A Report from the Warden Charles Sinclair( B, 1961-66)
Our journey through the centuries at Win Coll is made up of many beginnings and endings interwoven to make us who we are today. There seems to have been an unusually large number of these over the last year or so. Last year’ s Wykeham Journal celebrated Dr Ralph Townsend’ s 11 years of strong leadership as Headmaster, 2005 to 2016, to which Dr Tim Hands, starting in September, has added his own generous tributes. Tim in his turn has brought great energy and commitment to the headmastership, looking with sharp, fresh eyes at an institution imbued with history. It is for each Headmaster to find the right balance between change and conservation, supported and challenged by an engaged Governing Body. The Governing Body itself evolves. We lose Fellows we would rather not: Sir Andrew Longmore, a Lord Justice of Appeal, retired from the Governing Body in December, having brought his questioning eye to the unfamiliar territory of the Audit & Risk Committee, and his wisdom to the making of key decisions; and Sir Curtis Price, Ex-Officio Fellow as Warden of New College, was a focused and independently minded Chairman of our Academic & Pastoral Committee. But we have quickly learnt to enjoy the contribution of new Fellows: Dr Will Poole, historian and bibliographer as New College’ s nominee, and Miles Young, who succeeds Sir Curtis, after leading Ogilvy & Mather for many years. September saw Ralph Townsend opening“ Treasury”, which takes over the building known as the Warden’ s Stables since the 15th century. Win Coll has, through donations over many years, acquired a particularly fine collection of English medieval silver, Chinese and Greek ceramics and Roman bronze figures. These have in the past been quietly displayed for the benefit of scholars and pupils. Today, their magnificence is there for all to enjoy. Treasury is a triumph. It is a tribute to the early and patient commitment of donors: the names Du Boulay, Gough, Loveday and Nightingale amongst others come to mind, ensuring that the burden of funding and maintaining Treasury does not, and will not, fall on the College. It is also a tribute to those who conceived and implemented its design. I say no more: see for yourselves. It has already become an important part of a Wykehamist’ s education. We could say something similar about our PE Centre on Kingsgate Park. It was built in the 1960s and is approaching the end of its life. The school is significantly bigger and now offers a far greater range of indoor sports and exercises to add to and enhance the excellence of those outdoors. Design work on a new Sports Centre is advanced and planning permission has been applied for. The school will have to dig deep into its resources to prime this project, but we will need generous and patient donors once again to enable us to proceed within our conservative approach to finance, and without compromising the school’ s commitment to the continuing development of bursaries. Our ambition for our bursary programme is gradually becoming more secure, as we received in June the first proceeds from the development for housing at Barton Farm. The original farm acreage was given to Win Coll by William of Wykeham as
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