Winchester College War Cloister

The Winchester College War Cloister is a war memorial at Winchester College, in Hampshire, designed by the architect Sir Herbert Baker. The roofed quadrangle is said by Historic England to be the largest known private war memorial in Europe. It became a Grade II listed building in 1950, and was upgraded to Grade I in 2017, as one of 24 war memorials in England designed by Baker that were designated by Historic England as a national collection. Background The memorial was a project of the school's headmaster Montague Rendall, to commemorate the 500 Wykehamists killed in the First World War, at a time when the total number of boys at the school was around 450; a similar number of Wykehamists were wounded in the war, and around 900 were awarded decorations for gallantry. Around 2,500 former pupils, quiristers (choristers), and staff from the Winchester College served in the British armed forces in the war; four were awarded the Victoria Cross: Captain Arthur Kilby, Second Lieutenant Dennis Hewitt, and Lieutenant Colonel Charles Doughty-Wylie (all posthumously), and Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Burges (who was the only one of the four to survive the war). The first proposal for a school memorial made as early as 1915. The initial suggestion for a memorial hall expanded over time to include proposals for a new suite of rooms around a cloister. Baker was engaged as the architect, and made initial suggestions in April 1918. The large project was abandoned in 1921 due to lack of funds, and the proposals were scaled back to comprise a new cloister, together with rebuilding the reredos and a new altar by W. D. Caröe for the school chapel, and funds to educate the sons of Wykehamists killed in the war. (Baker was also commissioned to design a memorial cloister for his own school, at Tonbridge, but the project was abandoned on grounds of cost.)