October 2022 – Tales from the Archives

October 29, 2022October 30, 2022

Grammar for Pupil Teachers

The education and training of Pupil Teachers formed a significant proportion of the work of the University Extension College (1892-8) and Reading College (1898-1902). In a post about Reading’s ‘Normal Department’ I included information about Pupil Teachers and their attendance. On his appointment to the College in 1893, it was the job of W. M. Childs to teach them English history, something that all but defeated him:

‘…. at first it was uphill work, and sometimes I returned to London more that half inclined to throw up my job.’ (Childs, 1933, p. 4).

Below is the timetable for the third-years during 1899-1900. Four of the staff (de Burgh, Rey, Childs and Seaby) are in the photo of the Education Department at the end of the post, Teacher Education, Albert Wolters and the ‘Criticism Lesson’ :

Textbooks are specified in the College Calendar for History, Geography, English Language and Literature, Music, Algebra, Euclid and Mensuration.

The courses were intense and sometimes highly academic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the choice of textbooks for English Grammar. Until 1898 two books were listed:

- Outline of English Grammar, by C. P. Mason (Bell and Sons), 2s.
- For Fourth Year. Historical English Grammar, by C. P. Mason (Bell and Sons), 3s 6d.

I have never seen copies of either of these, but in 1899 they were replaced by a single volume:

- English Grammar, past and present, J. C. Nesfield (Macmillan), 4s. 6d.

No doubt the students were thrilled to be saving a whole shilling on the deal; whether they were thrilled by the grammar is another matter!

Nesfield’s grammar was first published in 1898 and my own copy, bought in a second-hand bookshop 40 years ago, is the reprint of 1900:

Nesfield

The work is divided into three main sections followed by appendices:

- Modern English Grammar
- Idiom and Construction
- Historical English: Word-Building and Derivation
- Appendices on Prosody, Synonyms, and other Outlying Subjects.

The 470 pages of small print must have been a formidable challenge for the Pupil Teachers.

Some of the terminology in the volume would be a mystery to many English teachers today. And contemporary linguists might be unhappy with the syntactic analysis, not to mention the division of the language into ‘parts of speech’.

Some expositions rely on diagrammatic paradigms; personal pronouns are shown in three separate tables (1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person) that cross-tabulate Case (Nominative, Possessive and Objective) with Number (Singular or Plural), sometimes with separate columns for Gender (Masculine, Feminine, Neuter). Included in the tables are ‘thou’, ‘thy’, ‘thine’, ‘thee’, ‘ye’, ‘you’, ‘your’ and ‘yours’ (p. 35), a total of eight forms compared with only three in modern English. Thus, ‘If thou shouldst love’ (p. 63) is an example of the 2nd person singular ‘Future tense’ of the ‘Subjunctive mood’ .

The chapter on Syntax contains Parsing Charts like the ones below for ten word classes:

Parsing example — Parsing charts for Nouns, Pronouns and Adjectives (Nesfield, 1898, p. 122)

Each of the main sections contains sample questions from London Matriculation Papers set between 1879 and 1897. These examples are typical:

- Modern English Grammar:
  - ‘State clearly the rules of English Accidence with regard to the use of shall and will in Assertive sentences.’ (p. 139).
  - ‘Prove that vowel-change is not the decisive mark of the Strong conjugation.’ (p. 142).
- Idiom and Construction:
  - ‘Explain and parse the following phrases:- methinks; woe is me; I had as lief.’ (p. 218).
  - ‘Point out any grammatical errors that are common in ordinary colloquial speech. Say exactly what you understand by “good English”.’ (p. 219).
- Historical English: Word Building and Derivation:
  - ‘What is a vowel? What vocalic sounds exist in modern English? Show particularly how they are all expressed by means of the six Roman vowels.’ (p. 423).
  - ‘What traces of reduplication can you adduce in the tense formation of verbs in English (Old and Modern).’ (p. 428).

I don’t know much of Nesfield’s grammar had to be digested by pupil teachers, but if Childs’s account is anything to go by, there was a great deal of rote-learning across the whole curriculum, and relatively little understanding — ‘a hot-bed of cram’, he called it (1933, p. 3). All that mattered was getting enough marks in the Queen’s Scholarship Examination to qualify for the training college of one’s choice.

Sources

Childs, W. M. (1933). Making a university: an account of the university movement at Reading. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Nesfield, J. C. (1898). English grammar past and present. London: Macmillan.

Reading College. Calendar, 1898-99 & 1899-1900.

