NELSON COLLEGE

Marlborough Express, Volume LXVIII, Issue 149, 26 June 1934, Page 4

NELSON COLLEGE

SCRIPTORIUM REOPENED. OLD BOYS' MEMORIAL.

Express Special Service.

NELSON, June 26. The ceremony of the re-opening of the Nelson College Scriptorium, the memorial to the old boys of the school who gave their lives in the Great War, and which has been close d for several years consequent upon the 1929 earthquake, was made the occasion of an impressive function attended by the whole school. Mr H. V. Searle, the principal, speaking from the Scriptorium steps, introduced Mr C. Richmond Fell, chairman of the Council of Governors of the Nelson Colleges, and Mr W. Carrol Harley, president of the Nelson College Old Boys' Association. Mr Searle said that ten years had passed since the Scriptorium was opened by Lord Jellicoe. He wished to thank the old boys and the Council. of Governors for restoring the Scriptorium, so that the pupils could use it again. Although the old boys had been responsible with the Council of Governors for restoring the building, the old boys had not been invited to the present ceremony because he fell that with them the memories of the opening day in 1924 would ever remain green, and that they would wish it so. But the present boys had never had the privilege of using the Scriptorium, and had never felt the inspiration that the flne memorial could give, and the> re-opening would to them be the opening ceremony. SPIRITS OF OLD BOYS.

"In years to come the building will probably be1 the oialy one: left in the style of the old college1 buildings, and we can imagine it as frequented by the happy spirits of the many old boys who have gone before, and it should help to inspire each. succeeding generation with the desire to emulate ihe example of.the great men the college has sent ,out into the world," said Mr Fell «in the course of his address. "Some of you perhaps may attain to greater honour than any who have gone before, but though all cannot hope to be Lord Rutherfords every one of you should be1 fiiled with the determination to do your very best in life, and by thought and deed to be worthy successors to those whose names are inscribed on the tablet inside." Mr Harley spoke of the material and spiritual sides of life. The boys did not realise it, he said, but when on a summer's day reclining on the terrace they heard the clack of bat on ball from the cricket pitch; when lying under the trees they heard the hollow sound of voices and the splash of swimmers in the pool; or from the classrooms on a dull wintry day heard the heavy thud of the footbali, they were storing up memories, and one day all these: things would come flooding back out of the past. Pupils as they sat in the Scriptorium would look at a brass tablet there, filled with forgotten names. But those to Whom the names had belonged had iistened in their boyhood to the same clack of the cricket ball, to the sanle splashing and shouting at the swimming pool, and to the same dull thud of the ball on the turf. Far from overseas, from the deserts of Palestine and the mud of Flanders, they came back in spirit to Nelson College. They had built up a spiritual side of school life which could not be weighed. The present pupils would add to it, and together with those that had gone before and those who would come after they would build up a spiritual force which in days to come would be a very wonderful thing in the life of the1 country. The head prefect (T. Straker") placed a beautiful wreath at the foot of the memorial tablet, and the wholeschool filed through the Scriptorium.