Italics indicated second or subsequent year of office.

Wellingtonians sport some fairly distinctive colours in unusual orientation when made into a tie.

The colours were adopted from the Crimean medal (shown below, courtesy of the National Army Museum), with its pale blue and yellow ribbon. These colours are most closely associated today with cricket: the XI and the Occasionals.

Their selection was a matter of much debate and quite some frustration. The more predictable colour choice of red and navy blue was rejected as any variation would inevitably infringe upon the  Household Brigade and several other regiments and corps. The colours went through several more variations, with orange replacing yellow and some minor frustrations when a suburban rugby club of limited success adopted the XV’s black and gold stripes before today’s recognisable yellow, orange and pale blue on a black field were finally settled and accepted. It still however takes a bold individual to have these made up into a suit…

Despite these inauspicious beginnings the colours have established themselves in the boys’ and now girls’ affections. This is perhaps best illustrated by Jack Girling’s poem from the Western Front in 1916:

———-

It hangs before me on a nail,

for when I gaze on you from above,

I see dear Wellington again;

And in the mud and drifting rain,

In fancy play the game I love.

———-

The Old Wellingtonian Lodge has always welcomed guests from other lodges to our meetings. Indeed a meeting is not quite complete unless we are able to share our festivities with visiting brethren, especially from our sister PSLC lodges. Those that  are entitled to wear the colours of their school are encouraged to do so, adding colour to the wit, wisom and experience they bring from their own lodges.

The Lodge does however insist on one rule being adhered to by members and guests alike: Bye Law 6, which states that there shall be “no speeches to toasts”. This is in no way intended diminish what we always hope will be a warm welcome.

The original rules of the Lodge are reproduced below:

The Lodge in its centennial year comprises forty-three members, including Honorary Members.

Our ages range from twenty-two to ninety-one, including five each in their twenties and thirties, six each in their forties, fifties, and sixties, seven in their seventies, and several a little wiser even than that.

In Wellington terms all the houses are represented. The Talbot tops the contributions with six brethren, with the Benson a close second with five, whilst the Lynedoch leads the dormitories with four. The Stanley, Picton, Murray and Anglesey have three a piece, the Orange, and Hopetoun a pair a piece, and one each from the Orange, Hardinge, Combermere, and of course the Blucher. We also have amongst us a former Assistant Master (a member of the teaching staff), a former College Servant, a brace of Governors and of course the President of College.

In terms of their college achievements there are amongst the brethren a former Head of College, four College Prefects, a head of the Corps, a captain of the XV, a pair of shooting captains and a third member of the VIII,  a Fencing captain and a pair each of Field Gunners and Gentlemen of the Hunt. Just over half went to university, of which four went to Oxford or Cambridge, the honours being evenly split.

By profession (past and present) we have five accountants, five brethren in various forms of banking and insurance, and the law accounts for another three. IT and property supply two each, and journalism, engineering, naval architecture and the Church are all represented. A wide range of entrepreneurial business ventures are also represented: travel and hospitality, bicycles and luxury cars, boxes and logistics, and performance coaching and training.

The greatest change from a hundred years ago is the presence of the armed forces. Accounting for over half the founders, today thirteen brethren in total have served in some professional or volunteer capacity, a significant number for sure, but also a significant fall from a hundred years ago. Two have seen service in Afghanistan in recent years, something the Founders would have certainly been familiar with.

Geographically our membership is quite diverse, spread from Sussex to Aberdeenshire, Herefordshire to Suffolk, and four live overseas.

Masonically speaking twenty-seven, or just over sixty percent are initiates. Of the joiners, five were initiates of Red Apron Lodges. Half have been masters of this Lodge or another and half are members of the Royal Arch. Just under half hold some degree of Masonic honour whether Grand, Metropolitan, or Provincial.

As with the founders, only one is the subject of a foreign power.

Readers may find an interesting comparison with the Founders of the Lodge some hundred years ago.

Report on the Centenary Meeting.

Brigadier Spencer Vaughan Percy Weston DSO** MC was the Founding Father of the Lodge, the last surviving founder, and the longest serving member in our history.

He was born in 1883, and went to Wellington in 1896. He was in the Hill, a college prefect, in the Rackets pair (see below) and the XI, where he is remembered as a fine batsman.

He was in the same year as the Auk (Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck) and eight fellow brethren of the Lodge, all of whom served in the Army, making it, along with 1890, the largest contributing year to the Lodge.

The ‘1896 Eight’ included Lt Col Corbett, Cpl Currie RF and Lt Stephenson SG who would all give their lives in service. Lt Col Dr Claude Douglas RAMC, Lt Col Thomas Eggar RFC, Capt Lionel Green SWB, Maj Charles Huggins Gordons and Maj Charles Micklem RA were luckier. The 1896 Eight make an interesting list of service for 8 boys arriving at school together in 1896. And thats before one starts to think about the Auk.

