Wesley House - Part II

Editors Note: This article follows on from Rev. Dr. Glass’ ‘The Story of Wesley House Part One’ published in Holiness 8.2. Here, Glass picks up the journey at the outbreak of World War II, as the College turns towards an era of unprecedented challenge.

“The twenty or so young men who gathered in the Chapel

in October 1939, found themselves surrounded by war

in Europe and filled with a conflict of feelings…War, which for

so long had been a fear and a rumour, was now a fact…

To the academic courses were added A.R.P. lectures and,

later, fire-watching rotas…The success of the staff in preserving

this normality and, indeed, in managing to keep the college

going at all, evoked, and still evokes, the admiration and

gratitude of those who benefited from their endeavours…Food

rations became small, fuel supplies scarcer, and the winters more

Arctic. ‘A’ block was given over to the undergraduate members of

Jesus College…By 1942 the numbers of students had fallen so

low that the time was clearly approaching when, in the absence

of candidates for the Ministry, the original line of tradition would

be broken, however temporarily, by the closing of the college”¹.

When the Second World War broke out the staff of Wesley House were faced with a range of issues but, at first, there seems to have been remarkably little impact on college life. Whilst many of the students had expected to be drafted into the Army or into Circuits, everything, at first, carried on as normal. Black out curtains were put up, fire buckets and shovels appeared, the cycle shed was turned into an air raid shelter. Term started early in 1939 and in those ten days the students took courses in first aid and anti-gas precautions.

However as the war dragged on the changes forced on the college became more and more obvious. Student numbers dropped off rapidly due to the national draft and Wesley House opened its doors to students and lecturers from other institutions, including neighbours at Jesus College and the London School of Economics. As the war carried on, one Methodist training college after another closed its doors and was either taken over for war use or shut down. This was a very real threat for Wesley House, and in the summer of 1943 it seemed as though the college would have to close for a short time. However a solitary Methodist student was to save the day. Joseph de Graft Johnson from the Gold Coast (modern day Ghana) became the thin thread that meant that Wesley House was the only Methodist College in Britain that carried on its function of training Methodist Ministers throughout the war.

The war period brought other events which were to affect the college deeply. In August of 1940, at the age of 66, founding Principal Maldwyn Hughes died. His achievements can hardly be overestimated. He was responsible for bringing together the two people whose generous donations were to make the college possible. He started the college, single handedly, with a handful of students. He was involved in finding and negotiating for the final site of the college, and it was his father-like care that gave Wesley House its early ethos and atmosphere.

At the end of the war Wesley House was a changed institution. When the new intake of students arrived for the start of the Michaelmas term 1945 they were effectively starting a whole new college. As with many educational institutions Wesley House was a college that had depended on its sense of tradition and continuity. The war broke that continuity. In many ways the new group of students in 1945 were starting with a clean slate, able to create a college atmosphere and ethos that was suitable and appropriate to them.

Another major change was in the makeup of the student body itself. Before the war the average student of Wesley House was in his early twenties having completed a university degree somewhere else. The vast majority of them had never worked in paid employment, had never been abroad and had a set of experiences that were largely limited to what University life could offer. The group of students who came in immediately after the war were different. They were older (usually in their mid 20s) and virtually all of them had seen service of one sort or another.

“I came straight from demobilisation from the Navy…A person like

Benjamin Drury [Student] had been in Singapore and became a prisoner and was

transported to Japan and came out of Japan lucky to have survived.

After that kind of experience it was like a resurrection from the dead, so

obviously we were full of exuberance. I think Wesley House before that

had been run rather like a public school, before the war - we rather broke

that tradition!”²

The post war students were more mature. They had seen more, experienced more and had been changed by that. They were far less likely to put up with the rules and restrictions that had bound Wesley House students in the past. It was a student body that was a curious mix of maturity and exuberance.

The staff of the college, Newton Flew and W.F Flemington, both seem to have been rather bemused by the immediate post-war situation. They attempted to run the college along the lines that had existed before the war and constantly came up against a student body who were not prepared to put up with the rules and restrictions that they tried to impose. The exuberant high jinks of the students to them appeared unseemly, and they found the lack of willingness to accept authority rather aggravating. Every misdemeanour and flouting of authority was followed up and acted upon. There was the occasion when the student group of 1947 stuck an 8ft high snowball outside the lecture room door. It was the infamous cold winter of 1947, the temperature dropped rapidly overnight and the snowball froze over. The next morning Flew stood at the doorway of the Chapel as the students arrived for morning prayers and gazed at each one in deep sorrow.

