Queen Elizabeth's School
The Elizabethan
NE WSLET TER TO PARENTS
SPRING 2023
LEADING THE WAY: Queen Elizabeth’s School celebrates its 450th anniversary in Westminster Abbey. See p4-7.
Thriving from ancient roots FROM THE HEADMASTER Dear Parents,
congregation of the bold assertion
support of the Crown during the English
of our Charter that we were to be:
Civil War; long periods of financial stress
In the course of this term, I have
‘one Common Grammar School in
during which the School was obliged
been reflecting on both founding
or near the town of Barnet… for the
to have recourse to the resources of its
and foundations – that is, on the
education, bringing up and instruction
longsuffering governors to stay afloat;
establishment of our School by Royal
of boys and youth…… and the same
the bombing of the School in the Blitz
Charter on 24th March 1573, and on
to continue forever’.
in 1941, and the School’s decline in the
the principles set out in that Charter
1970s and early 1980s, when it came
which continue to underpin so much
Over four-and-a-half centuries, this
of what we do today.
School has enjoyed many triumphs and
close to closure.
faced several existential crises. Among
In my address, I also spoke about the
When the School gathered last Friday
the latter were: a devastating outbreak
metaphor of the foolish man who built
in Westminster Abbey, 450 years to the
of plague in 1603; the imprisonment and
a house on the sand and the wise man
day since our founding, I reminded the
even execution of governors for their
who built his on the rock. There have