Westward Ho!

The Foundation of the United Services College

The founding of the United Services Proprietary College Limited, at Westward Ho! was a reflection on the strains and stresses of Victorian society of the time. Army officers were considered to be members of the upper crust yet their salaries did not stretch far enough to allow them to send their sons to the ‘Great’ Public Schools, unless of course, they possessed a private income to supplement their army pay. 

The need for a school, where the sons of officers in both the forces could be given a thorough education at a reasonably moderate cost, and from whence their entry into the Woolwich or Sandhurst Academies could be ensured, led to the foundation of the United Services College, as it became known, by the United Services Institution. The funding of an establishment of this sort was also an attempt to eliminate the necessity of the officers sending their sons to ‘Crammers’, after they had left school. These ‘Crammers’ charged £250-300 per annum to prepare the young men for the entrance exams for Woolwich or Sandhurst. 

The Public Schools of this time concentrated on preparing boys to pass into university. It was not until the early 1890s that the recognised Public Schools began to include an ‘army class’ in their curriculum. 

The members of the United Service Institution took it upon themselves to consider setting up a college that would fulfil the needs of these servicemen who wished to provide their sons with a good education and the prospects of entering one of the cadet colleges though they were limited by their financial arrangements. 

With these things in view the United Services Institution started to look for a suitable site and began considering how their school should be set up. The North Devon Herald for the 27th November 1873 contain the following:

 

In fact, they had not quite got all their facts right as the following week’s edition shows with its report of the actual meeting.

As can be seen the Institution had worked hard. A company had been formed, consisting mostly of army officers, and the purchase of 50 £1 shares enabled the holder to nominate one boy for education on reduced terms. The company was not formed for profit and the name of the school was soon shortened to the Untied Services College. 

Another report in the North Devon Herald discusses the advantages of a college at Westward Ho! and, as always, appeals for cash. It also attempts to put the minds of the devout at by pointing out the proximity of the local church!

The local papers follows the development of the school with keen interest, it is obviously a very high ideal to which the attention of the local inhabitants should be drawn. The education of boys who will eventually be defending the Empire, such high moral aims should be esteemed and praised. The snobbery and class distinction of the Herald’s reports typify the journalistic tendencies of the Victorian era for they were writing predominantly for the middle classes. 

But why build a college at Westward Ho! of all places? A remote, deserted stretch of coastline in Bideford Bay out of the main stream of the Victorian tourist industry. 

In the early 1860s some local landowners had clubbed together, bought the land and formed a land development and building company. The Westward Ho! and Northam Burrows Hotel and Villa Building Company Limited was incorporated under the Companies Act of 1862. It set out to build a ‘fashionable’ watering place that would outdo Torquay and Ilfracombe in popularity. The landowners consisted of local civilians and a number of army officers, some in retirement and some still in service. Of these General Sir Charles Daubeney has already been mentioned but Captain KCB Molesworth is one of the more important as his affairs are interwoven with Westward Ho! for many years to come. He helped set up the Company and also to run, being of influence in Northam and Bideford. Also when the College was funded he sent all his sons to the place and he was a keen golfer as well.

However with ten years of building completed, there were a few scattered Villas, two hotels and some rows of terraced houses, one of which was called Kingsley Terrace. Quite a few of these properties requiring tenants for the initial idea of a fashionable watering place had not caught on. 

General Sir Charles Daubeney, KCB, who owned an estate in the area, and who was also on the Council of the United Services Institution was the man who instigated the setting up of the College in the already vacant run of twelve five-storey terraced houses, known as Kingsley Terrace. A thirteenth building was added to this run of twelve – a gymnasium which was completed at a cost of £230 (a bargain) which contained little apparatus so that the room could be used for ‘call over’, chapel, concert hall and as a fencing academy. To quote Colonel Tapp:

 

To give the College any appearance other than that of a number of boys living in twelve boarding houses, the internal arrangements of the buildings were drastically altered. All lath and plater partition walls were cleared, thus making two of three rooms into quite sizable classrooms. Unnecessary staircases were removed to make dining halls and extra large classrooms or dormitories. The stout brick party walls between each of the houses were appropriately pierced to provide doorways so that access could be obtained throughout the length of the terrace. 

