How refreshing it was to read (May 11) that William Dimech, the outgoing headmaster of St Edward`s College, has hit on a novel way of raising money for restoring the college`s 700-foot-long crumbling boundary wall, and of celebrating his admission to the college, nearly 50 years ago.
College rectors and headmasters are not usually renowned for outstanding sporting activities; unlike sports masters in boarding schools, who often are. In the days of corporal punishment, they were usually too busy administering the ferulas to recalcitrant college boys, to find time for other activities!
So far as I am aware, the only other college rector and headmaster who displayed a similar urge to strenuous exercise, and then only once yearly, was the Rev. Dr Frederick Kerr McClement, the college`s first rector and headmaster.
More grist, therefore, to Mr Dimech`s mill!
Fr McClement, whose background as a Royal Navy chaplain and later as a diocesan clergyman at Westminster Cathedral did not include visiting seven altars of repose during Holy Week, was very impressed by the fervour with which the Maltese abided with this form of adoration, which is unknown in most European countries.
Mackie, as he was known to us boys, decided to go one better. He reckoned that it would do his soul (and his ample girth!) a world of good if, each year during Holy Week, he were to walk from college to seven separate parish churches located in the south of the island, and visit the altar of repose in each. Quite a strenuous undertaking for a man of his age!
Armed with a walking stick, rosary beads, a sun-hat, and the best of intentions, the rector did just that, for many years; come rain or shine.
But to return to the matter in hand: The boundary wall, which is 129 years old, is in urgent need of costly repairs. It is incumbent on all Old Edwardians and parents to help generously.
St Edward`s College occupies the buildings of Cottonera Military Hospital, which was built on three plots of land purchased by the Imperial government in November 1870.
A 148-bedded, ultra-modern hospital was built by the Royal Engineers and completed in August 1873. The overall cost, including the equipment and the laying out of the grounds, was £21,000 - a modest sum, even for those days.
The hospital was handed over to the medical establishment of the 1st Battalion the 13th Regiment of Foot (Somersetshire Light Infantry) on August 28, 1873, which duly vacated the Lower Vittoriosa Military Hospital on the same day.
Some years later, the Army Medical Services (later the RAMC) took it over, and set it up as the leading general military hospital in Malta.
The hospital`s contribution to the treatment of thousands of severely wounded and sick troops in the First World War (1914-18) was outstanding. In one year alone, 3,175 sick and wounded patients were admitted. Cottonera main and tented hospital became the main hospital for the many thousands of dysentery, typhus, enteric group, malaria, trench-foot, arthritis, and other debilitating cases, resulting from the dreadful and unhygienic conditions under which the soldiers on the Gallipoli, Salonica, and Bulgarian fronts were fighting.
Cottonera Military Hospital closed down on June 29, 1920, and remained vacant until January, 1929 when, at the request of Lady Strickland, the War Office handed over the buildings to the board of governors of a proposed public boarding school, to be named St Edward`s College, which opened in the summer and received the foundation pupils, just 31 boys, on October 1, 1929.