Cathy will miss gardening at Witham Close
and hearing music of the highest quality floating
from Music School.
Cathy has been Ralph’s active support throughout
his career but she has never played politics and
she has always been her own person. At each of
the schools in which they have lived and worked,
identifying with the intrinsic character of the
institution was an essential first step. At Winchester
the Townsends identified early on the need to
make time for everyone, and perhaps especially the
dons, who were in need of particular reassurance.
Both Townsends are musical and music plays an
important role in the life of the School, much
to Cathy’s delight. Cathy will miss gardening at
Witham Close and hearing music of the highest
quality floating from Music School. A legacy of the
Townsend tenure is the splendid donated Steinway
piano, which is discussed elsewhere in the Journal,
and which now holds pride of place in New Hall, the
renovation of which was completed in 2014. Cathy
acted as ‘mother’ for the boys auditioning as Music
Scholars. She looked forward especially to Glee Club
concerts and the annual Songfest, held in May.
Cathy says she will miss the religious life at
Winchester, both Anglican and Catholic. They
have done much to revitalise the spiritual climate
of the School. Ralph, as is well known, is the first
Roman Catholic to be appointed Head Man of
Winchester since the Reformation. He has been
particularly conscious of his responsibility as
Ordinary of the Chapel, ensuring that its Anglican
liturgical and choral tradition has been maintained
to the highest standard, while at the same time
ensuring that the 130 Catholic boys in the School
are provided with mass in St Michael’s every
Sunday and boys of non-Christian background are
instructed through a Sunday obligation known
as Faith Circles. The Christian Union currently
flourishes, especially among College men. Cathy
explained all this to me as we sat in the late Gothic
beauty of the Chapel and the stillness of Chantry. The
east window with its fragments of glass by Thomas
of Oxford dating from 1393, originally in the east
window of Chapel shed as we talked a pellucid,
almost spiritual, effect in the late afternoon sun.
Neither Ralph nor Cathy is particularly sporty,
but their interest in whatever the boys and dons do
has made them great sports supporters. At Henley
in 2015, Winchester had its best rowing eight
for many years. ‘Sport matters,’ Ralph says, ‘but
Winchester avoids making a cult of it.’ He admits
(indeed boasts) that Cathy understands the rules
of Winchester football better than he does (she
enjoys its puppyish physicality and abstruse rules,
and elements of it remind her of Australian Rules
football) but he is pleased that the game has enjoyed
a revival in popularity over the past decade.
I have said nothing of her role as the mother of two
children, now in their early thirties, nor anything
about her grandchildren, but it is not difficult to
imagine their devotion to her. Perhaps it has taken
these two Catholic Australians to remind us of
how remarkable a place Winchester College is!
The Wykeham Journal 2015 25