Malvern College Celebrates 150 Years

Malvern College celebrates 150 years

MALVERN College opened in 1865 and was modelled on several other

proprietary schools that had been very recently established around the country.

These schools had a modern curriculum and therefore could adapt to the educational needs of the day and were founded as joint stock enterprises by issuing shares to raise the capital required.

Cheltenham College had

been established in 1841, and it was thought that ‘what had proved possible at Cheltenham might be equally possible at Malvern’.

The town had grown in popularity with the success of the Water Cure and was receiving visitors of some

fame and importance - Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, Lord Macaulay, Alfred Tennyson and William Gladstone.

Charles Dickens also came to Malvern in 1851 to seek a cure for his wife, Catherine.

In 1861, the railway was

extended to Great Malvern from Malvern Link and brought with it 3,000 visitors a year, mainly from London.

Walter Burrow, the manager of a chemist’s shop in Malvern and his brother John, who would in the

future establish a highly successful business bottling water from St Anne’s Well, were the energetic and far-sighted businessmen who were the spiritual founders of Malvern College, as they sought new ways of advancing the town.

Malvern College celebrates 150 years

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Malvern College

Charles Hansom’s original design for Malvern College.

Key figures who

Friday, January 23, 2015 2 MALVERN COLLEGE CELEBRATING 150 YEARS

The founding of the school

KEY local figures became enthusiastic advocates for the proposal to create a school, most notably

the Rev Frank Dyson, who canvassed and won the support of Hon. Frederick Lygon MP, son of Earl Beauchamp.

Other key figures were the Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire, Lord Lytton, Sir Edmund Lechmere, Bt., MP, Dr Gully, Canon Melville of Worcester Cathedral, who had formerly been Headmaster of Radley College, and John Lea, a partner in Lea and Perrins.

Dr Leopold Stummes, an Austrian who had become a partner in Dr Wilson’s Water Cure business in 1850, bought a 26-acre site and offered it for the purpose of building a school and the Malvern Proprietary College Company was formed.

The project was guaranteed by John Lea to the extent of £10,000.

The Hon Frederick Lygon became Chairman, the Bishop of Worcester, Dr Henry Philpott, President and Dr Stummes the Secretary.

The formal foundation of the Company took place on 22 August 1862 in Dr Gully’s dining room at the Imperial Hotel, and the Bishop of Worcester laid the foundation stone on 22 July 1863.

Four hundred invitations were sent out and there were great celebrations and speeches and a toast to the ‘The Prosperity of Malvern’.

Building work began in earnest and on May 12th 1864, ‘to the pealing of bells and the music of a Rifles Volunteers Band, a hundred and eighty workmen walked, in procession, to the Belle Vue Hotel for the traditional gargantuan rearing supper to celebrate the laying of the roof timbers.’

The project was, however, beset by difficulties and the original

completion date of September 1864 was missed by three months.

It was not until January 1865 that the Main Building and School House alongside it, together with Houses No.1 and

No.2, were completed allowing Malvern College to open its doors on the 25th of January with just 24 pupils who, on their first day, had to struggle up to school through more than two feet of snow.

View to Great Malvern, mid 19th century.

Dr Leopold Stummes, left, and the 6th Lord Beauchamp.

Friday, January 23, 2015 3MALVERN COLLEGE CELEBRATING 150 YEARS

and the Great War

created a school to be proud of

THE trauma of the First World War was reflected in the life of the Chapel.

Between 1914 and 1918 week by week the casualty lists of Malvernians, killed or missing, were read out in Chapel and then pinned on the Chapel door.

A vivid impression of these sombre days comes from one OM:

“Every Sunday evening Headmaster Preston read out in Chapel the Roll of Honour of Old Malvernians who had

given their lives in the past week.

“A – who used to sit at the end of the pew just below you, B – whose fag you were in your first term, C – who made that wonderful century in the Repton match, D – who had been down for the day only a few weeks ago, newly commissioned, so smart in his new uniform.

Some Sundays the list was very long; after the bloodbath of the Somme it was very long.

After he had finished reading we would stand in silence for a few seconds and then from the organ came the first bars of the hymns we came to love.