The North Devon Herald for the 12th March records enthusiastically:

The infectious enthusiasm of the report tells how the whole project is met with locally. One of the retired Army officers living at Westward Ho! put forward the following offer which the North Devon Herald dutifully records:

From reports in the paper, dated 26 March 1874, the local populace learnt that the Westward Ho! College Committee had elected a headmaster, in the person of Mr Cornell Price, MA BCL, of Brasenose College Oxford and also the later Master of the Modern side of Haileybury College. They also learnt of the decision to open the college on the 10th September of that year. “The vacations will be the same as for the large Public Schools”. It also noted that “Arrangements will be made to take care of sons of officers serving abroad” during the holidays of course. The second master of the College was appointed soon after this. A Mr Frank Haslam, MA, and apparently the rest of the staff were soon selected though the announcements didn’t reach the local paper. 

The Victorian infatuation with specific detail is made clear by the following report in the North Devon Herald on the 2nd July 1874:

The great hopes and dreams made buoyant by the enthusiasm of the founders are sadly deflated as the century draws to a close. However for the thirty years that is existed it fulfilled its aims to the best of its ability and did acquire a Junior School but did not build a large edifice for the seniors, they stayed in Kingsley Terrace. 

There was also the last report in the paper before the College opened, which it did on the 10th September 1874. The local interest in the preparations of the College had obviously been high, it now remains to be seen what the effect of a minor public school would be on the area, when the school gets underway.

This article gives a very confused and garbled account of the utilisation of the premises and contradicts one of the previous reports concerning the size of the dining rooms and where the dormitories are. 

So the college founded, like some other schools at this time, as a limited company got off the ground. During the next few years it is a centre of interest for the local gentry. The local paper dwells on the ‘fashionable’ side of school life. There are reports of the Christmas and end of term concerts, reports covering guest speakers and drawing room entertainers as well as reports on the colleges sporting activities. 

The initial bunch of students at the College were a very motley crew. Cormell Price brought 15 boys from Haileybury with him to start as the nucleus of the new school However the numbers were soon made up of boys from all over the country who had been unable to continue their education at their public schools for various reasons. These were the boys who could have been termed as ‘hard cases’. They were boys with whom “Cheltenham could do nothing; whom Sherbourne found too tough and whom even Marlborough had politely asked to go. They were sent to the School as thugs and turned into men.” Within a few terms the numbers of boys in attendance at the School had risen from the original 50 to between 175 and 200, and except for the final few years of the College’s existence at Westward Ho! this strength was maintained. 

However one point seems to have annoyed the local Borough Council at Northam. This was the fact that there were very few day boys attending the College and as the school was being allowed to function in the area, it should surely provide a service for the local boys. In answer to this argument the College pointed out that they willingly accepted civilians sons as day boys as well as boarders and it was up to the local people to bring their sons forward to be educated. The School also pointed out that it was school policy to have as many boarders and as few day boys as possible. The Borough Council no doubt put that in their pipes and smoked it. 

The boys were kept very busy all through the day, everyday, with a very full timetable and a great amount of physical activity. There were compulsory games three afternoons a week – cricket or football (rugby) which ever term it was and of course swimming in the pool or in the sea as well as walking in the surrounding countryside. 

Kipling wrote in his autobiography that whilst he was at the College there was no evidence of any perversion such as was rife in other public schools at that time. His proposed reason for this is that Cormell Price kept the boys so busy that they flopped into bed exhausted after a days routine. The rising bell was at 6.30am. Consider this on a dark winters morning with biting winds blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. No doubt the ozone fortified the boys and accounted for the clean bill of health the school enjoyed during its sojourn at Westward Ho! Cecil Harris puts forward another argument that the ozones made the boys hungry (or maybe it was lack of food!); “Whether College food was worse than is generally found in such places or whether their appetites were abnormally sharpened by the ozone, I cannot say, but I am sorry to relate that many an afternoon, we robbed the bread cart and the nearby orchards.”

Officers and Gentlemen

The pupils, as has already been mentioned, were mainly, and to begin with solely the sons of army and navy officers. It is therefore quite easy to imagine the strata of society from which these boys were coming from. 

Queen Victoria saw some part of the British Army fighting in some corner of the Empire in every year of her ‘peaceful’ reign. Wherever there were regiments, there were officers, consequently their wives and children followed them to the far flung corners of the British Empire and took up residence in the major British colonies nearest to where the officer was stationed. 

Due to the lack of educational facilities in such remote and ‘uncivilised’ areas many parents sent their sons back to England placing them in the care of a guardian who would take care of the child during the holidays. On the other hand the mother and children might all return to England and take up residence within the vicinity of the required educational establishment and the children would become day scholars. 

In ‘Stalky’s Adventures’ L C Dunsterville describes his early life and how he came to be sent to the United Services College. It follows one of the patterns mentioned above. His father was in the Indian Army and sent the ten-year-old Dunsterville back to England and into the care of his aunt and her family. This was where he spent his holidays but being ten-years-old he was amongst the youngest of the boys at the United Services College, for he was one of the original pupils and suffered from the fact that many of the older pupils were little more than louts. 

