Barnes Wallis was educated at Christ’s Hospital school between 1900 and 1904, and maintained a long association with the school thereafter. He excelled in maths, English and the sciences, and was taught mechanical drawing. Three of the books he won as prizes while at the school were acquired recently by the collector Ray Hepner, who has kindly sent me photographs of both the splendidly engraved bookplates and the books themselves. The prizes were for Mathematics, English and French, which indicates the broadness of Wallis’s educational attainments.

Besides these, Wallis also won other prizes while at Christ’s Hospital, as can be seen from the list below, dated July 1903, when he won the Willcox Prize for Science.

A measure of the affection that Wallis had for the school was his donation of the sum of £10,000 which he had been awarded for his war work by the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors. He passed this on to Christ’s Hospital to support the children of people who had served in the RAF. A trust was set up in conjunction with the RAF Benevolent Fund, which matched the donation. Since 1952 over 150 pupils have benefitted from the Trust and all have worn the Foundationers’ badge, designed by Wallis.

Ray Hepner has also sent me three photographs taken during Wallis’s time at Christ’s Hospital, showing the art school, dining room and tuck shop. No one has yet been able to pinpoint the young Wallis in any of the pictures, but he could well be in some or all of them.

Ray also has a copy of the very rare 1830 edition of the History of Christ’s Hospital and a splendid stained glass window from the original building in Newgate, London, retrieved when the building was demolished in 1902. (Both seen below).

All pics: Ray Hepner Collection