Qualla: Westminster School https://qualla.com/westminster-school en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/westminster-school-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Westminster School https://qualla.com/westminster-school Westminster School: Introduction https://qualla.com/westminster-school/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1658, during Oliver Cromwell's funeral procession through Westminster, a schoolboy named Robert Uvedale managed to dart in and snatch the white satin Majesty Scutcheon draped on the Lord Protector's coffin. He kept it. Three hundred years later his family gave it to Westminster School, where it now lives in the library. That a boy could pull this off, and that the school still has the souvenir, says almost everything about Westminster: a thousand-year-old institution where the curriculum sometimes seems incidental to the proximity of history. The pupils have been a few hundred yards from Parliament, the Abbey, and the throne for so long that they have come to consider those institutions part of the furniture.

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/westminster-school-wp/gcpu-westminster-school-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Westminster School: Older Than the Conquest https://qualla.com/westminster-school/ Photo credit Asteuartw, CC BY 4.0. The Croyland Chronicle and a charter of King Offa both record a charity school run by the Westminster Benedictines before the Norman Conquest. Continuous documentation begins in the 1340s, with records held in the Abbey's Muniment Room. Parts of the school buildings date to the t...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/westminster-school-wp/gcpu-westminster-school-older-than-the-conquest.mp3 0:06 2 full Westminster School: Richard Busby, Birch and Pardon https://qualla.com/westminster-school/ Photo credit Asteuartw, CC BY 4.0. The reputation of Westminster for the next two centuries was largely the work of Richard Busby, headmaster from 1638 to 1695 and one of the most formidable schoolmasters in English history. He was an Old Westminster himself and ran the place with classical learning and the birch ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/westminster-school-wp/gcpu-westminster-school-richard-busby-birch-and-pardon.mp3 0:06 3 full Westminster School: Inside the Abbey Precincts https://qualla.com/westminster-school/ Photo credit Public domain. Westminster School stands in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, inside the UNESCO World Heritage Site that also contains the Palace of Westminster and St Margaret's Church. The main buildings cluster round Little Dean's Yard - known simply as Yard - off Dean's Yard, where Church...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/westminster-school-wp/gcpu-westminster-school-inside-the-abbey-precincts.mp3 0:06 4 full Westminster School: Locke, Gibbon, Bentham, Nobels https://qualla.com/westminster-school/ Photo credit Asteuartw, CC BY 4.0. John Locke went to Westminster in the 1640s, when Busby's birch still ruled. Edward Gibbon arrived at age 11. Jeremy Bentham at 8. Three Nobel Prize laureates have been Old Westminsters: the physiologist Edgar Adrian (1932), Sir Andrew Huxley for nerve impulse research (1963), an...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/westminster-school-wp/gcpu-westminster-school-locke-gibbon-bentham-nobels.mp3 0:06 5 full Westminster School: Blitz, Greaze, and the Future https://qualla.com/westminster-school/ Photo credit Asteuartw, CC BY 4.0. In the Blitz of 1941, incendiary bombs destroyed the roofs of both School Hall and College. Westminster, unlike Charterhouse and St Paul's, refused to evacuate London - the pupils dispersed but the school did not move. Westminster Under School was created in 1943 in the city as a...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/westminster-school-wp/gcpu-westminster-school-blitz-greaze-and-the-future.mp3 0:06 6 full