This means of sending the boys to a boarding school was designed so that the boys could pursue an uninterrupted education at the school and prepare to take their entrance examination into the Army colleges, thus following their fathers into the service of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India. The United Services College provided accommodation for boys unable to join their parents during the holidays, a service very much recommending itself to the officers in search of a suitable school for their sons in England. These boys would no doubt come from what would now be called an ‘upper middle class’ background as their fathers formed the backbone of the British Army and stood for all that was right in the eyes of Victorian society. The boys were to be educated in the manner of their fathers, the highest goal in their life being a career in the army. This is borne out by Kipling in Stalky and Co’ when he is describing the preparations for the Old Boys Match at the College:

The admiration with which the fully qualified officers were received is borne out by the following extract:

It is in passages like these that Kipling captures the atmosphere of the school. Though ‘Stalky and Co’ has been classed as fiction many of the descriptive passages, if not the incidents, can be considered truly characteristic of the school. 

In maintaining a son at such an establishment as a boarding school for the minimum length of time of five years would have been a considerable drain on the sources of an army officer if the school in question were of the nature of Eton and Harrow. Thus the aim of the United Services College to provide an inexpensive public school education met with the approval of such people. Also the existence of a school such as the United Services College would eliminate the necessity of sending a boy to a ‘Crammer’ for the extra education needed to pass the Army Examination. This would eliminate an extra financial outlay of about £250-300 per annum, which virtually paid for the boy’s schooling over a period at the United Services College. 

The fees for 1883 were quoted in the College Prospectus and Kalendar as being:

The fees for the Junior School are also quoted in two categories, for those and those under 10 years of age.

On the second of August 1883 a report appears in the North Devon Herald concerning the College Prize Day. The Examiner, or Guest Speaker, Mr E E Morris MA, of Lincoln College, Exford and Professor of English Literature of Melborne University, congratulated the United Services College on not only the large proportion of staff to boys and the physical training programme, but also their policy of keeping down expenses and ‘resisting the luxurious tendences of the age’ as he no doubt were not being likewise resisted in other Public Schools. 

This gives the impression that altogether the United Services College was doing a very good job for a very reasonable fee. The School was very proud of its reputation. Kipling sums it up in this article that is reported in the North Devon Herald, as originally being published in a New York paper.

The desire to keep trace of the old ways and their exploits is a typical public school trait that continues today but the Victorians took this even further. From an obscure publication called “The Public Schools and the War in South Africa 1899-1902” by A H H Maclean, the following facts and figures were extracted.

The boys during their time at the United Service College lived in house groups overlooked by a housemaster. At the initial opening of the College there were only 2 houses but by the time Kipling arrived in 1878 a fourth house had just been inaugurated under Mr Prout. It contained 25 ‘small boys’, third and fourth formers, and was called the ‘Small-boys house.’ 

Beresford relates, in Schooldays with Kipling “That the accommodation in Prout’s house was cheerless.”

The ‘small boys’ used the fire for toasting bread sneaked out of tea under a jacket and butter was wrapped in paper and smuggled out of the dining-room in the same manner. With reference to Cecil Harris’ remarks, Beresford is far more explicit about the daily fare. Breakfast consisted of bread, butter and coffee, and was served at 7.45am. On the payment of an extra fee a ‘small plate of sausages and potatoes, or a little meat, would appear.’ Lunch, served at 1pm, was an attempt at a tolerable meal. Usual roast joints, but as these were cooked in gas ovens, whose technology was not substantially advanced, (in other words they were not possessed of regulators), the standard was not too wonderful for the 1870a. The vegetables and potatoes, however were palatable as were the puddings which were ‘various and tolerable.’ Quantities of small beer were available on the table but not made much use of. Tea, at 6.30pm, was another matter altogether, ‘a pathetic failure. The poor fare provided was a repetition of breakfast.’ A beverage was provided under the name of tea and like all places where tea is made by the gallon, it tasted terrible. 

Having dealt with this primary concern of the pupils, their sustenance, let us turn attention to their work and their teachers. Beresford puts forward the view that

The various underhand means used to do these last deeds are not narrated to any extent by Beresford or Kipling. But the various methods of passing the boring lessons are suggested. 

To mitigate the boredom of trying to absorb a lesson in French or Geography or “some other branch of polite learning” boys would read paperback novels under the master’s very nose. If a boy was caught reading in class or performing other misdeeds, there was the birch but more frequently lines were given. 

