7 - Winchester College

Summary

In September 1924 Dyson moved from Wellington to be Master of Music (Director) at Winchester College, and so began his long association with the city that was to become his spiritual home and which would later acknowledge the distinguished part he had played in its life by giving him its Freedom, something he valued far more than many of the other honours which had been heaped upon him. Head-hunted by the retiring Headmaster, Dr Monty Rendell, Dyson had finally achieved the top rung of the public school ladder aged forty-one.

Winchester was founded in 1382 by William of Wykeham (hence the fact that Winchester boys are known as ‘Wykehamists’). He had already founded New College in Oxford (1379) as the institution to which ‘a constant supply of pupils well grounded in Latin’ from Winchester could move to continue their studies. The architecture of both institutions underlines the relationship between them, and the serene beauty of the ancient buildings are a wonderful working environment for a creative mind. As James Sabben-Clare points out in his history of the College: ‘It is a quite remarkable thing that nearly 600 years later most of the original buildings should still be standing, and within and around them the process of education should still be carried on by the same people as are named in the original statutes – albeit in different ways and in company with many others: a Warden and ten Fellows, two masters, seventy scholars, three chaplains, three lay-clerks, and sixteen quiristers or choirboys.