The Abingdon Foundation, Park Road, Abingdon, Oxford OX14 1DE 01235 521563 • Edited by Julia Cooke – [email protected] 01235 849123 • Design – [email protected] Abingdon Out of the Past @abingdonschool @abingdonschool @abingdon_school linkedin.com/school/abingdonschool Pembroke College, Oxford celebrates the 400th anniversary of its foundation this year, an event made possible by a £5,000 bequest from Old Abingdonian Thomas Tesdale (1547-1610). Tesdale and the Rector of East Ilsley, Richard Wightwick, who in 1623 established an endowment of £100 a year, are now acknowledged as the joint founders of the College. The money however came with specific conditions: of the College’s ten Fellows and ten Scholars all twenty were to have been educated at Abingdon School. These conditions varied over the centuries but the last of the Abingdon Scholars at Pembroke College went up in 1985. This portrait, copied from a contemporary portrait in Christ’s Hospital, Abingdon was donated to the school in 1763 as part of the bi-centenary celebrations of John Roysse’s 1563 endowment of the school. Abingdon’s Pembroke Connection These stained-glass windows were among three sets inserted into the Roysse Room in 1911. The room is now part of the town’s Guildhall buildings but from 1563 to 1870 it was Abingdon’s school room. Two sets of windows were removed when the Guildhall buildings were extended in the 1970s. They were offered to the school on permanent loan and inserted into what is now the Staff Common Room. This particular set record OAs who were Heads of Oxford Colleges, including the seven consecutive Masters of Pembroke. William Adams OA, Master of Pembroke 1775-1789 The arms of Pembroke College, Oxford on a corbel in the Staff Common Room, the Big School room of 1870. Pembroke’s arms can be found decorating the school in several places. OA Masters of Pembroke College The preponderance of Abingdonian Scholars and Fellows meant that between 1709 and 1843 seven consecutive masters of Pembroke were Old Abingdonians: Colwell Brickenden, Matthew Panting, John Radcliffe (nothing to do with the hospital), William Adams, William Sergrove, John Smyth and George Hall. John Smyth OA, Master of Pembroke 1796-1809 George Hall OA, Master of Pembroke 1809-1843 Thomas Tesdale OA (1547-1610)
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