24 Doors of Merchants’ – Day 20

Today’s doors lead to what is now the library at the Boys’ School!

This photograph shows the library in its former incarnation as the “Great Hall”. The lack of the 1st World War Memorial beneath the rose window dates the photograph to before 1923.
It was in this Hall that morning assemblies would be held with the Headmaster making announcements from the lectern beneath the large honours board, his staff arrayed round the sides with the pupils standing in the body of the Hall. Of the three honours boards on display on the far wall, magnification shows the board on the right lists winners of the Tyler Prize while the one in the centre could, possibly, list entrants to Oxford and Cambridge colleges.

The essential architecture of the room, the roof and windows, remains the same though the wooden steps outside the windows which acted as a fire escape have been removed and what appear to be gas mantles have been replaced by electric lighting.