Issue 19, 2013 - Balliol College - University of Oxford

features
for them is that they increased the
number of student rooms and SCR
elbow room very considerably.
Formality in dress was already
waning when I came up in 1961,
but gowns were still worn by
students for tutorials, and by all
for dinner and Chapel; and for
a visit to Sir David Lindsay Keir,
Master, a dark suit under the
gown was expected. The Head
Scout inspected diners as they
filed into Hall; ties were required.
The food at dinner (consumption,
or at any rate payment for it, was
compulsory) was rotten, and for the
sporty insufficient in quantity: but
it was possible to get two servings
by putting your empty plate under
the table and looking innocent
or relying on the connivance of
your scout. Most scouts (all of
whom were men) were in fact in
cahoots with all sorts of minor
undergraduate misbehaviour. The
The food has
improved
beyond our then
imagination . . .
Living conditions
are far more
comfortable.
The Bishop of Durham
having John Balliol
whipped. From the mural
by Gilbert Spencer in
Holywell Manor, c.1934.
night Porter was easily corrupted; a
packet of fags got admission in the
small hours – so much easier than a
perilous drainpipe climb, which few
of us attempted more than once.
The gowns have now gone from
Balliol (except for Fellows, and
Chapel, where they have recently
been readopted by the Choir), the
food has improved beyond our then
imagination, nobody dreams of
making reference to ‘College Servants’,
and there is no restriction inviting
bribery. Living conditions are far
more comfortable, with some en
suite facilities and central heating:
improvements driven by the need to
encourage conference bookings on
which the College depends so heavily.
Many social details contrasting
then and now come into my head.
Smoking, now a furtive deplorable
habit: one of my first Tutors
invariably began tutorials by offering
a cigarette, and the other smoked
memorable cigars. And security. Few
staircases had doors, and student
rooms (at any rate mine) had no
locks. I once got a flea in my ear
from the Dean for fixing a padlock
to a drawer in my room – not for
damaging the furniture, which was
utility junk, but for the implication
that I did not trust my scout. And
laundry. Once a week you packed
your shirts etc. in a pillow case and
left it at the foot of your staircase
in the laundry basket. A few days
later your shirts etc. reappeared
beautifully ironed, and you were
charged through battels in the
following term. There were other
services on battels which have gone.
There was a bike repair man and
a seamstress; we were, I suppose,
thought incapable of sewing on a
button. Above all there was room
service; my scout called me every
morning – hardly necessary as my
room was by the back gate where at
dawn hundreds of bottles of milk
were noisily unloaded. He would
come in with a cheery ‘Mornin’, Sir,
it’s rainin’,’ and pull back the curtains;
later he would make my bed and tidy
the room.
Students have passed from
relative affluence to penury since I
arrived in 1961. I was broke then,
broke when I graduated, and broke
when I was elected to my first
Fellowship, but I had no debts. A
state scholarship, and a few prizes
along the way, had kept me solvent
despite unrestrained participation in
Balliol life. The College has always
done its best to help its poorer
people along, which incidentally was
one of Dervorguilla’s instructions.
But debt-laden departure is now the
norm for British students who have
no family resource to tap.
In the early 1960s the College, led
by Christopher Hill (later Master)
and the science Fellows, decided to
turn towards research and graduates.
This was in tune with the times
(though not with Sir David Lindsay
Keir, then Master), and the legacy
of their initiative is the modern
vibrant Holywell Manor graduate
community. It is difficult, you might
think, to regret anything there. But
there is a small downside. In 1961
graduates and undergraduates
were mixed up in accommodation
and social life, and I believe the
undergraduate experience was richer
for that.
The evolution which has taken
place in so many areas of Balliol
life in my time has mostly been in
the same directions as in society
as a whole, but this is not so for
the Chapel, which has bucked the
downward drift of the Church
of England. The small group of
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