Following the closure last year of the Walden School, Saffron Walden, Essex, Clifford Hall’s portrait of Reginald Reynolds, which had been at the school for many years, is to be sold at auction on May 10th 2018 by Cheffins Auctions, Cambridge.
The land and buildings of the Walden School have already been sold to the property developer’s Chase (SW) Limited, part of the Chase New Homes group, based in Welwyn Garden City. This follows the failure of a local campaign which sought to keep the usage of the site for educational purposes.
Cheffins have thoughtfully provided the following information about Reynolds:
Reginald Reynolds went to the Friends’ School in Saffron Walden followed by a period of time travelling through India with Mahatma Gandhi. Upon his return to England he supported the anti-fascist movement during the Spanish Civil War and as a conscientious objector during the Second World War he worked for the Chelsea Civil Defence as an ambulance driver and handled tracker dogs searching for victims of bombing.
He studied and wrote on John Woolman, an 18th Century American Quaker and advocate against slavery. He spent the remainder of his life working for peace and racial equality. He regularly returned to the Friends’ School and was a great support to the pupils. The Friends at Kingston Monthly Meeting wrote of him at his death in 1958: ” … good intentions are not enough … What is rare is to find a person who cared sufficiently to put intentions into effect. Reginald Reynolds did just that”.
Reginald’s’ wikipedia page is a little sparse at present:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Reynolds
However, the Swarthmore College Peace Collection website has a page dedicated to the letters to and about Reginald Reynolds from Mahatma Gandhi, 1929-1946, which provides a great deal of additional information about him which should be of interest: