FEATURE
Dr Peter Warner is an Emeritus Fellow of the College and formerly Senior Tutor. He is Keeper of the Roll and Chair of the Retired Senior Members Association. Here, Peter
© National Portrait Gallery
goes in search of our first Principal.
Portrait of the Reverend John Conder.
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HOMERTONIAN
FINDING JOHN CONDER I
t is a great privilege to be ‘Keeper of the Roll’ for the forthcoming Homerton 250 celebrations. The role brings me close to alumni of all ages; we have just had our Leavers’ Dinner for last year’s graduates who are just over a term out, and also our 10-years-out Dinner in May. Over the course of the year there will be other events including the annual Alumni
Reunion Weekend in September where we usually welcome one or two of our oldest members. In gathering together a history of the College in the 18th century for publication next year, I have been looking back at some of our earliest Homertonians. And who more significant than John Conder, our first Principal or ‘Resident Tutor’ at the new Homerton Academy beginning in Homerton High Street in 1768? You can be forgiven if you have never heard of Dr Conder: Homerton College has been shy about its early history as a nonconformist seminary, but Conder is an interesting man and that is why I have been in search of him. Finding his portrait was easy on the National Portrait Gallery website. An engraving by James Watson shows a typical ‘divine’ of the eighteenth century in cassock and bands. A kindly, gentle smiling face with twinkling eye looks out beneath an imposing wig. There is no hint of the severity so often seen in portraits of divines from this period. This looks like a copy of a portrait in oils: perhaps the original portrait hung in the hall of the old Academy building, but is now lost. Described as ‘an eminently skilful and gracious minister’, his impact on several decades of Homerton students was profound. He set the standard of theological teaching at Homerton Academy, which then hardly changed until the mid-nineteenth century. When there was a challenge to the more liberal teaching of John Pye Smith (Principal from 1800–1849), the measure used by the Trustees was that his teaching was as orthodox as in Conder’s day. I then found myself in London at a rather dull meeting in an office in Moorfields, and I took the opportunity to wander up City Road and explore the extraordinary dissenters’ cemetery of Bunhill Fields. It is overlooked by the