PRESERVING OUR HERITAGE SPEECH ROOM

A CULTURE OF GIVING, AS OLD AS THE SCHOOL ITSELF

The launch of the Lyon Memorial Fund as part of the School’s tercentenary appeal in 1871 raised the necessary funds to allow for the building of a new Speech Room to accommodate a growing school. One-hundred-and-fifty years on, it is fitting that we restore this iconic space to its full glory as we celebrate the School's 450th anniversary.

Speech Room has been host to the grandest of occasions. Kings, queens, prime ministers, foreign dignitaries and an array of impressive visiting speakers having graced its platform. Its impressive design is simultaneously functional, beautiful and versatile, used for whole-School assemblies, Songs, Glees and Twelves, Prizes and Speeches, concerts and theatre.

Restoration

A comprehensive restoration and refit of this Grade II-listed building is underway this summer.

The project includes:

The removal and replacement of the lighting scheme and complete rewiring

Specialist cleaning of the stained glass

Specialist cleaning of the ceiling

The cast iron columns and bases redecorated

The vaults and arches over the proscenium cleaned and redecorated along with all walls and stone work

Sponsor A Chair

As part of Harrow 450, the Harrow Development Trust is inviting OH families, parents and friends to ‘sponsor a chair’ for a contribution of £1,000. This continues a long-standing tradition that dates back to 1901 when each boy was invited to present a chair on leaving Harrow.

Many of the existing chairs will be restored and re-upholstered; those beyond repair will be replaced. Funds raised from this appeal will go towards the £2.2m costs of this Harrow 450 heritage project. Each chair will carry a brass plaque with the donor’s name(s).

For more information please contact hdt@harrowschool.org.uk / 020 8872 8500 harrowschool.org.uk/support/heritage-speech-room

Harrow Lives

For 26 years, ever since he came to Harrow as Bursar in 1997, Nick Shryane has occupied the same quiet office, with its view of the Shepherd Churchill building and Central London beyond. Ironically, after leaving Oxford, where he read History, Nick knew that “the one thing I didn’t want to do was sit behind a desk”. So, when someone suggested that the Army might provide the active life he was after, he joined the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (which, on amalgamation in 1992, became The Light Dragoons): “I intended to join for three years, but three years somehow turned into 18.”

NICK’S FIRST POSTING WAS TO NORTHERN IRELAND. He hadn’t been there for very long when he was despatched to lead his troop of 12 men at a police station in Omagh which had been partly blown up by the IRA. “That made me think I was rather fortunate,” he reflects. A six-month posting in Cyprus as part of the UN Force followed, then the Falklands War, “which was quite exciting”.

Nick was drafted into 5 Airborne Brigade Headquarters (because he had recently completed a communications course with the aim of becoming the regiment’s Signals Officer) to act not only as a watchkeeper but also to assist with providing advice on the capabilities of the armoured reconnaissance vehicles in the 5 Airborne Brigade group and soon found himself on the QEII. “It was extraordinary. My recollection is that the ship had been provisioned as if it were going on a round-theworld cruise, so we ate really well, and I shared an A deck cabin with two other captains which was really quite smart – one of those that had its own little lifeboat hanging outside; what a way to go to war!”.

It was in the Falklands that, Nick claims, he had his only scrape with anything remotely dangerous and his only operational injury – mild frostbite to his fingers caused by the islands’ extremely inhospitable weather. One of his most vivid memories of that operation was following behind the paratroopers to keep communications lines open after they had taken Goose Green. In the deserted Argentinian trenches, they discovered warm climate paraphernalia - sunhats, sunglasses and flipflops. This seemed bizarre until, after the war, it transpired that the Argentinians were largely conscripts who had probably been persuaded by their top brass that they were going to be fighting their age-old enemy the Chileans in equatorial South America, where the climate is rather different.

Nick’s only other operational experience was when he deployed with his regimental headquarters to Bosnia for six months, tasked with defending the people responsible for rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, at a time when the conflict was coming to an end, and for preventing any resurgence of fighting: “It was a very interesting role, but quite taxing,” he recalls.

Germany was the destination for most of Nick’s other overseas postings, as his regiment was part of the NATO force that would bear the brunt of any, what seemed at the time perfectly likely, Russian attempts to invade the West from East Germany. He didn’t however spend his entire career outside the UK. In a busy job at HQ UK Land Forces (1988-89) he was tasked with producing a new Military Home Defence plan for the UK in the event of an invasion or nuclear strike, which, in the late 1980s, didn’t seem a far-fetched possibility. Completing it took two years and it seems that the generals who commissioned the work were satisfied as, in 1989, Nick was awarded an MBE. And in 1992/93, he counts himself very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to study for an MPhil in International Relations at Cambridge.

His last role, and the one he says led to him becoming a bursar, was at the MOD in Whitehall, where he was part of a small directorate called Army Plans. “It sounds almost arrogant,” he recalls, “but this group of about 16 officers had a disproportionate influence on the Army’s future because, in an organisation like the MOD, information is power and we had to have every bit of information necessary to plan what the Army was going to have to do in the next ten years, and the resources – people, money and equipment – it was going to need to do it. At the same time, we had to make sure that the Army was being as efficient with its resources as possible, so that Treasury officials had little or no excuse to cut our budget on the grounds that we were being inefficient.”

