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St Edward’s:
150 Years
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Chapter 2 / Wardens
The Sports Hall went up behind the outdoor pool and
CCF headquarters, and since it included a gymnasium and
swimming pool it was decided to make its facilities available
to the local community on a commercial basis. It was named
the Douglas Bader Sports Centre.
The Design and Technology Centre was to include the
Art Department and History of Art, and was run by Patrick
Morton and Nick Grimshaw. Nick Grimshaw had taken over
the Art Department when Chris Ruscombe-King died. The
new building had been intended to include Maths classrooms
too but the planners insisted that they be separate. It was
ready in May 1988.
John Phillips created a new post, Director of Studies, given
to a scholarly Classicist and OSE, John Leach. This appointment
was important as it gave a prominence to academic work
and the incumbent would be a leading member of what was
initially ‘the Warden’s Committee’, and which came to be
known as ‘the Senior Management Team’.
In 1982 the first girl, Penelope Burke (E.1982–4), entered
the School when there were 524 boys, joining Apsley as a day
pupil in the Lower Sixth. Her brother had been at the School
and her mother was the Second Master’s secretary. When the
first Sixth Form girls arrived the Warden’s wife, Pat, and Linda
Lyne, Classics teacher and Head of Classics from 1986, were
responsible for the pastoral care and accommodation of the
girls. Full co-education in the School was not achieved until
1997. John Phillips very successfully oversaw the first six years
of girls at St Edward’s.
DAVID CHRISTIE (b.1942),
WARDEN 1988–2004
Before David Christie became tenth Warden he had been a
successful Head of Economics at Winchester. He was a keen
golfer who had been educated at Strathclyde and Glasgow
Universities. Having taken on a school with pupil numbers in
the mid to upper 500s he left it with more than 650.
He was the first Warden to move out of the rooms on
the upper floors of the Warden’s House on the Quad to 289
Woodstock Road. He first broached the idea of full co-education
to his Governors in 1994 and, by 1997, it had become a reality;
JOHN CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS (1928–2013),
WARDEN 1978–88
John Phillips was educated at Malvern and then Magdalen
College, Oxford, after National Service. When appointed
Warden he had spent the previous 26 years at Charterhouse,
latterly as Housemaster of Gownboys, the largest House. His
wife Pat was a Modern Linguist who came to teach at the
School, and they were both great hosts.
John Phillips was Warden at a time when independent
boarding schools were being criticised for being too spartan
compared with the comforts that teenagers enjoyed at home,
and accordingly funds sometimes had to be diverted away
from planned projects in favour of making the St Edward’s
boarding houses more acceptable to parents.
Warden Phillips wanted to promote Design and
Technology, which he saw as a bridge between Arts and
Sciences, and he introduced an A Level in Design. He also
argued passionately for a girl Sixth Form entry to the School,
and persuaded the Governors to allow it. From the start,
he was thinking in terms of establishing an eighth House,
though in the event this was to follow later. Top of the
building priority list was a new Sports Hall, followed by a
Design and Technology centre, and lastly the new House.
Above: Warden John Phillips and Pat, his wife.
Right: Cooper Quad in 1988.
Below: Building the Cooper Quad, 1987–8.
Below: Warden David Christie and the then
ForeignSecretary,theRtHon.DouglasHurd,1995.
Douglas Hurd came to the School to lecture and
an article in the
Independent
said he gave A-Level
pupils an ‘elegant history of the ebb and flow of
British political ideas between the 1832 Reform
Act and the 1994 Labour Conference’.
Below: Common Room, 1985. Back row (left to right): J.H.W. Quick,
D.R. Walker, P.N. Coad, V. Abigail, J. Hughes, P.A. Kitovitz.
Third row (left to right): H. W. Blackett, G.D. Carter, N.E. Grimshaw,
M.K. Gardiner, J.A.N. Snell, R.McA. Hughes, Revd C.C.S. Neill, P.G. Cave,
L.A. Lyne, R.A.L. Anderson, J.W. Gidney, P. A. Ely, M.B. Corrie, R.E. Fletcher.
Second row (left to right): G.P. Wells, Revd D.S. Wippell, M.H. Payne,
N.R. Quartley, P.G. Badger, I.S. Beveridge, J. Dewes, M.J. Hiner, D.M. Cundy,
G.R. Rigault, R.M. Clements, J.E. Bee, A. Stone.
First row (left to right): L.P. Morton, S. Taylor, M.J. Rosewell, G.E. Fuzzard,
A.D. Tree, J.J. Mcpartlin, D. Drake-Brockman, E.C. Danziger, W.M. Boswell,
C. Lane, E.E. Weeks, W.J.D. Sayer, K.N. Jones, N.T. Roberts.
Seated (left to right): R.D. Aldred, M.S. Oxley, M.D Peregrine, J.A.S. Donald,
F.H. Prichard, J.E. Armstrong, J.C. Phillips (Warden), P.R. Church, R.H.M. Arkell,
P.N. Corlett, F.W.J. Pargeter, J.D.Leach, P. Mallalieu.