Prichard and Grosvenor Halls - Senior Boarding Houses
To the east of the North Lawn we find Prichard and Grosvenor Halls, the boarding houses for the senior boys and girls respectively.
The first step in the provision of really comfortable boarding facilities at Port Regis was the building of Grosvenor Hall in 1986. This gives each of 48 senior girls within the larger dorm her own cubicle which includes a basin, mirror, desk, clothes storage, radiator and window. The design is not mere partitioning: a sliding wall and door quickly turns the area into a private room. This resolves the problem of competing demands and allows the girls in their final couple of years the privacy of a single bedroom without sacrificing the conviviality of the dorm. The House nestles round a delightfully cosy and comfortable sitting room complete with kitchenette and fish tank, and Saturday evenings here in PJs with hot chocolate and toast is one of the highlights of the girls’ week!
In January 1995 we opened the boys’ equivalent, Prichard Hall. Accommodating 60 older boys the house embodies all the features of the girls’ house, with one or two adjustments. There is a shower and loo for every two pupils, with high-quality fittings and flooring, sensor-operated lights and hand-dryers, and enough hand-basins to keep the strictest enforcer of National Minimum Boarding Standards content!
Two large common rooms provide options in entertainment for the boys. Upstairs is a full-size table-tennis table and an area for model-making where boys can glue and paint safely. Downstairs, the sitting room offers comfortable chairs and bean bags for board games, reading or even (occasional!) TV viewing and is the meeting place for the whole house. Both social rooms have a kitchenette attached so that staff can provide hot chocolate and toast in the evening for winners of the week's "Tidy Dorm" competition, and sometimes even breakfast after a lie-in on Sunday morning!
A single room with en-suite bathroom extends the help available to boys who might be suffering jet-lag or feeling "under the weather" without needing to be in the Health Centre, and our facilities for the disabled are much admired. "Boot rooms" at every entrance mean that there is plenty of space for storing those "boy essentials" - roller blades, skate boards and scooters - as well as their muddy shoes and grotty trainers!
Both Houses have telephones, as do the Junior Houses, for both incoming and outgoing calls, which help keep parents and children in touch, although the seniors and all overseas children also have the option of bringing a mobile phone to the House with them (for use under careful guidelines).
All dormitories, both here and in the Mansion, have a responsible senior pupil (a “Dorm Captain”) assisting the House staff in looking after the children, and each term all children may request a number of others with whom they would like share a dormitory, and Houseparents will do all they can to accommodate these “dorm requests”.
The staff too are well catered for. Both Prichard and Grosvenor have married Houseparents, who enjoy delightful homes at one end of each building with private gardens, as well as Assistant Housemaster/ Housemistress and two matrons, all of whom have comfortable, self-contained flats. Happy staff = happy children = happy parents = happy headmaster!
We think that the boarding houses are amongst the very best features of what Port Regis has to offer with wonderful staff and really homely dorms that probably surpass what any other boarding school in the land can offer. Indeed we have a stream of Heads from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and elsewhere coming to see the renowned boarding facilities at Port Regis and take back to their own schools some of our ideas!
Click here to see the Port Regis Pre-Prep & Nursery
