Benefiting
from 600 years
of generosity
John Nightingale (D, 1973-77),
on stepping down from the
Governing Body, looks back
on some of the school’s
development projects during
his 15 years as a Fellow.
A not uncommon experience: meeting for lunch
with some of my former students and the subject
moves on to philanthropy only to discover that
they have been too busy earning money to give it
a thought. As someone who has lived and breathed
charitable projects for as long as I can remember
(Winchester, Oxford, and a medley of shoe-string
arts, education and regeneration projects from Kent
to the north of Scotland), it doesn’t take me long to
put them right. The choice is theirs, but the point
I make is that they should be doing something,
somewhere, and that if they do, they will find
it hugely enjoyable.
So why Winchester?
I first became re-involved with the school through
a project in the late 1990s to raise funds to get the
archives put on a firmer footing in terms of conservation,
storage, and the employment of a professional
48 The Wykeham Journal 2017
archivist. It was very gratifying to see this come
to fruition with the appointment of Suzanne Foster
and then to watch how, under her guidance, the
archives found an important place in the daily life
of the school, through regular exhibitions and use
of material in lessons.
In the light of this experience it was hard not to be
enthused when John Falconer came to me soon after
my appointment to the Governing Body in 2002 to
tell me about his idea of converting the Stables into
a museum to house and provide a public window
on to the College’s extraordinary collections (silver,
Chinese and Greek ceramics, watercolours, medieval
glass). Like many projects of this kind it involved
a long journey as we first set out to fund the capital
costs and then rose to Warden Clementi’s challenge
of securing a matching endowment, not to mention
space reviews, bats, more bats, and Historic England.
But if one believes in a project enough it normally
happens in the end and the magnificent triumvirate
of Anthony du Boulay (C, 1943-46), Shane Gough
(G, 1955-59) and Mark Loveday (H, 1957-62) gave
it the impetus it needed.
For me, the resulting Treasury can only be described
as transformational. As a boy it was Winchester’s
buildings and sense of place that really appealed to
me (I have to confess I never fathomed the rules
or underlying principles of Winchester Football
and pretty much got through my time at Kenny’s
without venturing into its yard) but, like my