There are certain buildings in and around Weymouth which I have passed on so many occasions in my lifetime that they just become yet another invisible part of the scenery, you no longer really see them…not properly.

One such grandiose building stood down towards the bottom end of Dorchester Road, an imposing building which towered tall behind its surrounding stone wall.

I had sometimes wondered at its imposing style, but never really knew what it had originally been built for.

I only knew of it as the Teacher Training College where two of my sisters went.

In later years my son also did his art 6th form there and many a time I would attend art exhibitions in the little chapel on the site.

After a little bit of digging I came across a copy of the book written in 1901 by G S Falkner entitled “The History of Weymouth College,” a book which relays it’s origins and long history with the town.

Every now and again I’ll add extracts from the book which gives a first hand view of what this area of the new college in the 1860/70’s was like.

In the mid Victorian era, much of this area of Dorchester Road was open land, free of any significant buildings, in fact, part of it was the old Greenhill Common.

This land was owned by wealthy Sir Frederick Johnston, who seemed to possess vast tracts of Weymouth,(and was the man who certain Weymouth residents had a court dispute with over the ownership of Greenhill Common when the Greenhill gardens were built there.)

The main plot was leased in 1864 and plans were drawn up for the building of a new Weymouth Grammar School. (later renamed the Weymouth College.)

The  architect chosen for the job was to be  George Rackstrow Crickmay, a man  who designed and oversaw the construction of many of Weymouth’s distinctive civic buildings such as the sadly long gone beautiful old Sidney Hall.

They were a family firm of architects who had not long since moved to their new premises in St Thomas Street,(1858.)

In February of 1864 the foundations were laid for Weymouth’s new Grammar School.

By the summer of that same year the building work was complete…the Victorians certainly didn’t hang around!

Pupils didn’t enter the new school until after the Christmas term when on the 8th February 1865 the boys filed into the big schoolroom to participative in a prayer meeting to bless their new home and for many it was to be their home, as many of the pupils were boarders.

“Just outside Big School, on this floor, was the ‘Class Room,’ as now, with capacious cupboards on one side. It opened into the Tower Room, as now, but the swing door outside communicated with the private part of the house. On the ground floor was the dining hall, shorter than now, with only one door, one fireplace, and two side windows. Behind the Hall were the box room, cloakroom and Day-boys lavatory. From the entrance hall a passage led past these rooms and thence by a flagged, roofed corridor, open on the right hand, to the lavatories and playground.

At the top of the first flight of stone stairs, and continuing in the same direction, was a short flight of wooden stairs, as now, which led past the bathroom and convalescence room, and, at the end of the passage , to a small sick-room, looking across the fields to Lodmoor. In the upper stories were three large dormitories, a masters room, and, down the passage, a changing-room, with a dozen basins set in slabs of slate, and other smaller dormitories. Communicating with the Hall was the Master’s Common Room and, through the swing door, the Headmaster’s study, the private apartments and stairs, the kitchens, the back stairs, the pantry and cognate offices.”

Behind the school buildings it was still farm land and common as seen here in the old photo from the period, it mentions a couple of names that might still ring bells with a few of Weymouth’s more stately residents, Radipole Farm and ‘Nangles.’

“Mr Wadsworth was tenant of the local farm and lived in the farmhouse(Radipole Farm,) since known as Nangles and ‘Radipole Villa,’ but now used as temporary Science Laboratory and Carpenters shop. The house was approached by a farm track, which may be traced along the lower boundary of the Chapel grounds and over which have been built Moffat house and the hospital, running down to small farm cottages almost on Lodmoor, where the pigs were tended.”

“Along the Dorchester Road was a farmyard shut off from the public gaze by a stone wall, with a lean-to thatched roof and shelter for cows. this wall is in existence today, though some years ago it was moved a yard or more further back from the road. The farmer kindly allowed the boys to use his land, extending from the farm track to the Preston Road, for games, the lower or rougher part, which was decidedly billowy, for football, and the smoother portion, in the neighbourhood of St John’s Church, for cricket.”

Sports and leading a good clean healthy life style was all part of the Victorian school boys day…healthy mind, healthy body.

“School football was played sometimes in front of the pavilion, sometimes along the potato patch, sometimes on the barrack field,( old Hanovarian barracks,) and sometimes by the timber pound (now the Great Western Railway Yard), along the Backwater.”

Other forms of outdoor recreation were often indulged in…

“…the great paper-chases of the ‘seventies’ became a feature of the School life; we never used to think of anything of twelve or fifteen miles. It must be repeated that shorts at this time were unknown, and only a very few could sport a flannel shirt”

Of course, corporal punishment was very much on the cards for those young boys who dared to flout the strict rules…

“Punishment, like holidays, was dealt out with no niggard hand in the form of severe floggings on the back with the cane. The headmaster was subject to sudden fits of temper, and discipline was then as fitful as an April day.”

Even the distinctive uniform only added to the boys misery…

“On Sundays top-hats were de rigueur for everybody and black coats for seniors, while ‘Eatons’ were compulsory for small fry. The top-hats were a cause of offence to the town boys, who used to waylay the College boys of a dark night on their way to christ Church.They had a regular slogan: ‘Drums up, Monkeys under!’ and continued with their insulting behaviour…”

“On Sundays boys attended morning and evening service at St Mary’s and marched to and fro via the Esplanade, which proceeding precipitated further town-and-gown rows and again led to fisticuffs.”

The school was popular with those who could afford to send their children, in its heyday back in the 1870’s it held 80 odd pupils, many parents sent their darling little Alfred’s and Johnny’s  because it was by the seaside which at the time advertised the benefits of sea bathing and the strengthening of one’s weak constitution.

” In the summer term we were allowed to bathe under the surveillance of a master, who sat on the beach just below Greenhill. There was no gardens in those dyas. No instruction in swimming was given; no bathing-dress was considered necessary.”

In the winter the boys would flock onto Lodmoor to skate when the weather permitted it.(which seemed to be fairly frequent in those days of pre-global warming)

Come 1891 and further buildings had been added to the school site as seen here in the photo below.

The school could even boast of their own resident ghost in the building, the sound of a pair of heavy boots being thrown onto the floor in the study room would happen every night regular as clockwork. Come 10 o’clock the mysterious sound could be heard from one end to end of the room to the other, but no one ever found its source.

Even as late as the start of the 20th c students inhabited the range buildings, shown here in an early postcard, boys of the Junior School enjoying a tennis match in the sunshine.

The old building continued to serve Weymouth over the following years, becoming the Teacher Training College, then a 6th Form College.

Later, when education no longer had a use for these grand old buildings  due to the erection of their modern new premises behind, they  became unused and unloved. Left empty and deserted, time soon began taking its toll on the grand Victorian facade with its elegant tall windows boarded up.

Thankfully, someone had the vision of what it could become once again, a lasting testimony to Victorian design and craftsmanship, the foresight to save it from demolition, the whole original Victorian school site was turned into flats.

But I wonder if that old ghost still launches his boots into the corner of his room every night, or if the sound of a small top-hatted boy’s footsteps running can be heard as he flees the wrath of his irate Headmasters cane?

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Below are two postcards from the taken between the two WW’s of Weymouth College boys practising their drill on the sports gound.

Interested in Weymouth’s history? Then check out my numerous Pinterest Pages of old views of Weymouth.