Up until the mid 00s the school maintained a number of payphones in the boarding houses, as well as on the ground floor of Ashburnham House. As mobile phones became more widely owned and used by pupils the number of calls made using these payphones dwindled and the income was insufficient to cover their maintenance. The school’s Housmasters’ Committee discussed…
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The Scholars’ Race in College Garden
For a period of time in the 20th Century the College Juniors would mark Election Sunday with a race around College Garden. This footage captures the race which took place in the Election Term, 1958.
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The Challenge
This year we will be starting a new feature on our twitter feed @WSchoolArchives, Challenge Tuesday. We will be tweeting questions from over 150 years of scholarship examination papers, which provide a fascinating insight into changing expectations. ‘The Challenge’ is the intimidating name of our scholarship examination. Following the dissolution of the Monastery at Westminster Abbey, Henry VIII established a…
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The Young Dr Busby
The school does not routinely acquire new portraits and as we already have five paintings of Dr Busby in our collection (along with a bust and countless engravings) another picture of the great Head Master was not high on our priority list. However, when this painting came up for sale at a small auction house in Cockermouth, Cumbria, it was…
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What does an Archivist do all day?
As a new Archivist you can feel like a walking oxymoron. An Archivist should know an organisation inside out and be able to respond to every conceivable question about its history authoritatively. During my first week, when I had still not mastered the location of the lavatories, the weight of this expectation was a little overwhelming. But of course, the…
