CHELTONDALE Always more than a mere building, Cheltondale continues to live on in its community of Owenites. Forty years on from the sale of Cheltondale to the hospital in 1981, we have gathered some snippets from the Archive and memories from some Owenites, to look back over its 85 years as a House. Built in 1869 as one of the College Boarding House Company’s projects, Cheltondale made an impression, though not necessarily the desired impression at the time: the local press described John Middleton’s design as ‘an architectural abortion.’
1869
The first Housemaster, Rev J Graves, was succeeded by Rev James Owen in 1872. As the names of early Housemasters have given the collective noun for the boys of their House, the boys became known as Owenites.
1872
1918 ‘Stop Press News’ from the Owenite Magazine, November 1918.
1940s 1941
SOCIETY 134
During an air raid in 1941, an unexploded bomb fell nearby. Gordon Wallace-Haddrill (Cheltondale, 1942 and Cheltondale Housemaster 1964-72) explained that ‘years later, when I was the Housemaster, our gardener, digging near the gate into what we knew as Corpse Lane, came across a bomb buried in the earth. It was probably only an incendiary but it meant police, a bomb disposal team and minor publicity. ‘So that’s where it landed!’ exclaimed Dick Juckes (Cheltondale Housemaster 1934-49) when I told him. ‘I knew one came down very close to the House but I never found it!’’
THE CHELTONIAN 2020-21
The most celebrated former Owenite was Field Marshall Sir John Dill, the CIGS who fell out with Churchill in WW2 and was despatched to Washington. His photograph hung in the Sweat Room. In summer we used to take our Shacks beds out onto the lawn to sleep overnight. One night, the conversation centred on seances. One bright spark persuaded us that if we all put our beds headfirst into a circle and held hands, with Dill’s photograph in the middle, we could commune with the great man. We did this, and as one by one we drifted into sleep, I fear that the Field Marshall’s spirit did not see fit to join us. Lord (Michael) Jopling (Cheltondale, 1948)
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