Calthorpe School

Note: This article relates to Xin Zhou's Schooldays, which begins in the year 1900 (well, 1899, technically, but the new year begins in the first story). It assumes that year is the present.

Calthorpe is a large, public boarding-school for boys, situated in southern England. It was founded in 1790, on the site of the ruins of the former Calthorpe Priory, a Catholic monastery which had been dissolved by Henry VIII, looted of it's treasures and lands, and then left in ruins.

Calthorpe originally consisted of a small boarding-house, a chapel, a hall and the main school building. This small, early school housed about 80 scholars in cramped conditions. The present school was completed in 1847, and now can house as many as 300 boys in a much grander style. The original hall and school survive, the school is now one of the four boarding-houses, and is affectionately known as The Old House.

The new main building was completed in 1858, the old, small boarding-house was demolished to make room for it, though a part of it's walls survive and form the base of what is known as "The Old Tower", though the rest of this structure is the same age as "The New Tower" opposite. Further expansions and modifications were made to the school in 1869 and 1881, which results in a somewhat hodge-podge layout in the main building, with many floors on slightly different levels.

The school has four houses, as well as The Old House, at the front of the building, there are three others at the rear. The houses contain the dormitories for each form, and combined studies and bedrooms for the sixth formers (mostly on the top floor, with the exception of the Dormitory Prefects, who are on the same floor as the dorm they are responsible for). The other forms have studies in the main building. Aside from The Old House, the other houses are named after the master in charge. Presently these are Waite's, Radley's and XXXX.