keeper could give was that he had gone out an hour ago and said he should not be in till later ”. Perhaps the most vivid of all are those papers that give an insight into ordinary , everyday boy life , like the pictogram letter ( fig . 7 ) sent by Herbert Hope Risley ( scholar 1864-9 , and later a distinguished Indian civil servant ), telling his little sister Edith how he went for a walk , heard soldiers shooting on a firing range , and had a splendid view of the cathedral : or the schoolboy diary of Charles Minet ( commoner , 1817-19 ). Minet ’ s diary
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milked a cow outside bounds ( thirst was clearly a problem with him ). Perhaps it is not surprising that several entries record the receipt of floggings , that routine feature of school life in his day .
Scattered through the various sub-sections of the Domus muniments there is naturally much bearing on the history of the College buildings , especially on building expenses . Besides documents relating to the original building works , there are fine selections relating to the Chantry in cloisters founded by John Fromond of Sparsholt ( d . 1420 ), and to Warden Nicholas ’ s late seventeenth century building projects , School and the new Warden ’ s Lodgings ; later there is material on the building of New Commoners and of some of the boarding houses . A marvellous collection of architectural plans and drawings , from c . 1830 on , and which form part of the archives , are currently preserved separately in New Mill , in the Works department . These plans
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Fig 7 . Pictogram letter from H . Hope Risley , scholar , to his sister Edith , 6 May , 1866 .
entries cover the 1818 rebellion , but his account of it does not come to life as sharply as for instance this entry , for a whole holiday : “ All our room overslept themselves this morning ... This leave-out Parker and myself got a man to bring us down some cyder which he did . As soon as it was leave-out we walked down to the barn where we met the man quite ready for us . We drank as much as we could and then walked by Double Hedges . The cyder was very bitter ”. Another entry describes how on one occasion he surreptitiously
Fig 8 . “ Unbuilt Winchester ” see p . 22 : Herbert Baker ’ s design for a rotunda building , betweeen War Cloister and Flint Court classrooms , 1921 .
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