David Kirke (C 63)
03 January 2025DAVID KIRKE, who has died aged 78, was the guiding spirit and enfant terrible of the Dangerous Sports Club, whose colourful exploits caused global scandal and delight in the 1980s. He was perhaps best known for having invented modern bungee jumping (he always spelt it ‘bungy’) when early on the morning of 1st April 1979 […]
Patrick Grubb (L 49)
03 January 2025Former Sotheby’s wine director, Madeira expert and Master of Wine, Patrick Grubb died on 23rd March, leaving behind his wife, Jennie, and two sons, Hugo (Bl 92) and Harry (P 98). The Institute of Masters of Wine has written the following words about Patrick’s impressive career in wine: Patrick Grubb passed the MW exam in 1958 aged […]
Major General Nick Ansell (L 55)
02 January 2025In 1989, not long before the Gulf War, Major General Nick Ansell, Director of the Royal Armoured Corps (DRAC), was preoccupied with one thing: the problems encountered in the planned upgrade of the Army’s new tank, the Challenger. Nick was not responsible for procurement policy but as professional head of the Royal Armoured Corps, whose […]
Hugh Aldridge (Hl 60)
02 January 2025Hugh began life in India where his father was a colonel in the Army in the Signals Regiment, engaged in breaking Japanese codes. In due course Hugh was sent to Wellington College, where he was a scholar. A contemporary writes of him that he was always very popular, extremely clever and a brilliant sportsman. From […]
Warner Haldane (Hl 64) appointed Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM)
12 December 2024On 3rd June 2024, Warner Haldane (Hl 64) was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM, equivalent to an MBE) in the King’s Birthday Honours (NZ) for services to arts administration, particularly music. Mr Haldane’s investiture was held on Tuesday 10th September and was awarded by the Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro […]
Life Beyond Wellington Week 2024
21 October 2024Life Beyond Wellington Week is an integral part of Wellington College’s commitment to preparing students for the complexities of life after school. The programme is designed to bridge the gap between academic life and the ‘real’ world, offering students essential skills and insights that will help them navigate their future with confidence. Through a mix […]
OWXC at the Annual Alumni Race 2024
09 October 2024On Saturday 14th September, OWXC took part in the 72nd Annual Alumni Race on Wimbledon Common, an 8k undulating cross-country course. This is a long-standing challenge amongst the alumni/ae of all the top schools and is as much social as it is competitive. We were again joined by four current College students and the staff […]
Long Service Celebration
03 September 2024On Friday 30th August we unveiled our new Long Service Boards, to honour and celebrate long-serving members of Wellington staff. Up until now, long-serving members of the teaching staff were commemorated with a stone plaque in Chapel, but only after their death, while most other members of College staff received no memorial, no matter how […]
OW vs OE Singapore Golf Match 2024
29 May 2024On Friday 10th May, our Singapore OWs played a friendly golf match against the Singapore Old Etonians. Read the Match Report by our OW Singapore Rep, Will Jelf (Hg 96) below. The Singapore OW vs OE golf match had been long talked about and finally organised by the two skippers Jelf (Hg 91-96) and Eton’s […]
Speech Day – Then and Now
22 May 2024In the early days, Speech Days were much smaller than they are now – there were only a couple of hundred boys in the school, and it was less common for parents to attend the day – it wasn’t expected, and many of them lived a long way away, quite possibly overseas. In 1894, Bertram […]
Building the Wellington Community’s Mental Resilience Podcast
10 May 2024Patrick Melville (Hn 97) is a mental health expert and founder of Melville Mental Solutions (MMS). Prior to starting MMS, Patrick worked in the media and marketing sector, but factors beyond his control encouraged him to switch career paths and launch MMS in 2013. Patrick has firsthand experience of dealing with personal trauma and having […]
Congratulations to our OW runners Oscar Chambers (Hg 17) and Francesca Sweet (W 22) who ran the London Marathon in aid of the Prince Albert Foundation (PAF) Scholarship programme.
