years here as a schoolboy; there was less access to the Collections for boys back then, who were presumably seen as too boisterous or philistine to appreciate them.
These days, even F Block boys have regular lessons in College Library, and are shown rare materials relevant to their courses.
One of the many joys of returning to live in Eton is our proximity to the Collections. I had worried, when I retired from my previous posting at the Victoria & Albert Museum, that I might feel deprived of world-class treasures at every turn. But the Eton College Collections contains fabulous paintings, manuscripts and the rarest of books, an extraordinary wealth of important pieces, which would be the pride of any national museum, both here and overseas. The longer one spends with the Collections, the more remarkable one realises they are. It has been an honour to be entrusted with an imposing heritage key, at least eight inches in length, allowing constant access to College Library.
The depth and diversity of the collections is extraordinary. We have been fortunate to be given two memorable tours – by Michael Meredith, Inspirator Emeritus of the Collections, who knows more than any living person about every volume and manuscript, and by Rachel Bond, the excellent College Librarian and Director of Collections. Both curated a display of seven or so important pieces, including items they (correctly) guessed might be of particular interest to us. To my shame, I had never seen the Gutenberg Bible – arguably Eton’s greatest treasure – during my five
Nestled on padded cushions were not only the 1454 Gutenberg Bible with its studded wooden binding, but the remarkable medieval Eton Choirbook and a handwritten fair-copy of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (which features in that enduring Eton leaving book) and other fascinating Gray manuscripts; and among other treasures, one of the oldest manuscripts in College Library – the Historia Scholastica of Peter of Poitiers from Glastonbury Abbey, c.1250 AD, with early illustrations of the murder of St Thomas Becket and St Francis preaching to the birds. And then, of particular interest to us, letters from the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge while a Cambridge undergraduate (his handwriting distinctly tense), handwritten poems by Mary Coleridge, and correspondence from the first Lord Coleridge to Robert Browning. It was a revelation (to me) that Eton owns this trove.
This year’s Collections Journal is full of interest and rewards close attention.
There is a fascinating article by the College Archivist titled ‘Keeping the boys safe from Hawkers and Hookers: the Eton College Constable’. These early safeguarding officers were appointed in 1833 to patrol the lanes of Eton, dressed in a uniform of glazed top hats and long blue coats with ‘EC’ sewn on collars and sleeves. Their job was to protect boys against aggressive
street hawkers and tradesmen, loiterers and, we learn, prostitutes who periodically arrived by train from London on the new Windsor line and peddled their favours around the school. Prior to the deployment of the College Constables, some boys apparently brought pistols and rifles to their houses to protect themselves. It all seems very tame today, by contrast.
There are engaging pieces about the early years of the Eton Natural History Museum and, much more recently, the Kim Collection of East Asian Art. And an article about the genesis of the Eton Photographic Archive, illustrated by evocative late 19th century colour photographs of the Eton Eight rowing past Rafts on the Thames, and early group shots of participants in the Procession of Boats and Pop, who look remarkably similar to the same groups today, except they had better polished shoes in the 1920s. I also recommend a short piece by Merritt Factor (JCAJ), Keeper of Collections, about an 1980s leaving portrait of Emily Bourne, A House Master’s daughter, who attended the school shortly after left. The painting is described as ‘A Portrait of an Old Etonienne’ (the first time I’ve heard that expression).
And don’t overlook the vintage photograph of Queen Victoria’s funeral at Windsor Castle, February 2nd 1901. A letter written by John Parish, recently gifted to the archive, mentions that Eton boys – the entire school, in fact – formed part of the funeral march, lining the route from Long Walk up to the main entrance of the castle. What an extraordinary sight that must have been.
Sir Nicholas Coleridge
‘Affectionately yours, Bel’:
Hidden Stories in the Moulton-Barrett Archive
In spring 2021, when the College Collections team was alternating working from home with on-site work, a research enquiry unexpectedly uncovered the untold story of a Mixedheritage woman in late 19th and early 20th-century Jamaica, and led to some exciting new acquisitions for College Library.
Dr Amara Thornton, Research Fellow and Co-Investigator of ‘Beyond Notability: Re-evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage in Britain, 1870-1950’, reached out to College Library seeking to identify the ‘Miss Moulton-Barrett’ mentioned in an article in the Jamaica Gleaner During an explosion of archaeological work in Jamaica tied to the colonial government’s plans for increasing tourism to the island in the 1890s, artefacts discovered during Miss Moulton-Barrett’s informal excavations at Retreat Pen in St Ann’s were displayed at the Institute of Jamaica’s Anthropological Exhibition in 1895.
Searching online during lockdown, Amara found a passage in a digitised copy of Jeannette Marks’s book The Family of the Barrett: a Colonial Romance (1938) charting the family history of the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (EBB): ‘[…] there was born to Charles John [Moulton Barrett, EBB’s brother] by a woman of colour, a child […] Eva.’ Another child, Arabella, followed three years later in 1860: two Mixed-heritage Jamaican nieces of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. As Amara herself is a Mixed-heritage researcher with close family ties to the Caribbean, this stopped her in her tracks.
To identify ‘Miss Moulton-Barrett’, she approached College Library, where the Moulton-Barrett family’s surviving Jamaica papers are held (ECL MS 681). We soon established that Eva had married John Casserly, a planter living at Oxford Estate, Trelawny in 1880, so ‘Miss Moulton Barrett’ was most likely Arabella (known as Arabel or Bel). More excitingly, while searching through the archive boxes, library staff discovered six letters written from Jamaica between 1945 and 1953 by ‘Bel’ herself, by then a very elderly woman, to a relative, ‘Edward of Albion’ (Edward F. Moulton Barrett).
The Barrett family had been associated with Jamaica since the 18th century, holding plantations across several parishes including Retreat Pen (‘The Retreat’), the plantation between Brown’s Town, St Ann’s and Stewart Town, Trelawny. Arabel’s paternal grandfather Edward Barrett, who lived in Britain, received thousands of pounds
Following the discovery of Arabel Moulton-Barrett’s archaeological work, in 2024 College Library acquired two watercolours of The Retreat, painted shortly before Arabel was born, by her father’s youngest brother ‘Occy’ (ECL MS 681)
of compensation after the abolition of slavery, and his son Charles John (known within the family as ‘Storm’), had moved to Jamaica to manage the Barrett estates as a resident proprietor. Arabel’s mother Elizabeth Barrett was herself a Mixed-heritage woman whose father was Charles John’s ‘uncle Sam’, making Elizabeth and Charles John cousins.
