The TRUSTY SERVANT N O .111 MAY 2011 The Headmaster writes: Winchester College – a Special Place When I was asked to take up the energetic co-educational school , with a in their architecture and their regulations, headmastership of Winchester College in town in it, in charming Northamptonshire. he established the model of the Oxbridge 2005, I knew very little about the School. I Both are twice the size of Winchester, college and the model for their famous was aware, of course, of its venerable place which has just under 700 pupils, boys only, sister foundations, Eton and King’s in the history of English schools, the entirely boarding and with an entirely College, Cambridge. universities and the civil service, but I had resident staff. Winchester has an intimacy More than any other school, the never actually set foot in it. When I visited which is one its unique qualities. person of the Founder is venerated at it for the first time I saw immediately its The origins of the School are a work Winchester; modern Wykehamists unique characteristics and I knew I was on of genius. The Founder, William of continue to hear mention of William of its wavelength. Its incomparably beautiful Wykeham, was twice Chancellor of Wykeham in the School’s various (and buildings dating from 1400, still in use for England in the second half of the often picturesque) rituals and celebrations. their original purpose, set among peaceful fourteenth century and Bishop of Wykeham’s foundation was for seventy meads and water meadows, and guarded by Winchester, then the richest see in Scholars, and as the School has grown the gaunt but benign mass of Winchester England, for nearly forty years. His great larger over the centuries, the role of the Cathedral, give it an atmosphere of project at the end of his life was to endow Scholars, who live together in College, has scholarly tranquillity. For an adolescent boy his double foundation, Winchester been established as the nursery of good sensitive to spirit of place, I could see that it College and New College, Oxford, to learning. The Scholars are the pace-setters was bound to make a profound impression. guarantee a competent educated clerical for the majority of boys, who live in I had taught at Oxford and Eton, and had service for the government of the realm. Commoner Houses, and so they have the then run two large schools, Sydney In creating these two places of responsibility to set the example of the Grammar School, an academic residential learning, School’s central purpose, which is to foster powerhouse squeezed on to a tiny site meticulously a love of learning for its own sake. This in the centre of one of the world’s planned culture of learning has been great cosmopolitan cities, and Oundle, a marvellously 1 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT enshrined in a unique feature of place of cloistered study and the boys are he will reflect that, while the School Winchester’s academic programme, called not unworldly ‘geeks’. There is a splendid understood adolescent rites of passage, and Division, in which for forty minutes every breadth of experience here, both for those was pretty tolerant of mistakes and errors of day, for their five years here, boys meet with who study and those who teach. judgement, things such as taking drugs and their Div don to study together any bullying other boys was absolutely not on. What does a boy remember about his intellectual matter of mutual interest. This time here? His Housemaster, who was He will know that our aim was not aspect of our common life is more interested in him and encouraged and merely to get him a good passport to a good important to us even than examination helped him; his Div don, who saw him university, but to inspire in him a deep and results (which are excellent) or admissions daily and maintained a close interest in his lifelong love of learning and beauty; that to Oxbridge (which are currently at the rate academic, social and moral progress; his while he lived among some of the most of about 35% of leavers) and it explains Matron, a kind lady who kept an eye on beautiful buildings of any school in the why Wykehamists tend to be lively and him; the other boys in his House who world, what really mattered was the quality interesting conversationalists for the rest of shared his ups and downs; his teachers who of Winchester’s teaching and the their lives! And the School is not inward- knew what they were talking about and friendships that flow from it; that what looking or socially monochrome: our showed him what it is to be in love with the William of Wykeham’s motto means when bursaries programme supports a wide social life of the mind; and perhaps even a it says manners makyth man, is the spectrum and our international links with Headmaster who was reasonably sane! He cultivation of an unselfconscious and schools and universities around the world will remember his School as fairly informal, natural courtesy, respect and modesty in all take our perspective way beyond one where he was treated as an individual, he does, so that while he will be deeply Hampshire and the British Isles. There is a but where he learnt that we meant what we grateful to what his parents did for him in distinctive air of tranquillity at Winchester, said - work had to be done properly and on sending him here, he will not be arrogant or created by the combination of its setting time, and he was expected to honour his boastful, and he will respond to the and buildings and our seriousness about commitments in the team, or the orchestra, opportunities life affords him with learning, but Winchester is not merely a or the cast of the play. In more mature years confidence, imagination and sensitivity. ■ Vince Broderick 1920-2010 This piece was written for The Wisden robustly as a left-handed bat and left-arm fluid and well-grooved well into his fifties, Cricketer by Andrew Longmore (A, 1967- spinner for a decade after the War. his pace more Derek Underwood than 71), a senior sports writer for The Sunday Bishen Bedi. Runs were not to be frittered Strangely perhaps for a Lancastrian- Times. away, even in the nets. His batting, by all born professional cricketer, Vince was an accounts, relied heavily on what became Vince advocate of the MCC Coaching Manual. known at Wantage Road as the ‘Brod Prod’. Broderick was a Cricket was a side-on game, a straight ball He would have been difficult to shift, for fine all-round should be hit straight. Any attempt at a sure, but a tally of 7,530 runs with six cricketer but, as natty flick from off stump through centuries and 548 wickets at 27.38 speaks of a generation or midwicket would be greeted with a silvery rather more than mere durability. He was more of frown and a northern bark: ‘Don’t turn an integral part of Northamptonshire’s Wykehamist those wrists’. And he didn’t like the sweep post-war revival under Freddie Brown and cricketers will shot much either. his figures of nine for 35 against Sussex on a tell you, he was Like all good school coaches, Vince drying wicket at Horsham remain the third an even better was more than just a coach. From his pro’s best for the county. coach. His shop in Kingsgate Street, he would dispense death, at the Had Vince not lost his early career to advice on all aspects of life along with a age of 90, will the War, he would have come much closer new pair of pads or a bat, and only a little be marked as much on the playing fields of to an England Test cap than his two extra would be charged for the privilege. Winchester College - and in his beloved appearances in the Test Trials in 1948 and local hostelry, The Wykeham Arms - as in It was not difficult to imagine Vince 1949, his most productive years. But he was Northamptonshire, the county he served so whirling away in his prime. His action was unlucky, both in having made his first-class 2 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT debut, against Glamorgan, just a where he drove the community fortnight before the invasion of bus. A plaque on a bar stool in Poland, and in having to the Wykeham Arms marks one compete for an England place of his favourite haunts and the with the likes of Doug Wright, match against Vince’s XI, a Jim Laker and Roy Tattersall shrewd company of drinkers and when he had finished his War players, was for many years a service. highlight of the Old Wykehamists’ cricket week. A After his retirement from widower after the death of his first-class cricket in 1957, he wife, Iris, two years ago, he captained and coached the leaves two sons, five Northants Second XI before grandchildren, five great moving to Winchester in 1959. grandchildren and an When he left the school, in unforgettable legacy on the 1987, he stayed in Hampshire, playing fields of Winchester. keeping a benevolent eye on the next generation of Vince Broderick was born Wykehamist cricketers from his on August 17, 1920 and died on home in Colden Common November 14, 2010, aged 90. ■ The Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum An Old Trantite, and Chairman of the International Dendrology Society, writes of Hampshire’s best kept secret, at Ampfield, near Romsey.