The attitude of the boys to their lessons seems to be that of getting by with as little done as possible before escaping to the countryside or the beach. No thought of the future or of the money their fathers were paying for their education. In some ways this is typical of all schoolboys and they become more aware of their proposed career in the army when they enter sixth form and being to receive personal coaching from various masters of whom the head was the most proficient. 

The Army exam took place twice a year, in the summer and in December, and a number of the boys were entered every time. The results achieved by some of the College boys were outstanding as the Headmaster’s Speech Day Address, reported in the paper, bears out every year.

The Masters

To have had to control and teach such boys, as Kipling and Beresford make themselves out to be, can have been no easy task, yet somewhere along the line someone persevered. To refer back to the quotation from Beresford “We were there to fight the masters.” From some of the incidents that Beresford relates it is quite evident that the masters were a very formidable foe, and quite capable of accepting the challenge.

To teach in a ‘public’ school in the late nineteenth century it was usually necessary to have obtained a university degree. Quite often the teachers of this era also took holy orders which led to the incomprehensible in the mind of a schoolboy. To have the master preach to him, at prayers, of the goodness and love in the world, and to be beaten and chastised with half an hour by the same man, for forgetting to do his preparation.

Unlike Arnold at Rugby and Thring at Uppingham, the first headmaster of the United Services College was not a cleric, but a quiet, none-too ambitious graduate from Oxford who had found his way into teaching after throwing up a medical career and being a tutor in Russian. On his return from Russia, Cormell Price MA, BCL, was appointed a master at Haileybury College where he eventually achieved the position of Master of the Modern Side. In 1874 he came to Westward Ho! to take up the post of headmaster of the United Services College. Kipling suggests that it is because Price was not a clergyman that he had such a hold over his pupils. He had a much more interesting and glamorous background than some public school headmasters of the time. He attended King Edward’s Grammar School at Birmingham with Edward Burne-Jones and the two remained life-long friends. Price followed Burne-Jones upto Oxford two years after Burne-Jones had started there. Beresford writes that the two went to Exeter College but the Herald report for 26th March 1874 says he came from Brasenose College. As this is just a short life sketch this discrepancy will have to await further research. However, by the time Price reached Oxford, Burne-Jones had gone down without taking his degree and had joined Rossetti in London to found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Whilst Price was at Oxford he struck up a lasting friendship with another eminent artist-craftsman of the era, a certain Mr William Morris. Even during his abortive attempt to study medicine and his three years in Russia, Price remained in touch with the Pre-Raphaelites and the high society of the time. When he took up school-mastering they were not as ‘snobby’ as to forget their erstwhile friend. Beresford writes:

 

Cormell Price was able to escape from the trap of so many headmasters who lost sight of the world through the idea of their own importance. He had the pose of a man of the world, not that of a mannikin of the tiny microcosm of the school, and for this he was respected and revered by his staff and pupils alike. Price, unlike his contemporary headmasters, chose to teach geography and history as opposed to Classics, which his contemporaries regarded as the domain of the head. In spite of these high qualities though, at time is appears as though Price was only just able to manage his position as headmaster. He relied a great deal on his housemasters and prefects for the control and discipline of the School even more so than other headmasters did, this is the impression that Beresford conveys. He seldom punished unless in the most serious of cases, contrary to the picture Kipling gives of the ‘P… Bates’ in Stalky and Co who is quite prepared to cane the whole school. The house he lived in, in the terrace, was set aside for his own personal use and was adorned with many original works of art by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as well as many reproductions. The remained of the staff had one-room study bedrooms for their delectation so the headmaster was very well provided for. 

Of the two headmasters that followed Mr Price’s shoes after 1894, the Rev Dr P C Harris (1894-99) was a very gifted teacher of Greek and did much to encourage the boys to go onto universities. The Rev F W Tracey took over in 1899 and moved with the school in 1904 to Harpenden. Little has been written about Price’s successors. Neither was in office long enough to have the effect Price had, and after all, the School was as much Cormell Price’s creation as that of the United Services Institution. 

The staff who served under these headmasters varied of course throughout the years but White’s Directory for Devon in 1878-79 gives us an insight into what the staffroom held.

This was the earliest list of the staff available. The Prospectus and Kalendar for 1883 holds another list and so does the White’s Directory for Devon of 1890.

In April 1888, the masters were:

The Artmaster Mr Thomas gets a mention in the Herald in 1891 when one of his pupils wins an award:

Sergeant Kearney is replaced by Sergeant Major Schofield between 1878 and 1883 and this man is ‘Foxy’ in Stalky and Co so it must have been about 1880 that the Sergeant Major took over because Kipling left the School in 1882.

