The Postcard
A postally unused postcard bearing no publisher's name. The card has a divided back.
Lancing College
Lancing College is an independent day and boarding school. The school is located in West Sussex, east of Worthing near the village of Lancing, on the south coast of England.
Lancing College was founded in 1848 by Nathaniel Woodard, and educates circa 600 pupils between the ages of 13 and 18; the co-educational ratio is c. 60:40 boys to girls. Girls were admitted beginning in 1971.
The first co-ed, Saints’ House, was established in September 2018, bringing the total number of Houses to 10. There are 5 male houses (Gibbs, School, Teme, Heads, Seconds) and 4 female houses (Fields, Sankeys, Manor, Handford).
The college is situated on a hill which is part of the South Downs, and the campus dominates the local landscape. The college overlooks the River Adur, and the Ladywell Stream, a holy well or sacred stream within the College grounds, has pre-Christian significance.
Woodard's aim was:
"To provide education based on sound
principle and sound knowledge, firmly
grounded in the Christian faith, and the
discipline of the prefect's cane".
Lancing was the first of a family of more than 30 schools founded by Woodard. Other schools include Ardingly College, Bloxham School, The Cathedral School, Denstone College, and Ellesmere College.
65% of pupils are either full or weekly boarders, at a cost of £37,065 per year; The rest are day pupils, at a cost of £25,320 per year (2023).
The school is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The school is dominated by a Gothic revival chapel, and follows a high church Anglican tradition.
The College of St. Mary and St. Nicolas (as it was originally named) was intended for the sons of upper middle class and professional men; in time this became Lancing College, moving to its present site in 1857.
The school buildings of the 1850's were designed by the architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter, with later ones by John William Simpson.
In 2003, Lancing College was one of fifty of the country's leading independent schools which were found guilty of running an illegal price-fixing cartel which had allowed them to drive up fees for thousands of parents.
Each school was required to pay a nominal penalty of £10,000, and all agreed to make ex-gratia payments totalling three million pounds into a trust designed to benefit pupils who attended the schools during the period in respect of which fee information was shared.
Lancing College Chapel
The foundation stone of the college chapel was laid in 1868, but the chapel itself was not finished in Woodard's lifetime. It stands at about 50 metres (with foundations going down 20 metres into the ground), but the original plans called for a tower at the west end which would raise the height to 100 metres.
The apex of the vaulting rises to 27.4 m (90 ft). It was designed by R. H. Carpenter and William Slater, and is built of Sussex sandstone from Scaynes Hill.
The chapel was dedicated to St. Mary and St. Nicholas in 1911, although the college worshipped in the finished crypt from 1875. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children.
Inside can be found, among other things, the tomb of the founder, three organs, and a rose window designed by Stephen Dykes Bower, completed in 1977, and the largest rose window in England, being 32 ft in diameter.
People acknowledge it to be the largest school chapel in the world, despite the fact that there appears to be no study or survey publicly available that can confirm that.
The eastern organ is a two-manual mechanical organ built by the Danish firm Frobenius; it was installed and voiced in situ in 1986. That year also marked the completion of the rebuild of the four-manual Walker organ at the west end of the chapel – both of which were showcased in the opening concert by the American organ virtuoso, Carlo Curley.
A stained-glass window was commissioned in memory of Trevor Huddleston OL, and consecrated by Desmond Tutu on the 22nd. May 2007. Huddleston, a former pupil of the college, became an Anglican bishop and anti-apartheid activist.
The unfinished west end of the chapel, which had remained bricked up since 1978 (bricks replaced the previous corrugated iron), was completed in the summer of 2021 with the addition of an open three-arched porch designed by Michael Drury.
The chapel was closed to visitors during the coronavirus pandemic and, subsequently, during the completion of the west end porch and refurbishment work on the school kitchens opposite, reopening to the public on the 25th. April 2022.
Lancing College Campus in WWII
During World War II, students were evacuated to Downton Castle in Herefordshire. Both the main college and the prep school buildings were requisitioned by the Admiralty, and became part of the Royal Navy shore establishment HMS King Alfred.
Notable Alumni of Lancing College
-- George Warner Allen (1916–1988), artist of the Neo-Romantic school.
