Westminster Abbey Choir School

Thorney Island was the eyot (or small island) on the Thames, upstream of medieval London, where Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster (commonly known today as the Houses of Parliament) were built. It was formed by rivulets of the River Tyburn, which entered the Thames nearby. In Roman times, and presumably before, Thorney Island may have been part of a natural ford where Watling Street crossed the Thames, of particular importance before the construction of London Bridge. The name may be derived from the Anglo-Saxon Þorn-īeg, meaning "Thorn Island". Thorney is described in a purported 8th century charter of King Offa of Mercia, which is kept in the Abbey muniments, as a "terrible place". In the Spring of 893, Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, forced invading Vikings to take refuge on Thorney Island. Despite hardships and more Viking raids over the following centuries, the monks tamed the island until by the time of Edward the Confessor it was "A delightful place, surrounded by fertile land and green fields". The abbey's College Garden survives, a thousand years later, and may be the oldest garden in England.Since the Middle Ages, the level of the land has risen, the rivulets have been built over, and the Thames has been embanked, so that there is now no visible Thorney Island. The name is kept only by Thorney Street, at the back of the MI5 Security Service building; but a local heritage organisation established by June Stubbs in 1976 took the name The Thorney Island Society. In 1831 the boundaries of the former island were described as the Chelsea Waterworks, the Grosvenor Canal, and the ornamental water in St James's Park. Thorney Island is one of the places reputed to be the site of King Canute's demonstration that he could not command the tides, because he built a palace at Westminster. In 2000, the politician John Roper was created a Life peer and revived the name of Thorney in Parliament by taking the title Baron Roper of Thorney Island in the City of Westminster.

Dean's Yard, Westminster, comprises most of the remaining precincts of the historically greater scope of the monastery or abbey of Westminster, not occupied by its buildings. It is known to members of Westminster School as Green (referred to without an article). It is a large gated quadrangle, closed to public traffic, chiefly a green upon which the pupils have the long-use acquired exclusive rights to sit, read and to play games such as football (they have some claim to have invented the modern game). For some centuries until a point in the early seventeenth century it was a third of its present size, since to the south stood the Queen's Scholars' dormitory, which was in monastic times the granary. Its stones support Church House. Adjoining buildingsEast: school buildings South: Church House, a conference centre and offices of the Church of England West: school buildings and Westminster Abbey Choir School North: flanking archway to the Great Sanctuary: Abbey offices and part of the Deanery.Historically the Abbey was one of the last ecclesiastical sanctuaries to surrender ancient rights such as sanctuary. Over centuries, residents included many politically disfavoured and dangerous inhabitants. They were held in check by the Abbot's own penal jurisdiction, and by the knowledge that the Abbot could instantly expel them to meet their fate at the hands of commom law. The Abbey Gatehouse was split into two prisons: one belonging to the Abbot and one for the constables outside. Westminster School displays a royal pardon from Charles II of England and Scotland to the King's Scholars, whose actions killed a bailiff harassing the mistress of one of them in Dean's Yard, accused by his fellow authorities of murder. Whether he was excused for reacting to the breach of some vestigial sanctuary, in stark contrast to the English Commonwealth where such rights were undeniably defunct, or for a moderate degree of violence that may have been used, such as might have resulted in a manslaughter charge were the victim not a bailiff, is unrecorded. The Abbey's Sanctuary extended beyond, as far as the north side of Parliament Square to a short approach, Thieving Lane, through which thieves were taken to the prison (see Richard II's gatehouse, Old Palace Yard) without entering sanctuary and being able to claim its immunity, but in the tenements of which prostitution took hold. HM Treasury is built upon its site, leading to accusations that thieving still continues there, especially at times of higher taxation or departmental cuts.

