LONDON TRAVEL GUIDE
WESTMINSTER SCHOOL
Hidden away in a quiet backwater deep in the heart of central London lies one of England's great public schools. It occupies a historic site next to Westminster Abbey and indeed for centuries was a part of the abbey. It comes as a great surprise to many people to find that, for a few weeks every year, it is possible to go on a tour of the school. This provides a rare opportunity both to go behind the scenes of a quintessentially English institution and to continue the tour of the medieval monastery of Westminster started in the tour of the abbey.
The purpose of the tour seems to be less to explain how the school functions than to show the historic buildings that the school occupies. This is natural enough since many of the buildings were part of the old abbey and they are full of historical interest and associations. But it may be that the school and the way of life of the boys and girls interest you more than old buildings. If so, the guide will be happy to answer any questions you may have. One of the things he or she will tell you is that out of roughly ISO le avers each year, invariably half or more go on to Oxford and Cambridge universities. Westminster School is a real academic hothouse.
To find the school, you must make your way to Dean's Yard, a large enclosed quadrangle next door to Westminster Abbey. The entrance to the school is through a low medieval archway half-way along the eastern side (the one with all the old buildings in it). Passing through this archway, you come out into Little Dean's Yard, the main yard of the school, with boarding houses to the right.
Ashburnham House
The tour starts in Ashburnham House, the large elegant house set slightly back to your left. Built in the 1660s for the Ashburnham family, Ashburnham House incorporates the much older lodging house of the abbey's prior, remains of which can be seen inside. Through the windows at the back of the house you can see the garden that was made out of the site of the monks' refectory. The refectory's north wall still stands to full height on the far side of the garden.
Ascending the house's wide staircase - its finest feature - you come to what is called the library floor, including the very handsome south-facing drawing room-cum-reading room. Anyone could become a scholar with a place like this to work. There are writing desks and comfortable armchairs, and the walls are covered with old pictures of the school. The ornate ceiling and carved door jambs exude craftsmanship and quality.
The room is remarkably well preserved. That's probably because Ashburnham House has been used by the school only for the last century or so, and during this time the boys have been relatively well behaved. In earlier times, before the house became part of the school, it was the students' custom to employ abbey stonemasons to carve their names on every available smooth surface. All over the school (and occasionally in the abbey, too) you will find walls, doors and furniture defaced in this way.
'School'
The centrepiece of the tour is what at Westminster they call 'school'. 'School' is actually the school hall, a huge, long, high room with an organ at one end and walls covered in the brightly coloured coats of arms of illustrious old boys. Beyond the shell-shaped recess at the other end is the Abbey Library. In monastic times, the library and the school hall formed the vast dormitory of the monks. After the monks had been kicked out by Henry VIII, the dormitory was given to the school for use as a classroom. The whole school was taught in this room for nearly 300 years, from 1599 to 1884. There were no individual classrooms. The only partition was a curtain across the middle of the hall dividing the lower school from the upper. You can still see the sturdy Tudor iron bar from which the curtain hung. At Westminster the bar is called the Greaze Bar. No one knows why exactly, but it's something to do with the ancient school custom, at least 250 years old, known as Greaze. On Pancake Day in February a pancake is tossed over the bar. A group of boys composed of one representative from each form then dive on the pancake and fight for the largest piece. The winner's reward - which seems rather prosaic compared with the violence of the contest - is a book token.
Dr Busby's library
As you come out of 'school', you pass a door on the left leading to Dr Busby's library, a room added in the 17th century to house the book collection of the then headmaster. The library, which is now used as a classics classroom, is not shown on the tour, but it contains one amusing school relic: the battered old school desk with two birch rods in the drawer. As at all public schools, there used to be a lot of thrashing at Westminster. When the rods stuck out twigs first, it meant a holiday. When the handles stuck out, which they did on most days, the boys knew they had better keep their heads down and their mouths shut:
Skipping the dormitory undercroft and the school gym (mentioned under Westminster Abbey), your guide wi1llead you through the cloisters of the abbey into the abbot's, now the dean's, lodging. This is actually a small courtyard completely enclosed by ancient buildings, one of which is the abbot's original dining hall. This was another of the rooms given over to the school after the departure of the monks and it's still used as a dining hall by the school's 200 boarders. That means people have been eating here continuously for 600 years, something that is all too obvious from the mildly unpleasant odour of food that hangs about the place. Above, the 14th-century wooden roof is the work of Hugh Herland, the master carpenter who also constructed the roof in Westminster Hall just across the way.
Abbey farm
The tour ends outside in Dean's Yard. When this was the abbey's farm (see page 103), the almonry, where the monks distributed alms to the needy, stood over on the far side. The original Westminster School, a free school for the sons of local tradesmen, began in this almonry at least 600 years ago, and probably more. In 1461 it moved into the range of old buildings running down the side of Dean's Yard to your left. Then, after the ejection of the monks in 1540, it took over some of the main monastic buildings. You have already seen the abbot's dining hall, which became the school dining hall, and the monks' dormitory, which became the school's classroom. What you can't see because it no longer exists is the abbey farm's granary, which became the boys' dormitory. It was used until the 1720s and was then replaced by the new building facing College Garden. The old granary stood to your left at the other end of Dean's Yard. It is said that in dry weather you can still make out the faint outlines of its foundations in the parched grass.
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