Abingdon’s stained glass Out of the Past Abingdon Also in the common room are four panels of glass that began life in the old schoolroom, now the Roysse Room part of the Abingdon Guildhall buildings. The work of the firm of C E Kempe and Co, the panels list the names of the headmasters who occupied the schoolroom between 1563 and 1870, some of the prominent men educated in that schoolroom and the names of their contemporaries who became heads of Oxford colleges. The panels were installed and the room refurbished in 1911 at the cost of two OAs keen to mark the fact that the room had been Abingdon’s schoolroom for 307 years. Four of the panels, the list of headmasters and the heads of Oxford Colleges, had to be removed when Abingdon’s Abbey Hall was built in 1966. They were acquired by the School on permanent loan during the 1990s. Common Room Roysse Room Two panels remain in the Roysse Room, together with a series of stained-glass coats of arms belonging to benefactors of the School during its years in that schoolroom. They are the work of William Glasby (1863 – 1942). Dunblane Cathedral Louis Davis (1860 – 1941), educated at Abingdon in the 1870s, was a distinguished stainedglass artist of the Arts and Crafts movement whose masterpiece, the six Choir windows in Dunblane Cathedral, was commissioned by the Scottish architect Sir Robert Lorimer. After his death, Davis’s widow donated an exhibition panel from one of these windows to the School. It is currently in the Staff Common Room. The Choir windows illustrate the Benedicite Opera Omnia, the Song of Creation, and the Abingdon panel represents the north wind from the Allegory window. In addition to the panel, the School archives hold a number of Davis’s sketchbooks and drawings. Louis Davis Dunblane Allegory Window The North Wind 26 September 2026
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