-- Sir Derek Alun-Jones (1933–2004), Chairman of Ferranti (1982–1990).
-- George Baker (1931–2011), actor best known for portraying Tiberius in I, Claudius, and Inspector Wexford in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries.
-- Thomas Southey Baker (1848–1902), amateur athlete who was on the winning crew that won The Boat Race in 1869 and played for England in the fourth unofficial football match against Scotland in November 1871.
-- Peter Ball (1932-2019), suffragan Bishop of Lewes (1977–1992) and Bishop of Gloucester (1992–1993), convicted sex offender.
-- David Bedford (1937–2011), composer and musician, worked with (among others) Mike Oldfield, orchestrating Tubular Bells.
-- Sinclair Beecham (born 1958), co-founder of Pret a Manger.
-- Sir John Gilbert Newton Brown (1916–2003), publisher of the Oxford University Press (1956–1980).
-- Sir Roy Calne (born 1930), pioneer of liver transplantation.
-- Giles Cooper (1918–1966), radio dramatist, injured in The Spanish Civil War, later working with The Royal Shakespeare Company, Kenneth Williams and Harold Pinter and dramatised the works of John Wyndham, Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
-- Col. Andrew Croft (1906—1998), explorer and member of the Special Operations Executive.
-- Sir Michael Darrington (born 1942), Managing Director of Greggs.
-- Jack Herbert Driberg (1888-1946), anthropologist.
-- Col. St. George Corbet Gore (1849–1913), Surveyor General of India (1899–1904).
-- Stephen Green, Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint (born 1948), Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings plc (2006–2010), Minister of State for Trade and Investment (2011–2013).
-- Brodrick Haldane (1912–1996), art photographer whom Sir Cecil Beaton described as the founder of modern society photography.
-- Alex Horne (born 1978), comedian.
-- H.S.H. Maj. Prince George G. Imeretinsky (1897–1972), Grenadier Guards and Royal Flying Corps Officer.
-- Elphinstone Jackson (1868–1945), England footballer and co-founder of the Indian Football Association.
-- Capt. John Letts (1897–1918), First World War flying ace.
-- Basil William Sholto Mackenzie, 2nd. Baron Amulree (1900–1983), physician and geriatrician.
-- Sir Max Mallowan (1904–1978), archaeologist and scholar; British archaeologist, specialising in ancient Middle Eastern history, Mesopotamian civilization and the heritage of Nineveh.
-- Dunlop Manners (1916–1994), first-class cricketer.
-- Sholto Marcon (1890–1959), England field hockey player, gold medallist at the 1920 Summer Olympics.
-- Richard Mason (explorer) (1935-1961), last British person to have been killed by uncontacted peoples in the Amazon.
-- Sir Peter Pears (1910–1986), tenor, associated with the composer Benjamin Britten, his personal and professional partner.
-- Sqn. Ldr./Lt. Cdr. Jeffrey Quill (1913–1996), Spitfire test pilot.
-- David Reindorp (born 1952), vicar of Chelsea Old Church, Chaplain to the Honourable Artillery Company and to the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers.
-- Sir Tim Rice (born 1944), lyricist, best known for his work with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita.
-- Tom Sharpe (1928-2013), novelist.
-- Jeremy Sinden (1950–1996), actor in Chariots of Fire and Brideshead Revisited.
-- Jamie Theakston (born 1970), TV and radio presenter.
-- Thomas Percy Henry Touchet-Jesson, 23rd. Baron Audley (1913–1963), soldier, playwright.
-- AVM Sir Stanley Vincent (1897–1976), Air Officer Commanding No. 13 Group (1943–1944), Air Officer Commanding No. 11 Group (1948–1950), only RAF pilot to shoot down the enemy in both world wars.
-- Gino Watkins (1907–1932), Arctic explorer.
-- Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), novelist.
-- John Williams (1903–1983), actor, appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Columbo, and Mission: Impossible.
-- John Dover Wilson (1881–1969), literary critic; professor and scholar of Renaissance drama, focusing particularly on the work of William Shakespeare.
-- Rear Admiral Sir Robert Woodard (born 1939), Commander of the Royal Yacht Britannia (1985–1990).