Arabel and Eva were brought up by Charles John at Retreat Pen – ‘my beloved home’ (7 March 1956). The girls were educated in France, and one letter recalls Arabel’s visit to her uncle by marriage Robert Browning at his home in London in 1867, describing his voice as ‘Deep – rich – full’ (2 December 1952).
The letters discuss Arabel’s parents’ relationship in some detail. She emphasises their love for each other and mourns the fact that they had been prevented from marrying.
‘But first let me say that when my father became a Roman Catholic the priest in order to ‘‘whitewash’’ another woman, married him to her, and at the same time arranged my mother’s marriage to a man by name of Greaves. The priests were satisfied, but many lives were spoiled by their high-handed proceedings.’ (2 February 1945)
Obliged to marry another woman, Charles John gave Elizabeth a house and land in Stewart Town, Trelawny. In the same letter Arabel notes that her mother had acquired an education on her own, and ‘had a nice little library – theology, travel, autobiography & poetry were all represented.’
‘He did the right and honourable thing in acknowledging his two little daughters. No father could have done more than he did – God forever bless him and give his soul eternal rest. And listen to this, Edward of Albion – I consider myself as more truly born of wedded parents than any other woman whose mother wears a wedding ring. In the true marriage there are found love, fidelity, obedience, sacrifices. I compare this true and holy, – yes – holy union with those I [see] all around me – some personally known to me – and I rest on the result. I honour my father and mother.’ (2 February 1945)
By the 1870s Charles John’s brother Septimus was heavily in debt. Arabel recounts how her father spent all his money and sold all the family properties, clearing Septimus’s debt to save the Barrett name. Retreat Pen was sold in 1893, except for the burial ground – this, Arabel notes in a letter, ‘still belongs to me.’ (5 April 1950)
‘My father paid every penny to save his brother’s honour – The Retreat, Oxford, Cambridge, Cinnamon Hill – all were sold – He was left impoverished – but his brother’s honour was saved –When my beloved father lay on his death-bed he asked my forgiveness. I honoured him for what he had done. He had acted rightly. He died happy –[…] I have never regretted his beautiful, brotherly action. I thank God he acted as he did – I have had to work hard all my life but work is good for body and mind.’ (30 April 1950)
Photograph album compiled by Maria Elizabeth Moulton-Barrett containing a carte-de-visite photograph of Arabel as a girl next to one of her father (above), and one of her as a young woman next to one of her sister Eva (below) (ECL MS 681)
farmed by enslaved workers for their sustenance – among them, possibly, Arabel’s maternal ancestors. In her notes published in the Jamaica Gleaner, Arabel recorded that the ridge featured small mounds where fragments of pottery, animal bones, and pieces of shell were recovered at and just below surface level. It was likely estate workers under Arabel’s direction who dug below the surface on the ridge.
The sale of Retreat Pen seems to have ended Arabel’s archaeological investigations. Perhaps with the loss of the family property, there was no opportunity for her to continue her interests, and her father’s diminished circumstances must have played some part.
It is not clear exactly when Arabel Moulton-Barrett undertook her archaeological investigations at Retreat Pen, but it must have been before the estate was sold. The exploration centred around two hills connected by a ridge. These had once been fields
By 1913 Arabel was living in Kingston, where – perhaps inspired by her celebrated aunt – she won first prize in a poetry competition: her winning poetic response to the set question, ‘If I Were Governor’, was printed in the Gleaner in December 1913, and three short stories were published in The Catholic World between 1919 and
Letters of Arabel Moulton-Barrett, 1945-53. The deterioration of her handwriting with increasing age and visual impairment is clearly visible (ECL MS 681)
1925. From the 1920s to the 1940s she was active in the Jamaica branch of the Empire Poetry League, and her work was included in the 1929 anthology Voices from Summerland. Impoverished and suffering with loss of vision towards the end of her life, the final letter written two weeks before her death records that a group of writers had clubbed together to send her badly needed funds.
‘My dear Edward of Albion, Many thanks for cheque with extra pound – it has been very useful. My sight is so bad I can hardly see what I write and I may be repeating myself. Blindness is a painful thing.’ (7 March 1956 [i.e.1953]).
Arabel Moulton-Barrett’s complex family history revealed in the six letters preserved at Eton encapsulates both the context of sexual exploitation of Black and Mixed-heritage women by White planters during the era of slavery, and lives of the resulting Mixed-heritage population in the period after slavery. Some of
these Mixed-heritage descendants, including Arabel, led relatively comfortable lives with the time to devote to intellectual pursuits. Written at the end of her life, the letters are a poignant insight into her memories, revealing the special place Retreat Pen, her childhood home, held in her heart. We hope she is buried in the family burial plot at Retreat as she wished.
Amara Thornton
Research Fellow, Institute of Classical Studies, and Stephie Coane
Deputy Librarian, Eton College Library
This piece is adapted from an article by Amara Thornton on the Beyond Notability project blog: URL https://beyondnotability. org/biographical/on-arabel-moulton-barrett/
ELEMENTAL
Exhibition opening November 2025 Verey Gallery, Eton College Free admission
For further information, please visit: collections.etoncollege.com
For centuries or even millennia, the human experience of the world was rooted in the four traditional elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Before the advent of modern science, the theory and associations of these elements suffused myth, religion, folklore, language, literature and art.
Elemental presents objects drawn from across the College Collections to explore our cultural relationship with the material world through the four elements from ancient times to today.
Keeping the boys safe from Hawkers and Hookers: the Eton College Constable
Prior to the 19th century, the safety of the boys at Eton was reliant on locked doors, curfews and night watchmen who were employed to keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour. In a letter home to his father dated November 1764, a boy remarked that ‘Most of the great boys, indeed almost all, have guns or pistols’ which offered a degree of protection but at great risk.
The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 encouraged towns and boroughs to establish their own police forces but did not compel them to. There were very few policemen generally in rural areas, and Slough elected to rely instead on the military presence in Windsor should there be a need for force. As a result, the Eton College Police was formed, initially appointed under the provisions of the General Watching and Lighting Act, 1833. In 1835, these men were William Ferryman, Christopher Barrett and Thomas Gray, under the supervision of Constable Thomas Bott.
The College Constables were provided with their own livery, very similar to that of the College watermen, the men appointed to ensure the boys’ safety on the river. The uniform was a glazed top hat, long blue coat with gilt buttons and ‘EC’ on the collar and the College Arms embroidered on the sleeve.
