Grant's

Identity area

Type of entity

Corporate body

Authorized form of name

Grant's

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

        1749-

        History

        Grant's was opened as an independent boarding house by Mrs Margaret Grant, or Mother Grant I, in 1749, when keeping boarders was one of the few respectable occupations for middle-class women. The house continued under the Grants’ management until Mrs Dixon, the last of the family, sold the building to the then housemaster, Charles Alfred Jones in 1868. As well as income from the sale of the house, Mrs Dixon also had a share of the profits of Dixon's antibilious pills, the world-famous 'pill to cure all ills'.

        Many traditions survive at Westminster, but one that has been discontinued at Grant’s is the custom that saw new boarders ‘walk the mantelpiece’ in Hall. Lawrence Tanner, a pupil who kept a thorough diary of his time at Westminster, records his own experience of walking the mantelpiece here.

        Grantites of particular interest include Lord John Russell (1792-1878), a Whig and Liberal Prime Minister and keen reformist; Charles Longley (1794-1868), Archbishop of Canterbury; Edgar Adrian (1899- 1977), winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology; the actor John Gielgud (1904-2000) and Dominic Grieve MP (1956-).

        Places

        The location of Grant's changed several times before settling on the south side of Little Dean's Yard in a plain Georgian building constructed in 1789 by Robert Furze Brettingham.

        Legal status

        Functions, occupations and activities

        Boarding house.

        Mandates/sources of authority

        Internal structures/genealogy

        General context

        Relationships area

        Access points area

        Subject access points

        Place access points

        Occupations

        Control area

        Authority record identifier

        GB-2014-WSA-01869

        Institution identifier

        WS 2014

        Rules and/or conventions used

        ISAAR(CPF): International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families, International Council on Archives (2nd edition, 2003)

        Status

        Final

        Level of detail

        Partial

        Dates of creation, revision and deletion

        Entry 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 Associations.'

        Maintenance notes