Concordia

Concordia Winter 2018 5 Concordia Winter 2018 4 A ll too often a subjective judgement is made of Headmasters based on their declining years. When I first met Hugh Elder in February 1958 (as a timorous candidate for Merchant Taylors’ 11+ entry) he had been a Head for 20 years; he had also recently suffered the tragic loss of a son and endured a torrid year of disciplinary issues such as were a regular occurrence in boys’ schools of the 1950s but which were all too readily swept under the headmagisterial carpet; not so for Hugh Elder who was nothing if not “valiant for truth”; he remained a strict disciplinarian until the end of his time in 1965. In my seven years at MTS I saw a fine schoolmaster coming to the end of his career; and then in my final Michaelmas Oxbridge term Hugh Elder’s already fading image was further eclipsed by the arrival of a dynamic successor, a bright young Eton Housemaster, Brian Rees, always described as a “breath of fresh air”. Sadly, the image of a rather austere, distant pedagogue remains; in part, this fits my own impression of my years with him at MTS. But it is far from the full story of a man who deserves proper recognition as a great Headmaster. Hugh Elder President of the OMT Society Christopher Hirst reflects on the headmastership of Hugh Elder, Headmaster of Dean Close 1938-46 and Merchant Taylors’ 1946-65. “Arriving at Merchant Taylors’ immediately after WWII and only 13 years after the school’s move out of the City to Sandy Lodge, Elder was to transform the school in many different ways.”