The TRUSTY
SERVANT
NO.119
M AY 2 0 1 5
The Headmaster writes:
New Hall renewed
Mrs Lindsay Fox MBE JP
DL, the Vice Lord-Lieutenant,
officially opened the
refurbished New Hall on 19
January. The hall had been
closed for eighteen months
while work was carried out.
Over the first half of the
twentieth century the need
for a proper hall was
increasingly felt. School had
fulfilled the purpose as best it
could since the seventeenth
century: for some functions, like an endof-term concert, it could produce quite an
atmosphere, but, for modern needs and
expectations, it had become inconvenient
and uncomfortable, and by the 1950s the
numbers in the School had grown to a
point where very few of its requirements
could be met in that building.
Money for a new hall came first of all
from the surplus accumulated in the War
Memorial Fund. Then the generous offer
from Sir George Cooper of Hursley Park
to return to the School the 1682
panelling which had been taken out of
Chapel in 1874 brought with it further
grants from charitable trusts. Finally, an
appeal, launched in 1956, made the
project to build a hall feasible.
Plans were published in 1957, the
work of architect Peter Shepheard, to
mixed reactions. Building work began the
following year, at the southern edge of the
Warden’s Garden, one of a number of sites
under consideration. The high water table
produced some problems, visited on us
several times since during exceptionally
wet winters; but everything was in order
for the official opening, celebrated
triumphantly with a purpose-written
Masque in the summer of 1961.
The building as a whole has stood the
test of its first fifty years pretty well, but
inevitably maintenance and repairs have
pressed in upon us; and, inevitably, the
School’s needs have changed (again) over
the period of the last fifty years. The
number of musical ensembles has grown,
the need for well-co-ordinated year-group
parents’ meetings has increased, as has the
demand for safe and secure public
examination accommodation.
What has this refurbishment entailed?
A new roof, surmounted with solar
panels; a reorganisation of drainage; a
1
complete upgrading of
electrical and lighting
provision; the addition of
extensive green rooms and
seminar facilities at the east
end; an entrance atrium at
the west end; and a balcony
overlooking the Warden’s
garden on the north side,
enhancing opportunities to
entertain large groups of
people. In the interior the fixed
seating has been removed and
replaced by retractable raked
seating, the floor has been
levelled, storage space for musical
instruments and furniture has been
created, the entrance atrium has provided
more reception and entertainment space
and an acoustic ceiling has been added.
The latest technology for recording,
amplification and image-projection has
been included. The project includes at its
east end a district main and a biomass
plant that enables the heating of the hall
and our ancient buildings by a new wood
pellet boiler.
The exterior of the hall projects an
austere classicism, but its setting on the
north side among the trees of the
Warden’s Garden softens it. Its interior is
graced by its seventeenth-century
panelling, now splendidly restored. It is
hoped that New Hall will make its
contribution to the cultural life of the city
of Winchester and that the people of
Winchester will become familiar with its
handsome interior.