Grounds
Whitgift is located in a 45-acre (18 ha) parkland site. The ship (a model of HMS Ark Royal) that features prominently on the top of "Big School" (the school hall) is a reminder of the history of the site. Additions since the 400th anniversary of the school have been a maze in the founder's garden, an aviary, an enclosure for Prevost's squirrels, ponds and a multi-million-pound sports complex.
Whitgift is renowned locally for its wide variety of animals, most notably the peacocks which have graced the grounds since the 1930s, and the flamingos. In 2005 Sir David Attenborough visited the school to open the ponds, the enclosure of which also houses two albino wallabies (a gift from the Queen, given in 2002 after the school's ponds re-opened, and various waterfowl, including Hawaiian geese, which the zoo successfully bred. Unfortunately both wallabies are now dead.The headmaster recently purchased four more wallabies to replace the dead two.
Read more about this topic: Whitgift School
Famous quotes containing the word grounds:
“We’re built, as a nation, on the grounds of a concentration camp. It’s like saying “OK, here’s Auschwitz. Here’s where we’ll start our country.””
—Peter Carey (b. 1943)
“The principle of the brotherhood of man is ... narcissistic ... for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Unfaithfulness ought to extinguish love, and we should not be jealous when there is reason to be. Only those who give no grounds for jealousy are worthy of it.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)