October 18, 2022October 28, 2023

The Missing Knighthood

The appendix to J. C. Holt’s history of Reading University helpfully names all its officers, professors and librarians who were in post between 1926 and 1976 (pp. 331 ff.).

The first four Vice-Chancellors are listed like this:

- 1926-9 W. M. Childs
- 1929-46 Sir Franklin Sibly
- 1946-50 Sir Frank Stenton
- 1950-63 Sir John Wolfenden

4 VCs — **Top row**: Childs & Sibly; **bottom row**: Stenton (c.1908) & Wolfenden (Images of Childs, Sibly & Wolfenden: University of Reading Special Collections; Wolfenden: University of Reading Imagebank)

Ever since I first came across Holt’s book almost a decade ago, I wondered why William Macbride Childs, Reading’s first Vice-Chancellor, was never knighted.

Out of Reading’s ten Vice-Chancellors, five have received knighthoods, though not always solely for their academic leadership, and David Bell was already ‘Sir David’ on his appointment.

Nevertheless, Childs would seem to have been a prime candidate. After all, it was largely thanks to him that a relatively obscure College developed sufficiently to receive the Royal Charter (even Edith Morley had never heard of the College before she was invited for interview in 1901).

Childs’s relatively short tenure as V-C was the culmination of a much longer association with the College. It began inauspiciously in 1893 with a part-time position teaching history to pupil teachers, some coaching and giving University Extension lectures. In a parallel with Morley’s experience 8 years later he explains that;

‘I knew nothing about this new College, nothing about Reading ….’ (W. M. Childs, 1933, p. 1).

early Childs — University of Reading Special Collections

By 1903, however, Childs had become the Principal of what had recently become University College, Reading, and he soon developed a vision for achieving full university status. Here’s how Professor Holt recounts his achievement:

‘From the moment in 1906 when he first announced it, he pursued the objective of university status with a methodical and relentless intent. He was personally responsible for some of the most characteristic features of the University College: the emphasis on residence and the importance of agriculture. He was the inspiration behind the movement for the Charter.’ (Holt, 1977, p. 28).

Not that Holt was blind to Childs’s faults and errors; he documents these in some detail and concludes:

‘He was a man to found a university. He was not equally a man to develop one once founded’ (Holt, 1977, p. 28).

Following Childs’s retirement in 1929, the issue of a knighthood was a matter of concern for family, friends and fellow academics. Writing of the accolades his father had received, Hubert Childs wondered:

‘…. why was it that in all the eagerness to pay my father honour and to mark his achievement by words and action worthy of it, there was, seemingly, no recognition by the State of what he had done and stood for? The omission caused him little personal concern, for he attached no great importance to such things; but it perplexed his friends who expected a knighthood to be conferred upon him, both in honour of himself and the new University.’ (H. Childs, 1976, pp. 145-6).

One possibility was that the political instability following the General Election of 1929 and a change of Government were the explanation, but this idea was rejected by Hubert Childs.

More likely, in his opinion, was that, on separate occasions, his father refused to accept both the Freedom of the Borough of Reading and a knighthood unless Alfred Palmer, his friend and benefactor received the same honour.

Childs & Palmer — W. M. Childs with Alfred Palmer, c.1925 (University of Reading Special Collections)

As Hubert Childs concluded:

‘Those who attempt to apply conditions to the acceptance of honours inevitably run the risk of falling foul of unrelated and unthought-of considerations, and this may be what happened in this case.’ (H. Childs, 1976, p. 147).

J. C. Holt, Professor of History 1966-78, and author of ‘The University of Reading: the first fifty years’ (University of Reading Special Collections).

Sources

Childs, H. (1976). W. M. Childs: an account of his life and work. Published by the author.

Childs, W. M. (1933). Making a university: an account of the university movement at Reading. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years. Reading: University of Reading Press.

Morley, E. J. (2016). Before and after: reminiscences of a working life (original text of 1944 edited by Barbara Morris). Reading: Two Rivers Press.

The Magazine of University College Reading, 1904, Autumn Term, Vol IV, No. 1.

University of Reading Special Collections: University History MS 5305 Photographs – Portraits Boxes 1 & 2.

Thanks

To Ian Burn for supplying the correct image of Professor Holt.

