Noel Downing attended the small private prep school called Mulgrave Castle School from 1899 to 1902. It was based in Mulgrave Castle near Whitby, the seat of the Phipps family. We have about thirty photographs of his time there – some official school photographs as well as his own snaps.
Mulgrave Castle, 24 Jun 1901. Noel sitting second left in the middle row
Lord Normanby, a church of England minister, was the headmaster. He was Rev Constantine Charles Henry Phipps, the 3rd Marquess of Normanby and Canon of St Georges Chapel, Windsor. Apparently the school moved for one term each year to Windsor. According to a newspaper clipping we have –
“…the school began with only eight or nine pupils and [he] had little idea of increasing the number” – however there were soon “so many applicants that … the average number of pupils in each year rose to twenty five or thirty. Each paid £220 a year in fees … Lessons began each day with religious instruction; but, beyond a sound general education, gymnastics, carpentering, horticulture, sport and athletics received attention; there were occasional theatrical performances by the boys, and Lord Normanby’s aim was to make his pupils well informed gentlemen, capable of taking a prominent place in society…”
Mulgrave House, Windsor, 1 Apr 1901. Noel sitting second left in the middle row
Several copies of ‘The Mulgravian’ (No. 20, 22-40 & 46) – the school journal are also in our collection.
We also have a number of Noel’s letters home to his mother, many recounting his cricket scores, but also a gem of a letter (see below) about the lady friend of one of the school masters. The irony of this was that his mother, Hannah Pitt Showell, in later life at least, was a somewhat staid Victorian lady and the humour would have been much better appreciated by his father.
Mentioned in Noel’s letters is a boy called Cocks, later to be Lord Somers – a keen cricketer and Acting Governor General of Australia 1931-32. Noel recounts a robust regime of ‘teasing’ – the correspondence of Lord Somers apparently tells of desperate unhappiness, birchings and abortive attempts to run away.
Another member of the 1901 cricket team as well as amateur thespian was Douglas Brownrigg, later to follow a prominent military career. He played ‘Cheekey’ to Noel’s ‘Dick’ in Little Red Riding Hood.
A keen cricketer was also John Wilfred Seddon from Painswick in Gloucestershire he went on to design the eccentric Seddon Mayfly aircraft.
Mulgrave House, Windsor, 1 Apr 1901. Noel sitting fourth right in the middle row
Also in the above picture is William Hulme Lever, only son of William Lever, the soap magnate of Port Sunlight. He is at the back fourth from the right. Noel Downing is the small boy in the middle seated row also fourth from the right.
In summer 1902 Noel Downing left Mulgrave and finished his secondary education at Harrow School, where his entrance is recorded in the Harrow Register for Michaelmas Term 1902.
Lord Normanby closed the school some time after his marriage in Dec 1903.
