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ST EDWARD’S
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Field House – a short history
Based on a presentation by Dr Nicholas
Doggett, the Managing Director of Asset
Heritage Consulting Ltd and the two School
histories, David Bevir has compiled a short
note about Field House for his own benefit
and that of his five contemporaries in Field
House between 1952 and 1957, Malcolm
Axtell, Hugh Privett and Iain Wilkinson,
John Cox (who died in 2014) and Philip
Darley, to mark the 60th anniversary of
his leaving. In particular it has enabled
him to solve the nagging query, how his
father (
G T Bevir
, 1922-1926) could have
been in Set E and in Field House! In his
covering email David wrote “The particular
characteristics of Field House were an
important part of my teenage years and
undoubtedly contributed to the fact that
my contemporaries and I have remained in
touch ever since, usually meeting annually
for lunch at The Trout in May”.
transacted by the school’ by Desmond Hill
in
A History of St. Edward’s School.
Even after
adaptation and refurbishment, Apsley Paddox
cost only a little over £11,000. In 1935 the
sale of the frontages on the Woodstock and
Banbury Roads and Squitchey Lane recouped
£7,000.’ The sale of the frontages contributed
a large part of the cost of the block built for
Cowell’s and Segar’s in 1936.
Kendall replaced the set system with
the house system. Set E, named Apsley but
retaining E as its house letter, moved en bloc
to the Paddox with the Warden nominally
in charge but Gerry Segar as its actual
housemaster. Set C moved to Field House
(the future K House) with J. W. Griffiths as
its housemaster until 1927, when he left to
be chaplain to the Bishop of Carlisle. He was
succeeded by Walter Dingwall, who had
become the first Bursar in 1924 as well as
teaching history.
In 1931 Apsley moved (with Sing’s) into
what we knew as School House but had
earlier been called the Main Buildings. Field
House/Set C moved from what we knew
as K House into Apsley Paddox which was
renamed Field House and conveniently
By
David Bevir
(C, 1952-1957)
The description Field House can be
confusing, because it was the name of K
House when that property was bought by
Warden Simeon before 1905. In July 1925,
at his first OSE dinner, Warden Kendall
announced the purchase of ‘an estate of 10
acres called Apsley Paddox, which includes
a house for 50 boys and a ground for 3
football fields’.
Apsley Paddox was the name of a
Regency mansion and land linking the
Woodstock and Banbury Roads. ‘The
purchase, achieved in a period of rapid
residential building in the area around and
north of Summertown, was a masterstroke,
a credit to the school’s estate agent, Brooks’.
The amount of £9,250 was set aside towards
the purchase of the property, which in
the event was secured for less. The actual
purchase price was £8,000, described as
‘financially, the finest piece of business ever
The terrace and the wall separating the house from the service wing [the dayrooms!] are post-1965
A R C H I V E S