Archibald MacLaren (29 January 1820 – 19 February 1884) or Maclaren was a Scottish fencing master, gymnast, educator and author[1] who in 1858 opened a well-equipped gymnasium at the University of Oxford where from 1860 to 1861 he trained 12 sergeants and their officer who then disseminated his training regimen into the newly-formed Army Gymnastic Staff (AGS) for the British Army.[2] The AGS was later to become the Royal Army Physical Training Corps.[3] His training scheme was also later adopted by several British public schools including Rugby School in 1872[4] and universities.[5] He wrote a number of books on physical training theory and practice.
MacLaren was born in 1820 at Alloa, Clackmannanshire in Scotland, the son of Jean née Stewart (born 1769) and Archibald MacLaren (born 1771).[6] Brought up as a Presbyterian, he was educated at Dollar Academy until aged about 16 when he travelled to Paris where he studied fencing, gymnastics and medicine.[7] While in Paris he also developed an interest in physical training and on returning to Britain he was listed in about 1840 as a fencing master in Oxford where he equipped rooms to teach fencing and gymnastics.[8]
In Oxford he married firstly Charlotte Wheeler Talboys (1825–1844),[6] the daughter of David Alphonso Talboys (c1790–1840), the radical Oxford politician and printer and bookseller.[7] She died in 1844 after having only been married for three months. In 1851 as a 'fencing master' he was living with his widowed mother-in-law and her family in Oxford, including her 18 year-old daughter Gertrude[9] Later that year in London he quietly married 18 year-old Gertrude Isabel Frances Talboys (1833–1896), a classics scholar and teacher - and his late wife's younger sister. During this period it was illegal for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister. The couple had three daughters and two sons: Gertrude Elizabeth (1852–1854); Mabel (1855–1952); Alexander Mitchell Archibald McLaren (1856–1858); Margaret (1859–1938), and John Wallace Hozier MacLaren (1861–1915).[10][11]
In the early 1850s MacLaren equipped rooms in Oxford to teach fencing and gymnastics, and his endeavours were so successful that in 1858, assisted by his wife, he opened the renowned Oxford Gymnasium on Alfred Street at the University of Oxford.[12] Designed by William Wilkinson,[13] here MacLaren taught fencing and gymnastics[14][15][16] to William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones[8] and Richard Francis Burton[7][17] among other prominent Oxford residents of the day as well as to the general public.[18] MacLaren devised a system of regularly measuring his clients, regardless of age or sex, to determine the best exercise regime to develop their physical well-being.[19]
The physical condition of every pupil, child or adult, on his first entrance to the gymnasium, is carefully examined, and his height and weight, &c., carefully compared with his size, condition, and conformation of body, so that his exercises may be adapted to that part which is defective. Among other machines employed for this purpose is one invented by Mr. McLaren by which he can measure the depth and width of the chest at any point.[13]
The gymnasium was a rectangular brick-built structure with round-headed windows and doors with an octagonal dome and lantern on its roof to provide ventilation, especially during poor weather when the gym's windows were closed. The building was centrally-heated,[12] included space for fencing[20] and was fitted with the latest gymnastic equipment of the day including a central mast or pole 60 feet tall in the atrium for climbing. The gymnasium's floor was made from a "carefully constructed padding, soft, thick and elastic."[21][22]
The Oxford Gymnasium operated over two floors, with the top floor divided into two rooms - a fencing salon and a room for "modified exercises for young or delicate pupils." An additional one-storey building attached to the main building was added in 1861 to provide a private gymnasium for children.[23] Women were also admitted.[8]
The building survives today, having been renamed Blue Boar Court in 1989. Since 2017 it has been the base for the Oxford property management firm Locale.[13]
Training the ArmyEdit
MacLaren (back row holding hat) and Captain Frederick Hammersley (in door, right) with the twelve NCO's and two of MacLaren's assistants at Oxford (1860)
During the Crimean War about 27,000 British troops died - the majority not as a result of wounds in battle but of disease.[24] Investigations after the War decided that so many had died owing to their poor physical condition, resulting in their inability to fight off the effects of the diseases. In 1859 the War Office commissioned a report into the physical training systems in the armies of France and German. The final report stated that the French army had had a gymnastic physical training regime since the 1840s, with a central gymnastics training school founded in 1852; while the Prussian army had introduced military gymnastics training in 1842. Colonel Hamilton firmly advised that the War Office should institute a similar system of gymnastics training for the British Army.[14]
