Page updated on the27^th January 2008

The Royal Hospital School

Holbrook, Suffolk

Click on the School Colours for the the Photo Gallery

The Royal Hospital School re-located to Holbrook near Ipswich from what is now the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich in 1933

I joined my elder brother David in Raleigh House at the Royal Hospital School [RHS] at Holbrook in 1959. There were eleven houses divided East [Collingwood, Cornwallis, Anson, Hood, Hawke, and Nelson.], and West [St Vincent, Howe, Raleigh, Blake, and Drake.] of the parade ground. Raleigh is a West house. The house master was Mr Brown [Baldy Brown] renowned for his accuracy at caning, in those days one had to bend over and touch ones toes for caning.

There were eleven houses, each house had 60 boys divided as juniors/seniors. The school is set in 200 acres of rural land on the North banks of the river Stour in Suffolk. We had a 96 acre sports field. We also had an indoor shooting range at the top of the playing field with the figurehead of the Fame on the front, as well as an outdoor shooting range, tennis courts, 400m race track with long jump/high jump pits etc. The indoor swimming pool is Olympic size as of 1933.

The assembly hall could seat 1000 with a stage fully equipped for drama productions, as well as cinema. The cinema was converted to wide screen cinema-scope in 1963, the first wide screen & colour film shown was "The Magnificent Seven" on Speech day.

We also had our own Chapel with a magnificent organ. Also we had our own Infirmary, Mortuary, and water tower.

Down in Holbrook creek we had our boat shed where we kept our Whalers and Cutters.