Floreat Etona: Anecdotes and Memories of Eton CollegeNevill, Ralph
History
Floreat Etona: Anecdotes and Memories of Eton College
Nevill, Ralph
Eton College
With regard to the Eton Memorial, however, built for some unknown
reason in the Renaissance style, the writer can only say that in his
opinion a building less in keeping with the spirit of Eton it would
have been impossible to erect. Why the authorities should have selected
a design of this sort is difficult to understand. Surely some architect
might have been found to produce a building which would have harmonised
with the fine old brickwork which in the quadrangle and elsewhere
produces such a charming effect? To intrude a purely personal opinion,
those responsible for the maintenance of Eton School have within the
last seventy years committed three great artistic mistakes--the first,
the indiscriminating restoration of the College Chapel, entailing the
destruction of much admirable woodwork; the second, the renovation
of the College Hall, in which it is admitted a number of interesting
features were obliterated; the third, the erection of the huge
Memorial, the whole aspect and style of which is utterly out of keeping
with its surroundings.
Closely associated with Eton is the adjoining Royal Borough of Windsor,
in which past generations of Etonians played so many wild pranks.
The houses which formerly fringed the walls of the Castle have long
disappeared, and on the other side of the road few ancient buildings
remain. The queer old theatre and gabled buildings near “Damnation
Corner” have been demolished within comparatively recent years.
“Damnation Corner,” it is curious to recall, received its name from the
fact that in the old “shirking” days it was extremely difficult for an
Eton boy to avoid a master coming quickly round the corner.
[SN: A MONSTROUS ROOF]
During the last fifty years the whole appearance of Windsor Hill has
been transformed, the hand of the restorer having not even spared the
venerable curfew tower--now for some forty-eight years disfigured by a
roof so monstrous in its ugliness that it stands forth as a surpassing
and convincing proof of our national lack of artistic taste.
[SN: FUTILE PRATTLE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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