When approval was finally given for the Windsor-Slough branch railway line in 1848, it was against much opposition. The Head Master, Edward Craven Hawtrey, in particular was very hostile to the railway, stating that ‘Any line whatever which brings Eton nearer to London is prejudicial to the school’. The permission of the College was conditional upon additional Police Officers being hired by the railway company but chosen by the College, specifically to prevent Etonians from gaining access to the line. Despite this requirement, it would seem that the Great Western Company never established policing at the station, and in 1849 the Head Master would write to the director complaining that a boy was allowed to leave Slough when officials must have been aware he was leaving school without permission and had no money to pay his fare. Hawtrey stressed that in the absence of proper policing, it was doubly incumbent on railway servants to prevent abuse of the railroad.2
After William Bambridge (1819-79), Mr Bott, College Constable, published 1851, lithograph (FDA-E.2107-2015)
When the Buckinghamshire Constabulary was formed in 1857, the College applied for four Constables to supplement the two then still serving the College. Although these officers would be constables of the county’s constabulary, under the supervision of the Chief Constable, the cost would be entirely at the College’s
expense, and the College would form its own Police District. Thomas Bott retired after 26 years’ service to the College, and the others were offered a place in the Buckinghamshire Constabulary but elected not to join. The Eton College Police then ceased to exist as its own entity.
In 1859, a notice was issued from the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire noting the authorisation to appoint three additional Constables for the service of Eton College. These Constables were to ‘keep from the College premises all persons of bad or suspicious character’, to monitor those street sellers permitted to sell to the students, to remove bands of music or other noisy exhibitors from the public road in front of the Long Walk and to keep it free from ‘loiterers, dealers in Dogs’ and ‘loose women’.3 Finally, they were to protect the students’ luggage on their return from holidays. Their standing orders stated ‘You will check the passes of Hawkers and Tradesmen, ensure that no loose women enter the precincts – you will be tolerant should you become the target for the exuberance of the Collegians’4
The College Police Station was between Drury’s and Wolley-Dod’s, both Boarding Houses. Drury’s was demolished in 1902, WolleyDod’s in 1905, to make way for School Hall and Library. The Police Station was a casualty of this building work. Premises were instead leased on the High Street for use by the officers.
In 1892 the Eton College Police District merged with the rest of the Buckinghamshire County Constabulary, but the College continued to be provided with three private constables and an Inspector of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary was stationed at Eton. These private constables were funded out of the School Fund. This fund was made up of tuition fees and subscriptions and was used to cover general educational expenditure.
The practice of employing private constables continued until the end of the First World War. In 1919, the College asked to drop to just one additional constable who would conduct night patrols only.
From then, policing the College came solely from the local area policeman, with no officer specifically appointed to protect the College. In the 1930s, concerns over the rise of traffic in Eton led the College again to request additional support and the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire agreed to provide an extra officer for point duty.5 The boys were rather dismissive of the need for this, writing in the Chronicle ‘if we are taught nothing else at Eton we learn to treat all traffic with magnificent contempt.’6
In 1974, the Eton College Police Cadet Force was inaugurated, intending to initiate 12 volunteers a year. Boys would visit local police stations and training colleges, hear lectures on a variety of policing matters and undertake elements of practical police work, including patrols. Although short-lived, it was another component to keeping the College safe.
Almost 150 years exactly from the foundation of the Eton College Police, a full-time private Security Service was again established at the College, under David Hogg, reviving the title of College Constable. Consisting of five full-time guards, three for night time, two for the day time, their main jobs, according to the Chronicle, were car parking and ‘herding the tourists’.7 Their primary purpose though was to protect the school and enable the everyday routine to continue unhindered.
Today there are 23 members of the Security Department, with four teams operating 12-hour shifts. In addition, over 100 CCTV cameras monitor the College area. Eton College has never been so protected.
1. Eton College Archives, ED 179
2. Ibid., COLL P 13 01 01 08
3. Ibid., ECC 30 November 1962
4. COLL CC 04 62
5. Minutes of the Provost and Fellows, 20 February 1934
6. Eton College Chronicle, 5 November 1936
7. Ibid., 9 February 1987
Eleanor Hoare College Archivist
Eton College Police Station,1902; the small hut between the houses, visible to the right of the Burning Bush (PA-A.124:47-2013)
College Constable in Eton College police uniform, c.1858 (PA-A.15:39-2013)
The early years of Eton’s Natural History Museum
How else could trailblazing schoolboy Alexander William Maxwell Clark-Kennedy (EDS, 1868) have written the world’s first book on birds containing photographs while he was still only 16 years old? His Birds of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, was published in 1868 and very likely featured the huge taxidermic collection of birds that already resided in Eton, pre-dating any formal museum.
The Thackeray Bird Collection, mostly collected in the 1820s, was bequeathed to Eton in 1850 by Old Etonian George Thackeray, who was Provost of King’s College, Cambridge from 1814. JeanJacques Audubon (1785-1851), the French-American bird artist, on his visit to England had called this collection one of the finest he had ever seen. At Eton it was at first housed in the School Library in what is now the Wall House.
‘Joseph, river-bathing with his friends one fine summer evening, had lingered behind them in the water; when he came out they were all gone and he dawdled back to school by himself along a flowery lane. Solitude, the flowers, perhaps the evening light, had their effect: “he stopped and looking round, involuntarily exclaimed, How beautiful! After some reflection, he said to himself, it is surely more natural that I should be taught to know all these productions of Nature, in preference to Greek or Latin; …I will however make myself acquainted with all these different plants for my own pleasure and gratification”.’2
Sir John Lubbock has some claim to be the most popular Old Etonian of all time, being the man who invented bank holidays whilst working for his father’s bank. But as a distinguished amateur scientist, his brilliant work on social insects earned him the friendship of Charles Darwin and a place as a most distinguished author on ants and bees and one of the first experimental zoologists. Lubbock was obsessed with natural history and remarked, with no trace of hyperbole:
‘There is no species of animal or plant which would not well repay, I will not say, merely the study of a day, but even the devotion of a lifetime.’1
As a longstanding Curator of the Natural History Museum, I know how he feels.
When we reflect on why Eton has a Natural History Museum of such quality, and the school has such a long line of notable natural historians to its credit, we first need to understand that, over 150 years ago, Etonians had more time on their hands!
