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News
14
April 2012
1563 and All That
News that the School will be marking its 450th anniversary next year might puzzle
some people who remember it celebrating its 750th anniversary only six years ago.
However, those who were paying attention will remember that in 2006 we celebrated
the anniversary of the first documented reference to the School – in the will of the
Abbot of Abingdon, John de Blosneville, who left an endowment for the support of
thirteen poor scholars. Just over 300 years later, and following the dissolution of
Abingdon Abbey, John Roysse gave the Mayor and Corporation of Abingdon £50
towards the refurbishment of part of the old abbey as a schoolroom, and the freehold
of two properties in the City of London. The income from these properties helped
support the School for the next 300 years, and when they were sold in 1866 the
money was used to build the current school premises so that even today we are the
beneficiaries of Roysse’s four hundred and fifty year old endowment.
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out of the past
The Happiest Days of
Your Life?
John Lambourn, OA 1940, has just sent
the archives a copy of some cine film that
he recently transferred to DVD. Taken in
1939, it shows him winning the Junior 220
Handicap Trophy. John, who remembers
cutting his hand badly on the newly built air
raid shelter in Waste Court Field, transferred
to St Edward’s in 1940 because his parents
thought Abingdon was too close to RAF
Abingdon for safety.
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If you have any film, photographs or
memories that you would like to share with
the Loose Limbed Collective film makers
please get in touch with Jeremy Taylor
– see page 13
Garden and walls were the work of the garden designer Thomas Mawson (1861-
1933) – one wonders what he would think of the fact that the old rose garden is
now known by the name of one of his principal rivals, Gertrude Jekyll.
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Photo reproduced with the kind permission of Kendal Archive Ref. WDB 86/9/41
Moon Arch Restored
During maintenance work last summer, one of the walls in Lacies Court
garden fell down, bringing with it the moon arch that once led into a walled
rose garden. The walled garden is no more, two of its walls having been
removed in1956, but the moon arch has now been restored. See page 3
Moon Arch September 2011