| During the coming holidays, Mr Louis Ginnett,
ROI, hopes to place in position as his own gift the last of
the panels in the School Hall. To commemorate this remarkable
achievement, the Editor has offered the opportunity of placing
on record the progress of the scheme, and of writing an appreciation
of the message which the artist has conveyed to one who is
a mere layman in art, but has repeatedly used each successive
panel to bring home more vividly to recent generations of
Grammarians the Story of Man in Sussex.
Two extracts from Past and Present explain the
origin of the scheme: ‘On January 20 1913, the Governors of
the School accepted the Old Boys' gift of carrying out in
part Mr Louis Ginnett' ’ scheme for the decoration of the
new School Hall with a series of panels illustrating the History
of Man in Sussex, …. The School architect, Mr S B Russell,
FRIBA, cordially approved the scheme of decoration and remodelled
the wood panelling of the Hall so that painting and panelling
shall constitute one harmonious whole’. Thus in August it
will be possible, for the first time, to see the Hall as the
architect conceived it. Throughout, the artist has kept this
aim in view and has shown marked skill in overcoming the limitations,
as well as in making full use of the opportunities which such
a scheme involved.
The first decision sanctioned the three panels
at the south end of the Hall – the middle one, above the portrait
relief by Alfred Drury, RA, as part of the Marshall Memorial,
and the two flanking ones as gifts of the Old Boys to the
new School. On the occasion of the first reunion to be held
in the new buildings, the 47th Annual Reunion,
on Saturday, October 25 1913, the President of the Old Boys’
Association, Mr TG Read, BA, BSC, unveiled the Marshall Memorial
panel, and spoke of the scheme for continuing the work. Early
in August 1914, the artist had put the other two into position,
and ‘was busily engaged (on August 7) in putting the finishing
touches to his paintings, when an officer of the RTAMC arrived
and took possession of the School.’
During the War, Mrs Read died, and Mr Read,
on the re-opening of the School after it had ceased to be
a military hospital, presented the fourth panel as the Ellen
Read Memorial, in memory of his wife, ‘the school-mother,
1894-1918.’ To those who knew her, and especially to many
a Marshall House boy, there could be no fitter memorial than
one in the School Hall, between that to E J Marshall and that
to the sons of the School who gave their lives in the War,
1914-18. For it is to them that the fifth panel, with its
flanking rolls of honour, was dedicated by the Right Rev H
K Southwell, Bishop of Lewes, and former Assistant Chaplain-General
to the Forces, in February 1023, when Lt Col H C Saunders,
DSO, presented it to the School on behalf of the Old Boys.
With the sum left over from the War Memorial
Fund, augmented by gifts from parents and Old Boys, the sixth
panel was commissioned, in June 1927, and the artist himself
spoke to the School on his scheme when it was first put on
view at the beginning of the Autumn Term, 1928.
On November 20, 1936, at the Annual Prize Giving,
Mrs Mills unveiled the seventh and eighth panels as part of
the Memorial to her father, Headmaster from 1899-1924. She
herself, and other members of the family, helped considerably
to make this possible, as an addition to the furnishing and
equipment of the new Library.
Finally, in 1939, as his own tribute to his
School, and former master, the artist himself presented the
ninth and last panel to complete the Hall as designed by the
architect. Seldom can a School Hall have had such an aid
to build up a tradition – the Story of Man in its own county
designed and executed by an artist who himself was an Old
Boy and presented by those who held dear the memories of E
J Marshall, Ellen Read, the Old Boys who gave their lives
in the War of 1914-18, and of him who bridged the whole period,
Thomas Read, Boy, Assistant Master, Headmaster and President
of the Old Boys’ Association. |