With the “crystal ball” of information he had acquired, Nick could see the cuts, both in resources and numbers, that were coming the Army’s way. Feeling he didn’t want to be part of a contracting organisation, and having moved house 9 times in 13 years of married life, with small children approaching prep-school age, he began considering what else he might do. After “having a moan at a party with an old friend from Oxford”, he received in the post an advert, cut from the Financial Times, for the Bursar of Harrow School, with the note ‘You should apply.’ “It was serendipity,” says Nick.

In his role as Bursar, Nick is primarily responsible for making sure that the School’s resources (including an operating budget of over £40m) are managed properly, and for the leadership and management of the over 600 non-teaching staff. When he arrived at Harrow, he was, he says, “quite surprised that the School didn’t have a comprehensive strategic plan – or at least not the type of all-encompassing and detailed document that I was used to in the Army.” He was also surprised at how financially tight things were. “With an endowment nothing like as substantial as that of Eton or Winchester, we have had to think on our feet and find other sources of income, and so we have put a lot of time and effort into developing Harrow School Enterprises Ltd (HSEL) which is now probably the country’s biggest and most successful school trading company. As an organisation we have also, with evident success, put a lot of effort into developing our international schools venture.”

On a day-to-day basis, one of his principal roles is making sure that the non-teaching departments are delivering high quality services which he does through his management group (the BMG) involving finance, estate management, HR, catering, IT, facilities management, commercial trading and general administration. With such diverse areas of responsibility, each day, he says, “is, to use that old cliché, completely different.” To the extent that he has a routine, it tends to be built around the timetable of various Governors’ meetings: “The majority of the main strategic decisions are made by the Governors, particularly the financial ones… and my view has always been that if our Governors are given good information, they will make good decisions, so I spend a great deal of time providing them with the best information I can.” He “sincerely hopes” that “those who attended my 78 Governors and GPC meetings, including the five Chairmen of Governors and five Head Masters that I have served, might think I did a reasonable job in that respect.”

Reflecting on all he has done during his years at Harrow, Nick finds it difficult to pick out specific highlights although he counts himself “very fortunate to have served with outstanding colleagues on both the Senior Management Team and his Bursar's Management Group.” He is clearly proud of his role in steering the School’s ambitious estate development plans through several years and many obstacles, including a High Court hearing, to the advanced state of planning and construction that we see today. “It was a great vision –a very large green ‘quadrangle’ at the heart of the School - with one important underlying notion being to allow the boys to traverse the School in a lovely green and safe space.” It was also very clear that the School needed to replace its ageing Sports Centre and overcome the “health and safety risks” posed by its Victorian science buildings. One of his few regrets is that construction will not have been completed by the time he retires but he is nevertheless pleased with the many significant estate developments and acquisitions during his time, including: the creation of excellent outdoor sports facilities (grounds and pavilions), the construction of Lyon’s and the Modern Languages Centre and the acquisition of the Old Etonian and (after a seven-year struggle) St Mary’s Vicarage.

He is also proud of Harrow’s bursary strategy, developing which has been a significant part of his job: “We are fortunate to have, besides a substantially increased endowment, a steadily growing income stream from the International Schools, and helpful income from the both the Harrow Development Trust and John Lyon’s Charity, so together these provide a significant amount of money for bursaries, and the hope is that this will continue to grow. Along with more full bursaries, the plan is to make more partial bursaries available to support what is sometimes seen as the overlooked ‘squeezed middle’. A fifty percent bursary is about equivalent to the total fees for a day school, so we would like to make it possible for someone who might be able to afford for their child to attend a day school to come to Harrow instead.”

Nick was also extremely pleased with the way the School managed its way through the Covid pandemic. “In many organisations, lots of people were losing their jobs, but I was determined that none of our non-teaching staff would be forced to lose theirs, and thankfully we managed to do that.”

On the financial side, a particular source of satisfaction is the leading role that he and Daniel Emkes (a previous Director of Finance) played in the acquisition of two private placement bonds in 2019 and 2021. These 40-year fixed-interest loans for a total of £90m were secured at a time when interest rates were very low, and “were probably transformational” in that they have made the fulfilment of much of the estates development plan a possibility within a reasonable timeframe.

One of his main regrets, as his departure from Harrow approaches, other than the frustration of not being able to see the Estates Masterplan through to its conclusion, is that pressure of work means he has not been able to spend more time enjoying all those things that Harrow offers. As a “bit of a ‘sportaholic’ it’s a great disappointment to me that I didn’t get the chance to watch many more of the School’s sports matches” and an intention to “pick up his flute” again was another thing that fell victim to the demands of the job.

On doctor’s orders, Nick is not just going to down tools, turn his back on Harrow and do nothing. He will continue, for a time, to provide part-time support to his successor, and he has been involved in setting up, with the Independent Schools Bursars Association, a coaching and mentoring consultancy service for school bursars. As one of their consultants, he hopes, in increasingly difficult times for schools, to be able to provide independent advice to any of the over 1,200 bursars around the country who seek it.

Although he will miss Harrow greatly and “in particular our amazing and deeply committed staff”, he will not, he says, miss the 12-hour working days, and he is looking forward to being able to fulfil “fairly ambitious” travel plans. He has also given a commitment to Perena, his wife, that he will learn to cook: “I’ve hardly cooked a single thing in our 38 years of marriage, so it’s about time I did something for her; I simply couldn’t have done my job without her.”