In June 1946 Flew was appointed President of the Methodist Conference and to help cover his teaching duties while he was away on official business Conference appointed one of the brightest young Ministers in the Connexion to take on the duties of President’s Assistant at Wesley House. Gordon Rupp had himself been a student at the college and was prepared to give the students a little more freedom to let off steam occasionally. He was rapidly gaining a reputation as a lucid and brilliant scholar and was ideally suited to taking on some of the teaching duties. He and his wife were given a downstairs set of rooms in ‘C’ staircase. Flew was very anxious to point out that Mrs. Rupp was the first woman ever to stay in the student accommodation in the college, and he laid down strict rules to cover this fact. The Rupp’s were not to have any visitors after 10pm, and female visitors in the college rooms were not allowed.

Other, larger, issues were to be faced in the years to come. Post war Methodism was faced with an acute shortage of Ministers. The assumed shrinkage of the number of Methodist churches due to amalgamations following the Methodist Union in 1932 had not taken place at the rate imagined, and therefore the number of Ministers needed had also not faced the fall that had first been planned for. In 1954 a report came before the Methodist Conference which suggested:

“The Committee agreed unanimously on the general principle that the sole

condition of a man’s acceptance for the Ministry should be the evidence of

God’s call and of his fitness in the widest sense for the work of the Ministry.

Questions of age and marriage, though of importance, should only be

admitted as they affect the Church’s judgement of these primary

Considerations. They recommend, therefore, that the regulations making

marriage, per se a barrier, and age a handicap to acceptance be rescinded,

and that Examination Committees, Synods and Conferences be free to

consider all offers for the Ministry on their merits on the basis of these

Principles”³.

The changes that were coming to Wesley House and their implications were huge. Hitherto, the community at Wesley House had been remarkable for its homogeneity. There was hardly any accommodation in the college that would be suitable for a married couple. What if these married students had families as well? The whole character and ethos of the college would be altered. The consequences of this set of proposals was far reaching and fundamental for Wesley House, and the staff of the college stood out against them as long as they could. Indeed, even in the mid 1960s the barriers being put up to married students coming into Wesley House saw them head elsewhere. It was only in the latter years of the 60s that the first wives of students started coming into the college.

It was appropriate then, considering the challenges that were gathering, that Newton Flew announced his retirement as Principal of the college in 1955. He had been suffering from ill health for a while. He had been a member of staff of the college for some 27 years. Flemington wrote this summing up Flew’s ministry in the House magazine,

‘Educated at at Christ’s Hospital and Postmaster of Merton College, the new

Tutor had gained two first classes at Oxford and two university awards.

This coupled with further theological study on the Continent, prepared him

for a Ministry in which scholarship and evangelism have never been

separated…Under his stimulating teaching a succession of students

Gained the highest honours in the Theological Tripos and won many

University prizes’⁴.

The genius, surely, of Flew’s period at Wesley House was that he followed and mapped out the careers of the students who came through the college with great care. He was always suggesting the names of Wesley House students to take positions of responsibility within the Church. He was constantly giving ideas about areas of study that might be followed up fruitfully, and he had a passion that first and foremost Wesley House should be a college which provided preachers of note and calibre for the Methodist Church.

Conference decided to appoint W.F. Flemington as Principal from 1955 and as Tutor they appointed Revd. Philip Watson. Watson too was an ex-student of Wesley House and understood the ethos of the College well. He was an expert in Lutheran studies. For him the centrality of grace was essential. He also came to Wesley House having been Principal of the Methodist training college at Handsworth in Birmingham. This presented potential difficulties, as a Principal of a college had now been appointed to a Tutor’s role. Not only that but he was serving under a person who was a newly appointed Principal. It came as little surprise to anybody that in 1959, after only four years as Tutor at the College, Philip Watson announced that he was leaving Wesley House to take up the position of Professor of Systematic Theology at Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Illinois. After his time at Wesley House the post at an American Seminary would give him the freedom and chance to spread his academic wings that he had been looking for.