28 April 2024In April 2024 we celebrated 165 years of OW Giving at Wellington College in a number of ways one of which was that we had two fantastic OWs who rose to the challenge of running this year’s London Marathon in aid of the Prince Albert Foundation, Oscar Chambers (Hg 17) and Francesca Sweet (W 22). […]
In memory of George Harcourt (Pn 19)
05 April 2024On Sunday 7th April 3 OWs, Bertie Morgan (Bl 19), Jack Reid (S 19) and Finn Sykes (Bd 19) will be running the Paris marathon in loving memory of George Harcourt (Pn 19) and to raise funds for Papyrus UK. In January, George tragically took his own life. George was a friend and a brother […]
London Marathon Sunday 21st April 2024 – OW Runners in aid of the Prince Albert Foundation (PAF) Scholarship programme.
21 March 2024In April we are celebrating 165 years of OW Giving at Wellington College and as part of this we are thrilled to announce that we have two OWs Oscar Chambers (Hg 17) and Francesca Sweet (W 22) running this year’s London Marathon, which were kindly donated by a current Wellington parent which takes place on […]
A trip down memory lane with Robin Dyer
20 March 2024Last Monday evening College Archivist, Caroline Jones, chatted to Robin Dyer about his remarkable life at Wellington – from a pupil in the 1970s, through a 33-year career as teacher and Housemaster, and encompassing 16 years as Second Master. He was joined by special guests Nick Moss – Robin’s contemporary in the Talbot and lifelong […]
Richard Aylmer (Bl 49)
01 March 2024Despite being born in Devonport, it was in the British Army that Richard Aylmer made his way in life. With a degree from London University, he joined the Royal Artillery in 1952 before retiring with rank of Captain in 1959. He was selected for the 1956 Winter Olympics in his chosen sport of cross-country skiing, […]
John Sworder (C 49)
01 March 2024John arrived at College as a Foundationer and left as Head of Dorm and member of the UX, joining the RMA in 1949 before regimental duties with the RA and the RHA between 1954 and 1957 and retiring in 1968. He married Jillian in 1957 and they had 3 daughters before her untimely death in […]
John Jehu Ross-Barnard (A 57)
01 March 2024John Jehu Ross Barnard passed away on 2nd November 2022, at the age of 83. John was born in 1939, the son of Captain J K Ross Barnard. He was in the Anglesey from 1953, a Foundationer. On leaving College he joined the well-known London Department Store, Selfridges, but very quickly found his true calling on […]
Celebrating Philanthropy
27 February 2024We recently published our latest Community Report in which we celebrate all the philanthropic achievements of the Wellington Community in the past few years. Highlights include Giving Week ’23, in which enough was raised to offer 16 more young people a sixth form Prince Albert Foundation scholarship, and the exciting plans for the new Sixth […]
Timothy R. Morley (Hl 57)
20 February 2024Tim Morley FRCS enjoyed a distinguished career as an orthopaedic surgeon of international renown. As his son, Mark, reflects, “After achieving Victor ludorum and some measure of academic success at Wellington, he clearly must have enjoyed his time at Cambridge and medical school because he qualified from one with a Third and the other only […]
Michael Houldey (M 58)
20 February 2024Michael Houldey, who has died aged 82, was a director whose documentaries for television ranged from portraits of film and music giants to insights on world issues that reflected his original ambition to become a foreign correspondent. Houldey’s early work put on screen the realities of daily life faced by those struggling in Britain. The first […]
Timothy O’Brien (Bd 47)
19 February 2024O’Brien, left, with the director Peter Hall working on the RSC production of Staircase in 1966; his set for Pericles at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1969. Timothy O’Brien learnt his secret of stage design – that the aim is clarity, and the enemy distraction – from Samuel Beckett, the pioneer of post-modern minimalism in […]
An Evening with Robin Dyer (T 77): OW, Teacher and Second Master
19 February 2024On Monday 18th March, College Archivist Caroline Jones, will be chatting to Robin Dyer about his remarkable life at Wellington – from a pupil in the 1970s, through a 33-year career as teacher and Housemaster, and encompassing 16 years as Second Master. He will be joined by special guests: Nick Moss – Robin’s contemporary in […]
John Budden (L 57)
15 February 2024When the BBC organised a poll in 2014 to discover the identity of the greatest Cumbrian, the broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, the comedian Stan Laurel, Emperor Hadrian, the author Beatrix Potter, and Catherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, were the fancied frontrunners. There was another contender, less familiar to the outside world but […]