the wellington college year book 2010/2011
120
be consolidated together in what is now
known as the Wellington College Collection.
Catalogued and accounted for centrally, the
collection should be preserved as a living
repository for at least the next thousand years.
To this end, following the earlier work
of Common Room members Mark Baker,
Robert Sopwith and Nick Ritchie, much
work has been done in the past two years.
A large quantity of our holding was restored
to College from storage in London and a
new room set up. Where ‘Ma Bennett’ once
presided over the laundry and linen processes
deep under Hall, huge sliding storage shelving
has been erected.
The holding of Dormitory Books (fasti) and
albums are now safe, as is Prince Albert’s Gift
of Books and documents on the foundation of
the College. Many more of the latter are in the
Royal Collection at Windsor. The Wellington
Year Books and Wellingtonians are currently
being digitized and soon will be available to
students, staff and accredited members of the
Wellington community, including members of
the ow Society. These should be accessible
from September 2011. In due course much
else besides will be scanned and put on a data
base. Plans are being made to open up the
Collection to pupils as part of Middle Year
Programme research projects.
e ag l e s ta n da r d o f t h e 1 0 5 t h r e g i m e n t
imperial french army
ention has been made
of the British Military
Tournament 2010, organised by Major General
Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter
[S 1959–1963]. During the performances,
there was an incident from the battle of
Waterloo of 1815, re-enacting the seizing
of the Imperial Eagle Standard of the 105th
Regiment of France. (An eagle is the emblem
of empire.) Capturing a regimental standard or colours was a signal honour for one
side and disaster for the other. Waterloo
was a ‘close run thing’ as Arthur Duke of
Wellington said modestly and with genuine
remorse for losing so many friends.
Captain Clark of the Royal Dragoons,
who seized the Eagle, was the progenitor
of boys who attended Wellington College
in due course — true heroum filii — named
Clark-Kennedy. Archie [Hg 1907–1912] was
a very well-known doctor, who served in the
First World War and was Tutor and Fellow
of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge for
very many years. The editor of these notes
can well remember seeing the aged and venerable doctor, riding his tri-cycle around
Cambridge in the early 1980s, wearing his
ow tie as a battle honour. In his rooms, his
forebear’s Waterloo sword resided by his
hat-stand. His son Alec Clark-Kennedy [Hg
1935–1940] was Estates Bursar of Corpus,
looking after all the College’s endowments.
The story, however, does not end
there. The photo shows a replica Eagle of
which College owns four, three sadly in
very poor condition. Each year the Duke
of Wellington presents our Royal Visitor
with one of these standards as rent for
Stratfield Saye, the ducal country residence
fifteen miles west of College grounds. The
Duke of Marlborough (who has no connection with the College of that name in
Wiltshire), also presents a Louis xiv replica
standard, for his home at Blenheim Palace
near Oxford. Together the two ‘current’
standards reside in the Waterloo Chamber
at Windsor Castle, and the Monarch occasionally commands previous years’ standards
to be given to favoured institutions. We are
in need of a new one, which we intend to
display in the new Waterloo Dining Room
should Her Majesty graciously donate a
more recent Eagle standard to College.
historic item received
F
rom time to time, we are
given artefacts by donors
keen to see items residing
where they belong, adding
to the history of College.
Recently we were presented with what
is almost certainly a genuine Ducal Crest
from the funeral pall of Arthur, Duke of
Wellington in 1852. It shows the familiar
crest that the ccf wear as a cap-badge, still
to be seen in the cap-badge of 3rd Bn The
Yorkshire Regiment, successors to the Duke
of Wellington’s Regiment, 33rd Foot. When
fully conserved, the plan is for the crest to be
displayed in Chapel. Any historical items will
be gladly received for the Collection.
the wellington college year book 2010/2011
121
dispatches
I
n the last edition of the
Wellington
Year
Book,
2009/2010, we published a
long list of the extraordinary dynamic activities of
ows attending to the modern-day version the
‘Mespot’ (Iraq) campaign and a replay of the
deadly ‘great game’ in Afghanistan. Some 60
ows had been identified in carrying on the
Wellington tradition of public service in the
military. A few had been overlooked, including
David Taylor [A 1994–1999] who served on
op telic 8, Iraq, with the Queen’s Dragoon
Guards, a stronghold of ows. He has now
retired and contributes to the dynamics of the
financial services with Ernst and Young.
Writing from Helmand Province, Afghanistan in March 2011, Major Edmund
Wilson [S 1985–1989], served in the Irish
Guards during four tours in Northern Ireland
from platoon commander to company
commander. He then commanded an Irish
Guards company on telic 10 in Iraq in 2007.
‘We are having significant success’, he writes
from his position as Chief of Staff, 1st Bn The
Royal Irish Regiment in the Nad-e Ali District,
Helmand. ‘In the chain of command my 3-up
(above my co and Brigade Commander)
is Rear Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt
[O 1971–1976]’. Tony, who was mentioned
in last year’s ow dispatches, takes up his
appointment as Defence Attaché at hm
Embassy, Washington in late 2011.
Colonel Andrew Cuthbert [Hg 1974–
1979], is a veteran of the First Gulf war
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