CELEBRATING 150 YEARS OF CARRINGTON HOUSE

It was very special to host Carringtonians for a Sunday Lunch and House Visiting on Sunday 2nd October to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the House. The former Housemasters who were able to travel joined us and all were delighted to reconnect with some of their previous students.

Robert and Sheena Philp (Ca HM 1975–1986)

Gregg and Allison Davies (Ca HM 1994–1999)

Rob Harrison (Ca HM 1999–2005)

David Goodenough (Ca HM 2005–2009)

James and Andrea Weatherby (Ca HM 2009–2021)

Sam Shelley (Ca HM 2021–present)

Sadly Nick and Jill Ridley (Ca HM 1986–1994) were unable to travel.

At lunch, Fettes families were represented with relatives going as far back as 1890. Despite there being 14 Housemasters in the 150 year lifetime of the House, the Old Fettesians in the room were connected to a total of 10 of the 14. We were particularly thrilled to have been joined by the daughters of the 7th Housemaster, MC Leslie who was Housemaster from 1960–1975.

After lunch there was a note of welcome from OF Governor and former Carringtonian Roy Leckie (Ca 1985–1990). Roy also took the opportunity to thank recent Housemaster James Weatherby and his wife Andrea for their time at the helm of Carrington which ended upon James’ appointment as Senior Deputy Head and during the pandemic when gatherings to thank them were not possible.

Rob Harrison (Ca HM 1999–2005) provided an informative and entertaining address to celebrate the 150 years of Carrington cleverly linking the House spirit of belonging with the history. Speaking on behalf of all Housemasters past and present he talked of the privilege of guiding the members of the House and watching them grow combined with the joy of seeing those former students many years later in their adult lives.

Sam Shelley then invited all present down to Carrington to visit the House. The Carrington pipers played in welcome and current students greeted the guests. They toured in small groups and both OFs and current Carringtonians enjoyed seeing familiar places and sharing stories of then and now.

“It’s an honour to have shared this house with so many amazing people, from all over the world. I hope that this historical house will still be here in another 150 years.”

Ca, Fifth Form Student

“I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the numerous Old Carringtonians and seeing generations who I know have walked through the same corridors as I am doing now.”

Ca, Lower Sixth Form Student

It is often said that within a week of joining the College everyone at Fettes feels like their House is the best House and the place where they live, where they belong and where their closest friends are made. The momentous Carrington House anniversary definitely brought out those feelings amongst the former residents and the current ones.

Excerpts from Rob Harrison’s speech:

I joined the Fettes staff 31 years ago as a Carrington resident tutor and I enjoyed thirty years of comparative obscurity as an English teacher and Housemaster before I shot to prominence recently with my appointment as Head Consort on my wife’s promotion to Head…

…My term as Carrington Housemaster was of pitifully short length compared to the prodigious stints of my predecessors who used to put in shifts of up to about 30 years. I can only think times and the pressures of the job were different then, with perhaps the prefects having a freer role in the running of the house and the Housemaster’s timetable including at least one day’s grouse shooting a week…

…The building in which you all lived, then, was almost contemporary with the main college, comprising large communal dormitories, Study Area and its little individual studies with their own fireplaces as well as quite substantial accommodation for the Housemaster and his family. And it’s a building that has survived two World Wars, evacuation to Lake Windermere following the diphtheria outbreak that claimed the lives of the founding Headmaster’s wife and child, various fires, restorations and renovations and then the recent pandemic. As the number of boys in the House has increased, so the cavernous dormitories of yesteryear, so difficult to make cosy and homely for today’s more discerning market, have been further subdivided into smaller rooms and studies. On a side note, I used to love scouring the old House photographs in the back corridor and was always intrigued, in the house photos of maybe the forties and fifties by a man on the end of the row, labelled simply ‘MacArthur’. No Mr or initials for him and yet he was plainly far too old to be a pupil. And then what a delight it was to learn that his first name Joe lived on in Joe’s Pantry, that little kitchen off the side of the Common Room and his role, exclusively in Carrington, was to make the porridge and deliver the coal for the study fires…

…When you visit Carrington I feel sure you will be struck by pangs of vivid memory of place, of a room, a corridor, a view, a much-frequented fire escape – it might be a pang of affection, or one of recognition, it might recall a moment of humour (and let’s face it, House life was very often about the shared laughs)…

…I’m similarly sure that all Old Carringtonians visiting the House in the years after they left find the latest living conditions appallingly soft and quite unlike the characterbuilding spartanism that they themselves endured. I persist in my belief that all Fettesians believe the school to have been specifically built for the five or so glorious years that they were there, but you cannot but be affected by a sense of the past when you have occupied those rooms and walked those corridors…

…But a place like Carrington is about so much more than mere bricks and mortar. It cannot be denied, I suspect, that memories of one’s days in House are unavoidably linked with the identity and character of the Housemaster who was in post at that time. Let me read you the names, then: Bell, Heard, Yeo, Pyatt, Lodge, Cooper, Timbs, Leslie, Philp, Ridley, Davies, Harrison, Goodenough, Weatherby, Shelley. Some of those may have been names below the photographs you walked past a thousand times as a youngster, they may be names of various rooms around the house, but one or two of those names will be forever associated, one hopes largely positively, with the years you spent in the House. There’s a name not among that list that I also want to mention today and it’s that of Dr Peter Coshan, a Carrington tutor for many years and someone who stood in for two terms as Housemaster when Nick Ridley was seriously ill. It would be wrong, as we all come to terms with the appalling circumstances of his death, not to pause a moment to appreciate his contribution to Carrington life…

…Let all who can, then, be upstanding to raise a glass to old friends and to the home in which we made them, Carrington House…