St Paul's Cathedral School

They are a co-educational preparatory school for boys and girls aged 4 to 13 and a residential choir school for the boy choristers of St Paul's Cathedral. We have a unique location in the heart of the City of London and a history that can be traced back to the 12th century. Our close links with St Paul’s Cathedral are very important to us and we affectionately refer to this wonderful building as our 'school chapel'. It is a very special place.

This place is amazing, filled with history and a magnet for royalty as I think several weddings have been held here in the past. It is filled with the tombs of knights, royalty and religious personalities from history. And, it is filled with tourists. You can actually take stairs up into the tower and look out over the city. There are tours or you can look around yourself. I would definitely go if you're in the area. Wizard of Where

We were lucky enough to be offered a show around of the school. The staff were so knowledgeable and it was like a step back in time for me. The long corridors and the sounds of young voices lifted my spirits. Speak to the reception staff and ask for open days to visit a real treat of history

Great school and cathedral

The Choir School for boy choristers dates from about 1123, when 8 boys in need of alms were provided with a home and education in return for singing the Cathedral Office. Gradually two schools emerged, the Choir School and the Grammar School. For many years they co-existed happily, the choristers graduating to the Grammar school to finish their education, until the latter was re-founded by Dean Colet in 1511 and became Saint Paul's School. (It is now in Barnes and has only a tenuous connection with the Cathedral.) In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the school was more famous for its acting than its singing. The Children of St Paul's had their own resident playwrights, performed regularly at Greenwich Palace before Queen Elizabeth 1 and incurred the wrath of Shakespeare and his professional company just over the river. (In Hamlet he rails against the company of 'little eyases' who are roundly applauded for their histrionic efforts). After the Restoration the choristers enjoyed a somewhat chequered history, but a vigorous campaign by the redoubtable Maria Hackett lasting some sixty years led to the re-establishment of a purpose-built school in Carter Lane to the south-west of the Cathedral in 1874. There it remained until the 1960s, when, under threat of demolition due to a road-widening scheme, it moved to its present site in New Change.