Eton College


Eton College is a private school providing boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the town of Eton, Berkshire. The school is the largest boarding school in England, ahead of Millfield and Oundle.
Eton charges up to £52,749 per year. It was the sixth most expensive Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference boarding school in the UK in 2013–14.
It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI as Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore, making it the 18th-oldest school in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. Originally intended as a sister institution to King's College, Cambridge, Eton is known for its history, wealth, and notable alumni, known as Old Etonians. It has educated prime ministers, world leaders, Nobel laureates, Academy Award and BAFTA award-winning actors, and generations of the aristocracy, and has been referred to as "the nurse of England's statesmen".
Eton is one of four public schools, along with Harrow, Radley and Sherborne, to have retained the boys-only, boarding-only tradition, which means that its boys live at the school seven days a week during term time. The remainder of them, including Charterhouse in 1971, Westminster in 1973, Rugby in 1976, Shrewsbury in 2015, and Winchester in 2022, have since become co-educational.

History

Establishment

Eton College was founded by 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 used Winchester College as a model, visiting at least six times and having its statutes transcribed. Henry appointed Winchester's headmaster, William Waynflete, as Eton's Provost, and transferred some of Winchester's 70 scholars to start his new school.
When Henry VI founded the school, he granted it a large number of endowments, including much valuable land. The group of feoffees appointed by the king to receive forfeited lands of the Alien Priories for the endowment of Eton were as follows:
It was intended to have formidable buildings; Henry intended the nave of the College Chapel to be the longest in Europe, and several religious relics, supposedly including a part of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns. He persuaded Pope Eugene IV, to grant him a privilege unparalleled anywhere in England: the right to grant indulgences to penitents on the Feast of the Assumption. The college also came into possession of one of England's Apocalypse manuscripts.
However, when Henry was deposed by King Edward IV in 1461, the new King annulled all grants to the school and removed most of its assets and treasures to St George's Chapel, Windsor, on the other side of the River Thames. Legend has it that Edward's mistress, Jane Shore, intervened on the school's behalf. She was able to save a good part of the school, although the royal bequest and the number of staff were much reduced. Construction of the chapel, originally intended to be slightly over twice as long, with 18, or possibly 17, bays was stopped when Henry VI was deposed. Only the Quire of the intended building was completed. Eton's first Head Master, William Waynflete, founder of Magdalen College, Oxford and previously headmaster 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.
As the school suffered reduced income while still under construction, the completion and further development of the school have since depended to some extent on wealthy benefactors. Building resumed when Roger Lupton was Provost, around 1517. His name is borne by the big gatehouse in the west range of the cloisters, fronting School Yard, perhaps the most famous image of the school. This range includes the important interiors of the Parlour, Election Hall, and Election Chamber, where most of the 18th century "leaving portraits" are kept.
"After Lupton's time, nothing important was built until about 1670, when Provost Allestree gave a range to close the west side of School Yard between Lower School and Chapel". This was remodelled later and completed in 1694 by Matthew Bankes, Master Carpenter of the Royal Works. The last important addition to the central college buildings was the College Library, in the south range of the cloister, 1725–29, by Thomas Rowland. It has a very important collection of books and manuscripts.

19th century onwards

The Duke of Wellington is often incorrectly quoted as saying that "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton." Wellington was at Eton from 1781 to 1784 and was to send his sons there. According to Nevill, what Wellington said, while passing an Eton cricket match many decades later, was, "There grows the stuff that won Waterloo", a remark Nevill construes as a reference to "the manly character induced by games and sport" among English youth generally, not a comment about Eton specifically. In 1889, Sir William Fraser conflated this uncorroborated remark with the one attributed to him by Count Charles de Montalembert's C'est ici qu'a été gagnée la bataille de Waterloo.
The architect John Shaw Jr became a surveyor to Eton. He designed New Buildings, Provost Francis Hodgson's addition to provide better accommodation for collegers, who until then had mostly lived in Long Chamber, a long first-floor room where conditions were inhumane.
Following complaints about the finances, buildings and management of Eton, the Clarendon Commission was set up in 1861 as a royal commission to investigate the state of nine schools in England, including Eton.
Questioned by the commission in 1862, Head Master Edward Balston came under attack for his view that in the classroom little time could be spared for subjects other than classical studies.
As with other public schools, a scheme was devised towards the end of the 19th century to familiarise privileged schoolboys with social conditions in deprived areas. The project of establishing an "Eton Mission" in the crowded district of Hackney Wick in east London was started at the beginning of 1880, and it lasted until 1971 when it was decided that a more local project would be more realistic. However over the years much money was raised for the Eton Mission, a fine church by G. F. Bodley was erected; many Etonians visited and stimulated among other things the Eton Manor Boys' Club, a notable rowing club which has survived the Mission itself, and the 59 Club for motorcyclists.
The large and ornate School Hall and School Library were erected in 1906–08 across the road from Upper School as the school's memorial to the Etonians who had died in the Boer War. Many tablets in the cloisters and chapel commemorate the large number of dead Etonians of the First World War.
In December 1940, during the height of the Blitz, a bomb fell on the College grounds, destroying part of the Upper School and blowing out the stained glass windows of the Chapel. In 1949 the College commissioned modernist replacement windows from Irish stained glass artist Evie Hone. The large Crucifixion window in the east wall was installed according to her design in 1952. However, Hone's death the following year prevented her from completing the Chapel's entire reglazing scheme. In 1959 the commission for the eight windows of the nave passed instead to artist John Piper, whose designs were realised in glass by his regular collaborator, the glassmaker Patrick Reyntiens, over the next five years. Intended to be in dialogue with Hone's east window, the four windows to the north each depict one of the Miracles of Jesus - the Miraculous Draft of Fishes, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, the Stilling of the Waters, and the Raising of Lazarus. To the south four Parables of Jesus are shown - the Light under a Bushel, the House built on Rock, the Lost Sheep, and the Sower.
Among Head Masters of the late 19th and 20th centuries were Cyril Alington, Robert Birley and Anthony Chenevix-Trench. M. R. James was a Provost. Between 1926 and 1939, Eton pupils were included as part of a group of around 20 or 30 selected public school boys who travelled yearly to various British Empire countries as part of the Public School Boys Empire Tour. The first tour travelled to Australia; the last went to Canada. The purpose of the tours was to encourage Empire settlement, with the boys possibly becoming district officers in India or imperial governors of the Dominions.
In 1959, the college constructed a nuclear bunker to house the college's Provost and fellows. The facility is now used for storage. In 1969, Dillibe Onyeama became the first black person to obtain his school-leaving certificate from Eton. Three years later Onyeama was banned from visiting Eton after he published a book which described the racism that he experienced during his time at the school. Simon Henderson, current Head Master of Eton, apologised to Onyeama for the treatment he endured during his time at the school, although Onyeama did not think the apology was necessary.
In 2005, the school was one of fifty of the country's leading independent schools found to have breached the Competition Act 1998. In 2011, plans to attack Eton College were found on the body of a senior al-Qaeda leader shot dead in Somalia.