No . 138
The Trusty Servant
War Cloister Centenary
Christopher Normand , Director of Winchester College Society , briefly summarises the extensive work undertaken in War Cloister leading up to the Service marking its Centenary earlier this year .
Over the last 18 months , War Cloister has undergone a beautiful regeneration and 2024 has marked one hundred years since its Dedication on 31 st May 1924 . The physical regeneration began with masonry work ( cleaning algae from the flint and marble ; relaying the paving slabs of the paths in the centre ), continued with unobserved work to improve the drainage to prevent future leaching of salt through the walls , and culminated in the repainting of the stone emblems throughout the building .
Throughout the project , the route up-tobooks remained through War Cloister , although changing course from time to time as contractors moved . Out of phase with the earthly seasons , the painted marble , stripped bare last autumn , came back to life as the dedicated squad of restorers added paint , precious metal leaf and their own delightful artistic touches to the carved emblems . In the course of the work , they estimated that over 7,000 words on the memorial tablets received three coats of paint , as did a hundred coats of arms , regimental cap badges and roof bosses . It was a common sight during Short Half and Common Time to see pinpricks of light around War Cloister as workers continued their painstaking task while wearing headtorches .
Individual parts of the restoration were mesmerising . Because of its visible location , the Belgian coat of arms could be seen coming to life day by day : at first a bare marble bas-relief ; then a pale-yellow undercoat applied to those parts that would be gilded ; gold leaf was then fixed by adhesive ; finally , paint in colours true to the original decorative plan of 1924 completed the emblem . All the heraldic symbols were studied carefully , for a restoration in the 1960s had obscured some of the 1924 detail . And we have gained some beautiful features , such as painted highlights that enhance carved relief , and the addition of Palladium leaf to replace what once had been Silver , but so tarnished it was over-painted or covered with Gold leaf . There are also some charming idiosyncrasies such as the eagle in the USA coat of arms . Most would expect a bald eagle to display a white head and tail , but ours is a uniform black . A century-old oversight or , as some have suggested , a deliberate choice to represent youth by a juvenile eagle , which does not display white feathers ?
Work on the Belgian coat of arms nears completion
Reflecting the physical regeneration , there has also been a spiritual rebirth , the Centenary providing opportunities to revisit War Cloister ’ s history , its design and the stories of those remembered on its walls . Hundreds of pupils have been encouraged to dig deeper into the roles of those who
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