N o .123
T he T rusty S ervant
The College Tutorship
Tim Giddings (Tutor, 10-16) examines the
role:
The two huge sash windows in the
Georgian gable projecting from College
towards Moberly Court look out from
what many hold to be the finest room in
the School: the College Tutor’s drawing
room. Having vacated that and the rest
of the flat in College after six years in
post last December, I thought I would
look back over its previous occupants
and reflect on this unique job, and the
begowned community that it serves.
In 1839, worries about the
overstretched Second Master and ‘the
present youth of the Prefects’ prompted
the Warden and Fellows to engage a
resident College Tutor for a two-year trial
period, and set aside £200 as his annual
salary. A fresh Wykehamical graduate
from New College, Godfrey Lee, was
the first incumbent. His first year so
impressed Headmaster George Moberly
that he wrote to the Warden urging
that the position be made permanent.
Lee’s role was primarily to instruct the
Godfrey Lee
Jack Parr
junior Collegemen in Greek and Latin
composition, but he also attended tea in
College Hall and won Moberly’s praise
for his ‘kind, brotherly, companionable
protection’ of his pupils. Lee was clearly
a man of perseverance too: his 21-year
tenure (-1860) has never been surpassed.
Nor has his meteoric subsequent rise:
after a year as Bursar of New College,
he returned to Winchester as Warden in
1861 (and was one of the longest-serving
in that position too, occupying it until
his death in 1903).
Until the move into the current
suite of rooms above Thulé in 1909,
the Tutor lived in the two rooms above
Middle Tower, now Lower and Upper
Coll Lib. RLG Irving (Tutor, 1901-09),
reminiscing in The Wykehamist in 1951,
describes having all his water carried up
the spiral staircase by a College servant
and battling with an invasive cat, which
he could not see off, despite driving it
14
out the window and up the chimney on
successive visits. Irving also introduced
the eight-man hot to Winchester
football, enabling College to win a rare
victory over Houses in the 1907 XVs.
Jack Parr (Tutor, 20-33) was rather
less involved with College life. In fact,
he confesses in his Wykehamist article
that he did not enter a College chamber
during toytime once in his 13 years. His
attitude is perhaps epitomised by his
appearance in the Thulé mural by CFC
Hawkes (Coll, 18-24): he emerges at
the top of the stairs in his pyjamas to
sluice a bucket of water over some noisy
Collegemen. But he was the first tutor
to descend from the dais in Hall to sit at
the end of a bench during meals.
JB Poynton (Tutor, 33-54) was
probably the cleverest man to have
inhabited the rooms. At Winchester
and New College he had swept the