That many boys did indeed spend their time pursuing birds, plants and insects in the 18th and 19th centuries is beyond any doubt. For instance, consider this quote from Leonard Jenyns, who started at Eton in 1813:
‘At Eton, being no cricketer, I preferred wandering by myself in the green lanes that skirted the Playing and Shooting fields, looking after stag beetles (very common there), watching birds etc.’
Jenyns became one of the leading naturalists in England in the first half of the 19th century, and famously played an unwitting role in the history of science by turning down the offer to be the naturalist on the voyage of HMS Beagle. Instead, his friend Charles Darwin was appointed to accompany Captain Fitzroy, and the course of science took an important step forward as a result!
From the 18th century, for evidence of avid Etonian natural historians with time on their hands, we need only think of Joseph Banks, another gentleman naturalist who decided to accompany perhaps the most famous British circumnavigation of all time. His Damascene botanic conversion, probably apocryphal, was described in the Hunterian Oration of 1822 by Sir Everard Home:
But what ultimately led to the origin of the Natural History Museum in 1875 was the birth of Eton science, a development that itself depended on the national zeitgeist and a realisation that a scientific renaissance was imperative. And yet, only a decade earlier, the portents for science were not promising in the school.
Consider Mathematics Master Rev. Stephen Hawtrey in an 1868 essay, who stated that if boys learned
‘about the electric telegraph, the lightning conductor, the electric light, the Davy Safety Lamp, chloroform, and vaccination, would there not be a great danger of the boys becoming less vigorousminded than they are?’3
Add to that William Johnson (later Cory), author of the ‘Eton Boating Song’, who opined that geology ‘cannot be received by mere boys without a violent disturbance of their religious belief’,4 though with great magnanimity he granted that the study of botany might be an exception!
Parliament set up a Royal Commission in 1861 to investigate the state of the nine leading schools in England. The Clarendon Report was duly published in 1864 with general recommendations on the subjects of curriculum. The most surprising idea, according to Tim Card’s book, ‘unforeseen by even the most forward-looking Eton Masters, was the recommendation to include science’5 And so, in 1869, a chemistry laboratory was built (where James Schools now stands), and in 1874, the Public Schools Commissioners insisted on an increased provision of science teaching and more laboratories.
George Fussey was Curator of the Natural History Museum from 2004 until his retirement at the end of 2024. He reflects upon the origins of the museum, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2025.
The Natural History Museum in the 1890s (PA-A.141:18-2014)
The remnant of the Thackeray birds displayed in a case designed by Prince Albert for the Great Exhibition in 1851
Frontispiece of Alexander Clark-Kennedy’s book on local birds, published in 1868 when he was a boy at Eton.
Memorial plaque to Lionel George Lawson (RSK 1903) in whose memory the Natural History Museum annexe was built
The science teachers appointed were adamant that they needed a museum to support their work, and the rest, as they say, is natural history. The first museum was erected in 1875 from subscriptions raised from the science masters and was in the form of a rotunda on the site of Lower Chapel. By 1891, the new Queen’s Schools was unveiled, housing the museum on the first floor.
Today’s Natural History Museum still occupies some of the original Queen’s Schools footprint, but the bulk of the present-day museum is in an annexe, dedicated to the memory of another budding Etonian naturalist, Lionel George Lawson (RSK, 1903). A keen birdwatcher, Lawson was one of two boys tragically killed in a fire in Baldwin’s Shore boarding house in 1903. His family - with great magnanimity, built the extension through which visitors now enter. The Jacobethan-style annexe cost just over £5,000 to build. Its external peacock decoration makes it obvious that it was designed to hold the bulk of Thackeray’s Birds, and to this day they still lie in wait by the entrance.
1. Sir J. Lubbock, The Beauties of Nature, and the Wonders of the World We Live In, Macmillan, 1892, London
2. I. Wallace (ed.), Leonard Jenyns: Darwinís Lifelong Friend: A Victorian Naturalist and his World, Bath Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath, 2005
3. Sir E. Home, The Hunterian Oration in honour of surgery, Royal College of Surgeons, London, 1822
4. Rev. S. Hawtrey, A Narrative-Essay On A Liberal Education: Chiefly Embodied In The Account Of An Attempt To Give A Liberal Education To Children Of The Working Classes Hamilton, Adams & Co., London, 1868
5. R.C. Austen-Leig h, R.C Martineau and T.P. Connor, A Guide to Eton College, 8th edition, Eton College, 1988
6. T. Card, Eton Renewed: A History of Eton College from 1860 to the Present Day John Murray, London, 1994
Vale GDF
George Fussey retired from Eton at the end of 2024, after nearly 40 years at the College, and 20 years as Curator of the Natural History Museum (NHM). From the very beginning of his tenure at the museum, George took the view that ‘a museum without people in it is just a collection’ and focused on developing and expanding audiences. His approach led the way for the College Collections as a whole to orient itself much more actively toward community engagement. George’s roles, at various times, as Borough Councillor and Mayor of Eton, equipped him well; in his time the NHM hosted more than 50 family learning events in collaboration with Windsor schools, as well as countless Cub and Sea Scout groups. He also ensured that the museum features prominently in the Eton Walkway.
George worked tirelessly to make the natural history collections more accessible to audiences both within and beyond Eton, from re-labelling the exhibits to installing a wheelchair lift to working with interested boys to create new displays, often with more direct emphasis on contemporary ecological issues. He curated two stimulating, popular and quite different exhibitions on one of his heroes, Joseph Banks, which were shown at the College a quarter-century apart. George made some important acquisitions for the museum, including the beloved Kakapo, a specimen of the world’s most endangered parrot. He was also responsible for identifying a handwritten leaf in College Library as one of only 42 to survive from the original manuscript of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a special challenge given the author’s less than clear handwriting! All of this was somehow done alongside dynamic performance of a variety of other roles at Eton, including teaching Biology, for which department he also served as Head; running a summer school; serving as Director of Career Education; and overseeing the Infusions Society.
We greatly miss his presence, his energy, his good sense and wisdom, and even—sometimes—his quick and inescapable puns. Though it has been very difficult to picture the museum without him, or George in a state of retirement, we wish him every happiness—and much drinking of tea—in his next chapter.
Rachel Bond Director of Collections
Nora Davison’s watercolours of Eton
A Woman’s View
An exhibition celebrating the work of watercolour artist Nora Davison (1855–1950)
Davison specialised in painting marine scenes before taking up residence above the old Post Office on the High Street in Eton in 1913. She was in her late 50s and embarking on a new phase of her career, capitalising on local demand for views of the streets and buildings of Eton College. Her works sold mostly to Eton Masters, boys and their families, for whom she became ‘a familiar figure, sitting on her camp-stool, often with a cluster of boys looking on as she painted some Eton building’.
