Leave The Window Alone

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30092, 28 March 1963, Page 14

Leave The Window Alone

The suggestion that the war memorial window in Canterbury University Hall should be transferred to a building on the university’s Ham campus could prove as contentious—and as ineffectual—as the suggested abandonment of the university’s Latin motto. Till recently the university authorities were too preoccupied with plans for the Ham buildings to spare time for considering the future of the Worcester street block. A start must be made soon to repair this lack. As classes are transferred to Ilam, opportunities will arise to restore the original Gothic beauty of the old buildings by the removal of ugly prefabricated rooms and alterations that have marred (though not irretrievably) the Victorian architects’ concept of academic dignity. But it would be unthinkable that the substantial stone structures. the quadrangle, the cloisters, and all the other enduring features of the former university college should have anything but a long life. For this reason the suggestion to shift the memorial window is inap-

I propriate and unnecessary. As the Mayor (Mr Manning) has pointed out. the window should be allowed to remain with the citizens of Christchurch city, to whom its beauties have become more familiar since it has been floodlit. Although the window itself was unveiled in September, 1938, it is part of a splendid hall! erected soon after the open-! ing of the university’s first! permanent buildings in 1877.1 As the uses of the Worees-! ter street buildings change with the expansion of the university at Ilam, the uses to which the hall is put are likely also to change. However. the hall should remain for the indefinite future a practical and historic asset! I to the community that the i university is designed to; ! serve. To move the window! ! from its. present site would !be to diminish its associa-! I tion with men who studied; •in the old grey buildings I and subsequently lost their : lives during the First World I War. The connexion between that cataclysm and ; the modernistic university j •at Ilam is tenuous in the! 1 extreme.