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Moberly’s in 1871, progressing to work
as a butler in the Warden’s Lodgings
and in College Hall. He was appointed
Head Porter in December 1908 and held
this post until his retirement in 1937.
He was remembered for his courtesy
and efficiency, and for helping to make
home-sick scholars feel more at home.
William Appleford was the porter from
1674 to 1696. He was evidently inspired
by the example of William of Wykeham’s
T he T rusty S ervant
foundation as he bequeathed money and
land to be used to educate poor children,
particularly girls, in the Hampshire
parish of Catherington.
One of the best-known porters was
Alfred Lane Locke. He also started
his working life at the College on the
domestic staff of a boarding house, then
moved into College as a chamberman
and was appointed as porter in 1883. It
was Locke who transformed the Lodge,
his obituary noting that it had become
a ‘miniature museum and a focus of
College life’ during Locke’s time. Many
readers may remember the room as a
repository of Wykehamical artefacts.
The Lodge remains very much a focus
of Win Coll life with the current team
of porters providing a welcoming and
friendly reception to us all.
Vox senum
A new forum publishing a selection of responses from our readership.
Inspired by Win Coll music (cont’d)
James Macdonald (G, 50-55):
I would like to add a postscript to
this series. I was in Phil’s in the early
50s when Henry Havergal and later
Christopher Cowan were in charge of
music. I was in Chapel Choir and the
School Orchestra for most of my time
at the school and thus had a superb
grounding in music. But there was
another facet of musical life of which
no mention has so far been made. That
was Wind Band under the redoubtable
guidance of Mr Jackson. I never knew
his first name, but he used to drive up
to Music School in his big Buick and
teach all the wind players - yes, all of
them; and if there was an instrument
he did not play, he would teach himself
first, as he did with a fellow Philite of
mine with the bagpipes (that Philite,
John Maclay, later played them at my
wedding and still plays them today.)
Wind Band was known as Jackson’s
Faction - not very good, but fun. And
Jackson’s lessons were fun too. I learned
the clarinet and in the intervals when
one caught one’s breath he would regale
one with anecdotes and facts about
music generally and wind instruments
in particular: why Brahms symphonies
are always played better than Beethoven
symphonies; what happened when
Bartok and Benny Goodman met; and
so on. One day he asked me, would I
like to learn a saxophone? A saxophone!
Such a thing had never been heard of at
Win Coll before. Far too vulgar. So he
lent me one and I think I was the first
boy in the school to play it. I played it in
Wind Band and even played a sax solo
in a concert. Some 60 years later, I’m
still playing and indeed collecting them.
And I play baritone sax in a big band. All
thanks to Mr Jackson!
John Warrack (H, 41-6):
May I add a brief footnote to the
memories of distinguished visitors to Win
Coll concerts? In Common Time 1946,
on 28 th March, so the note in my score
records, Henry Havergal conducted a
performance in Cathedral of Bach’s St
John Passion. The forces were local (in
my last half in the school, I was allowed
to play the oboe), but for the Evangelist,
Henry recruited Peter Pears, who a few
months previously had sung the title role
in the first performance of Britten’s Peter
Grimes. Some 40 years later, I persuaded
him to contribute to a series of song
seminars I was directing for the Oxford
Faculty of Music. He remembered the
Winchester occasion, not least because
15
as a then still-struggling tenor he was
grateful to accept Henry’s fee - five
pounds.
Patrick Stables (Coll, 47-52):
Alas, mea culpa, I missed David Wilson’s
letter in TS122 but I have now read it
and also James Steadman’s in TS123.
They both remember Glee Club’s
performance in 1951 of Messiah in
Winchester Cathedral. So do I! It was
the first public concert in which I sang
as a bass and my parents came to hear it,
returning by train and finding themselves
by chance in the same compartment as
the four soloists. The bass was not wholly
complementary about Henry Havergal’s
conducting: ‘rushed of my bloody feet’,
he said . But the performance bowled me
over, and to this day Henry Wendon’s
‘Comfort Ye’ and ‘Every Valley’, sung
with clear diction and without any
ornamentations, remain the standards
by which I judge all others. What David
and James did not mention is that
the performance ended in a way the
Handel had not foreseen. The ‘Amen
Chorus’ was barely eight bars in when
the Cathedral was plunged into total
darkness. We learned that the Dean had
instructed yet one more array of lights to
be turned on when the ‘Chorus’ began,