page_title: Royal College, Colombo
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Royal College, Colombo / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Year 7 building, the oldest building in Royal College
context_page_description: Royal College is a selective entry boys' school located in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Started as a private school by Rev Joseph Marsh in 1835, it was established as the Colombo Academy by Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton in January 1836, as part of the implementation of the recommendations of the Colebrooke Cameron Commission, and was the first government-run secondary school for boys in the island.
  Royal College is considered to be the leading public school in Sri Lanka and is often referred to as the "Eton of Sri Lanka". The school was founded in the British public school tradition, based on the recommendations of the Colebrooke Cameron Commission, and having been named the Royal College, Colombo in 1881 with consent from Queen Victoria, it became the first school to gain the prefix, "Royal", outside of the British Isles and it was one of the first schools to be designated as a national school by the Sri Lankan Government in the 1980s.
  As a national school it is funded by the government as opposed to the provincial council providing both primary and secondary education. The school was selected as "one of best innovative colleges" in the world by Microsoft in 2009.
context_section_description: In 1835, Rev. Joseph Marsh started a private school at the back verandah of the church called the Hill Street Academy for twenty students from the upper class community situated at Hill Street, Pettah.
  Then in the following year in 1836, Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, the British Governor of Ceylon, based on the recommendations of the Colebrooke Commission, established the Colombo Academy, an English public school modeled on Eton College, with Marsh continuing as headmaster on government pay. It was the oldest public school on the island and had the governor as its patron. It gave the children of leading Ceylonese an education which would make them fit to be citizens of the British Empire and served 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 in its early years, since 1836 it has remained a secular school.
  In 1859 the Queen's 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 at the University of Oxford, and as a result in 1869, Queen's 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.
  In 1911, work commenced on a new building for the school on Reid Avenue. On November 1911 during construction of this building it was hit by an aircraft that was trying the establish the record for the first flight over Ceylon in November 1911. On August 27, 1913 the school was moved to thin new building at Reid Avenue (which is now the main building of the University of Colombo). Ten years later on October 10, 1923, the school moved, this time to the newly constructed Victorian styled building further down Reid Avenue, which it continues to occupy. This move was due to the suggestion made by a higher education committee in 1914, that Royal College should be converted into a University college. Due to the objections made by past pupils of the Royal College Union, especially by the speeches made by Frederick Dornhorst, KC, the then Governor of Ceylon, Lord Chalmers instead created a separate University College, University College Colombo, at the school's 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 and later covering it into a garrison. Principal E.L. Bradby made sure that education was carried on unhindered by moving the students into four private villas (known as bungalows in Ceylon) at Turret Street, Colombo: the Turret House, Carlton Lodge, Sudarshan House and Firdoshi House. In 1942 the 1–3 forms were shifted to Glendale bungalow at Bandarawela in the hill country.
  Following a decree from the State Council of Ceylon in 1945, religious studies were started at the school.
  In 1945, after the 
caption: The oldest building in school, the former hostel now houses the Grade 8 section.
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