- CODRINGTON COLLEGE, BARBADOS [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—A great calamity has overtaken Barbados, and indeed the Empire, in the total destruction by fire on the night of Sunday, April 18th, of the historic buildings of Codrington College. The Principal's Lodge—the house in which Christopher Codrington, Founder of the College, died in 1710-- is undamaged ; but of the College itself, the students' rooms, the tutors' quarters, the great dining hall, and the gem-like chapel, only a shell of walls is left, while as we write it remains doubtful how much of the mere masonry itself must still come down. The loss is partially covered by insurance, but of its amount no mere financial estimate is possible. The library, the museum, and, above all, the historic associations which for so many generations have clustered around the senior missionary college of the Empire, these money can never replace.
Under so heavy a blow the authorities of the Institution might almost be forgiven for despair ; dependent as the College has always been upon the sugar market, no sufficient funds are available for the work of restoration. Yet that there should not be such restoration is unthinkable. That the college, whose alumni have done such brilliant service in every province of the Empire, in almost every province of the Church's ministry, should, even in this distress, be forced to relinquish its functions—this cannot be believed. We ask for help.
The College owes its existence to the munificence of Christopher Codrington, a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, a distinguished soldier in the army of William III in Flanders, an ex-Governor of the Leeward Islands. Codrington spent the last six years of his life in retirement in the mansion on his estates in Barbados, which tie had inherited from his father and grandfather. He did in April, 1710, in his 42nd year. At this period slave labolw was almost exclusively employed in the West Indies. In one of his letters he wrote ; " I have always thought it barbarous that so little care should be taken of the bodies and so much less of the souls of our poor slaves." Such a thought inspired him to leave his estates of some 800 acres to the newly founded Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, on the stipulation that a college should be founded for training missionaries. As a preliminary step a grammar school was opened in 1745. But under the influence of Coleridge, the first Bishop of Barbados, a reversion was made to the original design, and a theological college was opened in 1880. The college has, however, given to the world not only Bishops (for examples the present Archbishop of the West Indies and the Bishop of Barbados) and considerably more than half of the clergy of the West Indies, but also governors, chief justices, doctors, and men of high positions. It is the oldest theological college in the British Empire. In 1875 it was affiliated to Durham University.—I am, Sir, &c., J. C. WIPPELL (Principal). Principal's Lodge, Codrington College, Barbados.
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