86 – 90: Further afield
Marlborough draws pupils from throughout the country and around the world because it is a full boarding school, and this diversity helps to make it such an interesting place to live in. Marlburians often go on to live in far-flung places, and the Marlburian Club helps them to keep in touch with the life of the school and their friends from the past. The root system of the school spreads in many directions and there are numerous traces of the College’s past in locations beyond Wiltshire. The church of St Paul’s in Covent Garden is an example of such a connection. Here, the Rector George Bowers, Member of Council (1843-52) and the future first Dean of Manchester, envisaged a school for the sons of clergy. It was not just the ‘birthplace’ of Marlborough. Rossall School in Lancashire was envisaged as a twin school, and its foundation was modelled on Marlborough. The architect Thomas Nelson, who converted the ‘The Castle Inn’ into a boarding house also converted Rossall Hall into accommodation for the new school, which opened in 1843 as the Church of England School for the North of England. This great windswept coastal school had much in common with Marlborough in its early days.
Echoes of Marlborough’s history can be found in another coastal site, one famed for its quaintness and literary associations, the East Sussex town of Rye. The west window of its parish church, St Mary’s, was presented by the well-known novelist E.F Benson (B1 1881-8) in memory of his parents, Archbishop Edward Benson and his wife Mary. ‘Freddy’ was Mayor of Rye between 1934 and 1937, and he was then given the rare honour of being a Freeman of the town. He can be seen at the bottom right-hand side of the window in mayoral robes and there are portraits of his collie Taffy and his manservant in the guise of a shepherd. Benson loved Marlborough. He wrote about the school on several occasions and one of his best-known novels, David Blaize (1916), presents a tale of college life in the late nineteenth century.
In Chester Cathedral there are stained glass windows dedicated to Marlborough’s Master George Cotton (1852-8), and at Rugby School there is a house named after him. There is also a house there named after the Master George Granville Bradley (1858 – 71). At New College Oxford there is a great tower dedicated to its Bursar, Alfred Robinson, a member of Marlborough’s Council (1868 – 94), with a Latin inscription which describes him as a ‘Pillar of this College’. At Marlborough there is a portrait of Robinson by the famous Victorian painter Hubert von Herkomer, an artist admired by Van Gogh. Robinson was a generous benefactor and paid for the fine cricket pavilion designed by Alfred Waterhouse.
One of the most important places with Marlborough connections is Hut 6 at Bletchley Park. Asa Briggs’ Secret days: Code-Breaking (2011) suggested that no institutions can claim to have made greater contributions to the success of Bletchley Park than Marlborough College and Sidney Sussex College. Hut 6 was led by Gordon Welchman (C3 1920-5) between 1939 and 1943 in the decryption of German Army and Air Force Enigma codes. The success of Hut 6 resulted from the brilliance of the people who worked there and from Welchman’s insistence that there should be absolutely no administrative hierarchy in daily work to encourage co-operation and opportunities for creative thinking. Terry Rogers (CR 1964-96 and Archivist) noted ten OMs who made significant contributions to the codebreaking at Bletchley Park. He also speculated that Welchman could have learned important lessons in management from his schooldays, and that Marlborough’s contribution would have been greater still had Alan Turing not failed his entrance exam to Marlborough!
This section of objects ‘further afield’ will focus on an estate in Cornwall; an important feature of Marlborough College Malaysia; the legacy in India of George Cotton (Master between 1852-8); and a pulpit in Tottenham. It will also describe an object, one of Marlborough’s greatest treasures, which reveals places many light years away.
86. The Trevalga Estate
The hamlet of Trevalga lies 500 metres from the coast on the seaward side of the road from Boscastle to Tintagel in Cornwall. Thanks to Gerald Curgenven (C1 1890 – 95), the last Lord of Trevalga manor, this formed part of an estate which was held in trust after 1961, with profits after maintenance going to the College. In addition to an annual sum of money, Marlborough was presented with a symbolic wooden staff and a pair of kid gloves, which for many years were displayed in the Bursar’s office. The increasing complexities presented by charity law resulted in the College deciding to sell the estate, a process which was in turn very complicated. Eventually, in 2023, the sale resulted in a substantial sum of money being obtained to fund bursary places for pupils from Cornwall.
87. Barton Farm in Marlborough College Malaysia
Barton Farm in Marlborough College Malaysia, which began its work in 2019, seven years after the school started, is named after the old farm at Marlborough in Wiltshire, which is currently the home of the school’s estate offices and workshops. Barton Farm in Malaysia is a place for the whole community to connect and learn. Here, pupils learn first-hand how important it is to care for the environment, looking after animals and plants, harvesting and preparing the food which has been grown. It supports sustainability by composting food waste, recycling paper, and collecting rainwater. Beginning as a pupil-led IB project, this tranquil place engages the whole community from Pre-school children to parents.
