Article by Elizabeth Wells, Archivist, first published in The Elizabethan Newsletter, 2018 The pink granite column which stands in Broad Sanctuary, opposite the Hawksmoor Towers at the west front of the Abbey often goes unnoticed by the crowds of tourists that gather there each day. Up until recently, even if they had wished to know more about the monument they…
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Ties, Ties, Ties
Three Fifth Form pupils, inspired by the plethora of school colours around them, were keen to know which of the school’s eleven houses was the first to have a house tie. Elizabeth Wells and Tom Edlin set out to investigate… Initial research indicated that ‘the modern necktie emerged around 1860 when men began knotting their scarves like the reins of…
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Robert Hooke’s Euclid?
‘He went to Mr. Busby’s, the schoolemaster of Westminster, at whose howse he was; and he made very much of him…There he learnd to play 20 lessons on the organ. He there in one weeke’s time made himselfe master of the first VI bookes of Euclid, to the admiration of Mr. Busby (now S.T.D.), who introduced him’ Biography of Robert Hooke, John Aubrey’s Brief Lives.…
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The Latin Play, 1560-2010
Origins of the Latin Play Two beliefs produced and sustained the early tradition of Latin Plays at Westminster in the sixteenth century. First was a faith in the training such performances would offer in deportment and elocution for young gentlemen needing the tools for public life. Second – and it generally came second – was the conviction that such an…
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The King’s Scholars’ Pardon by Charles Low
In 1949 Viscount Davidson (OW) purchased at Sotheby’s and presented to the School the so-called King’s Scholars’ Pardon. For many years this hung on the wall of College Library, and it has now been transcribed and translated. In the document, dated 8th October, 1679, Charles II pardons all forty scholars for the murder of one Robert Rowley. In its…
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Reel History
Article by Elizabeth Wells, Archivist, first published in The Camden, 2012 In the early 2010s, the medium of film came to the cultural foreground. Travelling Light, Nicholas Wright’s 2012 play, directed by Nicholas Hytner at The National Theatre, considered the very beginning of cinematography through the memories of a successful Hollywood director; The Artist, having had unprecedented success at the Oscars, recreated the…
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Ashburnham Garden by Alexandre Guilloteau
Nestled between the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, School and Ashburnham House lies a little treasure. In perhaps the most valuable square in the country, watched over by the looming presence of perhaps the finest and most important church in the country and the property of perhaps (certainly, really…) the greatest academic institution not to be a university, is a small…
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Price, Worth and Value
CECIL GRAHAM. What is a cynic? LORD DARLINGTON. A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. CECIL GRAHAM. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan Around 2 years ago I visited…
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Goodnight, sorry for sinking you…
One of the most enjoyable aspects of my work as School Archivist is learning about some of the fascinating events in the lives of Old Westminsters. In 2016, thanks to Ian Petherick (HB 1941-1946), I found out about the incredible journey of the Almond brothers (Basil, David and Francis) from India to the school, then out in Herefordshire, during the…
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The Brock Library by Iskander Mathews
Denison Saumarez Brock (1922-1980) OW, of the Brock Library, was a principled, God-fearing man admired by many for his sincere, candid and inward nature. Brock was a man truly forever bound by the so-called “Westminster Bubble”, having gone to Westminster as a pupil when he was 13 years old to study Mathematics and Physics, then for a short while went…