Major Frederick Hammersley and twelve carefully selected non-commissioned officers (NCOs) were put through a twelve month course of physical training in Oxford under MacLaren. MacLaren used the techniques he had developed in his gymnasium, charting the physical changes in the men with each of the NCO's being photographed before and after their training and regularly measured to check their development. On completing the course it was apparent that each man's physical fitness had considerably improved and they became the foundation of what was to be called the Army Gymnastic Staff (AGS).[25] This later become the Royal Army Physical Training Corps. A gymnasium similar to MacLaren's at Oxford was built at Aldershot.[7] Soon after eight additional military gymnasiums were built to MacLaren's design including that at Sandhurst (1862), now the Library,[26] and Brompton Barracks (1863).[27][28]
In 1864 Maclaren and his wife Gertrude opened a school in Oxford, Summerfield House School (which still exists today as Summer Fields School).[8] In 1871 MacLaren, described as a 'Schoolmaster and Professor of Gymnastics,'[29] was living at Summerfield House School with his schoolmistress wife Gertrude and their children Mabel, Margaret and John in addition to three servants and 39 boy boarders aged between 9 and 14.[29]
Over the years the school grew and needed more staff, two of whom married into the MacLaren family: the Reverend Dr Charles Williams ("Doctor"), who took over the scholarship form from Mrs MacLaren and married Mabel MacLaren in 1879; and the Reverend Hugh Alington, who married Margaret MacLaren in 1885 and took over the boys' games. The school remained in the hands of the MacLaren, Williams, and Alington families for its first 75 years. Among the school's old boys are Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell, the Viceroy of India.[30]
Later lifeEdit
The author of various popular works on physical training, Archibald MacLaren's 1869 book A System of Physical Education, Theoretical and Practical was reviewed in Macmillan's Magazine:
It will be no news to the readers of this Magazine to tell them that to Mr. MacLaren of Oxford, more than to any other man living, is the cause of physical education indebted for the rapid strides it has of late effected in this country. His magnificent Gymnasium at the University, and the marvellous results there produced, constitute only a small portion of the work he has been for many years accomplishing. The British Army is now trained on his principles, and in Gymnasia invented by him. His last effort is worthy to be placed on a level with any of his former achievements. It is a little book, but it contains the refined wisdom and experience of a quarter of a century; it throws open to all the world the knowledge obtained in endless studies, experiments, and meditation.[5]
^ abObituary for Archibald MacLaren, The Oxford Magazine, 27 February 1884, p.114
^Archibald MacLaren: Scottish gymnast, Encyclopædia Britannica online
^Galligan, Frank. Advanced PE for Edexcel, Heinemann Publishing (2000), Google Books, p. 18
^ abcdeArchibald Maclaren Fencing Master and Physical Educator, Victorian Fencing Society
^ abOxfordshire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1930 for Archibald MacLaren, Headington, St Andrew, 1837-1886: Ancestry.com (subscription required)
^ abcdeArchibald MacLaren, ATHLOS: A website dedicated to athletics literature
^1851 England Census for Archibald MacLaren, Oxfordshire, Oxford St Giles: Ancestry.com (subscription required)
^Oxford Men and their Colleges, Matriculations 1880 to 1892 at the University of Oxford
^1861 England Census for Archibald MaeLarin, Oxfordshire, Oxford St Giles: Ancestry.com (subscription required)
^ abChaline, Eric. The Temple of Perfection: A History of the Gym, Reaktion Books (2015), Google Books, p. 104
^ abc"The Gymnasium, Alfred Street". Oxford Schools. Oxford History. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
^ abCampbell, James Dunbar "The army isn't all work": Physical culture in the evolution of the British army, 1860-1920, PhD Thesis - The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine (2003), p. 43
^Biography of Archibald MacLaren, ATHLOS: a website dedicated to athletics literature
^History of the Oxford Gymnasium, Oxford History: Schools
^Burton, Isabel. The Life of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1893)
^Caroline Arscott (2008). "chapter 2". William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones: Interlacings. Yale University Press.