Clear and strong the voices of five hundred boys would rise to fill the roof with sound.

Preston, standing in his stall under the organ loft, did not sing. His hands rested on the Roll he had just read.”**John Baker White OM, No 7 1916–20)

Parade of the Cadet Corps 1890s.

A Chapel was designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield and was opened in 1899.

War horror reflected in chapel life

The College Chapel, looking East, 2014. Photograph by Alastair Carew-Cox OM.

St George at sunrise, a memorial to the Malvernians lost in conflict.

College relocates to Blenheim


The Evacuations

MALVERN College would experience great upheaval in 1939, and again in 1942.

The Admiralty commandeered the College on the outbreak of war and the school was evacuated to the grandeurs of Blenheim Palace.

In 1942 it would move to Harrow, nearer the capital and to the bombing.

At Blenheim, Malvern’s relocation was not without its difficulties and sixteen large huts had to be erected in the main courtyard to provide classroom accommodation.

During the very cold winter of the Lent term the heating in the huts was not good and boys came to lessons wrapped in coats and rugs, to find that icicles had formed under the corrugated iron roofs during the night and, as the temperature slowly rose, they melted and dripped onto the pupils below.

The school functioned as best it could and the boys had to become adept at living out of trunks stowed under their beds; still, there was a general feeling of excitement and adventure amongst the boys.

They listened to Winston Churchill’s speeches hour by hour and the school received its first taste of what must have seemed like real war when boys and masters were required to patrol the Palace grounds at night, acting as the Home Guard.

In the beautiful summer of 1940 the boys played cricket in front of the Palace and swam in the lake, while the great struggle in France reached its sad climax and the country braced itself for

what Winston Churchill called the coming Battle of Britain.

The Government handed back parts of the College in September 1940, and the school moved back to a profoundly different Malvern. Gaunt, in his biography, says: ‘I doubt whether many other towns outside London contained so

great a variety of men and women of different countries meeting frequently together. The Belgian army had its headquarters in the Abbey Hotel, the Records branch of the Polish Navy, and a small contingent of Greeks were in the town, and on occasions we had visitors from Yugoslavia, Norway and Holland at some of the

dances and parties which were held. For a short while a contingent of Canadians were at the Malvern House Hotel. Americans and Australians were frequent visitors. Crown Prince Paul of Greece, while staying with Lord Beauchamp at Madresfield, visited the College Chapel for Evensong one Sunday, spoke to the

school afterwards and presented two books to the Library.’

At Malvern, on the campus, British soldiers were housed in No.2 where the Naval Initial Training Centre had its Officers’ Mess and in No.5 where the Free French cadets, a group of patriotic French boys, were being trained to return to France

Malvern College pupils enjoy the cricket in the summer of 1940 at Blenheim Palace. Right, The dorm in the Long Library.

with the Army of Liberation. Thirty-five of the sixty-three trained at Malvern would lose their lives in the war.

The school was once again faced with exile in 1942 when its buildings were requisitioned: this time by the TRE (Telecommunications Research Establishment). In their laboratories so many


The Evacuations

Palace and then Harrow SchoolTIMELINE1862 College founded in meeting in Dr Gully’s dining room in the Imperial Hotel1865 Malvern College opened in January with 24 boys and 7 masters Headmaster Arthur Faber; Chairman of the College Council 6th Earl Beauchamp1867 Rev Henry Foster arrived: his seven sons all played cricket for Worcestershire1872 Senior cricket pitch levelled1873 Association Football replaced the Winchester form1883 Artillery Cadet Corps founded1894 Malvern College Mission (later the Docklands Settlement) in Canning Town began1898/9 Sir Godfrey Huggins (later Lord Malvern) attended Malvern College1899 Chapel completed and consecrated1903 R.E, ‘Tip’ Foster scored 287 in his debut v Australia; captained England at both cricket and football1909 First Morgan car assembled in Engineering Workshops at the College1912 Arnold Nugent Strode Jackson won the Gold Medal in the 1500 metres at the Stockholm Olympics1913/4 C.S. Lewis attended Malvern College1917/20 Sir John Wheeler-Bennett attended Malvern College1914-18 2,833 Malvernians served in the war; 457 were killed; 1,100 decorated1918-9 Christopher Wood attended Malvern College, later to become a most distinguished inter-war British artist1922 Francis William Aston (2.1991-3) won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry1937 Preston Science building opened by Earl Baldwin1939-40 College evacuated to Blenheim

Palace. College used by the Royal Navy and the Free French1940-2 College returned to Malvern1942-6 College evacuated to Harrow School. TRE at Malvern with important radar devices developed on site1944 The King and Queen visit the TRE at Malvern.258 OMs killed in the War1950s John Lewis, Senior Science Master, pioneered Nuffield Science1965 Centenary celebrated with a visit by HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother and Harold MacMillan1974 Lindsay Art Centre opened1977 James Meade (8. 1921-6) won the Nobel Prize for Economics1992 Malvern College became fully co-educational and combined with Ellerslie School and Hillstone.Introduction of the International Baccalaureate2009 Duke of York opened the new Sports Complex and the two new boarding houses2012 Malvern College Quindao in China opened2015 Razak Science Centre opened.

offensive and defensive techniques were devised that it has been suggested that the Second World War was ‘won on the playing fields of Malvern’.

Harrow School, much depleted in numbers because of its proximity to London, was able to host an equally depleted Malvern College until September 1946.

In his first address to the school in Harrow Chapel, Gaunt struck a reflective note: “Let us consider this catastrophe in its right perspective, against the broader background of the war. Compare our sufferings with the perils and privations which our brothers are facing on land, sea, and in the

air. Consider the lives of those who fought at Singapore or who withdrew fighting week by week along the roads of Burma. Picture for a moment what our allies have to face in France and Poland and Greece. In the larger picture of the war our sufferings and difficulties seem a small part.

“But if against the vast canvas they seem a small part, they are not an insignificant part. I am sure that when the whole story of our evacuation can be told – and it cannot be told now – Malvern College will be found to have played an honourable and vital part in the winning of the war.”

Both schools were to retain

their separate identities and, despite some tribal tension, the evacuation proceeded with relatively little dis harmony. Air raid sirens were frequently heard and the masters and boys shared fire-fighting duties.

One Malvern boy recalls: “It was not until 1943 that we had our first real taste of enemy bombing with a firebomb raid on the Hill. Malvern squads did yeoman service fighting fires in West Street, under the direction of the Headmaster, and a No. 3 squad extinguished a fire in the Chapel. Damage to school property was amazingly light, but the ‘Grub’ was badly hit, a bitter blow to all.”

Gaunt reported in June 1945

that VE Day had been celebrated with much ‘festivity in the town, in some of which our boys took part. One boy remembers: “In my third term on VE Day we were allowed time off and could join the celebrations in the town. Somewhat later Winston Churchill came to attend a Harrow School function at the Speech Room. Two friends and I decided to go to where he would probably be and saw him emerge from the Headmaster’s House – accompanied by the Head. He seemed amused by the presence of three Malvern boys and we were convinced that he winked at us, which of course made our day.”

Malvern College pupils at Blenheim Palace 1939-40.

Above, Malvern arrives at Harrow School. Right, the Malvern College notice board at Harrow School.

A boy studies under the paintings at Blenheim.

SOME of the most significant research work of the war took place in Malvern.

Dr AP Rowe, the Superintendent of the vast scientific undertaking provides an excellent account of the wartime work and the transformation of the grounds at the College in his book, One Story of Radar.

“Only the Senior Turf remained sacrosanct throughout the war, a touch which is as characteristically English as is the atmosphere in which it was possible for ‘a row of Air Vice-Marshals and Air Commodores to sit at the feet of flannel-bagged lecturers’ in the Radar School in the Monastery.

“The Sixth Form room, which TRE had promised not to convert into a laboratory, was not only the Chief Superintendent’s office, but also the scene of the famous ‘Sunday Soviets’ – meetings of scientists, university dons, civil servants, service officers and occasionally even cabinet ministers, at which high matters of policy and priority were discussed.

“In the magnificent room at the top of the Tower in Malvern College, entered in the dark by way of a plain, wooden staircase Rowe held meetings of his divisional leaders and into those meetings would come anybody and everybody who was thought to have a really good idea.

