Attention: You are using an outdated browser, device or you do not have the latest version of JavaScript downloaded and so this website may not work as expected. Please download the latest software or switch device to avoid further issues.
Object No.12 is a commercially printed postcard, one of many that has featured the Christ College buildings over the years.
This image is different from other postcards because it includes two pupils. The boys’ puzzlement as they stare uncertainly at the photographer makes it feel as if it was snapped by a passer-by and adds an air of spontaneity.
Every element of this photograph is engaging: the hand-colouring of the original photograph, the boys’ Eton collars and their school caps, the rough pavement that merges with the road, the loose picket fence pulled across the open gateway.
But it is the ivy-clad building in the background that is of most interest as it is the earliest image in the Archive collection that shows Big School.
Photo: Big School. Ground Floor Plan. J B Fowler. 1880. Christ College Archive.
On Speech Day 1880 the Headmaster, the Rev. Daniel Lewis Lloyd, had dramatically drawn the attention of guests and parents to the “pile of buildings being erected” they might have observed as they arrived for the proceedings.
Designed by J B Fowler, the new building would be an imposing and public statement of modernity and a sign of the school’s scholastic success. One can easily imagine the Headmaster’s pride in the imminent construction and the satisfaction of parents that the school was expanding academically.
The arrangement of rooms inside the building was certainly impressive, but it was also very practical for an expanding modern school. There were four spacious classrooms on the ground floor and a well-lit Big Schoolroom on the first floor. A much smaller space was set aside for science facilities that we now understand to be among the earliest examples in England and Wales of a purpose-built science laboratory and lecture room.
Photo: Big School. First Floor Plan. J B Fowler. 1880. Christ College Archive.
What was then known as the Big Schoolroom was used for Speech Day for the first time in 1881. The newspaper report of the proceedings offers a full description of the new teaching accommodation.
from The Brecon and Radnor Express, July 30th 1881
The school room, measuring about 80 feet in length by about 25 in width, forms the principal portion of the new block. This is so treated as to give it emphasis and importance. The upper windows are a range of lancets, built of dressed native stone, resembling the lancets of the chapel.
Opposite the large schoolroom, on the second landing of the staircase, are the science lecture room and the laboratory both closely connected. Underneath is one large classroom about 40 feet long by 18 feet wide.
The space underneath the large schoolroom is divided into three large classrooms, the entrance into each room being from the main corridor. The main entrance and staircase are lighted by a large and lofty bay window of a very imposing character.
Photo: School Corridor. 1950s. From the P A Lewis Collection. Christ College Archive.
Important within the plans for the ground floor of Big School was the corridor that stretched from School House to Chapel Yard. Providing a dry passage for the Head from his accommodation in School House to Chapel, its position recalled the location of one of the cloisters of the Dominican Friary, which led from the Friary Chapel towards the Friary building we now know as the Dining Hall.
The old cloister had long been obliterated by the passage of time, but a new cloister very nearly featured in the construction of School House in 1864. Although visible in J P Seddon's original plans, that part of the design was too costly to bring about. Though the cloister passage that would have crossed what we know as Chapel Lawn was never constructed, it was clearly important enough for the plan to be revived in the building of Big School.
The corridor no longer exists in the way it once did. Walls were repositioned in 1996 to incorporate part of the corridor into the Clive Richards Room and in 2017 the corridor was opened into the ground floor classrooms to create the open space that is now the Sixth Form Hub.
The ghost of the corridor remains. Its footprint is still visible in elements of the original walls in the Clive Richards Room, the carefully constructed open corridor in the Sixth Form Hub, and the door into Chapel Yard.
Photo: the remnants of the School Corridor still evident in the Sixth Form Hub. 2023.
The rooms in the Big School building have inevitably changed use many times over the years.
What was originally the science lecture room and laboratory was developed into a common room then a cluster of studies and later a staff room (SCR). It is now a vibrant Middle School hub. The classroom beneath, which later became a dormitory and then a changing room before becoming the Sixth Form Common Room, is now the welcoming Clive Richards Room. Two of the other three classrooms on the corridor leading to the Chapel became the Maynard Jenour IT suite in 2002. The third classroom, often used as a dormitory or common room, became the Learning Support Centre in 2007.
Since 2017, the ground floor space beneath Big School has been an open-plan space that accommodates the Sixth Form Hub. Like the Middle School Hub, it is a home room for day pupils as well as a common room space.
The way the interior of the building is currently used would be unimaginable to the guests at the 1881 Prize Day and to the two little boys in Object No.12, the postcard of Big School. While the exterior of the building represents the continuity that binds Old Breconians, the changing face of the interior space reflects the modern school that is Christ College today.
