New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1906-02-18
WESTMINSTER SCHOOL.
II tumble of 4ncient architecture
and Medi9UaI Customs.
London, February 3.

London, February 8.
One of the battling puzzles for strangers in
London Is the discovery Of Westminster School
underneath the walls Of the stored abbey. The
boys playing football in the Deans Yard can be
seen any day in the quadrangle under the Films;
but patience and ingenuity requisite for
finding out where they eat sleep, fag. study
and work. They have inherited the most an
cient stones and hooks of the Benedictine Mon
astery. They assemble for meals in the abbot's
refectory built toward the close of the four
teenth and reroofed in the sixteenth century;
and they sit at tables framed from timbers
of the Armada joints and sweets are brought
in from Elizabethan serving hatch adjoining
the renovated monks kitchen. with its huge
arched freplaces This is entered from the pict-
uresque court of the Deanery and Jerusalem
Chamber; and the Upper School Is approached
by even more ancient passages of the original
Norman monastery; the South Closter as far as
the Pyx chapel and the Dark Closter leading to
Little Deans Yard through the substructure of
the monks dormitory, with inlet to the
medieval nfirmary and the cells where the
chorets were walled in for life to pray for every
one in the abbey. In this dark passage one is
at the heart of Westminster School, for the gym
nasum is in the crypt the left, the big school
with the birching table is above, and the read
ing rooms and classrooms are the right and
are built on the foundation of the ancient Miseri-
corde; yet walls and vaulting date from the
time of Edward the Confessor and, like the Pyx.
are as old anything in Westminster.
The Dark Cloister opens into the schoolyard.
with three masters boarding houses at the fur
Their end and on the Deans Yard side separated
by a vauted passage, the Headmasters resi-
dence and the Home Boarders' house, with fives-
courts in front of it; but if one turns about and
looks back there is the stately Ashburnham
House, with the magnificent gable Of the South
Transept towering above 1T, and the side
beyond the long dormitory is the Elizabethan
gateway. with the gable of the upper school
behind the classrooms and Busby Library. Yet
there the visitor cannot escape from an
hquity. The eighteenth century college dormi-
tory is built from Wrens designs; Ashburnham
House reconstructed monastic founda-
tions by lingo Jones; the Headmaster's resi-
dence Is the enlarged hall of the Abbey Gel
iarer; the Home Boarders' house with the four
teenth century archway the guest chamber
of the monastery; and the walls of the Upper
School are twelfth century masonry
Westminster School is even more interesting
scholars and home boarders dine at midday. is
a quaint interior With marble pavement, arched
beams and latticed gallery. and with the arms
OF the dean and three royal colleges crudely
aainted over the head table. The gymnasium
- the vaHlted crypt with ancient piers enlarged
by the roofing in of the space between it and the
Bals of the Chapter House. Between the treas
tre house. where the royal jewels and money
chest were once guarded by sleepy monks and
the debating hall of the earliest Parliaments
are vaulting horses. parallel bars, transverse
ladders, flying trapezes, weights rings clubs and
al the paraphernalia of physical training In