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Wars and Jubilees

The strength of science and mathematics at Clifton in the nineteenth century led to an impressive record of engineering successes at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. But this alone cannot explain the lustre of Clifton’s military tradition. The figures tell their own story: 43 Cliftonians lost their lives in the South African war, barely a generation after the founding of the school; 578 died in the First World War; and in that war, Clifton provided not only the Commander-In-Chief (Douglas Haig) and an Army Commander (William Birdwood), but 23 Major-Generals and 52 Brigadier-Generals.

The South African war memorial, unveiled in 1904, with its figure of St. George looking out across the Close, symbolises the chivalric ideal of the profession of arms, celebrated by the Old Cliftonian, Henry Newbolt, but soon to fall victim to the machine-guns on the Somme. Percival had called his Launcelot, and the Victorian stained glass of the Chapel embodies an Arthurian theme. Alfred Drury’s St George might equally well have been one of Arthur’s knights. As the sculptor explained: “In the head of St. George I have endeavoured to express his character or Fortitude and Virtue, without effeminacy.

Clifton of the 1880s and 1890s did not altogether escape the cult of muscularity that characterised public schools in the closing years of the century. The shortcomings of the XV were considered a suitable theme for the editorial of the Cliftonian in December, 1901, and the militaristic spirit was inextricably entangled with the playing of games – as Newbolt’s poetry makes clear. When the Clifton Cadet Corps (now the Combined Cadet Force or C.C.F.) was founded in 1875 as the Engineer Cadet Corps (and they remained engineers or “sappers” until 1929) it was expressly stated that it “should rank as one of the games of the school… and that it should as far as possible have the same organisation as the other games.” No doubt the imperialistic fervour that surrounded Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887 helped to foster the notion of soldiering as a manly sport.

The Queen’s jubilee also coincided with the school’s silver jubilee, and on 9th July, 1887 the School Cadet Corps attended the Royal Jubilee Review before Her Majesty at Ascot, where (we are told) “the Public Schools” Volunteers were formed, for the first time at a review, into a provisional battalion of which Clifton was the leading company.”

The jubilee year also saw the epic 7000-mile journey of Colonel Francis Younghusband across central Asia from Manchuria to India. He and his elder brother George (who rose to be Major-General) had been in School House in the 1870s. Haig, also in School House, was near-contemporary of Francis Younghusband; Birdwood, a couple of years their junior, was in Oakley’s.

By the time Clifton came to celebrate its own golden jubilee in 1912, it was able to do so in an enlarged Chapel. Sir Charles Nicholson, who was entrusted with the task of enlargement, found that there was no scope for extending the Chapel eastwards or westwards. Instead he made it “bulge” outwards, and lit it by the addition of a lantern after the manner of Ely Cathedral. The effect was to transform the Chapel from a Latin cross to a Greek cross in shape, and incidentally to adapt it to late twentieth-century liturgical needs. Yet it was not until the 1970s that a central hexagon altar (designed and made by the Mathematics Department) was introduced under the hexagonal lantern.

The enlargement of the Chapel provided the occasion for the installation of the Harrison organ. In 1897, the year of Victoria’s diamond jubilee, the editor of the Cliftonian had paused to comment on the Christmas Concert and to congratulate “Mr Peppin and the Choral Society on the success which they achieved.” He also expressed the hope that “the Choir will do their best to keep up the reputation they then earned.” Clifton’s musical tradition was in the making.

The image below shows the arch of welcome for the visit of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, July 1888. The inscriptions were written by the Headmaster.

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