The Governors of Wesley House and the General Committee of the Ministerial Training Department recommended that Revd. Michael J. Skinner be appointed to the Tutor’s post. Educated at The Leys School in Cambridge (where his father had been Chaplain for nearly 30 years), Michael Skinner read history at Jesus College and later trained for the Ministry at Wesley House. He had served six years as Assistant Tutor at Handsworth, six as Chaplain to the University students at Durham, and from there to the Filey Circuit where he had been Chaplain at Humanby School. Skinner was appointed to the Tutorship in systematic and pastoral theology. It was in the area of pastoral theology where he did his best work.

“For my second year the other member of staff was Michael Skinner,

and he had already influenced me before that because he was Meth.

Soc. Chaplain at Durham, and so it’s difficult to see to what extent he

influenced me in the House for that year, and to what extent I’d already

been influenced by him. But certainly I think in the House he was very

Helpful in that he came straight from Circuit and had quite valuable

Circuit practical experience to share with us about how you order your

day, how you do your visiting, many of the practical things of the Ministry

that probably we wouldn’t have got if we hadn’t had someone like him”⁵.

Skinner himself said later,

“I had no pretensions of being academically front line. I had never

envisaged doing this kind of thing. I was very happy being a Circuit

Minister despite its frustrations, it’s what I imagined I was going to do

with the rest of my life. And it was just because I was reasonably

competent to teach and the fact that I was in love with the local Church

as it were, at a time when people weren’t. I’d seen this happen in other

colleges and I had heartily approved of this - that at least one person

on the staff should be someone with experience of Circuit work and

someone who was in love with it, after all, you’re going to train most of

your people for this Ministry”⁶.

Flemington himself was obliged by financial constraints, and by the fear of having to go cap-in-hand to the Methodist Church, to run Wesley House on a very tight budget indeed. Every last penny had to be accounted for. A student who came to the college in 1964 arrived to find the black out curtains from the war still hanging in all the windows. Flemington was forced due to lack of funds to do most of the college book-keeping and accounting himself. He spent large amounts of time doing jobs around the college that should have been done by somebody else. He even went around rooms emptying the gas meters three times a year and supplying change to start each student off for the new term.

Elsewhere in the University, storms were brewing. In March 1963, John Robinson, a member of the Divinity School, published a slim book called ‘Honest to God’. It is difficult to overestimate the effect the ‘Honest to God’ debate was to have on the Churches. The book and the debate that surrounded it asked fundamental questions about the image Christians have of God not as ‘up there’ but ‘out there’. Interestingly one Wesley House student stated,

“Honest to God, of course was published the first March after I went into

Circuit and, interestingly, in that most of the people who came into

prominence through that movement were in Cambridge in the Divinity

Faculty, we knew not a thing about it”⁷.

This comment is revealing of the sheltered nature of Wesley House at the time. Could it be that the pressure of doing the Tripos in two years was such that Wesley House students really only had time to concentrate on their set areas of study of Old Testament, New Testament, Greek and early Church history? Was it that the slightly cloistered nature of the community meant a failure in grasping the wider debates that were going around but outside? Ferment and change was happening everywhere. Kennedy was elected (and then assassinated), the Cuban missile crisis caused deep anxiety, racial tensions and the civil rights struggle were taking place. In the midst of all of this the regime in Wesley House could feel behind the times. But even it was slowly changing. One of the reasons for this change was the high dropout rate of students in the early sixties. A number of students very soon after leaving college left the Ministry to pursue other careers. In 1962 for example, out of a total student body of twenty-three, six people left the Methodist Ministry reasonably soon after leaving college. This rate was uncomfortably high. Part of the answer seems to have been the rigidity of the college regime at a time when other colleges were relaxing their rules and encouraging open debate and student participation. In contrast, at Wesley House the student chairman always had C5 for his accommodation because of its direct access to the Principal’s Lodge. The colleges training was beginning to look divorced from the outside world. At other colleges students’ wives were part of the college community, and Christian names were used in all areas of college life.

