House System
The school operates four houses, to one of which each student is allocated upon entering the school. The houses compete for different sporting and academic trophies throughout the year, and determine each student's form class.
The four houses are:
- Blackfriars - named for the Dominican monks (or black friars due to their garb), that once had a convent adjacent to the school grounds.
- Collyhill - named for Alexander Simpson of Collyhill who bequeathed a large sum of money to the school, which allowed for more boys to join the school.
- Sillerton - The origin of the Sillerton house name is not clear, but it is believed that, in Robert Gordon's lifetime, he was known as Gordon of Silverton (siller being Scots for silver), and on a 1746 map, the school is identified as Sillerton Hospital.
- Straloch - named for Robert Gordon of Straloch, one of the first graduates of Marischal College, studying humanities, mathematics and philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Robert Gordon's College
Famous quotes containing the words house and/or system:
“[They] hired a large house as a receptacle for gentlewomen, who either had no fortunes, or so little that it would not support them. For these they made the most comfortable institution [and] provided [them] with all conveniences for rural amusements, a library, musical instruments, and implements for various works.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)