These members of staff lived a very austere and spartan existence demanded of them by their profession. They lived among the boys, in their own study bedrooms, ate with the boys and even bathed with the boys. They seemed to have very little privacy and a very boring existence. Their vacations were spent returning to their families or remnants thereof, or retiring to fashionable watering places and resorts such as Bournemouth, Torquay or Dawlish. Cornell Price remained in residence during the vacations for he looked after the boys who were unable to join their parents for the holidays.

There was no ‘fagging’ at the College due to the fact that the head made sure the College was fully staffed with domestic servants, who either lived on the premises, in the basement, or in the immediate locality. A few of these find themselves mentioned in the local paper, proving that even domestic servants could make the local newspaper.

The Gazette dated 29 April 1884 also reported that William Keates was ‘picked up insensible, and found to have sustained serious injuries’.

The United Services College certainly had its fair share of problems, both above and below the stairs. All in all however the standards maintained by the College in educating the boys seem to have been relatively successful. An article in the North Devon Herald dated 22 January 1903 when the College had been in existence for twenty nine years goes onto clarify this point, though the article must be taken with a pinch of salt for in most respect everything looks rosy.

So much for the success of the boys after they left school. The question to ask now is whether they succeeded because of their education, or in spite of it? From the influence of Cormell Price in the writings of Kipling and Beresford, it is clear that the man and the School had a long lasting effect on their ensuing lives. 

School Organisation and Sporting Activities

The Prospectus and Kalendar for 1883 gives a breakdown of the forms and the number of boys in each:

This shows the relatively small ratio of pupils to masters, especially as the pupil moved towards the top of the school, he is guaranteed of more individual attention. In 1883 there were 12 masters (13 including Sergeant Major Schofield) and the ratio works out at about one master to fifteen boys. The organisation of the School was such that the whole of the Upper School and Lower School were put into sets for Maths and French. The remainder of the subjects taught can be seen from the timetable.

One of the crowning academic achievements of the College was to take first place in the Woolwich or Sandhurst examinations. This happened in 1882 as the Herald bears witness:

For a successful career in the Army it seems rather odd that such a high standard of classical education should be necessary. It is understandable that various branches of mathematics should be needed, and of course some experience of in foreign language. The allusions in the novels by Kipling and Beresford to the teaching of Latin and Greek bear witness to the fact that these subjects were approached with little interest and the boys attempted to pass the time engaged in illegal pursuits right under the masters’ noses. The method of teaching, with the master sitting at his desk picking on each boy in turn to complete the next part of the translation or problem is to us very archaic. However the boys were supposed to have prepared the work for the classes the evening before or before breakfast. Beresford relates some very amusing incidents concerning Kipling, who never did his Latin preparation, and his bluffing in front of the Latin Master. As for the teaching of Mathematics at the College, the Report of the Mathematics Examiner speaks for itself:

The conclusion to the Report of the Examiner of the Whole School, dated the same time as the Maths Examiners Report, follows, and these give some idea of the Academic Standards reached in the teaching at the United Services College.

The three points the examiner comments favourably upon bear out the original aims of the college when it was founded and stress the fact that the College is turning out boys who are healthy, have had the best attention due to the proportion of masters, all at a reasonable and fairly low fee. This sounds more like good business management which is not normally associated with education.

The sporting prowess of the United Services College became something of a legend that in the latter years of its existence at Westward Ho! the College was not able to live up to. The reports in the local paper always included whatever sport was being played in the district and so the United Services College came in for quite a few mentions. In its early years, the College gained quite a reputation for its rugby football. The school year, then as now, was divided into three terms, Michaelmas, Lent and Summer. In these terms various events took place. Rugby was played in the Michaelmas and Lent terms, and cricket in the Summer term, as is the wont of most schools.

On 16 February 1897 the Gazette reported that Mr Horace Gray, BA, of Jesus College, Cambridge, has been appointed an assistant master. And, that Captain Banning, Instructor of Military Administration and Law at the RMC Sandhurst was impressed enough with the reputation of the College, that he sent his son to it.

The School and the Local Society

However what was most important to the College were its specific occasions noted in the Herald of course, during the school year when sporting prowess excelled itself by giving a demonstration (to a fashionably gathered selection of local worthies) in the form of Sports Day, or an Assault-at-Arms. The latter of these was a form of gymnastic display that no doubt incorporated some of the physical training that would be pursued at a later date at Woolwich or Sandhurst.

