Letters
Dear Jeremy,
Jowett bust and Biba
I refer to the recent Spectator article in Atrium lamenting the lack of a statue to Benjamin Jowett (1829-36) at Balliol College. St Paul’s School and Old Paulines were very proud of Jowett as they contributed to two memorials in The Great Hall of the West Kensington school which comprised an organ installed in 1896, I think nicknamed ‘the Thunderer’ and in 1904 a panelled organ screen with a central niche with a bust of Jowett, an inscription in gold letters and decorated with coats of arms including that of Balliol College. I am reminded of a very poignant photo attached to an article by Paul Velluet (1962-67), entitled ‘The Last Farewell’ in The Pauline July 1969 which shows the partially stripped out Great Hall with the organ, screen and part of the wall mosaics having already been removed by, I assume, very appreciative antique dealers. What I found interesting in the article was that the famous mosaics were not fixed on the walls but on removable iron panels and thus, could easily have been removed from the walls and been installed in the new school at Barnes. While the timber panelled front of the cantilevered first floor seating of The Great Hall, with a centrally located clock, found its way into the Biba Boutique on Kensington High Street. Regards, John Dunkin (1964-69)
Dear Jeremy,
Where is the Boer War Memorial?
I much enjoyed reading the latest edition of the Atrium. Several items triggered memories for me and I thought they may be of interest to some readers. Keith Pratt’s (1951-56) article on the two masters, Philip Whitting (History Department 1929-63) and Frank Parker (Modern Languages Department 1928-65), reminded me of my time in the Upper History 8. As a non-academic I generally floated in the lower quartile of the class. Despite that I benefited hugely from the teaching of Whitting, who was undoubtedly one of if not the best history teacher of his generation. I believe people like Hugh Trevor-Roper dedicated books to him. He did not just stick to the guidelines of the A level curriculum but taught us about civilisation, introducing us to a wide range of topics including covering such areas as Byzantine coins and classical architecture. I was interested in the article about Pauline statues and Jowett in which was mentioned the fact that Cosmo Gordon Lang was a pupil of Jowett (1829-36) at Balliol. Although he became the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was born a Scots Presbyterian. His father was the Minister of the Kirk in the small village of Fyvie, deep in the Aberdeenshire countryside. During the Second World War my father, an Aberdonian, evacuated the family to Fyvie and there my sister, brother and I started our education in the village school. The discipline was strict. Punishment was administered, not by a cane but the strap, a long thick piece of leather which was applied quite viciously to the open palm of the hand; and we wrote on wooden framed slates not paper. These were the days when Scottish education was considered superior to that of many other countries, sadly not the case today. The article on War Memorials was very interesting and mentioned that the Boer War memorial was eventually sold to an OP, who had it resurrected in his garden. That was Professor Alfred Ubbelohde CBE (1920-26) who was a very distinguished scientist and a governor of the School from 1966-71 and 1981-86. I was governor with him the 1980s. The Board of Governors then was a joint one for both SPS and SPGS. What happened to the memorial subsequently was not stated in the article and it would be interesting if any OP has any information about it. With best wishes, Mike Graham (1952-56)
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