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La Martinière College is an elite private educational institution located in Lucknow, the capital of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The college consists of two schools on different campuses for boys and girls. La Martinière College (for boys) was founded in 1845 and La Martinière Girls' College was established in 1869. La Martiniere Boys' College is the only school in the world to have been awarded royal battle honours for its role in the defence of Lucknow and the Lucknow residency during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The two Lucknow colleges are part of the La Martinière family of schools, founded by the French adventurer Major General Claude Martin. There are two La Martinière Colleges in Kolkata and three in Lyon. La Martinière provides a liberal education and the medium of instruction is the English language. The schools cater for pupils from the age of 5 to 17 or 18, and are open to children of all religious denominations, the boys' school has a Chapel, a Hindu Temple and a Mosque on its campus and has remained a non-denominational school since its inception, unlike the two La Martiniere Schools in Calcutta which are Christian schools, controlled by the Anglican Church of North India. Both the schools have day scholars and residence scholars (boarders). The Economist has described its Constantia building as "perhaps the best-preserved colonial building in Lucknow". Major-General Claude Martin La Martinière Boys' College was founded by an endowment from the wealthy eighteenth-century Frenchman, Major-General Claude Martin (1735–1800), who was an officer in the French and later the British East India Company. Constantia, the palatial building which now houses the Boys' College, was built in 1785 as Martin's country residence, but was not completed until 1802, two years after Martin's death on 13 September 1800. Historians believe that the house takes its name from the school motto Labore et Constantia (Work and Constancy) which represents Martin's personal philosophy. There is a more romantic, though unproven, notion that the building was named after Constance, a young French girl who was supposedly Martin's first love. Martin never married and he had no heirs. In his will, dated 1 January 1800, he left the bulk of his estate to provide for the establishment of three schools to be named La Martinière in his memory. The schools were to be located in Lucknow, Calcutta and at Lyon, his birthplace in France. The residue of his estate after bequests had been made to be used for the maintenance of these schools. He directed that the school in Lucknow should be established at Constantia and that the house should be kept as a "school or College for teaching young men the English language and Christian religion if they found themselves inclined". Martin instructed in his will that his 'body be salted, put in spirits or embalmed', and placed in a lead coffin in a vault beneath the house. It is popularly believed that Martin was motivated not just by vanity but by a desire to protect his property after his death and to prevent his friend, the nawab, from acquiring it. By having himself, a Christian, buried beneath Constantia, he knew that the building would be permanently desecrated in the Muslim nawab's eyes. Chandan Mitra, in his book Constant Glory, thinks otherwise. He writes "Constantia's plans show that the basement mausoleum was part of the original scheme for the building and not included as an afterthought to guard against requisition." Martin was duly interred in a specially prepared vault in the basement of the house. Thus, Constantia became both a school and a mausoleum. It is the largest European funerary monument in India, and the historian William Dalrymple has described it as "The East India Company's answer to the Taj Mahal". Early years After Martin's death there were protracted disputes in the Calcutta High Court and consequently his will was not proved until 1840. In the interim the Constantia building was used as a guest house for visiting Europeans. The school finally opened on 1 October 1845 with some seventy boys on roll. The first Principal was John Newmarch. Unlike the Calcutta La Martinière, the Lucknow school was technically established outside British territory so right from its inception its interaction with local society was frequent. There was also a native branch of the school in the Maqbara Umjid Ali Shah at Hazratgunj in the centre of Lucknow. There were plans to move the native school to a different location, although it is not known whether this actually took place. The first major challenge for the La Martinière School was the events of 1857 when it had to leave its premises and assisted in the defence of the Lucknow Residency. La Martinière during the 1857 uprising In the events of 1857, eight staff members, sixty seven boys and one ensign (old boy) participated. After 1857 La Martinière Lucknow, like its counterpart in Calcutta, expanded rapidly after the rebellion of 1857 There were 148 students on its rolls in 1859, but the number had increased to 277 by 1862. Boarders came from all over the province from districts like Pratapgarh, Mirzapur, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Kanpur and Etawah. The records show that in 1865 over 120 boys qualified for admission to the higher department of the Civil Engineering College at Roorkee. In the years following the uprising, the city of Lucknow, now under the British Crown, was redesigned. La Martinière emerged as an outpost of the British Empire and it acquired the traditions of English public schools. In 1869, the La Martinière Girls' School was founded and in 1871 it moved to its present location in the compound of Khurshid Manzil. Initially the Girls' School was under the management of the Boys' School. The La Martinière College Principal was in overall charge of both the Boys' and Girls' Schools, with the Girls' school headed by a Lady Superintendent. The late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century saw the emergence of the school as an exclusive school preferred by the landed aristocracy of Awadh. In 1945, the college celebrated its Centenary. In wake of threat of invasion by the Japanese during the Second World War, the Calcutta Schools were re-located to Lucknow. After Indian Independence, the curriculum was changed in 1947, with Urdu being dropped as a compulsory subject and replaced by Hindi. Many Anglo-Indians both students and Masters left for Britain and Australia. This trend was to continue till almost the mid-seventies. In 1951, Mr. Meredith Doutre was appointed as the first Indian principal of the college. He was succeeded by Col HRH Daniels in the 1960s and then by Mr. DEW Shaw in the mid-1970s. The bulk of the students were drawn from the upper middle and middle classes. In 1960, there was flooding of the grounds by the Gomti River resulting in the evacuation of staff and boys to higher ground. In 1962 and 1971 again major floods occurred which threatened th.... Discover the Florence Keeling popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Florence Keeling books.