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Letters to John Peter Winckworth (1908-1986), solicitor and author, 1931-1969

John Peter Winckworth was born on 2 November 1908, youngest of the three children of Lewis Herbert Winckworth (1864-1940), solicitor, and Ruthella Theodora, elder daughter of the Revd Herbert Clementi-Smith of Holland Park Avenue, Kensington, chaplain to the Mercers’ Company. In September 1922 he entered Grants House at Westminster School (also attended by his father and three uncles) and left in July 1927.

Admitted as a solicitor in October 1932, he practised in London, in 1947 with Messrs Trollope and Winckworth of 21 Old Queen Street, Westminster. Winckworth was one of the originators of the Seven Years’ Association, established at the 1933 Anglo-Catholic Congress to form ‘a youth auxiliary to the Church Union’. In 1948 he became Registrar of the Diocese of Oxford, and subsequently served as a Church Commissioner, Master of the Worshipful Company of Mercers 1961-2, a governor of St Paul’s School and Secretary of the Church Union.

He joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in August 1940, and was transferred to the Training Progress Section of the Air Ministry in 1941.

Winckworth was author of Does Religion Cause War? (1934); Sensible Christians (1935); The Way of War: Verses (1939); A Simple Approach to Canon Law (1951); The Seal of the Confessional and the Law of Evidence (1952); A Verification of the Faculty Jurisdiction (1953); and A History of the Gresham Lectures (1966).

He died at Eastbourne on 28 April 1986, and a requiem mass was held at St Matthew’s Church Westminster on 23 June.

His portrait, by Richard Aylmer Frost (1905-1995), a Westminster contemporary, 1924, is among the collections of the school (GB 2014 WS-03-PIC-002/29).

Some of the letters were sold at Messrs Gorringes of Lewes on 30 October 2023, and others were sold by private treaty to the archive of St Paul’s School; all have been replaced by copies.

Collection relating to the Elizabethan Club. Contains Minute Books of not only the General Committee, but also the Entertainment. Games and Annual General meetings and Old Westminster Football Club. Includes Reports and Rules of the Club. These state the rules of the Club, also give annual reports and accounts as well as a list of members. Also contains a limited number of financial records including ledgers of termly payments and correspondence with banks. Some records of social events also survive detailing arrangements for annual dinners. The collection is incomplete with most records coming from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Collection relating to Westminster School Society (WSS). The first section of the collection consits of minutes from the WSS Council alongside various committees associated with the Society. The collection also includes material relating to the administration of the Society; this section includes membership registers, the Certificate of Incorporation, correspondence and documents pertaining to the establishment of WSS. The final section of the collection relates to the finances of the Society which covers gifts and donations, reports and accounts, trust funds and correspondence.