Headmaster of Sherborne Preparatory School, 1880-1905.
William Heitland Blake was born on 8 December 1852 at Thurning in Norfolk, where his father the Rev. Henry William Blake (1798-1857) served as rector from 1824 until his death in 1857. William’s mother Mary Blake (née Heitland) (1810-1871) was the Rev. Blake’s second wife and daughter of Major William Peter Heitland (1763-1817) of the East India Company.
From 1865 to 1872 William attended Haileybury in Hertfordshire under Rev. Arthur Gray Butler (headmaster 1862-1867) and Rev. Edward Henry Bradby (headmaster 1868-1883) and in Michaelmas 1872 he matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1875 William was a member of the Cambridge University XV under captain and fellow Old Haileyburian Edward Temple Gurdon (1854-1929) and was awarded a rugby ‘Blue’. On 13 December 1875 William and Edward played for Cambridge against Oxford in the annual Varsity match at Kennington Oval, which ended in a narrow victory for Oxford. This was the first major rugby game played between two teams of fifteen, matches having previously been played twenty-a-side with thirteen forwards, three halfbacks, one three-quarter and three fullbacks.
In Easter 1876 William was appointed assistant master at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School in Staffordshire under headmaster Francis Elliott Kitchener (1838-1915), a cousin of Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (1850-1916). While working at the school William got to know the headmaster’s sister-in-law Katherine Emily Bradley Hammond (1855-1925), daughter of the Rev. John Parish Hammond (1798-1865) and Roosilia Elizabeth (née Dickinson) (1815-1876), and on 29 December 1880 William and Katherine were married at Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Francis Elliott Kitchener was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge where he was a contemporary and friend of the Rev. Edward Mallet Young (1839-1900) who in 1878 was appointed headmaster of Sherborne School. On 31 May 1880, the Rev. E.M. Young announced to the Governors of Sherborne School that the Rev. Alfred Charles Clapin (1826-1924) was stepping down as headmaster of the Prep and, in order to keep the Prep open, he had purchased Westbury House (now Wessex House) for £1250 and was giving a five-year lease of the property to William Heitland Blake who was then working for his friend at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School.
In September 1880 William moved to Sherborne and took over the headmastership of the Prep, where in December 1880 he was joined by his new wife Katherine.
The Prep thrived under William’s headship and by June 1884 there were thirty-six boys on the school roll. William needed larger premises for his growing school and purchased from the trustees of the congregational church a two acre green field site in Acreman Street known as ‘Meeting House Close’. Here he built Acreman House, on the south front of which can still be seen his initials ‘W.H.B’ and the date 1885.
The author John Cowper Powys (1872-1963), who was a pupil at the Prep from May 1883 to July 1886, recalled in his Autobiography (1967) the building of Acreman House and how he spent one Saturday afternoon on the building site jumping over the emerging walls. Acreman House was designed by Sherborne architects Farrall & Edmunds and built by Messrs. Young of Salisbury. It comprised a dining room, three classrooms, a matron’s room and six dormitories. William took great pride in both his new house and the garden, which he personally arranged and planted. By Easter 1886 Acreman House was completed and William and Katherine, together with assistant master and Old Shirburnian George Hamley Bent (1859-1950) and thirty-two boys, moved in. One of these boys was a future headmaster of the Prep – Littleton Charles Powys (1874-1955).
Although the Prep was now financially independent from Sherborne School the ties between the two establishments remained strong and at Sherborne School’s Commemoration Day on 25 June 1886, the Head of School recommended in his address to the assembled parents that they should send their younger sons (‘budding boys’) to Mr Blake’s new Prep School which would ‘serve as a nursery for those who are putting forth their tender shoots with a view to becoming members of the great school.’
The running of Acreman House was left to Katherine who was responsible for recruiting house staff, often posting advertisements in the Western Gazette. In May 1899 Katherine posted an advertisement for a good plain cook, in January 1900 she advertised for a housemaid who must be a strong-well trained girl of 20, with no fringe and not from Sherborne, and in November 1902 for a dormitory maid aged between 18 and 20 and of neat appearance. In his autobiography The Joy of It (1937), Littleton Powys described how four boys would be invited to join William and Katherine for Sunday lunch in their private dining room where Katherine, who was ‘very small of stature’, would endeavour to make conservation with the boys, two seated either side of her.