Flemington decided to retire from the active Ministry in 1968. Up until that time he had resisted students’ wives being members of the college community. He had been a member of staff at Wesley House for thirty years. He had always maintained a huge interest in the lives and progress of the students who had been through the college. Whenever a student moved station in the Church they knew that a card of greeting from Flemington would arrive. Michael Skinner wrote of a man,

“Who is utterly humble and self-effacing as it is given to few Christians

to be…he has succeeded in evoking deep affection from many

generations of House men. Some have found, it is true, the discipline he

imposed on himself excessive when some of it was required of them! Some

have considered him too much of an unrepentant traditionalist in an age

of feverish change. Time will show whether they were right. But all, without

exception, have admired the strength of his convictions and the inimitable

Humour with which he has so often expressed them”⁸.

The person appointed as the new Principal of Wesley House was someone who had experience of the college both as student and as member of staff, Gordon Rupp. He was not only a brilliant scholar but also a Principal with drive and vision. It was quite clear to him that changes needed to be made within Wesley House in a number of areas. He was fortunate in that circumstances were converging that would force a series of radical and far reaching changes onto the college. In all of these changes he was supported and helped by Michael Skinner who had long seen the need for movement. One of the first things that Rupp did which was of symbolic importance more than anything else was the taking down of the decorations in the Chapel. The wall murals were removed and the apse decoration painted out. Chapel decorations that had been in place since the 1930s were gone and that served as a powerful sign to the students that Rupp’s new brush was going to sweep clean.

Far more significant changes were not far behind. For a number of years students training for the Methodist Ministry had been permitted to marry, however Flemington had striven to maintain Wesley House as a college full of young bachelors. With his retirement the number of married students bringing their wives to college with them increased quickly. By the academic year 1969/70 there were seven married students in the college, some of them with children. In order to accommodate this all sorts of changes came about. It would be difficult to overestimate the effect that this had. From being an almost monastic institution of single young men with a highly formal, rigid lifestyle, the atmosphere began to become more and more informal and relaxed. Whereas previously there had been afternoon tea and evening prayers now a number of students had the pressures of young family life. Babies had to be bathed and put to bed. Family meal times were important. Children could not be stopped from running round the quad when students were writing essays. From being a place where even the appearance of a woman in the grounds would spark comment, there were now women who made up a significant, yet separate, part of the college community. The staff had no authority over this increasingly important group within the life of the college. Here was a group who were very much part of the world outside the community. Would they be allowed to have their voice heard?

One change necessitated more changes. It was clear that with increasing numbers of families coming to Wesley House (of varying sizes) the whole purpose of the accommodation would have to change. With the advent of married students the likelihood increased that for some at least Wesley House would become their year round home. The staff then turned their minds to the possibility of a new building that would be made up of family flats of various sizes that could be lived in year round.

It became clear to Rupp and Skinner that a new building was needed. The original plan for Wesley House had been that the college would be completed by a fourth wing built along the Jesus Lane side of the site. The scheme itself would cost more than was available within Methodism and so Rupp and Skinner started looking for a benefactor. One of the only Methodists in this period who had the resources to be a new Michael Gutteridge to Wesley House was Lord Joseph Rank. Rank was not easy to negotiate with. He was a theological conservative and wanted to be sure that the students at Wesley House were only going to be taught what he considered to be sound Biblical theology. His support was vital and the Governors of Wesley House compiled a statement that was presented to him.

“The Governors and Trustees of Wesley House have no hesitation in Expressing their firm conviction that:- a)

In future those responsible for appointing the Principal of Wesley House would seek him from those known by their life and teaching to be men Inspired by the Holy Spirit.

b)

The training given in the College will continue to show a due and proper emphasis on the authority and power of the Holy Spirit.

3. It is the desire of the staff:- a)

To give sound teaching on the Ministry of Healing.

b)

To make full use of modern visual aids to teaching, so that when the Students go into Circuits they many know how to use this equipment n presenting the Gospel”⁹.

The pressure was mounting. It was clear that some married students would soon have to live in their own accommodation outside of the college. It was then that Lady Rank died and Lord Rank asked Michael Skinner if the whole sum could be given in memory of her. Work on the Lady Rank building, designed by Peter Hall, started in the summer of 1971.

