Nobody at the School now seems to remember the sad fate of Percy Bigland's portrait of the Headmaster Edmund Ashby, described by Francis Arnold Knight in his centenary history as 'one of the School's treasures'. Like Bigland's fine portrait of Knight, it used to hang in the drawing room. After a Young Quakers summer school it was found to be missing. The surmise was that it was damaged in some horseplay and that, rather than own up, the culprits destroyed it. I was told by a former English master that the School never had the Young Quakers again.

The portrait is reproduced in the Knight history.

My father Baden Baker (1900-1992) knew both Knight and Bigland. Bigland used to stay with my grandparents, Harry and Elvina Baker, at Paddingham House opposite the Avenue.

25 Feb 2026: A correction... The Knight portrait hangs in the drawing room now, but at the time of the disappearance both that and the Ashby portrait hung in the dining room.