Science at Winchester was taught in Flint Court from the 1870s. It proved so popular that more space was needed so, in 1903, work began on Science School, believed to be the first major building dedicated to school science in Britain. Fortunately, it has been on the same site ever since which is why it has been able to retain so much of its original equipment and collections.
The Science Collection represents science teaching at Winchester with other artefacts and smaller collections being donated to the College in the past.
We are currently in the process of digitising highlights from the collection, some of which are available to view online.
The first full-time science teacher at Winchester College was W.B. Croft, who taught here from 1874–1915. The Science Collection includes some of the equipment purchased or made for Croft, which he used in his teaching. It also has earlier exhibits from the mid-18th century that were the property of various teachers and left to Science School when they died.
Dr Martin Gregory, former Head of Physics at Winchester College, talks about some of the items in our collection and their origins in a series of audio clips.
Our Herbarium is a historic botanical collection featuring thousands of specimens. Most of the specimens were donated to the College in 1874 by Rev. William Webb Spicer, an Old Wykehamist. More specimens have since been added, some of them donated by Wykehamists collecting while they were boys in the school.
The oldest herbarium specimen in our collection so far is Asplenium scolopendrium (hart’s tongue fern) collected in Battle, East Sussex in 1818.
The Herbarium also contains a collection of Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) accumulated by WMM Baron, teacher of botany and biology, 1956 – 1988. Our oldest Bryophyte is a Sematophyllum demissum (prostrate signal-moss) collected in Ireland in 1810.
Our Science Collection has a variety of natural history specimens, which includes birds, insects, corals, fossils and flints. Some of the collection is currently in the process of being digitised.
At any one time there are different parts of the collection being catalogued and digitised. Some of the items we are working on at the moment are shown below.
