Stories from the Archives: Alice Millea on the Front Entrance Inscription

Campion Hall moved to its current building on Brewer Street in 1935. Thanks to Master Martin D’Arcy’s vision, and influential and glamorous social circle, the Hall had been able to secure the services of renowned architect Edwin Lutyens to design the building. Lutyens cleverly incorporated an existing building on the site, known as Micklem Hall, into the new design and the building was first occupied by staff and students in Michaelmas term 1935.

What might seem odd, as it certainly did to me, was that Lutyens appears not to have included a sign on the front of the new building to say what it was. For nearly 50 years, the Hall’s only form of identification to the outside world were the words ‘Campion Hall’ in very small letters on the letter box on the door to Micklem Hall.

Barely readable from any distance, this is not what would constitute clear signage nowadays; but this served as the Hall’s external identifier for nearly half a century. Records in the Hall Archives show that the handsome inscribed name in the stonework at the main entrance was not added to the building until 1985.

In a letter of 1 November 1984 to the Hall’s architect Bill Evans (of the firm of William Evans and Partner), Master Peter Hackett SJ raised the issue of the Hall’s lack of visible name. He wrote:

‘’it has been suggested that there should be some indication that our front door is indeed the front door of Campion Hall, and that the postman should, in fact, be able to deliver letters there. Hitherto, the nameplate and letter box have been attached to Micklem Hall... I myself can visualise some incised inscription on the stonework but find it totally impossible to visualise a letter box in the Lutyens front door”.

Fr Hackett’s suggestion of an incised inscription on the stone surrounding the front door was adopted and Bill Evans put him in touch with sculptor Michael Clark. Following a preliminary visit to the Hall to see the building and the space intended for the inscription, Clark submitted his proposal for the signage in January 1985. His original drawing of 29 January 1985 is in the Hall Archives. It sets out the design, size, and location of the new lettering.

The records also include correspondence between Clark and Fr Hackett on the logistics of getting the work done. That January was particularly cold, and Clark was reluctant to stand outside, carving the inscription in the snow (4 inches deep, he wrote). It was agreed to wait until the weather became more clement and Clark visited the Hall to carry out the work six months later at the end of June.

In the end, Fr Hackett’s fears about a letter box being cut into the main Lutyens door came to nothing. Lutyens’s door escaped unscathed, and the original named letter box remains today on the door of Micklem Hall.