There's gold in them thar schools

Some of the most significant treasures and curiosities in British history, from Henry VII's golden cope to Alan Turing's reports, lie not in museums or galleries, but, unexpectedly, within independent schools, reveals Madeleine Silver

- Madeleine Silver

EACH autumn term, Harrow’s new boys, freshly decked out with a straw boater and tentatively familiarising themselves with the 300-plus-acre campus, are ushered into a briefing by the school’s curator. It’s here that they learn about the generosity of their predecessors who bequeathed their collections to the school’s Old Speech Room Gallery, an otherworldly compendium of curiosities, for future pupils to marvel at. Think Etruscan antiques, prehistoric implements and 19thcentury watercolours by Turner, Ruskin and Cotman, as well as photographs by Old Harro- vians Sir Cecil Beaton and Patrick Lichfield.

With more than 450 years of history, Harrow’s collection might be staggeringly sprawling, but it’s not alone. Eton College in Berkshire keeps the oldest known FA Cup programme, from 1882, a specimen of a kakapo, Henry V’s will and a page from the draft of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Across Britain, archivists at public schools are presiding over treasures that not only tell the story of these great institutions themselves—each library stove, corps uniform or house tankard providing a telling snapshot of Britain at that time—but with prized pieces that wouldn’t be out of place in the finest of national galleries.