On November 16 Alistair Lexden visited Scarisbrick Hall School, near Ormskirk in Lancashire, an award-winning member of the Independent Schools Association, of which he is President. After touring the school, he opened a set of new science laboratories which have been created within its remarkable Gothic Revival Grade One listed building. They form part of a programme of expansion and development being undertaken by the Headley family who bought the school in 2009 with a firm commitment to safeguarding its future. The owners work in close and successful partnership with the school’s dynamic head, Jeff Shaw.
Numbers at the school are rising to the 500 mark ; exam results are impressive(in 2013 two pupils achieved the highest GCSE scores in the country); and in 2014 an excellent inspection report was obtained. But more important than any of this to the school is its commitment to instilling the highest moral values in its pupils.
“Home from home”, Alistair Lexden told senior pupils when he addressed them before returning to Westminster. Augustus Pugin was the architect of both Scarisbrick Hall and the House of Lords. (His son, Edward Welby Pugin, did further work at Scarisbrick in the 1860s.) The resemblances between the two are striking. The visitor could not repress feelings of covetousness. Though he felt that Westminster should leave the magnificent tower at Scarisbrick alone, he thought that its fine wood carvings, paintings, mouldings and models of knights in armour could be transported most usefully to Westminster where they would fit in brilliantly with Pugin’s work there.
He did not put this proposal to the vote, but he did ask for a show of hands on the issue of whether 16 and 17-year-olds should be included in the forthcoming EU referendum, a proposal widely supported in the Lords. Interestingly, opinion was split fairly evenly.