The Herald gives a report of one of these Assaults-at-Arms in March 1882 at which the Countess of Portsmouth was present. The events performed included displays on the trapeze and rings, fencing, vaulting, quarter-staff and single-stick fighting. A later report in 1891 includes bayonets and parallel bars. The results of football and cricket matches recorded in the paper are too numerous to mention though in 1897 the following report appears in the Herald:

The nostalgic sentiments are echoed in a similar report in 1902

The standard of football seems to have hit upon hard times reflecting no doubt the whole College situation, for at the beginning of this century the United Services College was in a precarious position and was pondering over the idea of moving to a situation nearer London. The College, however, had also excelled itself at golf during its sojourn at Westward Ho! It needed little prompting for the students to make use of the Royal North Devon Golf Links on the Northam Burrows. It had been hyped at one time to make the Westward Ho! Golf Course second only to St Andrews but something wrong with the speculators plans, and they were glad of the College’s patronage. 

The College was very much orientated towards physical exercise. There were compulsory games for all the school on 3 afternoons a week and one of the highlights was the Old Boys Match which Kipling describes in Stalky and Co.

 

Considering that a great part of an army training called for physical fitness as well as intellectual alertness the College seems to have been able to provide the right sort of balance between the two. 

The effect of the School on the surrounding area has already been touched upon. The tone in which some of the Herald’s reports were written gives some idea of the impact of a minor public school on the lives of the local inhabitants. A ‘large number of spectators’ or a ‘fashionable gathering’ are phrases that crop up again and again.

It was the College social evenings such as the end-of-term concerts and dramatic productions as well as the drawing-room entertainers that find their way into the pages of the Herald. The following are extracts from numerous reports of such events, to be found in the Herald. Cormell Price had decided that his pupils should not be without knowledge of the world of entertainment, so thought readers and other personages were asked to perform at the College.

The tradition was continued after Cormell Price had retired and the following extract appears in 1902:

However the pupils were not incapable of producing their own forays into the world of entertainment and like most schools their attempts were reported in the local press.

The social prestige of the School was heightened by the number of distinguished people on the Board of Governors. In 1878 the United Services College Council consisted of:

In the Victorian era when ‘class consciousness’ was very much a part of everyday life and people were very much aware of their position in life and in the social hierarchy, it was obvious to all concerned that a school such as the United Services College was for a very well defined slice of society. Secondary education, i.e. education after 12 years of age was something only those who had the means could obtain. Limiting this still further, to the number of service officers who had the means, shows the uniqueness of this educational establishment and the boys it was coping with.

1891 Census - England

The following are staff are recorded in the 1891 Census as living at the United Services College:

Recorded separately under College Laundry are: Harriet, Elizabeth and Arthur Gregory, all born in Northam.

Not everybody may have ‘lived in’. George Schofield, living at Eastbourne Terrace with his wife and daughters, was a ‘school drill/gym instructor, born in Manchester'.

The Move

However during the final decade of the nineteenth century the social climate throughout England began to change and this had a detrimental effect on the United Services College. The other public schools began to open army and navy classes, they were also more accessible, being in less remote parts of the country. The steady decline in applicants to the United Services College and the increasing financial difficulties resulted in the upheaval of the College and its removal to another site.

As early as 1894 the United Services College made an application to the High Court under the 1890 Memorandum of Association Act so that they might introduce civilian shareholders in the hope that this would secure more pupils. However the number of civilians on the Council should never be more than one third of the number on the Council A report on this application appears in the local paper of which the following is an extract that gives an insight into why the College was having difficulty.

In 1895 the College advertised the use of its football and cricket grounds for grazing sheep, maybe a sign of reducing funds?

The problem seems to have simmered in the minds of the United Services Institution for the next few years. But the local inhabitants and the School itself co-existed in contented ignorance of the eventual storm that was brewing. The news of the College’s proposed departure first appears, not as would be expected in the local paper, but in the Exeter paper. Of course the local Committee have to cover up the blunder and keep a cool face. The following report, a fine example of a news bulletin to keep people happy, covers the whole event. The article praises the College for its achievements and lulls the reader into a false sense of security, after ll how could a thirty-year old school suddenly up and go.

The optimism of Colone Winterscale’s last paragraph, in particular “We hope it will be found possible to meet requirements,…” is in there to soften the blow for the United Services Institution were making definite enquiries into the short term lease of large establishments within a few miles of metropolis by this time (mid 1903). The following article appeared a month later and is a very thinly disguised appeal to the public for funds.

Another article in the same issue of the paper voices the opinion of the locals, it is either written by a local man or one of the editorial staff. It points out that local opinion should have been consulted, in fact should been consulted before the decision was made.

