From abbey to school

Sherborne is another of Britain's historic towns. But the draw, says S. MUTHIAH, is the ancient abbey and the centuries-old school abutting it.

SHERBORNE, in the southwest of England, is just a little bigger than Sandwich, and every bit as well preserved, befitting another of Britain's historic towns. Here again, you find the narrow streets lined with well-preserved old homes that do not look quite perpendicular but whose conservation promises them several centuries more of life for a variety of uses. Here again, there is life by the riverside and in the parts. But the centre of the town, the ancient abbey and the centuries-old school abutting it, is the draw and can keep you rapt so as to not leave enough time to wander around Sir Walter Raleigh's two castles on the eastern outskirts.

Sherborne Abbey dates to the establishment by the Saxons of the See of Sherborne in 705 whose athedral it was till shortly after 1066. After the Norman Conquest, it served as a Benedictine monastery till the Reformation. Since then it has been a parish church - but what a spectacular one. I am no architect to explain what it is all about, but a look at the ceiling of St. Mary's Abbey in Sherborne is to see an architectural feature that is of extraordinary beauty besides being unique. Fan vaults, they are called, and they are the earliest of their type in existence, dating to the 15th Century. An English development of a Gothic style of vaulting, the ribs of the fan and the decorative features linking the ribs and embellishing the high vaulted roof are what grab the visitor's attention on entering the church. Especially when you drop a coin and turn on the lights and discover each vault is different. Compared to this workmanship, what is left of the medieval sculpture and carving in the church is almost grotesque and reflects nothing like the skills found from Hampi to Mamallapuram. Which is rather surprising considering the quality of much of the later sculpture in the church. The other impressive feature of the church is its glorious stained glass windows, most of them of the 19th Century, but with bits and pieces from the 14th Century on. They are a veritable art gallery.

An Old Shirburnian, however, was not going to let me ogle the dugong-breasted mermaids in the church for long when one of the best and oldest public schools in the country, his, awaited us just to the rear of the abbey. Arriving at the very modern reception complex in a 19th Century part of a school, many of whose buildings date to the 12th - 15th Centuries when they were part of the monastery, Oliver Woodroffe announced that he had brought along a friend from India to see where he had studied. And before we could get further, tea, cakes and cookies were summoned as was that American institution I had referred to a couple of articles earlier, the manager in charge of fund raising, someone much more than a public relations person. With him he had in tow a fund rising manager for Cheltenham Girls' School who was trying to learn how Sherborne School had raised a million pounds the previous year. Certainly I found her easier to talk to - and look at - than the Sherborne manager who insisted we do the grand tour, perhaps in the hope Woodroffe would be a handsome contributor and I would help swell its expansive ranks with a son or, on second take, a grandson - from India.

Listening with half a ear to his spiel as we toured, I learnt that Sherborne School had its roots in the Abbey school that was given a Royal Charter in 1550 by Edward VI after the Monastery had been closed down in 1539. Called the Royal Free Grammar School, it took on its present public school image only in the 1860s and has established an impressive record since. Paying closer attention to the buildings, I found the cloisters of the monastery had been put to good use with intriguing renovation and refurbishing. The Abbot's house is where the headmaster and his senior staff have their offices, the library, computerised only a short while before my visit and reflecting Britain's slower approach to the computer than America's and even India's, is in the Abbot's reception hall. The chapel occupies the monks' refectory. Later buildings include the Old School Room raised in 1606 and now being used as a staffroom, giving the staff an opportunity to study what students do while they teach; the window sills on three sides, along which were the forms the students sat on, are rich with the names of students carved over the generations. The first years of Sherborne school saw the renewal of the old buildings for the new use and the raising of new buildings. The consequence is that most of the buildings on campus range from the 15th to the 19th Century with bits and pieces going as far back as the 12th Century and as new as the 21st Century. That is quite a span covered in one precinct, without making any of it stick out like a sore thumb.

