Addiscombe Military Seminary

About

The East India Company Military Seminary was a British military academy at Addiscombe, Surrey, in what is now the London Borough of Croydon. It opened in 1809 and closed in 1861. Its purpose was to train young officers to serve in the East India Company's own army in India. The institution was formally known as the East India Company Military Seminary (a name the cadets always disliked) until 1855, when the name was changed to the East India Company Military College. In 1858, when the college was taken over by the government, it was renamed the Royal India Military College. Colloquially, it was known as Addiscombe Seminary, Addiscombe College, or Addiscombe Military Academy. The Seminary was a sister institution to the East India Company College in Hertfordshire, which trained civilian "writers" (clerks). In military terms it was a counterpart to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

Addiscombe Place, the mansion house which formed the central building of the later Seminary, was erected in about 1702 by William Draper, on land which he had inherited in 1700 from his aunt, Dame Sarah Temple. Draper's father-in-law was the diarist John Evelyn, who in 1703 pronounced the house "in all points of good and solid architecture to be one of the very best gentleman's houses in Surrey, when finish'd". Its interior included many mural paintings of mythological subjects, supposed to be the work of Sir James Thornhill; while high up on the exterior east front was carved the Latin inscription, Non faciam vitio culpave minorem ("I will not lower myself by vice or fault"). By the late 18th century the house was in the ownership of Charles James Clarke, who leased it to the statesman Charles Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, later 1st Earl of Liverpool. Regular visitors during Liverpool's tenure included King George III and William Pitt.

Following the death of Lord Liverpool in December 1808, Addiscombe Place was put on the market by Emelius Delmé-Radcliffe (Clarke's brother-in-law). It was bought by the Court of Directors of the East India Company for use as a military academy. Although the company was primarily a trading concern, it also maintained its own army, the officers of which had previously been trained at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, at the Royal Military College Junior Department at Great Marlow, or privately. They were now to be trained at Addiscombe. The Seminary opened on 21 January 1809, although the formal transfer of title of the property did not take place until a year later, on 26 January 1810. The initial purchase comprised the mansion house and 58 acres of land to the south of Lower Addiscombe Road, but a further 30 acres to the north were subsequently acquired. New buildings were added, so that the mansion house, which originally housed the entire establishment, became a purely administrative block. The additions included barracks, a chapel, a drawing and lecture hall, a hospital, a dining-hall, a sand-modelling hall, a gymnasium, and service facilities including a bakehouse, dairy, laundry, and brew-house.

In the early days cadets entered the Seminary between the ages of 131⁄2 and 16, and later between 15 and 18. They normally remained for 2 years (4 terms), although it was possible to pass the final examination within a shorter period. The initial intake comprised 60 cadets, but numbers rose to about 75 a year, meaning that there were around 150 cadets in residence at any one time. Cadets or their families were required to pay fees (£30 a year when the Seminary first opened; £50 a term by 1835), but these were heavily subsidised and represented only a proportion of the true costs of their education. Initially, the main purpose of the Seminary was to train cadets for the Engineer or Artillery arms of the service, but as an experiment in 1816–17, and more permanently from 1827, "general service" cadets destined for the Infantry were admitted. In all, some 3,600 cadets passed through Addiscombe during the years of its existence. Of these, over 500 entered the Engineers, nearly 1,100 the Artillery, and about 2,000 the Infantry, some of whom subsequently transferred to the Cavalry. The curriculum comprised instruction in the "sciences of Mathematics, Fortification, Natural Philosophy, and Chemistry; the Hindustani, Latin, and French languages; in the art of Civil, Military, and Lithographic Drawing and Surveying; and in the construction of the several gun-carriages and mortar-beds used in the Artillery service, from the most approved models". The Company paid well, and attracted some distinguished academic staff: John Shakespear published a standard Hindustani grammar, and Jonathan Cape was a Fellow of the Royal Society. In practice, the emphasis was on mathematics, and the Seminary was criticised for not including more training in practical "military science". In the 1850s photography was also studied. J. M. Bourne concludes that the Seminary was "not a true military college at all, but a militarised public school" – although he also judges that, by the standards of the age, its record as a military training school was not significantly worse than those of the establishments at Woolwich and Sandhurst. Cadets were required to wear uniforms at all times, and were not permitted to go beyond the grounds or into Croydon without permission. However, they gained a reputation for indiscipline, and fights with the townspeople of Croydon were not infrequent. There was no corporal punishment, but in the early years, cadets could be punished by being incarcerated in the so-called "Black Hole", and fed on bread and water. Until 1829 they worshipped regularly at Croydon Parish Church (marching there each Sunday in uniform, accompanied by their band): after that date they began to worship at the newly consecrated St James's Church, Addiscombe.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.