Charterhouse School - Houses

Houses

There are four old houses and seven new houses in White List (a directory of names) order. In Charterhouse vocabulary an old house is one which was founded in the early years of the school, as opposed to the new houses which were created later and are situated away from the main school. They are all distinguished by the colour of the pupils' ties, umbrellas and football team's stripes.

In addition, a new Day house, Fletcherites, named after Frank Fletcher, a former headmaster, was opened in autumn 2010. Fletcherites's Housemaster is I de Visme and the house colour is Light Blue (as compared to Hodgesonites' Dark Blue). The house moved into the old Great Comp building, now renovated. Verites, Saunderites and Gownboys houses predate the move to Godalming in 1872 and are known as the "block" houses. However, Girdlestoneites is now treated as one of the "old houses" because it, along with Verites, Saunderites and Gownboys, are the only houses still in their 1870s buildings, while all the rest are in their 1970s replacements. Saunderites is named after its first Housemaster Dr. Saunders (Headmaster 1832-53) and it was the Headmaster's house, in that the headmaster would not only run the school but one of the houses. Unfortunately, the dramatic increase in the size of the school and the increasing difficulties in running such a school have meant that the Headmaster can no longer do this. Gownboys was named not after their original housemaster, but because it was the scholars' house, although scholars were distributed across all the houses after the transfer to Godalming. As was tradition, scholars wore gowns with their uniform and were treated as superior to other boys. There is no longer such a tradition and the scholars are now distributed throughout the various houses, on a random but numerically equal basis. There are still scholars in Gownboys, but in no greater proportion than any other house.

Verites is a contraction of Oliverites (Oliver Walford, School Usher 1838-55) and hence 'Verites' is pronounced as if the 'Ver' is from Oliver not as from 'very'. The records of the house run back to the start of the last century, but previously it was just called 'Boarders House No.2'. Girdlestonites' first housemaster was Frederick Girdlestone, who was said to walk like a duck. Girdlestonites has therefore been unofficially known as 'Duckites' ever since, but since this was 'insulting' slang it was never written down or used officially. This latter restriction has now largely fallen by the wayside and even the school magazine uses Duckites in print occasionally.

All new Houses apart from Bodeites are named after their founders (although Robinites was originally Robinsonites). Bodeites was originally Buissonites, named after the Head of Languages at the time. He ran off with the matron, and so the house was renamed Bodeites after the replacement, Mr Bode. This did lead to some confusion at the time of naming the houses because some housemasters moved to houses named after their colleagues.

Robinites was a 'passage house' when the school first moved to Godalming and boys stayed there for no more than two years until they could be transferred to one of the other houses. It now has normal status. There was also another passage house known as Laleham, but this has ceased to exist.

All pupils belong to one of the 11 houses, and boarding boys will sleep in their house. Charterhouse has traditionally had very few day boys. In the 1870s the statutes of the school limited them to 10 (excluding sons of masters) and even in the late 1980s the number was only around 25 (some of whom were the sons of masters). Boarding girls are assigned a House and are fully involved in House life but at night, they sleep in halls of residence (e.g. Chetwynd) which are not treated as houses. These halls of residence are more modern than the 'new' Houses.

Teachers belong to Brooke Hall (the teachers' common room building).

Uskites was a temporary house opened in 1872 by Mr Stewart, the writing and chemistry instructor from the old Charterhouse. It was closed in 1878 and the pupils redistributed. The building itself (on Peperharow Road) was bought by a schoolmaster, and later used by the School as a sanatorium. It is now masters' accommodation. Mr Stewart named the house because he likened the valley of the River Wey (where the house lies) with the valley of the River Usk.