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Object 15 represents a selection of darts discovered in 1997 when a suspended ceiling was removed during refurbishment. As the rafters were revealed, the darts fluttered to the floor after decades of being hidden.
The darts made from sharpened pen nibs and flights made from notes written on pages torn from exercise books have curiosity value in themselves, but the hints they give of the lives of schoolboys at the time in which they were made add to the interest they hold for us.
Photo: the dart made by Robert Bruce Hunter (School House 1913-1916) who served with the RFC Royal Flying Corps in the First World War.
Most tellingly, another dart features a thought familiar to every schoolboy (and girl): "only 6 more Sundays until the end of term". Written on 14 November 1910, it is redolent of a time when boarders did not go home at all during term time.
Penknives are no longer permitted in schools but they were once a necessary piece of writing equipment. Before fountain pens were commonly used (and long before Biros were invented), users had to create their own writing implement by fixing a metal nib onto a shaved wooden shaft. The nib had to be dipped into an inkwell to carefully capture the right amount of ink: too little ink left only a scratch on the paper; too much meant inky blots obscured words already written.
The penknife offered the additional possibility of making a pen nib that would be sharp enough to stick into the wooden ceiling. It is not difficult to imagine the sounds of eager sharpening of metal nibs with penknives, the furtive fashioning of flights, and the effort of throwing the missile up into the rafters as soon as the Master left the room at the end of Prep.
Object 15 fixes in time an idle moment, the proliferation of penknives, scraps of paper and a competitive upward throw. To understand the story of its discovery, Big School's back story needs to be told.
Photo: the Big Schoolroom in the 1920s.
The Big School building was constructed in 1881 to provide the additional teaching space needed for a school that was rapidly expanding under the leadership of Revd Daniel Lewis Lloyd (Headmaster 1879-1890). There were four classrooms on the ground floor, and on the upper floor of the new building was the big schoolroom - often known as Big School.
In common with other similar schools, the large room was the place where boys did their prep and where assemblies, concerts and Prize Days could be held. Until the Memorial Hall (now the Neuadd) was built in 1955, it was also used for exams, slide projector shows, and dramatic productions.
The dais and stark furnishings in the photograph suggest a time of intense discipline but boys of all generations also tell of tricks played on unsuspecting Masters. Surreptitious crawling under the benches from the back to the front was popular by all accounts, with team crawls taking place when one of the older masters had fallen asleep in his chair on the dais. Curiously, it was also the place from where School House boys would be called for their weekly bath.
Photos: The Kendrick Edwards Library under construction in 1997
When the room was converted into a library and two classrooms in 1957, the library occupied the open space we know today and the classrooms occupied the space that is now the Hub study area.
The height of the new classrooms was lowered by the installation of suspended ceilings and pen darts thrown by generations of boys were left hanging from the rafters - "like broken birds" according to one OB.
Hidden above the 1957 suspended ceiling, they weren't discovered until 40 years later when the new Mezzanine was constructed.
Photos: The Kendrick Edwards Library in 1998
Under a major refurbishment programme, the Kendrick Edwards Library with its new Mezzanine (now the R J Boulton Archive Room) was completed in 1998. At the same time, the glazed area (now the Hub study area) was created as the school's first IT suite.
During the demolition process, the classroom walls and suspended ceilings were removed to reveal the splendour of the original ceiling and the rafters were once more exposed.
To everyone's surprise and amazement, a flock of "broken birds" fluttered down. Most of the rescued darts are unnamed and many were already faded by the time of their discovery, yet together they evoke an era that still whispers from the walls of Big School.
Read more about Big School at Object 12.