^Mussey Hartwell, Edward. Physical Training in American Colleges and Universities, Government Printing Office, Washington (1886), Google Books, p. 94
^Invented by the Ancient Greeks, the gym has served as a social institution that has impacted not only the body but also the mind, The Architectural Review, March 2020
^Christodoulou, Glenn 'Nightingale at Scutari: death and disease in the Crimean War', Journal of the Crimean War Research Society, Volume 14, No. 2, July 1996
^"Corps History". Royal Army Physical Training Corps Museum. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
^ ab1871 England Census for Archibald MacLaren, Oxfordshire, St Giles: Ancestry.com (subscription required)
^"History". Summer Fields School. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
^Oxfordshire, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-1965 for Archibald Maclaren, Summertown, 1833-1925: Ancestry.com (subscription required)
^England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995 for Archibald MacLaren, 1884: Ancestry.com (subscription required)
August 29, 2023
archibald, maclaren, january, 1820, february, 1884, maclaren, scottish, fencing, master, gymnast, educator, author, 1858, opened, well, equipped, gymnasium, university, oxford, where, from, 1860, 1861, trained, sergeants, their, officer, then, disseminated, tr. Archibald MacLaren 29 January 1820 19 February 1884 or Maclaren was a Scottish fencing master gymnast educator and author 1 who in 1858 opened a well equipped gymnasium at the University of Oxford where from 1860 to 1861 he trained 12 sergeants and their officer who then disseminated his training regimen into the newly formed Army Gymnastic Staff AGS for the British Army 2 The AGS was later to become the Royal Army Physical Training Corps 3 His training scheme was also later adopted by several British public schools including Rugby School in 1872 4 and universities 5 He wrote a number of books on physical training theory and practice Archibald MacLaren Contents 1 Early life 2 Oxford Gymnasium 3 Training the Army 4 Summerfield House School 5 Later life 6 Selected bibliography 7 ReferencesEarly life Edit MacLaren depicted in the novel The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green by Cuthbert M Bede 1850s MacLaren was born in 1820 at Alloa Clackmannanshire in Scotland the son of Jean nee Stewart born 1769 and Archibald MacLaren born 1771 6 Brought up as a Presbyterian he was educated at Dollar Academy until aged about 16 when he travelled to Paris where he studied fencing gymnastics and medicine 7 While in Paris he also developed an interest in physical training and on returning to Britain he was listed in about 1840 as a fencing master in Oxford where he equipped rooms to teach fencing and gymnastics 8 In Oxford he married firstly Charlotte Wheeler Talboys 1825 1844 6 the daughter of David Alphonso Talboys c1790 1840 the radical Oxford politician and printer and bookseller 7 She died in 1844 after having only been married for three months In 1851 as a fencing master he was living with his widowed mother in law and her family in Oxford including her 18 year old daughter Gertrude 9 Later that year in London he quietly married 18 year old Gertrude Isabel Frances Talboys 1833 1896 a classics scholar and teacher and his late wife s younger sister During this period it was illegal for a man to marry his deceased wife s sister The couple had three daughters and two sons Gertrude Elizabeth 1852 1854 Mabel 1855 1952 Alexander Mitchell Archibald McLaren 1856 1858 Margaret 1859 1938 and John Wallace Hozier MacLaren 1861 1915 10 11 In 1857 MacLaren published The Fairy Family A Series of Ballads amp Metrical Tales 5 illustrated by the then Oxford undergraduate Edward Burne Jones 1 8 He and his gymnasium featured in the 1850s novel The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green by Cuthbert M Bede a pseudonym for Edward Bradley 5 Oxford Gymnasium Edit The interior of the Oxford Gymnasium The Illustrated London News 1859 In the early 1850s MacLaren equipped rooms in Oxford to teach fencing and gymnastics and his endeavours were so successful that in 1858 assisted by his wife he opened the renowned Oxford Gymnasium on Alfred Street at the University of Oxford 12 Designed by William Wilkinson 13 here MacLaren taught fencing and gymnastics 14 15 16 to William Morris Edward Burne Jones 8 and Richard Francis Burton 7 17 among other prominent Oxford residents of the day as well as to the general public 18 MacLaren devised a system of regularly measuring his clients regardless of age or sex to determine the best