From the Archives Elizabeth Wells
School Archivist
Last week three pupils from the Fifth Form popped into the Archive to ask a question about school uniform. They were keen to know which of the School’s eleven houses was the first to have a house tie. The question made me realise just how little I knew about the history of school uniform at Westminster, so I set out to investigate.
School dress has been regulated at Westminster for a long time – the statutes provided by Elizabeth I in 1560 specified that scholars’ clothing should be ‘ecclesiastical and modest’. Our earliest depictions show scholars wearing a black gown, often with ecclesiastical bands. By the 18th century, an outfit worn under the gown, consisting of a waistcoat, white shirt and white neck cloth, along with knee-britches, became established. Barring the adoption of trousers in the 19th century (leading to the formal abolition of britches in 1843) this costume remained unchanged until the Second World War. Scholars still adopt a version of this formal dress on certain occasions. Town Boys (non-scholars) have always had more latitude. Paintings show some wearing green or blue suits, but as with the scholars, by the 19th century a dark suit with waistcoat and trousers became the norm. An online article revealed that ‘the modern necktie emerged around 1860 when men began knotting their scarves like the reins of a "four-in-hand" carriage. The first "club tie" appeared
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in the 1880s when the Exeter College rowing team removed the striped bands from their hats and tied them around their necks.’ My first port of call was to examine the School’s photographic record. Our earliest house photographs do show the pupils from Grant’s, Rigaud’s, Ashburnham and Home Boarders’ houses wearing neckties in the 1870s and 1880s. As the images are in black and white, it is difficult to identify
Very little uniformity can be seen in this 1868 Rigaud’s house photograph.