However the economic and financial considerations override local opinion. The decline in the value of the rupee, the remoteness of Westward Ho! and also its inaccessibility, the advent of Army classes in Public Schools, all were strong arguments in favour of the College’s removal from Westward Ho! Moreover at the College Prize-day in 1903 Colonel Winterscale gave a speech which contains some even more peculiar and bizarre reasons for the College’s removal from Westward Ho! The extract below elucidates further:

The railway (which opened in stages from 1901) had been in the news for a number of years as this article from the Gazette, dated 16 February 1897 details:

Trippers at Westward Ho! 1920

A 1904 Gazette article states that a ‘promising little difficulty’ has arisen between the Imperial Service College Trust and the liquidator of the United Service College Company, which owns the old United Service College at Westward Ho! There is a £10,375 mortgage debt on the buildings and £3,000 owing to tradesmen and others.

The character of the establishment was inexorably changed by its removal to the new premises at Harpenden in Hertfordshire. It had been the United Services College at Westward Ho! Anywhere else it could not exist, especially as it had fulfilled its purpose at Westward Ho! It had been founded with certain aims in view and had to all intents and purposes fulfilled them. When this had happened the college began to lose its popular appeal and run into financial troubles. The College had been created at a time when there was a definite need but as the need diminished so did the demand for an education at the College. However the United Services Institution was determined to keep its school running as a matter of prestige. To have closed it would have been admitting failure in their eyes.

So the United Services College began a trek round various premises, combining on the way with St Mark’s, Windsor, and ending as the Imperial Services College at Haileybury from whence Cormell Price had set out in 1874 to found the original College at Westward Ho! Events had therefore come full circle and all that is left of the old School are a row of dilapidated Victorian boarding houses and the reminiscences of Kipling and his friends, not of course forgetting the Herald’s numerous articles.

Notable former pupils at United Service College, Westward Ho! were:

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), writer. His collection of stories, Stalky & Co, is based on his experiences at the College, which he joined in January 1878 and left in the summer of 1882. He dedicated the book to Cormell Price, headmaster of the school for its first twenty years, and Price is portrayed in it as someone the boys respected.

Major-General Lionel Dunsterville CB, CSI (1865–1946), a contemporary of Kipling, he was the inspiration for the character of Stalky in the Stalky & Co. stories.

George Charles Beresford (1864–1938), photographer, "M'Turk" (Turkey) in Stalky & Co.

Bruce Bairnsfather (1887–1959), cartoonist and author – famous for creating ‘Old Bill’, a fictional character created in 1914-15.

Colonel Edward Douglas Browne-Synge-Hutchinson, VC, CB (attended United Services College Day Boy 1875). He was a Major when he earned his VC.

Brigadier General George William St. George Grogan, VC, CB, CMG, DSO & Bar (attended United Services College 1890–1893).

Brigadier General The Honourable Alexander Gore Arkwright Hore-Ruthven, VC, GCMG, CB, DSO & Bar, PC, Croix de Guerre (France and Belgium). He was a Captain when he earned his VC. 

Brigadier General Francis Aylmer Maxwell, VC, CSI, DSO & Bar, (attended United Services College 1883–1890).

Captain Anketell Moutray Read, VC, (attended United Services College 1898–1902).

Major General Cyril Wagstaff, Commandant of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

Archibald Ritchie (1869–1955), British Army Major-General of World War I.

Colonel Bernard Underwood Nicolay (attended 1887–1892)

United Services College Commemorative Plaque

Originally named Kingsley Terrace, the ‘twelve bleak houses’ were renamed earlier that year to honour Rudyard Kipling by Northam Urban District Council at the request of the USC and ISC Society.

In the Kipling Journal No. 108 (December 1953), it is recorded that a commemorative plaque was unveiled in September of that year at Kipling Terrace, Westward Ho! by Lt-General W G H Vickers, President of the United Services College and Imperial Service College Society. The eleven Old Boys present were: Col B U Nicolay, Col E C Hodgson, Gen Sir S F Muspratt, Mr R M Bourne, Lieut-Col F E Mascall, Lieut-Col J A McQueen, Rev L O Mott, Lieut-Gen W G H Vickers, Group Capt G I Carmichael, Mr H Lillie and Col H A Tapp. The original plaque was subscribed for by USC Old Boys, their relatives, local residents and members of the Kipling Society and it was designed and executed by R C Fox of the Bideford School of Art.  It was placed on the retaining wall of No. 7 Kipling Terrace which was the home of the three Headmasters – Cormell Price, Rev Dr P C Harris and Rev F W Tracy.

