Little Deans Yard (College Of Westminster School)

TO 3079 SW CITY OF WESTMINSTER BROAD SANCTUARY, SW1 101/19 (ABBEY PRECINCT AND WESTMINSTER SCHOOL) 9.1.70 Little Dean's Yard: No 4 ('College' of Westminster School)

G.V. I

School dormitory. 1722-30 by Lord Burlington, badly damaged in World War II, restored 1947. Stone, coppered roof. Severe astylar design with restrained use of Palladian motifs. Long range with main front facing east on to Abbey Garden. Originally 2 storeys (floor inserted to upper storey 1906) with ground floor open as a "piazza". 15 bays long and 3 bays deep. Entrance and stair bay built out in brick with stone dressings and quoins to north end of range. Semicircular arched doorway flanked by stone pilasters carrying archivolts; panelled doors with wrought iron fanlight grill. Main east front arcaded ground floor "piazza" with square piers, enclosed and provided with windows in 1846. The upper part, the dormitory, lit high up by square architraved windows with piano nobile level having, originally, blind niches with alternating segmental and triangular pediments, cut open as windows by T.G. Jackson in 1895 (intermediate floor inserted 1906). Pseudo parapet below niches. Entablature with modillion cornice and pulvinated frieze. "College" was Burlington's first public building and marks the opening victory of his campaign against empirical classicism of the Wren school.

R.C.H.M. Westminster School; L.E. Tanner. Earls of Creation; James Lees Milne.

Listing NGR: TQ3007179367