Weston joined the Royal Berkshires and served on the Western Front from 1915 to 1918 winning an MC in 1916 and the DSO a year later, before adding not one but two bars to the DSO the following year. He briefly commanded a battalion of the Royal Berkshires in 1916 before commanding the 17^th Battalion Royal Fusiliers in 1917-18. He became a Brigadier General and served as GOC 122 Brigade, part of the 41^st Division.

In 1933 Weston and S R Chichester (who was not a member of the Lodge) raised the funds to put electric lighting into the rackets court at College.

The Second World War saw him return to the colours as a half colonel, commanding troops on transport ships, most notably on the Queen Mary, before being made Inspector of Transports. He survived the sinking of the Empress of Canada by the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci, off Sierra Leone, West Africa in 1943, en route from Durban to Takoradi carrying Italian prisoners of war along with Polish and Greek refugees. Of the 1800 people on board, 392 died. Nearly half of the fatalities reported were Italian prisoners.

Despite enough service to satisfy the most demanding of career soldiers, Weston was in fact a stockbroker by profession, serving only when called upon. He was initiated into the Stock Exchange lodge, Verity Lodge No 2739, in 1905 before becoming a founder of the OW Lodge four years later. His 64 years in the Lodge were exceeded only by the 68 years he served his mother lodge. He became the ‘Founding Father of the Lodge’, the last surviving and longest serving founder on the death of Charles Parkinson in 1955, and remained so for almost two decades.

He died in 1973.

In one of those strange coincidences, lists of British Generals of the Great War place Weston next to his fellow OW and Lodge Brother, Brigadier Percy Westmorland.

The Brethren of the Lodge have been recognised for their military and civilian service over the years. Members of the Lodge has served in the Royal Navy, the army, the RAF and its predecessor the RFC, and the Royal Marines. On the civil side members have served in the home and Indian civil service, have been appointed to the Bench, called to the Bar, been Justices of the Peace, and Lord Lieutenants and their Deputies. They have been Ambassadors, Mayors, and Council members at home and abroad.

Edward George Villiers Stanley, the 17^th Earl of Derby was a great supporter of Wellington College both as an OW and as its Vice-President from 1908 to 1941, like his father the 16^th Earl before him, who was Chairman of Governors from 1901-07, and the 14^th Earl before him who was a founding Governor, and both of whom were also masons.

He was the Founding IPM of the Lodge and President of the PSLC Festival hosted by the Old Wellingtonian Lodge in 1922.

It is the 17^th Earl’s portrait which is connected to the Stanley, one of the houses at Wellington, notwithstanding the fact that the house is actually named after this grandfather, the 14^th Earl.

Stanley joined the Grenadier Guards in 1885 after leaving Wellington and served as private secretary to future fellow Lodge member Lord Roberts during the Boer War. He was ADC to the Governor-General of Canada in 1905. Outside his military roles he sat in the House of Commons from 1892 as the member for Westhoughton, and became Secretary of State for War between 1916 and 1918. He became our ambassador in Paris in 1918.

His private and semi-private roles at Wellington were as important. He was known to meet individual boys’ financial needs from his private income. Reflecting his understanding of the public and ever the politician, the boys particularly enjoyed his request for a holiday to celebrate the victory of his horse Sansovino in the Derby, a race named after the 12^th Earl.

He was the benefactor of the ‘Derby Field’ at Wellington College, still home to house and school matches today. He acquired what was then a polo field from the proprietor of the Wellington Hotel (a member of Wellesley Lodge well known the Brethren at the time). The 22 acres cost £5,000 (or the equivalent of £150,000 in 2010), which was part funded by £1,000 from Lord Derby and a further interest free £3,500 loan. It was Lodge Founder Dighton Pollock’s posthumous bequest that saw the creation of the eponymous bridge over the railway connecting College to its new playing fields.

Derby Field was not his only scholastic bequest; he also gave 3 acres of land to help build the Bury Grammar Schools (both Boys and Girls Schools) in 1906.

The Earl was initiated into Studholme Lodge No 1591 (Now United Studholme Alliance Lodge No 1591), the lodge to which he introduced Winston Churchill, his fellow Tory ‘Hooligan’, as the grouping of young MPs was known. He was a member of at least six other lodges, and was a founder of both the OW Lodge and its mother lodge, Household Brigade.

On 3 November 1899, when still just Lord Stanley MP, he was installed as Provincial Grand Master of Lancashire (Eastern Division) in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester. Lord Derby presided over the Province for 49 years until 1948, during which time the number of lodges increased from 113 to 303 and the number of members from 4,829 to 19,000. He was made Senior Grand Warden in 1949, and was 2^nd Grand Principal of the Royal Arch from 1951 to 1959.