April 2012
On a very strong recommendation from my cousin/sister EHJ, I just had to see Windsor on my next trip to London. Since it was an easy day trip, the next visit to see Adrian FVdR, we hopped a train and explored the town hosting that most famous royal residence. After walking around Windsor we crossed a small bridge just below the castle walls - Adrian announced we were in Eton.
Eton College was founded by King Henry VI as a charity school to provide free education to 70 poor boys who would then go on to King's College, Cambridge, founded by the same King in 1441. Henry took Winchester College as his model, visiting on many occasions, borrowing its statutes and removing its headmaster and some of the scholars to start his new school.
I am fascinated that one of the pillars of aristocratic learning in England actually started as a "charity school". Everyone has heard of Eton in England just as people know Oxford and Cambridge, but I had no idea it had such humble beginnings. We walked the campus and came upon the "chapel". It was massive!
Construction of the chapel, originally intended to be slightly over twice as long, with 18, or possibly 17, bays (there are eight today) was stopped when Henry VI was deposed. Only the Quire of the intended building was completed. Eton's first Headmaster, William Waynflete, founder of Magdalen College, Oxford and previously Head Master of Winchester College, built the ante-chapel that completed the chapel. The important wall paintings in the chapel and the brick north range of the present School Yard also date from the 1480s; the lower storeys of the cloister, including College Hall, were built between 1441 and 1460.
(Wikipedia)
Rather than an elite high school (college in the UK), the campus looked like an old university. Most importantly, the walls and towers of Windsor Castle were visible just in the distance. This was not any school - this was a place that catered to those with lofty connections. From that school the upper classes of England were formed and sent off to even more elite universities. I had never known that Eton was, in fact, just a stone's throw from the Windsor's summer London residence. Somehow it all made sense.
We were tired from all the walking that day and didn't tarry. Soon we were back in London where I processed the day's information. Eton, right next to Windsor Castle - understood.