A History of Musā (Part I)

The 500th anniversary of the opening of Winchester College was celebrated a year early in 1893 and the occasion prompted much discussion of how the College should mark the centenary.  

An extraordinarily large meeting of Wykehamists (some 500 of them) met at the Westminster Palace Hotel to debate a choice of proposals:  

either to extend College Chapel or to build an entirely new chapel that could accommodate the recently-expanded school.   (Numbers had grown from 200 under the headship of George Moberly, to 400, with the relatively recent replacement of Old Commoners by nine boarding houses.)  There was much disagreement, especially over ‘desecrating’ the medieval Chapel to extend it and these plans never proceeded beyond the initial proposal.

In the spring of 1893, The Wykehamist reported that a dual scheme had been decided upon: firstly, to restore and embellish the Founder’s chantry in Winchester Cathedral (at a cost of c£600) and secondly to build a Museum with art galleries, reading rooms and a natural history museum.  This latter project had been proposed by F G Kenyon (Coll, 1875-81).  He was a Greek scholar, expert on papyri and would go on to be Director and Principal Librarian at the British Museum, as well as Fellow of Win Coll from 1904 and Warden 1925-30.  The complete text of Kenyon’s persuasive letter (which can be read here) was also published in The Wykehamist in March 1893 and must have been adopted very rapidly for it to be announced the same month.

We will include a fuller description of the original contents of Musā and of the Wykehamists depicted on the façade, in subsequent editions of the Trust e-Servant.

TO BE CONTINUED