History
Founded in 1803 by act of Royal Warrant dating from 1801, the school was until 1892 called the Royal Military Asylum. The school’s primary purpose was to educate the orphans of British servicemen killed in the Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815.
Between 1803 and 1909 the Royal Military Asylum was located at what is now known as the Duke of York's Headquarters in Chelsea, London. For the duration of World War I (1914–1918), the Duke of York's School was evacuated to Hutton, near Brentwood, Essex. The reason for the evacuation was to provide the military authorities with a transit point for troops moved to and from the Western Front. The school was co-educational; making the Duke of York's the very first co-educational boarding school in the United Kingdom. Today the Chelsea site is home to the Saatchi Gallery and the Duke of York’s Royal Military School Old Boys' Association.
Between 1816 and 1840, the Asylum had a branch in Southampton which provided schooling for up to 400 military orphans and children of serving soldiers of both sexes until 1823, when the boys were transferred to Chelsea, with Southampton taking more girls. A decline in the school numbers resulted in its closure in 1840. From 1841, the buildings were taken over by the Ordnance Survey.
In 1892 the Royal Military Asylum was renamed The Duke of York's Royal Military School and in the process became an all-boys school. In 1909 the school relocated to new premises constructed on the cliffs above Dover in Kent.
In 1994 the school re-admitted girls and returned to co-education.
Read more about this topic: Duke Of York's Royal Military School
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