Over the years, it has become lost amongst the ivy and other undergrowth, but in the 1990s was rediscovered. The Welsh veined slate from which it was made had become badly eroded, and so with a grant from the Northam Town Council, the Westward Ho! History Group commissioned John Short, a Bideford Monumental mason, to restore it. A ceremony took place on 20 March 2010 to celebrate the restoration of the commemorative plaque.

Image provided by Mr M Crouch, volunteer at the Bideford & District Community Archive

One interesting parallel between the two ceremonies is that both were attended by relatives of the people disguised in Stalky and Co – in 1953 those present included Mrs E Bambridge (Kipling’s daughter), Miss A M Willes (daughter of the School Chaplain), Miss V Schofield (daughter of Sergt-Major Schofield) and Mrs Trevor (niece of Major-General Dunsterville); and in 2010, the attendee was Lorraine Bowsher (granddaughter of Cormell Price).

Kipling and the United Services College

Rudyard Kipling attended the USC for four years from 1878-1882. These years left a marked impression on him and he left a marked impression on his school fellows. His nickname was ‘Giglamps’. In the above picture, which was taken by Mr Crofts around 1882, Kipling is in the centre.

He seems to have fitted into the School comparatively well. His parents were personal friends of Cormell Price and Burne-Jones was an uncle by marriage. The society Kipling moved in during the holidays when he stayed in England must therefore have been much to do with encouraging the budding genius for the atmosphere of the School can hardly have been a source of much inspiration. Beresford is often alluding to Kipling’s ‘London friends’ in his book ‘Schooldays with Kipling’.

Gazette article dated 7 November 1899 about Rudyard Kipling

Dunsterville the original model for Stalky, makes passing mention of the School and Kipling in his book ‘Stalky’s Adventures’ but it is Kipling that immortalises the School in his book ‘Stalky and Co.’ Whether or not the events in the book really happened and how much Kipling exercised his poetic license are not really questions that we can answer. However by reading the book and other records it is possible to work out the probable events and the over-dramatised ones.

Kipling published the book in 1899, seventeen years after he had left the College. By which time he is bound to have blurred his memory slightly over the events of his adolescent schooldays. The book created quite a sensation when it was first published. Ex-public school boys from other public schools wrote to the Times to state that this sort of thing never happened at their schools. They were deeply shocked that these sort of activities cold be allowed to happen in a public school. What they were unable to see was though Kipling was writing from a factual basis he was turning it into a novel for boys not a semi-autobiography of his schooldays. In fact some people took it too seriously and believed everything actually happened. Beresford stresses that Kipling, alias Beetle, had the knack of avoiding trouble and thus the tales of him being beaten are ‘local colour’! However some instances such as the dead cat under the floorboards could very well have happened and there is likely to be an element of fact behind such an episode for the architecture of the boarding houses would allow this to take place. The performance of Aladdin that is mentioned was not such a brilliant affair. Beresford fills in a few details:

Major General J C Rimington, CB, CSI, in an article in the Kipling Journal of October 1941 also echoes the same ideas:

Beresford and Dunsterville both confirm this sentiment so, though Kipling may have let his ideas run away a little, the atmosphere of the School community, if not the actual events in the book, conveys a very real picture of the United Services College at Westward Ho! at the time that Kipling attended it. In the book Kipling is recollecting his schooldays and also his early awareness of himself. He is able to take an objective view as ‘Beetle’ who is noted for his shortsight and his poetic ‘effusions’ as Mr King, one of the masters, (Mr Crofts in reality) calls them. This book touches on the various escapades that Stalky (Dunsterville), McTurk (Beresford) and Beetle get upto; some true, some imaginary. There are times when these escapades are designed for the three boys to come out on top with an air of injured innocence for they are accused yet there is no evidence. Having read Beresford this point is enforced. It is little wonder that these 3 boys never became prefects in real life even if half of what happens in ‘Stalky and Co’ is true.

Both Dunsterville and Beresford go on to the Army Academy at Woolwich but Kipling left for India to join his family in Lahore and eventually became assistant to the editor of the local paper there.

Sources used:

A Study of the United Service College – Westward Ho! and its development with reference to the North Devon Gazette and the memoirs of Kipling as described in his ‘Stalkey & Co’. With thanks to Richard Escott who completed the Study in 1975 as part of the Bachelor of Education Course for Coventry College of Education and Warwick University.

Wikipedia; Ancestry UK; information from Westward Ho! History Group (including information from Lorraine Bowsher, granddaughter of Cormell Price