The First 1,000 Years

In the bustling Hertfordshire town of St. Albans last week, 1,000 sober Englishmen, dressed up as Roman legionaries, Saxon peasants, Norman kings, monks and long-haired cavaliers, re-enacted the glory of their town. The occasion: the 1,000th anniversary of St. Albans School.

St. Albans, founded by monks in 948, is one of England's oldest schools (St. Peter's, York, founded in the 6th Century, is generally regarded as the oldest). Long out-glittered by Eton and Harrow, St. Albans has kept to its modest tradition of service to the boys of the town.

Under regulations drawn up in 1570 by the school's patron, Sir Nicholas Bacon, enrollment was limited to 12 underprivileged boys who had "learned their accidence without books and can wright indifferently." The rule excluded Sir Nicholas' famous son, young Francis Bacon. Parents were required to furnish their boys with a bow and three arrows and if their "child shall prove unapt for learning . . . ye shall take him away; and again, if he prove apt, then that ye shall suffer him to remain till he be completely learned."

Today the weathered, reddish-grey walls of the abbey's gate tower are flanked by modern lecture halls and a swimming pool. But students proudly point out their abbey's heavy-beamed library, in which Parliament sat during the 17th Century's civil wars. A public (i.e., private) school for the past 25 years, St. Albans now takes in some 450 boys, nearly all sons of townsmen, at a modest tuition of -L-15 ($60) per term.

At the close of last week's pageant, attended by Queen Elizabeth, St. Albans' headmaster, ruddy-faced Thomas William Marsh, allowed himself a nostalgic sigh. Said he: "St. Albans will be very dull next week, when everyone returns to bowler hats."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.