As we said our goodbyes, our host was sorry we had not been there a month earlier to listen to the address given by Lord Sheppard of Liverpool at the school's 450th anniversary celebrations held in the abbey. Lord Sheppard, I asked. Oh, you probably knew him as the David Sheppard who refused the English cricket captaincy in favour of ordination, I was told. An old Shirburnian, the reverend went on to become a bishop who cared for the poor of Liverpool, then a lord who stayed committed to Liverpool. Alan Turing, scientist, Jeremy Irons, actor and John le Carre, author, are other Old Shirburnians, I discovered. So is Charles de Vere Beauclerk, Earl of Burford, but he is of a different ilk. If you remember the headlines of the time even in the foreign news pages here, you would recall the earl who jumped on the woolsack as an unmistakable sign of protest when opposing the Government's proposal to reform the House of Lords. I wonder what Lord Sheppard had to say about his fellow Old Shirburnian's simian antics performed on the seat occupied by the Lord Chancellor who presides over the House of Lords.

Talking of all these old Shirburnians, we never got around to seeing the 12th Century "Old Castle", that Sir Walter Raleigh failed in his attempts at renovation, or the "New Castle", now one of England's stately homes that grew out of the Sherborne Lodge he built in 1594, not long before he was executed. But then, how much can you do in a few hours? Especially when an English Tea, a sumptuous supper and an evening in a splendid drawing room overlooking a lovely garden in bloom at the Oliver Woodroffes', exchanging stories of the Madras of the 1930s and 1940s, beckoned.

From Sherborne, I was scheduled to head northwards to Josephine Felton and her heritage inn, Littledean House Hotel in the heritage village of Littledean in the Forest of the Dean in Gloucestershire. There, I hoped to hear more about how she had been proposed to - and had said "yes" - on the roof of the Adyar Club before it became the Madras Club. But the Feltons had "a fairly sophisticated group of mycologists" (whatever those are) in for the weekend, and the prospects of exchanging gossip in the kitchen and joining mine hosts in being upto our elbows in greasy dishes much of the time was daunting. Especially having long got over the experiences of 50 years ago and got used to a rather spoilt Indian way of life, which even a different kind of heritage experience was not going to woo me from.

So back to London it was and off a day early to Edinburgh "On the Track of the Flying Scotsman". But the inter-city express never made the promised 150 mph speeds I had been looking forward to, even if it did offer some comfortable seating, a great view of the historic towns we rushed through to the accompaniment of an entertaining commentary, a well-appointed restaurant car out of the days of great railway restaurants, but without the same chefs, and a bar that kept several passengers happy as they tried to chat up the lasses who simply looked down their noses at the rather aged lads "time-passing". And then suddenly the train began to slow down, then crawl and finally ground to a halt at a handkerchief-sized station that was manned by one multi-purpose factotum we were to discover. A few minutes later came the announcement that one of the two engines had broken down. Yes, it happens there too, but why did it keep happening to me all the time on a trip my wife ensured I started well before, or was it after, Rahu kaalam? While wondering about that mystery, the announcement went on that we could take any train that stopped there, get off at York and from that junction catch any train going north, even the next inter-city expresses that were following one hour apart. So off we got, to surround the one man who ran the station - and that is when I found it was called Grantham. Oh Hell, I thought, can't I get away from Ma Thatcher anywhere on this trip? For wasn't this where she started life?

Be that as it may, a train came along and we stood all the way for the two hours to York and then caught another inter-city, but the over 120 mph speeds were no more fun, especially when it involved a bit more standing. However I eventually rolled into Edinburgh, to find Tom and Lynnette Inglis (Ingles, to you) waiting patiently, also fretting about whether I could cope with Britain's now numerous private railways, and glad I would have an extra day to see a bit more of Scotland off the beaten track.

The Inglishes are regular Madras visitors. He is a retired architect doing a book on the British churches of South India - for which project I have been of some help. It will have some splendid architectural drawings - for which I have been of no help except for getting a colleague to go around measuring old churches in Madras and its suburbs. As for Lynette, she is a Madurai girl who has not forgotten her Madurai chicken curries. But what I have not forgotten is the secretary from Manali and Haldia who married an Italian engineer with Snam-something and went with him to the Matto Grosso, had three children in that wilderness, lost her husband in that Brazilian jungle, started life again with the three tots in Australia and met Tom there for a happy ever after ending. She comes back to India every year and I get a bit more of her story every time we meet. But enough of these stories of three continents, she said, in the next couple of days you will hear some tales of Scotland you have never even heard of before and they will soon have you forgetting my stories, she promised as we drove the 20 miles to their Mid Calder home. Not so, Lynnette; but in the event, they proved worth setting down.

The writer is a heritage buff who occasionally looks beyond Chennai, his favourite beat.

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