88. Bust of George Cotton at Bishop Cotton College, Shimla
Over the years numerous schools have developed associations with Marlborough, and in recent years partnerships have been established with Wiltshire state schools which have enabled pupils to join the College on full bursaries. An important link has also been made with the Darüşşafaka School (Istanbul, Turkey), a 100% scholarship- based bursary school for disadvantaged children. The school with the longest Marlborough association is Bishop Cotton College in Shimla, the capital and the largest city of the northern India state of Himachal Pradesh. Situated at 2000 meters in the Himalayas, this school forms part of the legacy of the George Cotton, Marlborough’s Master between 1852 and 1858 (see objects 17, 64). It was founded in 1859, with Cotton chosing the site of the school and appointing Dr. Samuel Slater as the First Headmaster. It is one of Asia’s oldest boarding schools.
Cotton had been appointed to the diocese of Calcutta in 1858 at a time when matters concerning education in India were being discussed, following Thomas Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education. Government had just been transferred from the British East India Company to the crown, and it was felt that there was a need for educational reform. There is a Bishop Cotton School for girls and a school for boys in Bangalore, founded in 1865. Cotton founded many other schools in India, including St James’ School in Calcutta and the Cathedral and John Cannon School in Mumbai. He consecrated new churches throughout the subcontinent. On the 6th of October 1866 he had consecrated a cemetery at Kushtia on the Ganges and was crossing a plank leading to a steamer when he slipped and fell into the river. He was swept away by the current and never seen again. The story goes that he was eaten by a crocodile but there is no evidence for this.
The bust at the school was commissioned in 2006 by a group of Old Cottonians who had left the school half a century earlier.
89. Farrar’s pulpit at Tottenham
Before Frederick Farrar began his five-year headmastership of Marlborough in 1871, he had achieved fame through his writing (see objects 19,74). Farrar had been an assistant master under Cotton between 1852-5 and it was to Cotton that he dedicated his well-known work Eric, or Little by Little (1858), and it is this, rather than Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), which is the real literary reflection of Thomas Arnold’s Rugby. Eric, with its tale of the corruption of a young boy by evil companions, is more akin to the concerns expressed by Arnold than the robust heroes of the famous novel about Rugby. Like his predecessor at Marlborough, Bradley (see objects 7, 18, 38, 53), he became Chaplain to Queen Victoria and he also went on to Westminster to become Vicar of St Margaret’s and a canon of the Abbey. In 1883 he was appointed Archdeacon and in 1895 he became Dean of Canterbury.
Farrar’s sermons were filled with history, poetry and biography, and he mentioned the work of Cotton frequently in his addresses. He promoted the cause of science in education and later, as Archdeacon of Westminster, he preached at Darwin’s funeral. He was also an aesthete and a collector of modern pictures. He believed that art was ‘a consummate teacher of mankind…I look on all true and worthy Art as a thing essentially sacred.’ When in 1872 some money became available to enhance the College Chapel he called upon the expertise of the great church architect George Bodley. This resulted in an extensive redecoration and refurbishment of the Chapel, which included the extraordinary Spencer Stanhope paintings of angels (see object 74).
Much of the decorative scheme was short-lived because the Chapel was rebuilt between 1884 and 1886, but the new pulpit which Farrar had commissioned was given to the Marlborough Mission of St Mary’s church in Tottenham (see object 58), a place full of memorials and stained-glass windows which speak of associations with the College. Farrar’s pulpit is still there and a focal point in this lively and splendid church.
90. The Blackett Telescope
After a busy school day, members of the Marlborough community are fortunate to be able to escape to worlds light years away by visiting the Blackett Observatory. On countless occasions the vastness revealed must have helped so many to put troubles into perspective and presented awe-inspiring glimpses of distant marvels. It is an instrument which has presented many extraordinary educational experiences.
The 10″ refractor telescope was built in 1860 by Thomas Cooke & sons of York for Mr Joseph Gurney Barclay FRAS of Leyton in Essex. It was used by Barclay and professional astronomers until 1885, when it was given to the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford. The instrument was used for double-star, comet and planetary work for 25 years at Leyton and then 50 years in Oxford. In 1935, its work hindered by light pollution, the Radcliffe Observatory relocated to South Africa, and the last UK Radcliffe Observer, Dr Harold Knox-Shaw (1885-1970), offered the telescope to Marlborough College. Old Marlburians raised funds and, it was set up in the present domed building, designed by William Newton, the Old Marlburian architect of the Memorial Hall and the Science laboratories (see object 3). Named the ‘Blackett Observatory’ after the expert on international finance Sir Basil Blackett KCB (1882-1935), Old Marlburian and President of the Marlburian Club, it was opened in September 1935, just after Blackett’s untimely death. A window in the north transept of Durham Cathedral is dedicated to him. The telescope’s restoration and modernisation between 1997 and 2002 was overseen by Charles Barclay (CR 1997-2022) and reopened by Professor Joe Silk FRS, Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford.
Details about the observatory and its work can be found on the website www.blackettobservatory.org