Gatehouse Prison was a prison in Westminster, built in 1370 as the gatehouse of Westminster Abbey. It was first used as a prison by the Abbot, a powerful churchman who held considerable power over the precincts and sanctuary. It was one of the prisons which supplied the Old Bailey with information on former prisoners (such as their identity or prior criminal records) for making indictments against criminalsWhile he was imprisoned in the Gatehouse for petitioning to have the Clergy Act 1640 annulled, Richard Lovelace wrote "To Althea, from Prison", with its famous line "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage" The Gatehouse prison was demolished in 1776. On its site, in front of the Abbey's Great West Door, is the Westminster scholars' Crimean War Memorial.

The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) is a neoliberal (formerly libertarian) think tank and lobbying group based in the United Kingdom and named after Adam Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher and classical economist. The libertarian label was officially changed to neoliberal on 10 October 2016. The Institute advocates free market and classical liberal ideas, primarily via the formation of policy options with regard to public choice theory, which political decision makers seek to develop upon. ASI President Madsen Pirie has sought to describe the activity of the organisation as "[w]e propose things which people regard as being on the edge of lunacy. The next thing you know, they're on the edge of policy".The ASI formed the primary intellectual force behind privatisation of state-owned industries during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher and alongside the Centre for Policy Studies and Institute of Economic Affairs advanced a neoliberal approach toward public policy on privatisation, taxation, education and healthcare. A number of the policies presented by organisation were adopted by the administrations of John Major and Tony Blair and members of the ASI have also advised non-United Kingdom governments.Beyond policy development, the organisation advocates free market ideas through the publication and distribution of literature, the promotion of Tax Freedom Day, the hosting of speaker events for students and young people, media appearances and blogging.

The Church House is the home of the headquarters of the Church of England, occupying the south end of Dean's Yard next to Westminster Abbey in London. Besides providing administrative offices for the Church Commissioners, the Archbishops' Council and the Church of England Pensions Board, and a chamber for the General Synod, the building also provided a meeting place for the Parliament of the United Kingdom during World War II, and for some of the organs of the newly formed United Nations afterwards, including the first meeting of the UN Security Council. It has more recently been the venue for several notable public enquiries.

The Westminster Scholars War Memorial, also known as the Crimea and Indian Mutiny Memorial, is an 1861 memorial in London. It commemorates 19 former pupils of Westminster School who died in two wars: ten in the Crimean War of 1854-56, and nine in the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58. It was designed in High Victorian Gothic style by George Gilbert Scott, who was Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey from 1849 to 1878. The memorial is installed on a triangular plot outside the west entrance to Westminster Abbey, and north of the gatehouse leading to Dean's Yard. It stands near where Broad Sanctuary to the north becomes Victoria Street to the west, with a short road The Sanctuary running to the south and east. It became a Grade II listed building in 1958. Westminster Abbey and the Dean's Yard gatehouse (also designed by Scott in Gothic style, and constructed in 1853-54) are each separately listed, at Grade I and Grade II respectively. Westminster School is still based in the Abbey's precincts.

Westminster School is a public school in Westminster, London, England, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. It derives from a charity school founded by Westminster Benedictines before the 1066 Norman Conquest, as documented by the Croyland Chronicle and a charter of King Offa. Continuous existence is clear from the early 14th century. Its academic results place it among the top schools nationally; about half its students go to Oxbridge, giving it the highest national Oxbridge acceptance rate. Boys join Under School at seven and Senior School at 13 by examination. Girls join the Sixth Form at 16. About a quarter of the 750 pupils board. Weekly boarders may go home after Saturday morning school. The school motto, Dat Deus Incrementum, quotes 1 Corinthians 3:6: "I planted the seed... but God made it grow." Westminster was one of nine schools examined by the 1861 Clarendon Commission and reformed by the Public Schools Act 1868. The school has produced three Nobel laureates: Edgar Adrian (Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1932), Sir Andrew Huxley (likewise in 1963) and Sir Richard Stone (Nobel Prize in Economics in 1984). Six UK prime ministers have attended, all belonging to the Whig or Liberal factions of British politics: Henry Pelham and his brother the Duke of Newcastle, the Marquess of Rockingham, the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Portland, and Lord John Russell.

