Over the centuries, Chapel has had many looks.
At its consecration on 17 July 1395 it was full-on
medieval Catholic, complete with painted statuary
and a rood loft. By the mid-1500s the religious laws
had changed, and Chapel wore the more restrained
liveries of the Reformation. But perhaps the biggest
overhaul came after another hundred years, once
normal life had started returning following the austere
puritanism of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Then, in
the late 1600s, Warden Nicholas decided to give the
whole College a facelift.
It is here, in this spectacular room,
that Suzanne worked on piecing
together a long-unsolved mystery
of one of the College’s greatest treasures:
the wondrous panelling of Warden
John Nicholas (1679-1712).
Part of the celebratory makeover included putting
up School, and the jury is still out on whether
Sir Christopher Wren, working just up the hill
on Charles II’s palace by the castle, was involved,
although his men certainly were. But more
importantly here, from 1680-83, Warden Nicholas
filled Chapel with the sound of hammering and
planing as he fitted some of the most spectacular
wooden panelling this country has ever produced.
Generations of experts have attributed it to Grinling
Gibbons, although Suzanne Foster shows me old
records which disclose payments to Housman the
joiner and Pierce the sculptor, both of whom had
previously worked with Wren. In any event, with
or without the involvement of Gibbons or Wren,
the luxurious woodwork was installed, and from
1729 the central panel behind the high altar housed
the radiant Annunciation of François Lemoyne,
‘discovered’ at Winchester in 2011 to the delight
the art world.
Moving forward another two centuries to the late
1800s, there was no room in Chapel for the sheer
number of men sprouting from the new boarding
houses. In 1874, Headmaster Ridding (1867-84)
finally took action, ripping out the stalls and wooden
panelling (brasses, and a lot else that is now lost), and
stuffing Chapel with rows of seating. One architectural
benefit, though, was the uncovering of the wonderful
fifteenth-century stone reredos on the east wall.
The old panelling was piled up in Cloister, then sold
for £60 to the Rev. Huyshe Yeatman, the future bishop
of Worcester, who wanted it for his private chapel.
in his laundry near Warminster, before offloading it
for £2,100 onto Messrs Hubbard and Moore, London
architects. After lending it out to surround the ice rink
at Cheltenham Winter Garden in 1902, the architects
finally managed to sell the lot for £31,500 to George
Cooper, although they cannily kept back the central
carved ‘cartouche’ of William of Wykeham’s heraldic
arms, presumably hoping to get a premium for it
from someone with Wykehamical connections,
Moving sure-footedly among the files of spidery
handwriting and faded type-written carbon copies,
finding the relevant materials with ease, Suzanne
shows me correspondence from the 1950s revealing
that the Warden, Sir George Gater, had decided it
was time to bring the panelling home, so was deep
in discussion with the Coopers, who had installed it
all at their family seat at Hursley Hall. The Warden
was a determined man, and with the help of the
Headmaster, Walter Oakeshott, and a generous
grant of £6,800 from the Pilgrim Trust, Chapel’s
exquisite 1680s woodwork finally returned to
Winchester in 1956.
At around this time the Headmaster wanted a space
large enough to accommodate the entire school,
and the answer was New Hall, which opened in
1961. Happily, it was also the ideal place to put the
magnificent but colossal panels. However, 1960s
buildings are cursed with rapid obsolescence, and by
2012 New Hall was tired and the panelling looked
dull and lacklustre. A major refurbishment was needed.
When droves of parents entered New Hall for JP
parents’ evening in November 2014, they were the
first to see the new-look New Hall. It would be an
exaggeration to say everyone was staring wide-eyed
at the panelling and ignoring their sons’ astral
academic progress, but there is no doubt the
woodwork stole the show. It certainly looked
unrecognisable from the drab space I remembered
in the mid-1980s.
This is where Suzanne Foster and the College’s
amazing archives come into play. She tells me the story
as we go through the records, tracing the journey of
these extraordinary carvings.
Yeatman, sadly, discovered his chapel was too small,
so kept the panelling in a barn in Wiltshire, before
selling it for £500 to Lord Heytesbury, who kept it
24 The Wykeham Journal 2014
Back in Warden Harmar’s study, I learn from Suzanne
the amazing story of how she worked together with
the archivist at New College, Oxford, swapping
nuggets of information from the depths of their
respective archives to piece together the panelling’s
extraordinary history, and also how the long-lost
cartouche of Wykeham’s arms finally also found
its way to New Hall.
It turns out the London architects’ rapacity was
successfully putting off all buyers, so they lent the
cartouche to Bethnal Green’s Geffrye Museum.
The Wykeham Journal 2014 25