The following mini projects have now been completed. The Hotel sign, which was retrieved from the fireplace of Spencer House, has been refurbished and now hangs on the wall in St George’s House Room.
The St. George's Wheel
Established as the George & Dragon Temperance Hotel in 1879, the building in Castle Street was acquired by the School in 1925 and thus a new Day House in the Junior School was born. It was christened St. Georges by its first Housemaster, Rev. A. Stainsby.
The Eton Fives ball & glove collection
donated by Derek Whitehead, OB Adders, 1949, is now on display in the Exhibition Room.
Display block constructed by Mr M. Batchelder, D&T Master.
Marjory Stephenson
Marjory Stephenson was educated at Berkhamsted School and was the first girl to go to Cambridge. In 1945 she was elected as one of the first two women fellows of the Royal Society.
With the advent of ‘Stephenson’ the new Girls’ House at Kings, the following two books have been sourced and purchased. A Chemical Passion writes about Marjory Stephenson thus - ‘the bacterial historian Robert Kohler has shown that the field of bacterial biochemistry was, in large part, defined by the work of Stephenson’ (Kohler, 1985). The authors, the Rayner-Canhams, visited Berkhamsted School in 2012, to carry out their research. Bacterial Metabolism was written by Marjory in 1929.
I came across a parcel of papers, entitled The Crusader Who Arrived by Canoe, which tells the story of the founder of the S.B.S., the seaborne equivalent of the S.A.S. This man created and commanded Nos. 1 and 2 S.B.S. Sections between 1940 and 1944. It was a real Boys Own adventure piece. His name was Roger James Allen Courtney and he was an Old Boy (Uppers, 1919). The book SBS in World War Two was written by his younger brother G. B. Courtney M.B.E., M.C., a Lt. Col. in the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, who also served in the S.B.S. unit from April 1942 until the end of the war in the Far East.
He may still be looking for a permanent home in Berkhamsted town but for the time being, the impressive bronze of William the Conqueror is sitting pretty in the Library at Castle.
Pictured here with Jonathan Culverhouse, OB Adders, 1963, who commissioned the bronze for the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.
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