Lyon House

g-lyon-house-c1912
Lyon House, Richmond Road, c.1912. (Sherborne School Archives)

Lyon House has been in continuous use as a school boarding house since 1912.

In February 1910, the School Governors purchased from the Digby Estate a plot of land in Richmond Road known as ‘Sherrin’s Field’ for the purpose of building a new boarding house.

In December 1910 R.T. Milford was appointed Housemaster of the new boarding house, the building of which commenced in February 1911 and was completed in December 1911. In the meantime, Mr Milford set up a temporary boarding house with four boarders at Gainsborough House in South Street, Sherborne.

The new boarding house, which was named after former Headmaster Ralph Lyon (1795-1856), was opened on 25 January 1912 with sixteen boarders. The building cost £6,836.9.7, including £620 for the land. Lyon House and School House are Sherborne School’s only purpose-built boarding houses. Later additions to Lyon House include the ‘sweat house’ (1936), the Ross Room and first floor Reading Room (1969/1970), additional studies above the sweat house (1974), and the Boissier wing (2006).

In June 1913, A.H. Trelawny-Ross was appointed House Tutor at Lyon House.  When Mr Milford left the School in July 1914, Mr Trelawny-Ross was appointed Housemaster, a post he held for the next thirty-two years!

During the bombing of Sherborne on 30 September 1940, seven bombs fell around Lyon House, causing 14,000 tiles to be displaced, and for some time the house was uninhabitable.

A bomb crater in Richmond Road outside Lyon House, October 1940. (Sherborne School Archives)

In 1925, Major John Bowater Vernon (Abbey House 1899-1900), who won a silver cup at the 1925 Chelsea Flower Show for the most attractively laid-out formal garden, built in the garden at Lyon House a lily pond and a rose garden with a sundial copied from one erected at Windsor Castle by King Charles II.  In 1940, Lyon House boys dug in the garden a 150 feet trench topped with 1,000 sandbags as a ‘second line of defence in case of need.’  The Garden of Remembrance, designed by Oswald Somers Brakspear ARIBA (Lyon 1926-1930) and Rowland de Winton Aldridge FRIBA (The Green 1920-1925), was built in 1946.

The Lyon House Loving Cup was presented to the house by A.H. Trelawny-Ross in memory of Old Boys killed in the First World War. Made by Harman & Lambert, it is an enlarged replica of the Bacon Cup commissioned in 1574 by Sir Nicholas Bacon when Lord Chancellor and Keeper of the Great Seal.

Former Lyon boys have included Paul Anstee (actor, theatre designer, interior decorator), Richard ‘Stonehenge’ Atkinson (archaeologist), Oswald Brakspear (architect), Hubert Burton (actor), J.C. Critchell Bullock (explorer and adventurer), Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (actor known by his stage name Timothy Carlton, father of Benedict Cumberbatch), Henry Carey Druce (British army officer, SAS), Phil Harvey (manager and fifth member of the band Coldplay and board member of ClientEarth), Tim Heald (journalist and author), Adrian Jardine & Stuart Jardine (one or both have represented GB in sailing at the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympic Games), Stanley Johnson (broadcaster, journalist, author, and conservationist), Robert Kitson (sports journalist and author), John le Mesurier (actor best known for Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army), Alan Lennox-Boyd (politician and a member of Winston Churchill’s peacetime government), Jonathan Marsden (art historian and curator), Christopher Morcom (promising scientist and mathematician, school friend of Alan Turing), Peter Oliver (soldier and mountaineer), Alastair Pilkington FRS (glass technologist), David Sheppard (England Test cricketer and Bishop of Liverpool), Hyla Stallard (ophthalmologist, won a bronze medal in the men’s 1500 metres at the 1924 Olympic Games), Frank Sherwood Taylor (Director of the Science Museum), Hugh Swynnerton Thomas (Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, historian), John Watson (film producer, professor at USC Cinematic Arts, holder of the Cubby Broccoli Endowed Chair), John Wilkinson (poet), John Wilsey (British army officer and author).

Lyon House, 2008. (Sherborne School Archives)

House letter: g (formerly House letter of Maperty/Wildman’s).

House colours: blue and black (formerly house colours of Ramsam House).

House motto: J’ai bien servi (I served well).

House magazines: Lyon House Letter, The Lyon’s Den.

House cricket team (played local villages): The Magnates (founded 1955).

Former dormitory names:
Becher – named in memory of James Stewart Becher (1910-1941)
Bennett – named in memory of Maurice Porter Bennett (1897-1917)
Gibbons – named in memory of John Gibbons (1897-1917)
Halliday – named in memory of Charles Graham Rivers Halliday (1897-1917)
Morcom – named in memory of Christopher Collan Morcom (1911-1930)
Pick – named in memory of David Bryan Pickering Pick (1921-1940)

In 2008 the dormitories were renamed after former Lyon Housemasters:
3rd form dorms – Ross, Holmes, Boissier.
4th form dorms – Ketley, Hatch, Francis.

Housemasters:
1911 Robert Theodore Milford (1862-1935)
1914 Alexander Hamelin Trelawny-Ross (OS) (1884-1967)
1946 Hugh Holmes (1910-1993)
1961 Peter Boissier (1921-2004)
1969 Roger Ketley (1933-2024)
1983 Michael Hatch
1995 Patrick Francis
2006 Guy Briere-Edney
2011 Ben Sunderland
2023 David Murray

Online Resources:

For further information about the Sherborne School Archives please contact the School Archivist

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