Westminster School - Notable Buildings

Notable Buildings

Westminster School, situated in the middle of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Westminster Abbey, St. Margaret’s, and the Palace of Westminster, has several buildings notable for unique qualities, age, and history.

'College Hall', the 14th-century Abbot's state dining hall, is one of the oldest and finest examples of mediæval refectory in existence, and is still in use for its original purpose every day in term-time; outside of term it reverts to the Dean, as the Abbot's successor. Queen Elizabeth Woodville took sanctuary here in 1483 with 5 daughters and her son Richard, but failed to save him from his fate as one of the Princes in the Tower. In the 1560s, Elizabeth I several times came to see her scholars act their Latin Plays on a stage in front of the attractive Elizabethan gallery, which may have been first erected especially for the purpose. Lessons did take place within the hall during the 16th century also.

'College', now shared between the three Houses of College, Dryden's and Wren's, is a dressed stone building overlooking College Garden, the former monastery's Infirmary garden which is still the property of the Collegiate Church of Westminster Abbey. College dates from 1729, and was designed by the Earl of Burlington based on earlier designs from Sir Christopher Wren (himself an Old Westminster).

'School', originally built in the 1090s as the monks' dormitory, is the School's main hall, used for Latin Prayers (a weekly assembly with prayers in the Westminster-dialect of Latin), exams, and large concerts, plays and the like. From 1599 it was used to teach all the pupils, the Upper and Lower Schools being separated by a curtain hung from a 16th century pig iron bar, which remains the largest piece of pig iron in the world. The stone steps and entranceway to School have been attributed to Inigo Jones, and are engraved with the names of many pupils who used to hire a stonemason for the purpose. The panelling "up School" is similarly, but officially, painted with the coats of arms of many former pupils. The original shell-shaped apse at the North end of School gave its name to the Shell forms taught there and the corresponding classes at many other public schools. The current shell displays a Latin epigram on the rebuilding of School, with the acrostic Semper Eadem, Elizabeth I's motto. The classroom door to the right of the Shell was recovered from the notorious Star Chamber at its demolition.

The building lies directly on top of the Westminster Abbey museum, and ends at the start or the Pyx Chamber.

Both School and College had their roofs destroyed during the Blitz by incendiary bombs in 1941. The buildings were re-opened by George VI in 1950.

Ashburnham House, which today houses the library the IT department and the Mathematics Department, was built by Inigo Jones or his pupil John Webb around the time of the Restoration as a London seat for the family who became the Earls of Ashburnham. It incorporates remains of the mediaeval Prior's House, and its garden is the site of the monks' refectory and some of the earliest sittings of the House of Commons. In 1721 when Ashburnham housed the King's and Cottonian libraries, which form the basis of the British Library, there was a disastrous fire, and many of the books and manuscripts still show the marks. After the Public Schools Act 1868 there was a scandalous parliamentary and legal battle between the Abbey and the School, until the School eventually obtained Ashburnham under the Act for £4,000. In 1881 William Morris conducted a public campaign which succeeded in preventing its demolition but failed to save the neighbouring mediaeval buildings. During the Second World War, the library was used for military purposes, and the ground floor as an American officers' club.