Verey Gallery, Eton College 23 May to 28 September 2025 free admission open weekends and by appointment see: collections.etoncollege.com
George Fussey Curator, Natural History Museum (2004-24)
A Splash of Colour
The Photographic Archive was set up in 1952 by Peter Stafford Henry Lawrence, Assistant Master from 1936-77. The collection includes examples of photographic types from the earliest days of photography to the digital world of today. This article looks at those which help chart the history of colour photography.
The first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. Then in 1839 came the development of the first official, public photographic process, the Daguerreotype, created by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. This process is recognised as the invention of photography and was a remarkable feat. People were amazed by the ability to capture a perfect likeness of a subject, but disappointment arose because of the inability of these photos to capture the exact colours of the subject and its background. Therefore, people took matters into their own hands and started finding ways to colour the fragile black and white photographs for themselves.
Although the first official process of colour photography was invented in the 1890s, major public use was not in effect until the 1960s. Colour was introduced to the different processes of monochrome photography from the 1850s, and various techniques were used for the following 100 years. Paint, ink, pastels, and crayons were all used in an attempt of achieving a faux coloured photograph across the different established mediums of photography. Photographers, professional artists and individuals all worked on handpainting photographs.
Not only did colour add depth and brightness to photographs, but for Eton College it was an important addition in order to capture the colours of the house teams. House colours have always been a tradition of pride and loyalty to one’s house, so the inability of photography to capture these colours was a great loss. One example in our collection of the addition of colour to house photographs is PA-A.125:14-2013. This photograph does not include names and bears only a date of 1909. Fortunately, the boys’ sport team uniforms have been painted with their black and red stripes. This allows us to quite confidently say this was the house football team of A.A. Somerville in 1909.
Photographer Richard Beard patented a method of painting on the fragile metal plated Daguerreotype in 1842. After the demand for miniature portraiture reduced with the rise of photography, professional artists were employed in photographic studios instead. A silver gelatin print in our collection from 1894 (PA-PSR.1:13-2023) is one such example of this. The detail of the colour additions makes this photograph seem like a painting, so it was most likely completed by an artist employed by the photographer, in this case, Hills and Saunders. Individuals also coloured aspects of their own photographs, as seen on the carte de visite type, PA-A.15:54-2013, c.1861. This boy’s corps uniform has blue stripes coloured to signify the company and rank he served in during his time in the Officer Training Corps at Eton.
The collection also contains over 2,000 silver gelatin dry glass plate negatives. This process of photography was invented in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox and maintained popularity until the 1930s, with some photographers still using the method in the 1950s. Our collection spans the period from the 1870s to the 1940s, and within the last year we have been working to clean, rehouse, digitise and catalogue the collection. While working on this project we have learnt a lot about the photographic process, including colourisation. A handful of the plates have additional ink painted onto certain aspects of the image, most common was a blue colour on the faces of the boys. It was not until we inverted the images that we saw that in the same way black becomes white from negative to positive, this blue colour was turning peachy, similar to that of a light skin tone. A great example of this is in an image of a group of boys from the Procession of Boats, PA-N.1114-2024.
This method was presumably a later addition to the actual capturing of the photograph itself, and it seems the method required some experimenting. Our collection holds examples such as PA-N.1158-2024, where a pink ink was applied, but when inverted this created a green colour to the boys’ faces! We have to assume this was not the intended final result.
Although these hand-coloured photographs are rare in collections today, they show a depth to what is commonly considered the monochrome 18th and 19th centuries. Eton’s Photographic Archive holds many treasures like these that add to both the story of Eton and the history of photography itself.
Laura Martin Archives Assistant
Portrait of Lionel Muirhead, 1861 (PA-A.15:54-2013)
The Eton Eight on the River Thames, 1894 (PA-PSR.1:13-2023)
The Eton Society, 1920s, original and inverted (PA-N.1158-2024)
Procession of Boats, 1920s, original and inverted (PA-N.1114-2024)
The Kim Collection of East Asian Art
In February 2024, the first Eton exhibition devoted to East Asian artists, The Wind from the East, was shown in the Tower Gallery. The exhibition brought together works by artists who achieved great success in the face of turbulent social and political climates, with those of rising contemporary artists, to explore East Asian identity. Alongside works by 12 established artists, including Nam June Paik (1932-2006), Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) and Isamu Noguchi (1904-88), were examples by 13 talented young Korean, Chinese and Japanese artists, currently based in London. Initiated and spearheaded by Jojo Jin Joo Lee (Mrs Kim) and her son, Justin Seojoon Kim (PEPW 2024), the exhibition drew extensively on Mrs Kim’s own collection. When it closed, Fine & Decorative Art staff were invited to select from the exhibits, to form a new collection of modern and contemporary East Asian art for display at the College. Sixteen works were chosen, representing the most important donation of art to the College since the Pilkington bequest of watercolours in 1973.
Among the works by rising artists was Non-Existent Existence II a red glass vessel by Jinya Zhao (b. 1994). Zhao was raised in China and completed a BA at the China Academy of Art, before moving to London in 2017 to study at the Royal College of Art.
She uses opaque glass to create sculptures with unexpected intersections that push the boundaries of spacial awareness and confuse perceptions of interior and exterior.
Beuys Vox, 1988, also now in the Eton collection (FDA-Sc.228-2024), is by Korean artist Nam June Paik. The work places the mythical East Asian moon rabbit inside the case of an early television to honour German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-86), Paik’s friend and collaborator. Paik is considered ‘the father of video art’.1 At 18, he and his family fled the Korean War, settling in Japan. Paik relocated again to West Germany in 1956, to study music history. There, he met American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912-92). Inspired by Cage’s freedom of expression, he became immersed in performance art, before turning his attention to television, recognising its power even in the infancy of the medium.
Paik moved to New York in 1964, where he befriended the cellist Charlotte Moorman (1933-91) and together they experimented by combining music, video and performance art. Critics were unreceptive, but Paik remained devoted to his path, despite the expense of the technology involved and his personal poverty, explaining: ‘I am fighting a war of persistence.’2 After receiving a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, he bought his first portable video recorder. His most celebrated works include TV Buddha (original version 1974; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), a statuette of a Buddha ‘watching’ its own live image on television, and The More the Better (1988; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon), an 18.5-metre-high installation, incorporating 1,003 monitors.
When Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was just one year old, his father, poet Ai Qing (1910-96), was exiled from Beijing and sent to a labour camp in Xinjiang. The family returned to Beijing in 1975 and Weiwei enrolled at the Film Academy. He became a member of a subversive political artists’ group before moving to the US in 1981, settling in New York. Weiwei returned to Beijing in 1993, after his father became ill, but was arrested in 2011 and jailed for 81 days. After Chinese authorities returned his passport in 2015, he emigrated to Europe.
For his Tate Modern show in 2010, Weiwei employed 1,600 people to make handmade, painted porcelain sunflower seeds. Each seed was individually sculpted and hand-painted by artisans working independently or in small-scale workshops, in the Chinese city of
Jingdezhen. 100 million seeds were installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, forming a deep carpet, through which visitors were invited to walk. Individually, each seed was a delicately crafted sculpture. En masse, they were like a fine gravel, generating sound as visitors marched through them, contemplating the mind-blowing scale of their manufacture. Through these apparently humble seeds, Weiwei’s installation reflected on the Chinese traditions of handmade ceramics versus mass production and spoke of presentday geopolitics and the place of cultural and economic exchanges with China. Just two individual seeds, mounted in frames, are included in the Kim collection; tiny mementoes from Weiwei’s sea of seeds (FDA-Sc.229:1-2024 and FDA-Sc.229:2-2024).
Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles; the son of Japanese poet Yone Noguchi (1875-1947) and American writer Léonie Gilmour (1873-1933). His family relocated to Japan when he was an infant. Aged 13, Noguchi was sent back to the US to enter a boarding school in Indiana. He was later apprenticed to sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941), creator of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. After moving to Paris, he entered the studio of sculptor Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957), who inspired Noguchi’s first abstract works in stone. In 1929, Noguchi met American architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) in New York. He collaborated with Fuller on several design projects, including the Dymaxion car. Noguchi made his initial return visit to Japan to study pottery in 1931, before accepting the first of many public sculpture commissions, for History as Seen from Mexico in 1936 (1936; The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, New York).
From 1947, he made designs for the Herman Miller Furniture Company. These pieces, including his three-part coffee table, have become iconic symbols of the modernist style. After a 1951 visit to the town of Gifu, Japan, Noguchi began designing delicate paper lamps, employing traditional Gifu methods. He called these works Akari, and explained that the Akari lamps ‘were partly motivated by wanting to be able to have my art in everybody’s home.’3
These artists have each confronted the challenges of addressing identity in the face of displacement. While some were forcibly dislocated from their home countries, others grew up without a strong attachment to one culture. Noguchi, known as Sam Gilmour during his student days in the US, explained ‘With my double nationality and double upbringing, where was my home? Where my affections? Where my identity? Japan or America? Either, both – or the world?’4 Nam June Paik, who learned to speak Japanese, English, German and French, in addition to his mother tongue, Korean, commented ‘When you count in a foreign language, you have to think so hard, you don’t have time to think about yourself.’5 Jinya Zhao articulated that through her work ‘… investigated and expressed my Chinese identity within British culture, which I described as ‘non-existent existence’.’6 Finally, Weiwei expressed the pursuit of identity as a universal struggle: ‘I think that people very often have a misunderstanding that we already have an identity. And yes, it’s half-true, but we still have to find our identities. We may never find out who we are unless we test it.’7
The donation of the Kim collection is a catalyst to encourage appreciation, familiarity, dialogue and engagement through the display of this group of remarkable works. The process is just beginning, as the works are gradually installed throughout the College, and we look forward to the conversations, experiences and teaching opportunities to come.
Philippa Martin Keeper of Fine & Decorative Art
1. C. Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art 2013, p.16
2. A. Kim (director), Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV, 2023
3. A. Kim (director), Noguchi: In His Own Words, 2021, Barbican Centre
4. M. Duus, The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey Without Borders 2006, p.6
5. H. Hsu, ‘How Nam June Paik’s Past Shaped His Visions of the Future’, The New Yorker, 29 March 2023
6. H. Wu, ‘Jinya Zhao: Chinese glass artist who evokes non-existent existence’, Timid Magazine, https://www.timidmag.com/features/ jinya-zhao (accessed 12/10/24)
7. G. Hong & C. Loh, ‘Ai Weiwei: The Power of the Individual’, Vulture Magazine 2024, https://vulture-magazine.com/articles/the-powerof-the-individual (accessed 12/10/24)
Isamu Noguchi, Akari Light Sculpture Model 6A, c.1952, screen printed Washi paper, bamboo and wood, enameled (FDA-A.2560-2024),
Pupil Perspectives
The College Collections have had a Boy Keeper since 2015. The role is to act as an ambassador to the boy community, raising awareness within the School of the Collections, to assist with events and to act as a mentor to younger boys who wish to volunteer with the Collections. In 2024-25, the Collections is lucky to have two Boy Keepers, both of whom have been involved for a number of years. This year’s keepers have selected objects from the Collections that they find particularly fascinating.
Portrait of an Old Etonienne
The Fine & Decorative Art Collection holds a painting described as a half-length portrait of a young woman, seated on a sofa and holding a book (FDA-P.130-2010). Despite having a young woman as the subject, it is an authentic Eton leaving portrait. The sitter, Emily Bourne, is the daughter of R.M.A. Bourne, Assistant Master from 1947-83 and House Master 1959-79, one of the girls who attended Eton in the 1980s.
Several cohorts of girls attended Eton in the 1980s to prepare for the Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams and lived at their nearby girls’ schools, coming to Eton for lessons. But Emily, as a Master’s daughter, was able to live at the school and attend Eton for her entire sixth form, which was permitted in the ‘70s and ‘80s but is no longer a privilege allowed to Eton daughters. She won an Oppidan Scholarship and Head Master’s Prize and was a member of Sixth Form Select, probably the first and only young woman ever to achieve these accolades at Eton. Her time at Eton was marked by a portrait because there was a tradition that one member of Sixth Form Select was painted every year, and in 1982, she was selected. Bourne’s portrait currently hangs in one of the departmental offices.
If Eton College were to go co-ed, after six hundred years of exclusively teaching and developing boys, the press would herald the admission of girls as an historic event. But girls have been here as part of the Eton community for centuries. We need to make a greater attempt to uncover new sources that show diverse experiences of Eton, beyond those of boys, masters, and senior staff. In looking at Eton through the eyes of girls who spent their childhoods here, we start to appreciate that these young women have had their own experience of the School—their own Eton, which is worth noticing and preserving.
