On Friday, February 12th, our group was fortunate to be hosted at Eton College by Dr. Andrew Gailey, one of the masters of the school. Eton College, a prestigious all-boys school, has been training and teaching young men for over 500 years.
As we began our journey, we walked through the huge main doors of the school into the courtyard. What we found was a familiar setting from both the foot-race scene in Chariots of Fire as well as the wedding scene of the more recent Shakespeare in Love. The beautiful red brick of the buildings is quite similar to those at St. John¹s College in Cambridge as well as Hampton Court, which we have also visited.
Walking through the main courtyard along with the boys dressed in their Victorian suits and bowties, our eyes were first caught by the statue set in the center of the court. It is of Henry VI, the founder of both Eton and King's College in Cambridge. Both were set up as schools for scholars, a program Henry founded in order to help less fortunate children (boys) to experience a good education. Any boy who wins the scholarship has all, or part, of his tuition paid for. Competition is high, making the scholars some of the brightest young men around. There are now over 1200 boys attending Eton.
Our first stop, before our tour, was for lunch with the scholars at their main dining hall. Eton is set up like the colleges at Cambridge and Oxford, with a chapel, dining hall, rooming and classrooms. This meal, hosted by Dr. Joe Spence, was a nice beginning, because it gave our group a chance to have one-on-one contact with the students. We had as many questions for them as they had for us. It was beneficial to have a first hand account of what it was like to go to Eton College.
After lunch, we had a wonderful and informative tour of the college by Ms. Carrie Evans. We began our whirlwind tour at the chapel, which is a smaller version of King¹s College Chapel in Cambridge. We then moved on to some of the old school rooms, one of which had poet Shelley¹s name carved in the wall. Before moving on to the student housing, we made a brief stop at the library.
The library was absolutely one of the highlights of the tour for many of us. Not only were we given a brief history of the library and the books in it, but Mr. Michael Meredith also set out rare books for us to look at. It was just amazing to see these incredibly old copies of works by Shakespeare and Chaucer; there were also a Book of Hours from 14th century France and a broad-side sheet dissolving the "Kingly Office," which was printed during the English revolution. I think many of us could have spent hours looking at the treasures there.
After the library, and a brief look into one of the boys¹ rooms, Ms. Evans took us to one of the newest buildings of the school dedicated to music studies. This had wonderful facilities for practicing and lessons, as well as an interesting, flowing architecture.
From there we moved on to the art building, and we also peeked into the theater for a moment, where we would come back later on in the evening.
A full afternoon tea awaited us in the living room of Dr. Gailey¹s home, where he oversees about forty boys. It was a very relaxing to have time to sit and talk about all that we had seen over the course of the day. Dr. Gailey, joined by his mother, served tea and cucumber sandwiches; they were very gracious hosts, and we are all very thankful for the effort that was put forth for us in this pleasant reception.
Our day ended with a trip back to the theater to view the speeches of the students. This was arranged by Mr. John Harrison, whom many of us met on our first tour of Cambridge in January. For the speeches, the senior boys are required to memorize lines from some piece of literature and then present them to the group. They were all quite entertaining. It was also great to see one of the young men we had talked to over lunch in front of the group. The son of our guide, Ms. Evans, also presented a piece. Their presentations were certainly among the best.
We were grateful for the inside tour, since visitors are not usually admitted this time of year. We all experienced a very interesting and informative day at Eton; we met some very interesting new people, while Dr. O¹Shaughnessy experienced more of a nostalgia tour, returning to Eton exactly ten years after having taught there.