Hurstpierpoint College - Notable Masters

Notable Masters

• Sabine Baring-Gould: Novelist and composer of hymns, the most notable being "Onward, Christian Soldiers". He was a Master of the College from 1855 to 1864. Baring-Gould had an eccentric reputation, and archives tell how he would teach with a bat on his shoulder and took weird holidays, bringing home a pony from Iceland, which lived for years in the North Field. Whilst the Hymn is thought to have been written in Yorkshire in 1865, a story recounts how Baring-Gould (known as"Snout") on one occasion gave a pupil of the College thirty-six (sic) cuts, and then washed his hands and sat down and wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers." A talented artist, he made and painted (well heraldically) the coat of arms of the Prince of Wales, which for many years appeared in the proscenium. Baring-Gould designed the cover of the Johnian (the College's publication), and designed the bookshelves and cases with their wrought iron, originally red and gold, in the Boys' Library. He also painted the window jambs with scenes from the "Canterbury Tales" and the "Faery Queen", and probably did work for the Fellows' Library. In 1860 he was one of the "Hurst Rifle Volunteers," who used to drill at the New Inn, which lead Hurst to be one of the founding Combined Cadet Forces schools.

He lived in the Shield rooms opposite to Rev. John Gorham. They mutually plagued each other. One put the huge Ammonite in the Fellows' Library into the other's bed. The response to this was the secretion of various cuckoo clocks in the room opposite, which heralded spring unintermittingly through the night hours.

• Thomas Fielden (musician): He was a famous Director of Music at Hurst, Charterhouse and Fettes, as well as a noted pianist, and Professor of Pianoforte at the Royal College of Music for over 30 years.

• Percy Henn: Noted clergyman and teacher in England and later Western Australia.

• David Whitmarsh: Academic at the University of Portsmouth.