exercise regime to develop their physical well being 19 A description of the gymnasium in The Illustrated London News in 1859 stated The physical condition of every pupil child or adult on his first entrance to the gymnasium is carefully examined and his height and weight amp c carefully compared with his size condition and conformation of body so that his exercises may be adapted to that part which is defective Among other machines employed for this purpose is one invented by Mr McLaren by which he can measure the depth and width of the chest at any point 13 The gymnasium was a rectangular brick built structure with round headed windows and doors with an octagonal dome and lantern on its roof to provide ventilation especially during poor weather when the gym s windows were closed The building was centrally heated 12 included space for fencing 20 and was fitted with the latest gymnastic equipment of the day including a central mast or pole 60 feet tall in the atrium for climbing The gymnasium s floor was made from a carefully constructed padding soft thick and elastic 21 22 The Oxford Gymnasium operated over two floors with the top floor divided into two rooms a fencing salon and a room for modified exercises for young or delicate pupils An additional one storey building attached to the main building was added in 1861 to provide a private gymnasium for children 23 Women were also admitted 8 The building survives today having been renamed Blue Boar Court in 1989 Since 2017 it has been the base for the Oxford property management firm Locale 13 Training the Army Edit MacLaren back row holding hat and Captain Frederick Hammersley in door right with the twelve NCO s and two of MacLaren s assistants at Oxford 1860 During the Crimean War about 27 000 British troops died the majority not as a result of wounds in battle but of disease 24 Investigations after the War decided that so many had died owing to their poor physical condition resulting in their inability to fight off the effects of the diseases In 1859 the War Office commissioned a report into the physical training systems in the armies of France and German The final report stated that the French army had had a gymnastic physical training regime since the 1840s with a central gymnastics training school founded in 1852 while the Prussian army had introduced military gymnastics training in 1842 Colonel Hamilton firmly advised that the War Office should institute a similar system of gymnastics training for the British Army 14 The Gymnasium at Aldershott built to MacLaren s design The Illustrated London News 1868 Major Frederick Hammersley and twelve carefully selected non commissioned officers NCOs were put through a twelve month course of physical training in Oxford under MacLaren MacLaren used the techniques he had developed in his gymnasium charting the physical changes in the men with each of the NCO s being photographed before and after their training and regularly measured to check their development On completing the course it was apparent that each man s physical fitness had considerably improved and they became the foundation of what was to be called the Army Gymnastic Staff AGS 25 This later become the Royal Army Physical Training Corps A gymnasium similar to MacLaren s at Oxford was built at Aldershot 7 Soon after eight additional military gymnasiums were built to MacLaren s design including that at Sandhurst 1862 now the Library 26 and Brompton Barracks 1863 27 28 Summerfield House School Edit Summerfield House School from its playing fields 2015 In 1864 Maclaren and his wife Gertrude opened a school in Oxford Summerfield House School which still exists today as Summer Fields School 8 In 1871 MacLaren described as a Schoolmaster and Professor of Gymnastics 29 was living at Summerfield House School with his schoolmistress wife Gertrude and their children Mabel Margaret and John in addition to three servants and 39 boy boarders aged between 9 and 14 29 Over the years the school grew and needed more staff two of whom married into the MacLaren family the Reverend Dr Charles Williams Doctor who took over the scholarship form from Mrs MacLaren and married Mabel MacLaren in 1879 and the Reverend Hugh Alington who married Margaret MacLaren in 1885 and took over the boys games The school remained in the hands of the MacLaren Williams and Alington families for its first 75 years Among the school s old boys are Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Archibald Wavell 1st Earl Wavell the Viceroy of India 30 Later life EditThe author of various popular works on physical training Archibald