October 4, 2022

Whatever happened to the South Cloister? Part 2: 1926-1947

On becoming a university (1926)

With buildings in place to the north, south and east of the central quadrangle, and cloisters joining them on the east and north sides, the development of the west side of the campus had become a priority. Childs reported to Council on the inadequacy of teaching areas, and in 1928 submitted a paper that stressed the need for a permanent, wide-ranging solution that had no place for short-term ‘tinkering’ (Holt, 1977, p. 34). Council’s immediate response was to set up a New Buildings Committee and an appeal for funds – £200,000 would be needed (including £55,000 for maintenance of the new buildings).

The Proceedings of 1927-28 refer to a ‘block plan’ prepared by the architects Messrs. Chas. Smith and Son that had been approved by Council. Proposals included:

‘… the whole of the University buildings, from entrance to entrance, to be linked together by permanent cloisters …. a cloistered quadrangle enclosing the major part of the open space to the south of the library’. (p. 47)

The block plan was published in the University Gazette in 1929:

Whole plan

The proposed route for the South Cloister shows an interesting deviation from the development plan of 1911; it now passes through the spur of today’s L19 before turning towards a proposed new south entrance with its own porters’ lodge:

close-up

Between 1929 and 1932, and with the help of donations, buildings for Geology (now L27), Geography and Agricultural Chemistry (L24) were completed along the West Cloister.

The undated plan below shows the campus at some time between 1932 and 1934. The names of some of the departments allocated to buildings are different from the earlier block plan. For example, today’s L29 is labelled ‘Geography and Letters Lecture Theatre’ instead of ‘Education’.

Undated plan published in Smith & Bott, 1992, p. 60.

In 1934 the Friends of the University provided £750 for an extension to the cloister on the west side of the Library Quadrangle.

Friends cloister — September 2022: ‘The Friends’ Cloister’, looking towards L33. A Plaque (see below) is on the second pillar on the left.

Friends plaque

In spite of progress along the West Cloister, space was still in short supply. In the Proceedings of 1936-7 the Vice-Chancellor (Franklin Sibly) notes:

‘Owing to the growth of classes in the School of Art and the Department of Zoology, the need of new buildings is extremely urgent; and there is also a pressing need of suitable accommodation, in a new building, for the Department of Psychology.’ (p. 31).

Further developments were reported in the University Proceedings.

- 1938-9: a two-storey building (now L33) was approved for Zoology and Psychology. Accommodation for Art would extend into the old Zoology Building on the East Cloister.
- Work started in July, but stopped in October 1939 because of the outbreak of war. The Vice-Chancellor noted that the need for space was ‘acute’.
- The University spent £3,250 on air-raid precautions and fire-fighting equipment.
- 1939-40: work on the new buildings resumed and ‘a basement air-raid shelter’ was added to the plans.

1939: preparing the ground for the New Zoology Building (now L33) (University of Reading, Special Collections).

- 1940-41: the buildings were completed.
- 1941-42: the accommodation became available for use during the Lent Term of 1942.

1941 — May 2019: L33 (formerly ‘The New Zoology Building’)

But Still no South Cloister

Despite the West Cloister being in place, the proposed South Cloister appears to have been relegated to a short ‘covered way’. This is shown in a Development Plan of 1944 published in Holt’s (1977) history of the University.

1944 whole campus — 1944 Development Plan (Holt, 1977, plate no. 25)

enlargement — Enlarged section showing the Covered Way near the proposed South Entrance on Acacia Road

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, space became even more of an issue: large numbers of ex-servicemen and women who had postponed entry wanted to take up their places. Many were refused admission because of lack of hall places, classrooms and laboratory space. At the same time, the Government was expanding university provision and Reading would be expected to double the number of students from pre-war levels.

There was no more room for expansion at London Road and attention became focused on acquiring the freehold of Whiteknights Park. Thanks to a Treasury loan this was completed in February 1947. Presumably there was little appetite now for completing the cloisters on the original campus!

The Institute of Education moved back to the London Road Campus from Bulmershe in January 2012 following a multi-million pound refurbishment and was soon accompanied by Architecture.

Students and staff moving from L14, L16 or the Dairy to L22 and L24 are still at the mercy of the elements.

September 2022: the West Cloister from outside the Learning Hub (L24)

Sources

Brown, C. C. (2006). Four score and more: a chronological celebration of the University of Reading on the occasion of its eightieth birthday. Reading: University of Reading.

Childs, W. M. (1933). Making a university: an account of the university movement at Reading. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years. Reading: University of Reading Press.

Reading University Gazette. Vol. II. No. 2. March 21, 1929.

Smith, S. & Bott, M. (1992). One hundred years of university education in Reading: a pictorial history. Reading: University of Reading.

University of Reading. Proceedings of the University, 1925-26 to 1946-7.