Another factor for change was also quickly coming to a head. As early as the mid 1960s there had been discussions in a range of different places about the importance of the ecumenical training of Ministers of Religion. At the Methodist Conference of 1965 the possibility of making one or more Methodist colleges available for fully ecumenical training had been raised. Part of the background to what happened next was the debate in the late 1960s both within the Methodist Church and within the Anglican Communion as to the resources needed for Ministerial training. There was a bruising debate in Methodism regarding the number of colleges needed and the curriculum that ought to be taught. The Anglicans were also looking to cut drastically the amount of money spent on training. These moves put the two Anglican colleges in Cambridge (Westcott and Ridley) under immense pressure, and it was in this context that the three colleges began talking to each other with the purpose of creating a united front.

Gordon Rupp was to say in later years that the thinking behind what was to become the Cambridge Federation of Theological Colleges was not some utopian ecumenical vision, but the self-preservation of the colleges involved. Westcott and Ridley both quite suddenly came under the threat of closure. Ridley was told to cut it’s student numbers and Westcott was on the prescribed list for closure. Gordon Rupp, who was on the governing body of Westcott, used his position to push things along. In March 1968 he informed the Trustees of Wesley House that unofficial exploratory talks had taken place with staff at Westcott.

Rather then being adversely affected by the proposed new building at Wesley Hpuse the development proved to be an enticement. A large, well equipped hall would be available for lectures and joint worship. The pooling of other resources made complete sense, from library purchases to shared teaching the economies were obvious. In fact the staffing resource would make it possible to provide self-contained specialised Ministerial training within the colleges themselves. This would serve to considerably broaden the number of people who could be accepted for training at Wesley House. If internal courses run by the theological colleges in Cambridge were available then all academic barriers to students being sent to Cambridge would disappear. It meant that staff could create and develop custom made vocationally specific courses for the training of Ministers. Extended placements and Church attachments would be possible, lectures on counselling skills and pastoral theology could be added.

By May 1970 the Trustees of Wesley House were writing to the Council of Westcott informing them that the expensive new buildings were being committed to including a dining room extension. The letter sought written assurances that Westcott intended to avail itself of the new facilities.

The conversations progressed so smoothly that Gordon Rupp was able to write about the new ‘federal’ relationship in the 1971 edition of the Wesley House magazine.

“Our contribution […] will in the first place be ourselves. Even in these days

when denominational ties are not overplayed, I suggest that we will find

out, in the new comradeship, how Methodist we are, and find grateful

reappraisal of our own tradition. We shall also be contributing in a

practical way, by finishing the buildings and making them as up-to-date

an instrument as possible for our training”¹⁰.

And so the Cambridge Federation of Theological Colleges took its first steps. Courses were planned, lectures assigned and students received. The Rank building was completed and opened by the Queen Mother in 1973. In 1974 the first female students for Ministerial training entered Wesley House and, having done so much to secure the future of the institution, Gordon Rupp retired to be replaced by Michael Skinner. Change continued apace. In 1976 Cheshunt and Westminster Colleges joined the Federation and in 1977 Michael Skinner announced his intention to return to Circuit work in 1980. Revd. Brian Beck was appointed Principal elect in 1980.

From a small collection of single young men gathering in a rented room, Wesley House had come a long way. The training had been transformed, the breadth of folk who were able to access it had been transformed also. By the mid 1980s one student could say;

“Well I think the incident that I shall remember most was the garden party

at which the Federation said farewell to Brain Beck as he was leaving to

become Secretary of the Conference. It was quite a grand affair, the weather

was lovely, there were chairs et out on each side of the podium for special

guests, of which - a number from Methodism and outside Methodism would

assemble. There were a number of empty seats, and what I remember quite

vividly, first of all was David Deeks’ [Tutor] youngest child toddling over and

occupying one of the seats, and then my youngest child, who was two,

toddling over and occupying one of the seats, and it seemed to me to capture

the spirit of Wesley House in its new found role”¹¹.

These articles have been a reworked and substantially edited version of a Ph.D thesis that was written in the late 80s and early 90s. Since then the journey of Wesley House has continued and much has been transformed. There are new stories to be told and existing stories to be expanded upon. It is the author’s desire during an upcoming sabbatical to start work on that process.