Schools

The Warriner Logo – Oct 2016

Recently The Warriner School has indicated it will, in due course, be considering updating its logo.
Inevitably some people will welcome change whilst  others prefer permanence.

Maybe knowing where the name “Warriner” came from in the first place might be helpful?
A Google search for Warriner lists entries that are almost exclusively to do with Warriner School or with random individuals with the surname Warriner – which isn’t much help.
The other item that comes up is the Warriner windmill which is the one at the end of Bloxham Grove Rd.

Around 1797,  coinciding with the enclosure of the parish’s open fields into the a structure that now makes up the modern UK agricultural landscape,  George Warriner purchased around 100 hectares (250 acres) of farmland in  Bloxham Grove  where the windmill now stands.

His son – also George Warriner –  was keen to maximise the efficiency of the farm and purchased new threshing and winnowing machines and a steam engine in the barn to drive milling machinery.
He may have been influenced to do this by the younger Warriner’s nephew Henry who was employed to manage the farm and was also engaged in both marine and railway engineering.

bloxhamwmill01

 

Another of Henry’s enthusiasms was windmills, and in 1865, whilst chief engineer of a company in Lambeth he designed the one-third scale post mill at Bloxham Grove.  This was never going to be big enough for commercial work and it’s thought he understood that the age of steam power would sound the death knell of wind-power and so had constructed it both as an interesting pastime and as a  ‘memorial to all windmills.’  The windmill now has grade 2 listed status.

So the name The Warriner derives from a forward looking farming family who keenly embraced the new steam technologies of the Victorian era but also built a lasting tribute acknowledging the part wind-power had played in the past.

Existing Warriner School Logo
Existing Warriner School Logo
Suggested (draft) new Warriner Logo
Suggested (draft) new Warriner Logo

So – what advice would  George Warriner or Henry have offered if we were able to ask them whether or not to change the Warriner School Logo?    Your guess is as good as ours – but I think we probably can be fairly sure they would have approached the question in an open-minded and positive fashion!

 

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