Although William and Katherine had no children of their own, like Mr Chips they had ‘Thousands of them. Thousands of them… and all boys.’ Amongst the many boys who attended the Prep during William’s headmastership were Prince Wasif Ali Mirza (1875-1959) who became His Highness the Nawab Bahadur of Murshidabad 1906-1959; Edward Bamford (1887-1928) who was awarded the VC for conspicuous gallantry during the Zeebrugge raid on 23 April 1918; Robert Bamford (1883-1942) one of the founders of the company that made the Aston Martin motor cars and designed their first car the Coal Scuttle; and six of the Powys brothers – John Cowper Powys (1872-1963), Littleton Charles Powys (1874-1955), Theodore Francis Powys (1875–1953), Albert Reginald Powys (1881-1936), Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939) and William Ernest Powys (1888-1978).
William clearly made an impression on his pupils. A tall, powerful and imposing man he was remembered by the boys as ‘a great-hearted Englishman, worthy of the great name he bore, and eminently fitted to instill into younger generations the highest Public School traditions, to serve God and honour the King’. He was a keen fisherman and enjoyed fishing for pike in Sherborne Castle lake, which he would bring back to eat at the Prep, and fly fishing in Ireland and Scotland during the holidays, he also loved sailing which earned him the nickname ‘Sailor Bill’. He also shared his love of literature with the boys – reading to them from Treasure Island, The Ingoldsby Legends and the works of Mark Twain. Littleton Powys remembered how ‘he read admirably and he would sometimes bring us into his drawing room and read to us, an entertainment we much enjoyed.’ The author John Cowper Powys credited William with his first public literary triumph when he praised his essay ‘A Voyage round my Chamber’ and was particularly grateful to him for the excellent library at the Prep of which he was made librarian and read for the first time Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and The Three Musketeers. Another unlikely area where William made a lasting impression on his boys was, according to Littleton Powys, instilling in them a love of olives! He also found time to serve on the board of Sherborne Urban District Council and as chairman of the local Conservative association.
In 1904, William inherited a considerable fortune from his half-brother Henry Blake (1843-1904) and in 1905 he sold the Prep to Littleton Charles Powys (1874-1955) who remained headmaster until 1923. William and Katherine left the Prep at Easter 1905, but before leaving William presented Sherborne School library with a first edition of John Hutchins’ History of Dorset (1774), which is still held in the School’s collection.
William returned to his native Norfolk where he bought Billingford Hall at North Elmham near Dereham. He did not, however, give up his interest in the education of boys and became involved with the nearby Watts Naval Training School, serving as secretary to the visiting committee and on the board of managers. The school, which was run from 1903 to 1953 by Dr Barnardo’s, trained selected Barnardo’s boys for the Royal Navy or mercantile Marine. Despite also serving as a JP for Norfolk, he found time to maintain his links with Sherborne, visiting and being visited by former colleagues.
On 17 March 1916 William died at Billingford Hall and was buried in the extension to the burial ground of St Peter’s church in Billingford, land which he had recently given to the parish. The funeral service was conducted by the Rev. C.W. Peck (rector), the Rev. H. Banister (resident chaplain and officer in charge of the Watts Naval Training School), and William’s nephew the Rev. W.M. Selwyn (vicar of St Simon’s, Upper Chelsea, London). The funeral was attended by 111 of the Watts boys, including the School band. Amongst the bequests William left in his will was £50 each to his four godchildren, one of whom was Patience Wilson (1899-1944), daughter of Thomas Ward Wilson (1849-1924) who taught at Sherborne School and was housemaster of The Green.
The following month a tribute by Sherborne School master William Beauchamp Wildman (1852-1922) appeared in The Shirburnian (April (1916):
‘He was one of the kindest men I have ever known, quiet in manner and deliberate in speech, thoroughly genuine in all he did and felt. Beneath his quite manner there lay a great enthusiasm for all causes and ideas which appealed to him, and these were many and sacred in his eyes, for he was a man of very wide sympathies. To us in Sherborne who knew him, the news of his death brings real sorrow, and the many old Shirburnians, who were under him, will share this feeling with us, for we have all been parted from a friend.’
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