Identity area
Type of entity
Corporate body
Authorized form of name
College
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1560-
History
College, the home of the Queen’s Scholars and the oldest house at Westminster, was effectively founded in 1560 when the school’s charter stipulated that there should be 40 Queen’s Scholars. Special weight in their selection was to be given to ability, good character and poverty. To become Scholars, boys had to pass an oral examination known as ‘The Challenge’, which shifted to paper in 1856.
Scholars had special privileges not accorded to other boys, such as the right to enter the Palace of Westminster.
The Scholars include John Dryden, the first Poet Laureate (1631-1700); John Locke (1632-1704), the empiricist philosopher; A. A. Milne (1882-1956), creator of Winnie-the-Pooh; and Kim Philby (1912-1988), of the Cambridge spy ring. The first female scholars were admitted to College in 2017.
Places
The boys were at first housed in the monastery’s former granary, but when this began to become delapidated they moved to the present site of College in 1730. The building, on the East side of Little Dean's Yard, is an example of neo-classicism by Lord Burlington and overlooks College Garden.
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
GB 2014
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Final
Level of detail
Partial
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Prepared by Felicity Crowe, Archives and Records Management Assistant, February 2020.
Language(s)
- English
Script(s)
- Latin
Sources
Westminster School Archive; Tanner, Lawrence, 'Westminster School: Its Buildings and their Associations' (Philip Allan & Co.).