Writer and broadcaster Ian Hislop visited Ardingly College, his old school in West Sussex, on June 25, to unveil a special sculpture, a galvanized wrought iron statue of a pelican preparing to take flight from the school terrace. It was dedicated to former pupils and its site overlooks what’s known at Ardingly as The View - miles of West Sussex countryside.
“How nice not to see a pelican covered in oil,” began Ian Hislop - clearly referring to events off the coast of Florida. He went on to describe the Ardingly bird as a symbol of the freedom to fly high which the school education gave him and his friends. Calling the sculpture ‘extraordinary’ he also joked, “As pieces of modern art go, I can’t think of a single rude thing to say about it!”
He told his audience of Old Ardinians, parents and students: “With the cohort of friends who remain with you from Ardingly – it’s not a solo flight. Every day I walked out on to the terrace to look at the view with friends. Sometimes we would talk about what we would become in the future. Everything I have achieved was started here at Ardingly. I also expect I wondered what sort of old bore they would get to do a thing like unveiling a statue – and now it’s me!”
Ian Hislop praised “the fantastic, inspirational teachers” he had encountered at Ardingly. “I had a real education here and I mean real in the widest sense; it gave me a genuine questing desire to work out more than just how many marks you’d gain for each section of an exam paper. It was an amazing privilege to be here.”
The idea for the sculpture’s site on the school terrace came about following the co-educational independent school’s 150th anniversary in 2008, when Ardingly College set out to recognize formally the contribution that all students, past and present, have made to the school and with the inspiration of a story told by a previous headmaster.
In the 1980s James Flecker, who was at today’s unveiling, found an old man looking over the wall of the terrace at the miles of Sussex countryside stretching out beyond the Balcombe viaduct. It transpired that the man came to Ardingly every year to see the view because, when he was in the Merchant Navy on the North Sea convoys during the second world war and was being regularly torpedoed it was the memory of the view that kept him going. Unfortunately, that was the last year the man came and his identity was never known.
Former Ardingly pupil Millie Wilkins designed the statue while in the sixth form at Ardingly, after a school visit to Antony Gormley’s studio. She described herself as delighted by the ‘elegance’ of the execution of her drawing by Hurstpierpoint-based artist blacksmith James Price. Millie, who is doing a Foundation year in art at Brighton and Hove City College, said the process of seeing her work become a sculpture had inspired her to move on to a degree in 3D Design at Falmouth University next year.
l-r - Peter Green, headmaster; Millie Wilkins, artist; James Price, blacksmith; Ian Hislop; Susie Winter, Ardingly art department.
Wed 30th Jun 2010