MacLaren s 1869 book A System of Physical Education Theoretical and Practical was reviewed in Macmillan s Magazine It will be no news to the readers of this Magazine to tell them that to Mr MacLaren of Oxford more than to any other man living is the cause of physical education indebted for the rapid strides it has of late effected in this country His magnificent Gymnasium at the University and the marvellous results there produced constitute only a small portion of the work he has been for many years accomplishing The British Army is now trained on his principles and in Gymnasia invented by him His last effort is worthy to be placed on a level with any of his former achievements It is a little book but it contains the refined wisdom and experience of a quarter of a century it throws open to all the world the knowledge obtained in endless studies experiments and meditation 5 MacLaren died aged 64 at his home Summerfield House School near Oxford in February 1884 2 and was buried in the cemetery in Summertown Oxford 31 He left an estate valued at 13 649 4s 6d 32 Selected bibliography EditThe Fairy Family A Series of Ballads and Metrical Tales Illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe Longman amp Co London 1857 Training in Theory and Practice Macmillan and Co 1866 A Military System of Gymnastic Exercises and a System of Fencing HMSO 1868 A System of Physical Education Theoretical and Practical Clarendon Press 1869 5 References Edit a b Archibald MacLaren British Museum database a b Obituary for Archibald MacLaren The Oxford Magazine 27 February 1884 p 114 Archibald MacLaren Scottish gymnast Encyclopaedia Britannica online Galligan Frank Advanced PE for Edexcel Heinemann Publishing 2000 Google Books p 18 a b c d e Archibald Maclaren Fencing Master and Physical Educator Victorian Fencing Society a b Oxfordshire England Church of England Marriages and Banns 1754 1930 for Archibald MacLaren Headington St Andrew 1837 1886 Ancestry com subscription required a b c d McIntosh Peter C MacLaren Archibald 1819 1884 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ODNB subscription required a b c d e Archibald MacLaren ATHLOS A website dedicated to athletics literature 1851 England Census for Archibald MacLaren Oxfordshire Oxford St Giles Ancestry com subscription required Oxford Men and their Colleges Matriculations 1880 to 1892 at the University of Oxford 1861 England Census for Archibald MaeLarin Oxfordshire Oxford St Giles Ancestry com subscription required a b Chaline Eric The Temple of Perfection A History of the Gym Reaktion Books 2015 Google Books p 104 a b c The Gymnasium Alfred Street Oxford Schools Oxford History Retrieved 27 January 2021 a b Campbell James Dunbar The army isn t all work Physical culture in the evolution of the British army 1860 1920 PhD Thesis The University of Maine DigitalCommons UMaine 2003 p 43 Biography of Archibald MacLaren ATHLOS a website dedicated to athletics literature History of the Oxford Gymnasium Oxford History Schools Burton Isabel The Life of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton 1893 Caroline Arscott 2008 chapter 2 William Morris and Edward Burne Jones Interlacings Yale University Press Mussey Hartwell Edward Physical Training in American Colleges and Universities Government Printing Office Washington 1886 Google Books p 94 Invented by the Ancient Greeks the gym has served as a social institution that has impacted not only the body but also the mind The Architectural Review March 2020 The Builder Vol 16 1858 p 716 The Builder Vol 17 1859 p 159 Jackson s Oxford Journal Vol 19 October 1861 Christodoulou Glenn Nightingale at Scutari death and disease in the Crimean War Journal of the Crimean War Research Society Volume 14 No 2 July 1996 Corps History Royal Army Physical Training Corps Museum Retrieved 24 January 2021 Library Royal Military Academy Historic England website Description in The Times 15 December 1863 Gymnasium Brompton Barracks Historic England website a b 1871 England Census for Archibald MacLaren Oxfordshire St Giles Ancestry com subscription required History Summer Fields School Retrieved 21 December 2020 Oxfordshire England Church of England Deaths and Burials 1813 1965 for Archibald Maclaren Summertown 1833 1925 Ancestry com subscription required England amp Wales National Probate Calendar Index of Wills and Administrations 1858 1995 for Archibald MacLaren 1884 Ancestry com subscription required Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Archibald MacLaren amp oldid 1144396113 Oxford Gymnasium, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