Merritt Factor (JCAJ) Boy Keeper of Collections, 2024-25
Figure of Seated Buddha
One of my personal favourite pieces in the Eton Collections is a seated Buddha statue in the Museum of Antiquities (ECM.65212017). Carved from grey schist (a mediumgrained metamorphic rock) and dating back to the 2nd – 4th century AD, it’s a beautiful work of art. This Buddha comes from the Gandhara region (between modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan), the centre of an immense network of trade routes linking India and the Mediterranean. These crossroads, I think, are reflected by the statue’s artistic blend of Greek, Roman and Indian influences.
The statue’s wavy hair and flowing robe seem Classically inspired. Yet, it’s unmistakably Buddhist. The Buddha is depicted with a meditative pose and seated characteristically with his legs crossed, while we can guess that his hands form the ‘dhyana mudra’, a sacred gesture to demonstrate the Buddha’s concentration. Behind the Buddha’s head is a halo, a typical example of Buddhist iconography symbolising the figure’s enlightenment. Indeed, the Tipitaka (Buddhist scripture) mentions that rays of blue, yellow, red, white and orange light emanated from the Buddha’s body at the time of his enlightenment.
The craftmanship is also remarkable. Gandhara was a large centre of Buddhism during late antiquity, with a flourishing market for Buddhist art. Here, the sculptor shows great skill in capturing the intricate features of the Buddha’s clothing as well as the serene expression on his face. Working with grey schist was a challenging task due to its durability – yet, the sculptor nevertheless manages to enliven the Buddha, increasing its spiritual value. Ultimately, it’s a masterful piece of work.
Floris Brocklebank (IRS) Boy Keeper of Collections, 2024-25
Richard Foster, Emily Bourne, oil on canvas, c.1982 (FDA-P.130-2010)
Gandhara grey schist figure of seated Buddha (ECM.6521-2017)
The 2024 Collections Prize Essay
The annual Collections Prize is open to Eton boys in C Block (lower sixth). It is an opportunity to research and write beyond the curriculum, with a focus on selected objects from the College Collections. In 2024, entrants were asked to select three objects to illustrate the theme ‘Youth’. In his winning essay, Dorian Park (PRKB) chose to write about a selection of objects, two of which are reproduced here.
‘He recommended to the young the constant use of the mirror, to the end that handsome men might acquire a corresponding behaviour, and ugly men conceal their defects by education.’
At a first glance, this line from Diogenes Laertius’ The Life of Socrates may seem like a careless stab at the ‘ugly’, though that is likely not at all what Socrates intends. Rather, he alludes to the fact that men who possess physical beauty but lack in their education are inferior to their counterpart; and that he wants young men to stare into mirrors, not to admire their own beauty, but so that they can see past their external form and cultivate their inner selves.
This dressing table may have been used by Eton boys since it was made - probably during the Edwardian era (1901-14). It is made from mahogany and has a rectangular top with an arched mirror erected on the rear side. Contrary to the Victorian era that saw the rise in furniture that was rather fanciful and bulky, and adopted a ‘more is more’ belief, Edwardian furniture turned towards practicality and simplicity in terms of colour and ornamentation. This dressing table displays a harmonious blend of form and function; for example, the mirror surmounted by a plinth and neo-classical urn finial is also able to swivel, so it can be angled towards the viewer.
Diogenes Laertius’ reflection on Socrates’ advice about the mirror extends beyond mere physical appearance, encouraging young men to go and educate themselves. This philosophical idea finds a literal parallel in the Edwardian dressing table, where the mirror may have reflected the daily growth and education of Eton boys. The
table, a blend of practicality and aesthetic simplicity, is a witness to the transformative years of its users, encapsulating the journey from adolescence to adulthood.
A mirror would have been used by Luke Martineau, when he painted his selfportrait in 1987-88, during his final year at Eton College. He was born in 1970 and attended Eton before going on to study English and Modern Languages at Oxford. He later became an artist. In his final year at Eton Martineau became the President of the Eton Society, shown by his waistcoat and stick ups. The painting measures 95cm
would have looked like: large entities of unblended colour. The colours themselves generally consist of pastel hues such as the pink, purple and blues, which contrast with the black used most for Martineau and thus bringing him forward as the subject. The lack of explicit lines and expressive brushwork creates a sense of movement, which perhaps reflects the busy school life Martineau would have painted in the midst of. Considering his young age of 17 or 18 at the time of painting the portrait, it is worth mentioning that Eton was likely where Martineau received one of his earliest forms of art education, and he therefore would have still been developing his style and incorporating experimental techniques in this work. In other words, his youth is imbedded in the paint itself.
by 65cm and uses oil on panel to depict him in three-quarter length, seated before an easel in the Drawing Schools.
Martineau’s passion for painting started in his teenage years and there is no doubt that his youth and school life had an impact on the rest of his career. The portrait embodies youth in various ways such as its style and freedom, which makes for a captivating image. Martineau paints in an expressive and impressionist-like style, using thick impasto brushstrokes. This is most obvious in the background, which probably resembles what his palette board
When analysing the composition of this piece, I find that I am reminded of the 1656 painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez due to the canvas on the left side of both paintings, along with the doorframe in each of the backgrounds which lets the light leak into the rooms. Martineau stares directly at us making us feel acknowledged in a shared space or on the other hand as if we are intruding his space. A further interpretation is that we, as viewer of the painting, act as the poser that Martineau observes and paints from, which, depending on whether he intended for the portrait to be seen by future Eton boys, creates a paradox of sorts: in this scenario, if Martineau paints the Etonian sitter, the result should be a portrait of the Etonian. In reality, we are left with a portrait of Martineau, but thus he in ways embodies and reflects the Etonian viewer - similar to the dressing table. Furthermore, the lack of definition in his eyes suggests to me that the importance of this portrait is shifted away from Martineau’s personal identity and more towards the embodiment of the young Etonian. Overall, the painting illustrates the impact of Martineau’s position as a youth at Eton on his developing artistic output.
Dorian Park (PRKB)
Eton Boy’s Dressing Table, late 19th/early 20th century (FDA-A.2299-2021)
Luke Martineau, Self-Portrait, 1987-88 (FDA-P.508-2014)
Engaging with the Collections
Teaching with maps
The Eton Geography Department’s work with Collections objects featured in the most recent annual international conference of the Royal Geographical Society, which attracts over 2,000 participants from around the world. David Anderson, of the Geography Department, presented a paper focusing on a selection of historic maps and atlases in College Library and the value of an ‘object-based’ learning approach. Materials regularly used in teaching at Eton, dating from the late 15th to early 20th centuries, are used to illustrate map projection and scale, maps as subjective constructs, maps as having varied purposes, and maps as tools to acquire resources and project power.
