spread over Dor set, Somer set and Devon, all within about fifty miles of Taunton; and it is a measure of Canford’s coming of age that they were happy to meet under Canford’s moniker. Each academic depar tment, the Heads, Housemaster s, Deputy Heads and Director s of Studies held annual meetings, with the venues rotating round the var ious schools. The

fir st meetings were dominated by discussion of GCSEs which were about to be introduced with concer n that the intellectual content of O levels would be diluted Most developed a for mat of a visiting speaker in the mor ning with pre-submitted questions discussed in the after noon

There have been changes. As roles such as Head of Sixth For m and SENCo (Special Education Needs Co-ordinator) were introduced, so new groups were for med. Allhallows closed, leaving Canford somewhat adr ift geogr aphically, exacerbated when Tr uro (Cor nwall), Millfield (Somer set) and War minster (Wiltshire) joined. Pastor al groups were

probably less successful than the academic depar tments, as subjects are univer sal but the needs of boarding and day schools are often ver y different. However, the Group still flour ishes, problems have been shared and solved, and fr iendships for med.

Colourfu hand-wr tten notes from the f rst housemasters’ meet ng n 1985/6.

A map showing the d stribut on of the present group Canford is in the SE cor ner

99:

Links with Over seas Schools

This platypus was gi ven to the school by Dr Peter Crowcroft who taught biolog y at Canford in 1961/2 before returning to Australia to become a leading conservationist. The school has gained immeasurabl y from the international teachers who have spent time here, not onl y because they offer a different perspecti ve. Sadl y, the exchange prog ramme, through which teachers at Canford swapped roles (and usuall y houses and cars as well) with a teacher from another country for a year, has now stopped.

All is not lost, though, as Canford is developing new links with international schools. In the mid-60s Canford

had looked seriousl y at building Washington House opposite the main entrance to the school. The hope was that several American school leavers (together with some Canford U6th) would spend a year there, with both parties gaining from the experience. A member of staff was sent out to the USA to explore possible partners but the scheme came to nothing

Now, the strongest relationships are being built with a school where the seeds were sown in the 1990s. Craighouse, based in Santiago, Chile, deli vers its Lower School curriculum in English. Every two years they bring strong rugby and hockey teams to England, with Canford a permanent f ixture on their itinerary. Some years ago, three members of their staff each spent a term at Canford, and a g roup of Canford pupils visited Santiago in 2003. The visits then stopped, but that may soon change as pupils at both schools have become ‘ pen pals’ and Zoom has allowed Craighouse to join the Model United Nations prog ramme.

Links with the Sagar School in R ajastan, India continue.

An OC now chairs the board of the school her f ather founded; a former Canford teacher spent three months there in 2019; their head visited Canford in 2020; and two recent OCs are teaching there now Along with many other schools, Canford is also linked to the Atmospheric School in Ukraine, something which took on new signif icance in 2022. There are plans to strengthen links with the Awutu-Winton school in Ghana, which Canford visits as part of the Canford Partnership. A teacher from there spent a term at Canford in 2023 and f urther visits are planned in both directions

The stuffed platypus.

Part of a note from Ian Wallace about Washington House.

Canfordians with their Chilean exchange partners in 2003.

100: The Future

Ever yone enjoys public recognition of what they do, and winning Tatler magazine’s School of the Year award in 2019 was no exception. Did that mean that no other school was wor thy of the award that year ; or that Canford was not such a good school the following year when it didn’t win? Of cour se not. However it did suggest that a lot of people thought that Canford was doing a pretty good job.

But what of the future? No-one sur vives by living on past glor ies or by assuming that you shouldn’t change a winning model. The

temptation is to join the ‘ ar ms r ace ’ and build bigger and better facilities, but when new buildings go up they mustn’t just be showpieces. Each must have an impact on the whole school, enable pupils to develop, and be based on Canford’s core beliefs: community, explore , express, excel.

In the past, OCs have tended to choose a profession and stay in it, but present Canfordians are much more likely to have por tfolio career s. The education they receive must give them the skills to adapt to the changing situations. It is impor tant that schools are not just a

prepar ation for the next stage , as too many people focus on the future and for get to enjoy the present, but Canford’s Beyond the Gates progr amme does enable pupils to prepare for their leaving The new Sixth For m college , designed to open in 2025, will house all the U6th in a complex that includes the Sixth For m Centre and career s depar tment It is an exciting development which will enable pupils in their last year to feel par t of the school, while helping to smooth their tr ansition to univer sity and beyond.

The Schoo of the Year trophy

In the courtyard of the new Sixth For m bu ld ng

The view from Mountjoy across Beaufort Lawn.