“There would be interminable scientific arguments and discussion and out of these discussions arose, in the course of time, a remarkable series of radar devices with curious code names which played such a

major part in the success of the war in the air.”

Big School was used for demonstrating a sample of almost every radar-making device to visiting service chiefs and ministers and to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth when they came to see the work in 1944.

The Gymnasium (now the Rogers Theatre) had been turned into a storeroom and the Memorial Library into a drawing office, No.5 and No.9

into hostels, and the other houses into laboratories.

From almost every College window overlooking the Vale of Evesham could be seen the metal mirrors associated with centimetre radar.

Work on the application of this, the most dramatic weapon in the whole radar arsenal, was done in the Preston Science School and in No. 8.

During this period there was a movement away from

the use of radar for purely defensive needs, such as identifying hostile aircraft, to the offensive use of the technology.

Among the devices which were developed were ‘Oboe’, which made possible high-precision bombing or the accurate flare-dropping of the Pathfinders Force; ‘H2S’, giving bombers accurate radar pictures of the towns beneath them and therefore made possible the bombing

offensive which began in February 1943; ‘Window’, the strips of metallised paper which confused the German radar system; the various devices which spelt the end of the U-boat menace and compelled Hitler to announce on the radio in the summer of 1943 that ‘the temporary setback to our U-boats is due to one single technical invention of our enemies’; ‘Gee’, which guided the armada of large

and small ships onto the beaches of Normandy in all weathers, ‘Eureka’ and ‘Rebecca’, devices by which the first parachute detachment to be dropped could guide the following troop-carrying aircraft to drop their detachments close to the first.’

The Malvern College campus was in a new phase of existence, which would last for nearly four and half years.

Significant scientific work TRE and the development of Radar


The last of the Sunday Soviets meetings, in the Sixth Form room at Malvern College, September 30, 1945.

The royal visit

The arrival of the royal party in 1944. Right, the King and Queen with Dr AP Rowe.


was carried out at College

Dr AP Rowe with Queen Elizabeth and King George VI on their visit to TRE at Malvern College in 1944.

Queen Elizabeth, Dr AP Rowe and King George VI meet the soldiers during their visit.

Traditional values remain at the centre of College’s development

The modern school thrives

THE years following the Second World War were as momentous for the College as any

period in its history. The school had to

re-establish itself after the long exile at Harrow and to adjust to a profoundly different society.

In the 1960s the College became a centre of excellence for science and modern languages, pioneering the Nuffield approach to practical science and building the first Language Laboratory.

The school became co-educational in 1992 and, in the same year, introduced the International Baccalaureate.

These developments put the College at the forefront

of contemporary educational thinking and made the school more accessible to all.

Malvern’s traditional values have remained at its core throughout its development in the post-war period and a forward-looking management has calibrated the school to keep pace with the requirements of a more modern world.

The Arts have become an integral part of the curriculum and the traditional games continue to flourish but pupils now play a wide range of sports and activities.

In 2009 the Duke of York opened the two new boarding houses as well as the large new Sports Complex, which the College happily shares with local clubs and the

community at large. The wonderful Ron Hughes

Rackets Courts were refurbished in 2011 along the lines of the courts at the Queen’s Club in London, and further cutting-edge developments have been made recently in the remodelling of the Razak

Science Centre that opens this January, in the school’s 150th year.

“This magnificent centre for science will provide an exciting environment for our scientists of the future,” said Headmaster Antony Clark, who guides the school’s fortunes today.

In 1965 at the Centenary, the Chairman of the College Council Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, an Old Malvernian and a distinguished historian, in considering how the school might approach its future, quoted the words of his former pupil, President John

Kennedy, “This is a time for courage and a time of challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do”, advice that the College has embraced fully over the last fifty years and continues to follow in the very different world that exists today.

Malvern’s traditional values have remained at its core throughout its development in the post-war period.

The Arts have become an integral part of the curriculum and the traditional games continue to flourish but pupils now play a wide range of sports and activities.


Cricket at Malvern.

Documents

Malvern College Celebrates 150 Years