Royal College, Colombo - History

History

Rev. Joseph Marsh (Snr) the acting colonial chaplain at St. Paul's Church, a tutorial staff member of then Cotta Institution (current Sri Jayawardenepura Maha Vidyalaya) joining from Diocese of Chennai in India established a school named the Hill Street Academy in 1835, as a private institution with 20 students, mainly from the upper class community situated at Hill Street, Pettah. Rev. Marsh also became the first Head Master of it.

The following year in 1836, Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, the British Governor of Ceylon, based on the recommendations of the Colebrooke Commission re-established it, as the Colombo Academy, an English public school modeled on Eton College, with Marsh continuing as Head master. The oldest public school on the island with the governor as its patron, it gave to the children of leading Ceylonese an education which would make them fit to be citizens of the British Empire and serve as the principal public school and a model for other government schools that were to be built in Ceylon. In 1836 the school was moved to San Sebastian Hill, Pettah, (prior to which it was at Maradana, next to Hulftsdorp) it would stay there for another 75 years before being shifted to Thurstan Road. Even though the college had close ties to Anglicanism at its early years, since 1836 it has remained a secular school.

In 1859 the Queens College, Colombo was established as the first institution of higher education in Ceylon, affiliated to the University of Calcutta it prepared students from the Colombo Academy for entrance examinations of English universities. In 1865 the Morgan Committee of inquiry into education recommended that it be reorganized and that scholarships should be awarded to study in University of Oxford and as a result in 1869, Queens College was amalgamated with the Colombo Academy.

The first hostel of the Colombo Academy was established in San Sebastian in 1868, establishing it as one of the first boarding schools in Ceylon.

In 1881 it was renamed Royal College Colombo with the royal consent of Queen Victoria. The Gazette Notification giving Her Majesty's approval to change the name of the school appeared on July 31, 1881. The same year the first cadet battalion in Ceylon was formed at the College, attached to the Ceylon Light Infantry. The Royal College Union was formed in 1891 as the first alumni society in the country.

On August 27, 1913 the school was moved to its new building at Thurstan Road (which is now the main building of the University of Colombo). Ten years later on October 10, 1923 the school moved once again, this time to the newly built Victorian styled building on Reid Avenue, which it still occupies. This move was due to the suggestion made by a higher education committee in 1914, which suggested that Royal College should be converted into a University College. Due to the objections made by members of the Royal College Old Boys Union, especially by the speeches made by Frederick Dornhorst, KC, the then Governor of Ceylon, Lord Chalmers instead created a separate University College named University College Colombo, at the schools former premises which became the University of Colombo in the later years. With the introduction of free education in Ceylon in 1931, Royal stopped charging fees from its students thus proving education free of charge to this day.

In 1940 the school was again on the move this time due to the onset of World War II. The school was ordered to move out and the British Army moved in establishing a military hospital in the school buildings by 1941. Principal E.L. Bradby made sure the education of the students was carried on unhindered by moving the students into four private villas (known as bungalows in Ceylon) at Turret Street, Colombo which were the Turret House, Carlton Lodge, Sudarshan House and Firdoshi House. In 1942 the 1-3 forms were shifted to Glendale bungalow in Bandarawela where Bandarawela Central College stands today.. Later in 1948 after the war the school was relocated to its old home on Ried Avenue, Colombo.

In August 1977 the Royal Preparatory School was amalgamated to Royal College forming the school's primary school, with it came the county's only national theatre at the time the Navarangahala.

Five years earlier on May 22, 1972 the members of the House of Representatives of the Dominion of Ceylon met at the Royal Primary School Hall (Navarangahala) enacted the Republican Constitution that established the Republic of Sri Lanka.