Charterhouse in 100 Objects

Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects, based on artefacts in the British Museum and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a series of 15 minute talks, captured the imagination of many people. The History of Charterhouse in 100 Objects is based on a similar concept, exploring the artefacts remaining in our Museum store. Object 16 has now been added to the series.

Object 16: School Graffiti

If you stroll through the archway between the South African Cloister and Founder’s Court you will notice many names carved into a stone archway that leads nowhere. This is the ‘Gownboys Arch’ that originally led into the Gownboys building at Charterhouse in London. Scholars could pay to have their names carved into the arch or into the facing of the Schoolroom building. Rather than lose these historic carvings, the stones were dismantled when the School moved to Godalming and reconstructed on the new site. 

In addition to these formally sanctioned carved records, the boys at the London Charterhouse also indulged in unofficial graffiti, scratching their names clandestinely during hashes or whiling away the long evenings in House by inscribing their names into the furniture. There was even a Carthusian term for graffiti, ‘mobbing’ (also the term for pushing and shoving). Our 16th object is a small table-top desk that was given to the Headmaster’s wife, Annie Marion Haig Brown, by the Saunderites butler, Thomas Bayly; it is made from pieces of desk from the London Charterhouse that are covered in Carthusian names. 

According to one Old Carthusian, boys who were particularly skilled at carving were in great demand to immortalise their friends’ names, and some of the lettering on this desk is certainly very neatly chiselled. The earliest name dates from the 1820s, although most belong to boys who were pupils during the 1840s. If you would like to know who some of them were and what became of them, read on:

Desk Top

GC Coles: George Godwin Coles, born 17 January 1831, the son of the Reverend George Coles, Vicar of St James’ Croydon. He was in Gownboys from September 1844 to December 1850 and played for the 1st XI Cricket team; he was awarded an Exhibition prize to go on to university, but we have no record of where he went after Charterhouse. He died in Melbourne, Australia, on 14 September 1854, aged only twenty-three.

C Wylde: Charles Wylde, born 25 January 1832, the son of General William Wylde RA. He was in Gownboys from April 1842 to August 1850 and, like his friend George Coles, was in the 1st XI Cricket team and was an Exhibitioner at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He became a civil servant in the Ordnance Office and the War Office, and was appointed as a Gentleman Usher to Queen Victoria in 1873. He retired in 1879 and died at Eastbourne in 1884.

Ward: James Duff Ward, born 9 June 1834, the son of Henry Ward of Brooklands, Havant. James was in Verites from June 1846 to July 1852. He joined the Bengal Civil Service and worked in India from 1854 until his retirement in 1875. He died at Norwood in 1891.

JEB: John Ernest Bode, born 23 February 1816, the son of William Bode. John was at Eton for two and a half years, but transferred to Charterhouse in October 1829, initially as a Day Boy and then as a Gownboy (Dec 1829 to Dec 1833). He won a Talbot Gold Medal for classical scholarship and was the Orator in 1832 (the senior scholar, whose responsibilities included giving an oration in Latin at the end of the autumn term). John won a Charterhouse exhibition to Christ Church Oxford and he had a distinguished career, both as a student and a tutor at Oxford. He was ordained in 1841 and was Rector of Westwell, Oxford and then of Castle Camps, Cambridgeshire until his death in 1874. He married Hester Lodge in 1847. John’s son, also called John Ernest Bode, was a Master at Charterhouse and founder of Bodeites House.

WF Belli: Walter Forbes Belli, born 24 August 1833, the son of William Hallows Belli of the Bengal Civil Service. Walter was born at Hooghley in Bengal and was sent ‘home’ to England to be educated, joining Gownboys in October 1844. He left Charterhouse in December 1849 and returned to India. In 1853 he was commissioned into the Bengal Army as an Ensign in the 40th Native Infantry Regiment and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1857. He died at St Heliers, Jersey, on 22 November 1861.

HW Chapman: Henry William Chapman, born 17 January 1834, the first son of Henry Chapman OC. He was in Saunderites and then Verites between September 1844 and August 1850. He joined the 28th Bengal Native Infantry Regiment in 1852 and retired with the rank of Captain in 1864. William married Julia Robertson in 1869. He died at Folkestone on 24 December 1889.

ME Barnes: Medley Edward Barnes, born 10 February 1832, the son of John Barnes of Braengorhan, Argyleshire. He was in Verites from September 1844 to December 1848. We know nothing about his later life, except that he lived in Scotland, at Rogart, Sutherland, and married, first Catherine Stephenson, and then Catharine Jacobs from Alderswort in Germany. 

Desk side

W Osborne: William Alexander Osborne, born 7 March 1843, son of the Revd. William Alexander Osborne, Headmaster of Rossall. William was in Verites from September 1853 to Aug.1860. He went to Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating with a BA in 1866. He was ordained in 1867 and had a long and varied career in parishes in Cheshire, Cornwall and Norfolk. William married Emma Grimsditch in 1872 and died in November 1925.

Desk front

C Paget: (another ‘Paget’ also appears on the top): Cecil George Paget, born 19 June 1853, the third son of Colonel Leopold Grimston Paget of Park Homer, Wimborne. Cecil arrived at Charterhouse in July 1864, initially in Saunderites, but then transferred to Gownboys. He won a Gold medal for classical scholarship and played for the 1st XI Football team. Cecil was one of those pupils who experienced school life in both London and Godalming as the School moved during his final term, CQ1872.  He was a Charterhouse Exhibitioner at Christ Church College, Oxford, and then was ordained and went into parish ministry. He married Elizabeth Skinner in 1887. He died at Oxford on 24 April 1929.

Footnotes

(i) A chair made in a similar way from London Charterhouse desks was presented to William Haig Brown on his retirement as Headmaster in 1893. It is on display in the Daniel Wray Room. 

(ii) E P Eardley-Wilmot and E C Streatfield, Charterhouse Old and New (John C Nimmo, London 1895)

Photographs and details of objects 1-15 are available below.