ABSTRACT
The English public school is invariably an island of mellowed buildings in a sea of well-kept playing fields. Nothing more strikingly illustrates the part that games have played in English upper-class education than the view down Music Hill, through Butler Gate and across the sweeping acres of Harrow ‘footer’ fields with its thirty-four pitches stretching to the Sheepcote Road. These spatial symbols of commitment, indulgence and privilege bear witness to the power of an ideology, the wealth of an institution and the devotion of its pupils, staff, old boys and parents. The latter were the financial source of the impressive facilities on which the public school boy ostensibly developed his character. It was the wealth of the upper classes which translated a value system into a set of actions by ensuring the purchase and maintenance of sufficient fields so that each member of a large school could find space to kick, chase and strike a ball. 1
