The Old Diocesan Issue 12 - Magazine - Page 60
The first sketch plans and
elevations were submitted to
the College Development Funds
Committee in August 1922.
The colonnade linking the
three new buildings was a design
element added in 1925. It was to
be a replica of the colonnade at
Wellington College, a nod to Birt’s
school that he probably insisted
on. It also formed a sheltered
connection between two major
buildings on the campus, and
passed in front of buildings,
as it did at Wellington College.
The concept of a memorial
colonnade was also derived from
the War Cloister – a never-ending
colonnade at Winchester College
in England, designed by Herbert
Baker and opened in 1924. Initiated
by the principal, Montague Randall,
it had been his painful duty to read
out, in assembly each week,
the names of some 500 Old
Wykehamists who had died in
the Great War. As with the new
chapel at Bishops, the cloister
was commissioned to honour the
tragic loss of so many past pupils.
An unusual attribute of the
chapel is that the choir is positioned
at the entrance to the chapel,
forming an antechapel, and not
in the chancel. Also, the seating
of the choir was not inward-facing
as in most examples of English
school chapels.
A prominent feature of the
interior is the baldachin or
baldacchino over the altar, a
truncated dome on four columns,
FROM TOP Aerial view of Wellington College showing the colonnade
between the two main buildings; comparative views of the Wellington
College and Diocesan College colonnades; the War Cloister at Winchester
College, which was designed by Herbert Baker and built, like the Memorial
Chapel, to honour old boys lost in the Great War.
BELOW A drawing by architect Lance Elsworth of the three planned school
buildings linked by a colonnade, 1925. The building annotated as “Future
Arts School” became the Science Block, while the “Future Science School”
became the Matric Block.