Thanks

Thanks are due , fir stly, to my wife , Tr icia, for suggesting this approach when I was str uggling to find a way to avoid the more tr aditional for mats. Fr ank Aher n, my predecessor as school archivist, has been suppor tive from the star t, even though this isn’t the book he would have wr itten. He has read ever y word and suggested countless improvements. He was even per suaded to wr ite two of the ar ticles (on Mar tin Mar r iott and English) The design of the book is entirely the responsibility of Glenn Coombs at Shelleys, who gave me far more time than was justified and showed great patience with my endless changes.

Apar t from offer ing gener al suppor t, Ben Vessey also read ever y word, made some impor tant changes and proved himself to be a better proof-reader than he knew His wish that there should be pupil involvement in the project can be seen in the dr awings before each section, and the photogr aphs of the objects themselves, most of which were taken by Daniel Deng.

Michael Rathbone and Henr y Baynham are no longer with us, but they, together with Robin Whicker, are the author s of previous books on Canford. I have dr awn on their research extensively The reward for them (and all the other member s of staff mentioned so far) is that they feature in at least one photogr aph in this volume!

Thanks, too, to Nicole Clayton and Nicola Will in ar t, Philippa Scudds in the mar keting depar tment and other staff, all of whom have pointed me in the r ight direction at times. Too numerous to mention are the for mer member s of staff who have offered me sever al objects, but also some interesting stor ies from their time at Canford A few of them probably became fed up with the number of questions I asked, but they never showed it To their memor ies must be added the scores of reminiscences from Old Canfordians that now for m one of the most interesting sections in the archive

Credits

The major ity of photogr aphs have come from the Canford archive and are uncredited. Of the rest, most have been taken by Daniel Deng (M23), with Richard Knott, Paul West and Lucas Fr ancis (M23) contr ibuting sever al in addition. Other s have been taken by Fr ank Aher n, James Aiken (F07), Richard Buckle (M67), Chr is Fenwick, Tom Gr iffith-Jones (F67), Sean Hanekom, Richard Hardie , Rob Hoey, Naomi Ings, Dave Kir k, Mar tin Mar r iott, Jeremy Or me , Roger Pear t, Br ian Rea (S54), Richard Salmon, Ian Wallace’s family, Kevin Wilkins and Rober t Woolley (SH60).

Sever al donor s of objects are unnamed, but those who are known include: Fr ank and Sue Aher n, Serena Ber nard, Greg Bowden, Peter Cadogan, Canford Par ish Church, Peter Catter mole (S67), Peter Dawkins, Helen Faircliff, Andrew Fear nley, Ian Fiander (SH84), Ben Gollings (L99), Keith Hay, Richard Hauser, Rob Hooker (S88), Lou James, John Lever, Monroe Mor ton (F37),

Mar tin Noscoe (S71), Jeremy Or me , Sir Roger Palin (SH57), Mar ion Peskett, Char les and Jim Pfister (C68/9), Quar terjack Sur ger y, Andrew Powell, Mar k Rathbone (S74), Dar ius Rodr igues (L12), Fear ne Spar k, Rhoder ick Vorember g, Richard Walker (SH45), Robin Whicker, Nick Williams (W72) and John Wrout (W65)

The dr awings of the objects at the star t of each section were done by Canford’s ar t scholar s of all ages: Louisa A’Bar row, Emelia Butler, Serena Chen, Abigail Crossley, Eva de Niro, Mar tha Fehrenbacher, Amelia Frost, Zoe Humphr ies, Hettie Lloyd, Molly Peacock, Ana Quer ious, Annabel Seabrook, Emily Shi, Alex Smith, Melissa Smith, Florence Under y, Zar a Watts and Lola Wood. Par ticular thanks are due to Char lotte Gibbons, Daisy Pinner and Amber Peake who, despite not being ar t scholar s, stepped in at shor t notice to complete sever al dr awings to fill some gaps.

Ever y effor t has been made to tr ace the copyr ight of all photogr aphs. Any er ror s will be cor rected online or in later editions.

3 Blore sketch – Br itish Libr ar y

4. Manor House – Royal Institute of Br itish Architects’ libr ar y

37 Guests playing cr icket –www.EliotsofPor tEliot.com

42. Ivor Guest – The Guest House 1 by Ber tie Guest (pr ivate publication)

78 Simon Preston – www bruceduffie com; Alan Hollinghur st – Terence Donovan Archive; Derek Jar man – still from BBC film (1991); French Derby - Henr y Cecil by Brough Scott

81. Assyr ian auction – still from BBC news (1992)

88 AFC Bour nemouth; Rosamund Pilcher film – ZDF/FFP Enter tainment