Imagine yourself at Centre doors. (If you don’t know where Centre doors are, you’re a bit stuffed. You’ll have to use your imagination!) Go through the lobby and the Great Hall doors are facing you. Pass through any of the doors into the ‘undercroft’ i.e. space under the gallery, used for storing chairs, seating platforms and occasionally pianos. Forward into the chamber and it opens up to its full height.
The ceiling décor and the lanterns are revealed. The stage is before you with its rich curtains now blue but originally brown. The large windows to each side sit above doorways allowing exit and entrance during assemblies and especially during Drill. The windows display the coats of arms of the lodges and important individuals who supported the School when it was entirely Masonic. Many (97) were transferred from Clapham (these were created by Edward Frampton) and were redesigned by Louis Ginnett. Many were newly created in the early 30s as the buildings were being erected and reflect the time when the School was a charitable institution rather than the independent fee-paying school it is now.
Above the windows are the 12 roundels representing anthropomorphised months of the year with the four seasons represented on north and south walls. All were painted by Ginnett in red on blue
On either side of the stage are the portraits of two women who were prime movers in the School’s history: Bertha Dean and Florence Mason, both painted by Maurice Codner.
Codner (1888–1958) enjoyed considerable success as a society portraitist, exhibiting numerous times at the Royal Academy. He painted a portrait of George VI in 1951, and of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in 1954. Both of these subjects have been seated on the stage in the Great Hall (in 1946), in between the two portraits above.
Above the proscenium arch is the old school badge – since updated – but existing since 1936. (The image above gives the detail but is actually not from the Great Hall.)
Walk forward, noting the coded marks on the floor (for Drill) and turn to take in the full panoply of the windows before viewing the viewing gallery. Seats here are prized for Drill performances to get the full effect of 180 girls in performance – so prized that the doors have to be closed off beforehand or – like the bad old days of the New Year sales – people will practically camp out to get them!
At the back of the gallery are other painted glass windows, including one almost impossible to see properly but which records who created them and which glass makers made them.
Exit from any of the side doors – hear the music of Drill in your head and the sound of people counting the beat to ensure they start on the right foot – and you emerge into the side corridors. The west, east and north corridors are punctuated by more stained glass, again by Frampton. They draw on great works of literature such as Milton’s Comus and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. One set of windows is an interpretation of Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin and, as this is signed by Frampton, is believed to have been one he worked on himself (as opposed to designing them and then handing them to craftsmen to work). The date is 1898 so the windows are already 122 years old.
We have a choice of directions here and all have points of interest so let us visit them in turn. Go northwards up the corridors, past some of the further 12 literary windows and there are two sets of doors. One leads outside and the other takes you to the back of the stage past two rooms. These have had various purposes over the years and at one point were known as Bei Uns and Chez Nous. Possibly their original intention had been as green rooms or costume and scenery storage. Two sets of stairs lead up past the rooms, converging in a central stairway. Here can be found a sculpture by Bartolini in Carrera marble (a hernia at every stair tread over which it was lifted) which came originally from the Boys’.
The statue is flanked by two bronze Japanese urns from the Meiji period, gifted to the school (more hernias).
Almost lost behind these is the large painted glass window gifted by Ginnett giving a stylized image of a school girl and perhaps a teacher/mentor. Originally a focal point for all ascending the stairs to the room above, its glory is somewhat lost by its peeping out round the sculpture and, consequently, not easy to photograph.
The room at the top of the stairs – more lodge coats of arms in the windows lighting the staircase – was originally the library. Tucked away from the hustle and bustle of traffic might seem like an ideal place for somewhere of quiet contemplation. Except, the clock tower rears up above it at the top of which is a bell chiming every hour from 7am to 10pm. Any silent study is rudely punctuated by the booming on the hour.
The windows around the former library have painted glass representations of Dewey classifications but the library ‘moved’ when the separate building in the Garth was created and opened (1st Dec 1970), leaving the room redundant of purpose. Since then, it has been re-purposed several times, with greater or lesser success, and is now known as Scarbrough Gallery.
Going back down the marble steps and through a set of, almost, hidden doors brings us back to the stage looking down the Great Hall. A quick trip down the steps from the stage – and if you don’t watch your footing it could be a trip – and exit the nearest door back into a corridor. This time, we are going either west or east depending on which of the two stairways you have used.
The eastern direction brings us to the Dining Room Quad. Now available as one of the hired spaces, used in summer for al fresco dining if the girls wish, it was originally where the main part of the mansion that was Park House stood pre RMS. The well from which the House obtained its water made a dramatic reappearance one wet Easter time. It is thought that possibly the remains of the old wine cellars are there beneath the turf but with any Chateau Neuf du Pape long drunk I’m afraid.
If we had gone the other way, towards the west, we would have found ourselves in the Chapel Quad. The Chapel forms the north wall of the Quad, the teaching corridor the south wall. Of note in the Quad is the Tulip tree (liriodendron tulipifera) with its distinctive foliage looking like golden tulips.
Also here is the duck house, presented by a former headmistress. Every year, a duck raises her brood of ducklings in a trough in the Chapel quad. She has been known to escort her family through a conveniently open door into the teaching corridor. Unfortunately, nature being red in tooth and claw, not all of the ducklings reach maturity and the duck house was intended to provide them with some sanctuary.
If we leave from the Great Hall via the doors through which we entered it, we emerge into the teaching corridor – with or without ducks – and on both sides here we find the Honours Boards, listing winners of Gold and Silver medals, the Bicentenary Jewel, the Kenyon Gold Medal and Head Girls and Deputies. For the most part, the corridor traffic fails to even notice these boards which is a great pity as they tell their own stories of the School’s history.
The first thing perhaps to note is that the Gold medal lists start in 1869 despite the School having been in existence since 1788. The almost 90 year time slip is not an indication that no prizes or medals were distributed before, but in 1868 some girls of the School sat a public exam – only available to girls from 1865. Six girls achieved good results and the best of these was Emily Redgrave so to her falls the honour of first place in the Gold Medal Honours board in 1869. Emily went on to become the Headmistress in her turn as did Elizabeth Hutchinson, the winner in 1872. Further down the list we encounter the name of the person in one of the portraits in GH – Bertha Dean. One of my favourite names is from 1912, Gwendoline Kitcatt, and six years after her is Christine Duncan who, in 1924 founded the school magazine, Machio. Josephine Cartwright, gold medallist 1934, was also the Head Girl and went on to become the first female obstetric consultant. There are a wealth of stories in these boards on their own without everything else around them.
Above the doors into Great Hall used to stand a clock with the epithet ‘By virtuous acts distinguish every hour’. It marked a convenient meeting point as in ‘Meet by Virtuous Acts’ but was otherwise not noticed. In fact, it was the classic ‘And there it was – gone’ as people only noticed it when it was removed. The lighting in the corridor was improved and cut across where the old clock had been. One had to give way and the clock lost the toss-up. (It hasn’t gone gone: It can now be found at the top of the stairs in the Admin corridor, just as unnoticed as it ever was!)
But the Great Hall is definitely not unnoticed even if you walked through, past, in it many times without seeing any of its specific points. Perhaps next time, you’ll see more than you were expecting.
RMSG History Extra 