Beetles and birds
Items from the Antiquities and Natural History collections were brought together last year in a new temporary display by a boy now in B Block (upper sixth). The display paired a scarab beetle and an ancient Egyptian Falcon icon from the Museum of Antiquities with a dung beetle and a bird collected by Provost Thackeray, one of the founding exhibits of the Natural History Museum, where these objects and specimens are on show. The juxtaposition allowed an exploration of natural behaviours and characteristics of these sanctified creatures and outlined how these feed into their mythology and sacred status.
Making Egypt
Ten objects from Eton’s Antiquities collection are spending most of this year on display in London at the Young V&A, as part of the new museum’s second special exhibition, Making Egypt. This innovative undertaking is the first exhibition about ancient Egypt to focus on a story of creativity and imagination for children and families. The objects from Eton will help show the enduring influence of stories and images of ancient Egypt, alongside items from the V&A’s little-known collection of Egyptian artefacts and other significant loans. The exhibition runs until 2 November 2025.
Antiquity inspires art
An ancient Egyptian ibis amulet in the Museum of Antiquities (ECM.16922010) was the inspiration for this line drawing created by artist and classical archaeologist Hanne Blitz for his recent exhibition, Wings, the first in a trilogy titled Abstractions of Archaeology. This series re-examines and reimagines art and architecture of classical antiquity. Three further objects from the Antiquities collection currently on long-term loan to the University of Birmingham inspired new poems by Josephine Balmer: ‘The Fingers’, ‘A Shard of Sky’ and ‘Weighing of the Heart’.
School visits
Museums are a fantastic tool for education and during 2023-24, the College Collections facilitated over 200 learning experiences for more than 6,000 students from external schools. These environments can be overwhelming for some learners, but our spaces, being small, quiet, and exclusively booked for individual groups, have been used by an increased number of local special needs schools this year. We have worked with students of a range of ages, both in small groups and as part of their one-to-one provision, tailoring sessions to the students’ needs as well as adapting them on the spot.
Image: Abstraction of Eton College’s ancient Egyptian ibis, 2024. Coloured pencil on paper, by Hanne Blitz. Image courtesy of Hanne Blitz.
New conservation studio
For the first time ever, the collections care team has a dedicated conservation studio. Collections can now quarantine, clean, analyse and conserve the items in our care far more effectively. It will also enable more specialised treatments to be undertaken in-house, as well as providing a dedicated space for the Collections staff to work alongside external conservators to look after our diverse collections. Generous support from the Friends of the Collections has been instrumental in realising this long-held goal.
All dressed up
The Museum of Eton Life has benefited from the installation of a new ventilation system. Conservation priorities will be supported by the improvement of air flow through the vaults of the museum, and displays have been given a clean and polish. As part of this development, the museum cases for the Dress and Dining displays have been opened up to improve their visibility and impact.
Photography and research
Last year more than 1,200 works of art were moved on over 200 occasions in association with building work, exhibitions and redisplays. More than 300 items from the Provost’s Lodge alone were packed and removed ahead of extensive refurbishment works. As paintings normally hung high on walls of the Lodge came down, it was possible to commission professional photography of many works of art for the first time. These images will enhance our online catalogue records, making the collections more accessible. Moving the paintings also allowed us to investigate the backs of the works, which revealed some new information.
A decade of volunteering
Our loyal volunteer, Carole, has been assisting in the College Archives for more than ten years. In that time, she has worked with many different records, including Debate Books, Bursar’s Bills and glass plate negatives. All of our volunteers, both adults and Etonians, make extremely valuable contributions to the work of the Collections.
Cataloguing milestones
All of the volumes—some 20,000—housed in the 18th-century rooms of College Library have now been catalogued. Meanwhile, the College Archives has completed cataloguing a large collection of records that tell the story of the Chalcots Estate in north London, which formed part of the endowment of the College from 1449 until the mid-1990s. The records are a rich source for the investigation of social, industrial, agricultural and urban history. These records are searchable online and bring these rare and unique materials to a global audience.
Nora Davison watercolours
Churchill first edition and letter
The Macnaghten Memorial Library, which forms part of Eton’s rare book collection, is now the home of a copy of Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis 1916-18, presented by Churchill in 1927 as a gift in memory of an Old Etonian who fell in the First World War. It is accompanied by a letter signed by Churchill. These items complement an archive in the library relating to Henry Dundas (CHKM, 1915), who died in the war, and who had been considered one of the most promising Etonians of his generation, with a glittering political career ahead of him.
Late last year the Collections received a significant bequest from Charles Nugent (CNCA, MCM, ‘79): 17 watercolours, 16 by Nora Davison (1855–1950) and a single example by friend and fellow artist Mabel Spurrier (1881–1979). Nugent’s carefully selected works span Davison’s output as a marine painter, but focus on her later career at Eton, where she recorded buildings and events at the College. Nugent’s career in the art world included working in the British Drawings & Watercolours department at Christie’s, London, and as a curator at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. This bequest will feature in a forthcoming exhibition on Davison, opening in the Verey Gallery in May 2025.
Account of Queen Victoria’s funeral
The funeral of Queen Victoria took place at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 2 February 1901. It was one of the largest gatherings of European royalty, and Victoria had left detailed instructions for the day, which was to be as military as possible. A letter written by John B.A. Parish (CHA, 1904) describing the event has recently been given to the College Archives (ED 536). In it, he details how the school formed part of the funeral march, lining the route between the Long Walk and the main entrance to the Castle.
New books in College Library
Three privately published books have been donated to College Library by an OE who left Eton in 2020. While at school, he was a member of the society for bibliophiles, through which he attended sessions on private presses and practical handpress printing, inspiring him to take up designing and printing his own illustrated books at Oxford and at Central Saint Martin’s.
Rowing records
Thanks to support from the Friends of the Collections, the College Archives has acquired an album compiled for Alexander Lees Mayall between 1928 and 1934. It captures his achievements at Eton, particularly in rowing. A photograph at the end of the album shows how flags, photographs and boating calendars would have adorned his bedroom walls before being carefully glued into the album itself. This acquisition enriches the narrative of rowing at Eton. In recent months the Friends have also enabled the acquisition of a painting of an unusual view of Eton College Chapel under repair, by Oliver Thomas, an art master from 1949 to 1972.