Ashburnham House is an extended seventeenth-century house on Little Dean's Yard in Westminster, London, United Kingdom, which since 1882 has been part of Westminster School. It is occasionally open to the public, when its staircase and first floor drawing-rooms in particular can be seen to be superb. Ashburnham House took its present form shortly after the Restoration when it was leased by Charles Ashburnham, a friend of Charles II. and subsequently became a London seat for his family that became the Earls of Ashburnham. As the staircase has the characteristics of work by Inigo Jones or his pupil John Webb the design of the house was for many years attributed to them, but now, however, the house as a whole is often attributed to architect William Samwell. The Ashburnham family lived in the house for less than eighty years until John Ashburnham, 1st Earl of Ashburnham sold the lease to the Crown in 1730.

The Westminster Assembly of Divines was a council of divines (theologians) and members of the English Parliament appointed from 1643 to 1653 to restructure the Church of England. Several Scots also attended, and the Assembly's work was adopted by the Church of Scotland. As many as 121 ministers were called to the Assembly, with nineteen others added later to replace those who did not attend or could no longer attend. It produced a new Form of Church Government, a Confession of Faith or statement of belief, two catechisms or manuals for religious instruction (Shorter and Larger), and a liturgical manual, the Directory for Public Worship, for the Churches of England and Scotland. The Confession and catechisms were adopted as doctrinal standards in the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian churches, where they remain normative. Amended versions of the Confession were also adopted in Congregational and Baptist churches in England and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Confession became influential throughout the English-speaking world, but especially in American Protestant theology. The Assembly was called by the Long Parliament before and during the beginning of the First English Civil War. The Long Parliament was influenced by Puritanism, a religious movement which sought to further reform the church. They were opposed to the religious policies of King Charles I and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. As part of a military alliance with Scotland, Parliament agreed that the outcome of the Assembly would bring the English Church into closer conformity with the Church of Scotland. The Scottish Church was governed by a system of elected assemblies of elders called presbyterianism, rather than rule by bishops, called episcopalianism, which was used in the English church. Scottish commissioners attended and advised the Assembly as part of the agreement. Disagreements over church government caused open division in the Assembly, despite attempts to maintain unity. The party of divines who favoured presbyterianism was in the majority, but the congregationalist party, which held greater influence in the military, favoured autonomy for individual congregations rather than the subjection of congregations to regional and national assemblies entailed in presbyterianism. Parliament eventually adopted a presbyterian form of government but lacked the power to implement it. During the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, all of the documents of the Assembly were repudiated and episcopal church government was reinstated in England. The Assembly worked in the Reformed Protestant theological tradition, also known as Calvinism. It took the Bible as the authoritative word of God, from which all theological reflection must be based. The divines were committed to the Reformed doctrine of predestination — that God chooses certain men to be saved and enjoy eternal life rather than eternal punishment. There was some disagreement at the Assembly over the doctrine of particular redemption — that Christ died only for those chosen for salvation. The Assembly also held to Reformed covenant theology, a framework for interpreting the Bible. The Assembly's Confession is the first of the Reformed confessions to teach a doctrine called the covenant of works, which teaches that before the fall of man, God promised eternal life to Adam on condition that he perfectly obeyed God.

The Diocese of Westminster was a short-lived diocese of the Church of England, extant from 1540–1550. Westminster Abbey served as its cathedral.

The Westminster Archives Centre is the archive centre for the City of Westminster, London, located at 10 St Ann's Street, London SW1P 2DE England.

The City and Liberty of Westminster was a unit of local government in the county of Middlesex, England. It was located immediately to the west of the City of London. Originally under the control of Westminster Abbey, the local authority for the area was the Westminster Court of Burgesses from 1585 to 1900. The area now forms the southern part of the City of Westminster in Greater London.