Published in Windlesora 26 (2010)
© WLHG
Beaumont has long been an important building in Old Windsor’s history. At one time lived in by Warren Hastings, it became the Jesuit boarding school Beaumont College which lasted for over a hundred years and had several visits by Queen Victoria. After a short time as a training college it came into the business world in the ownership of ICL and thence into multiple commercial operations under the umbrella heading of Peritas. Now it is being developed as a high class hotel and conference centre and is keen to develop usage for hospitality events.
When I read that the Chapel had been restored for use as a function room I realised that this would provide the opportunity to go and see the Rose Window.
So I wrote and asked if two of us could visit and see it, and Hester Davenport and I went and were given a comprehensive tour of the principal rooms in the hotel which is now marketed as The White House and fitted out in considerable luxury.
The Chapel itself is a large room with decorated walls which have been restored by a team of conservationists and the large Rose Window, whose glass was made in the Old Windsor Stained Glass Manufactory.
It was good to see the room looking so smart again, when it had been inaccessible and useless for so many years. We did wonder, however, what the Jesuits would have thought of the small bar now incorporated in the area used for wedding receptions and corporate dining.
We were also lucky to be taken on a tour of other areas, seeing two war memorials to old Beaumont boys and a little private cemetery which seemed to contain the graves not of the Jesuits (who are buried in the Church Road cemetery) but of boys who had died while at school. This was only a passing impression of course, since we did not closely examine the headstones.
I remembered having gone to a school performance of The Frogs of Aristophanes, and I regularly swam in its swimming pool (said to be the first pool at a public school) when it was owned by ICL so I was pleased to visit Beaumont in its most recent incarnation.
Windsor Local History Group 