The Royal Grammar School sits at the top of Guildford High Street, and its origins go back to 1509, when a wealthy grocer named Robert Beckingham left money in his will to ‘make a free scole at the Towne of Guldford’. Governors were appointed in 1512, Edward VI granted a royal charter in 1552, and the Grade I listed Tudor Old Building that everyone recognises — mullioned windows, red brick, a wonderfully wonky roofline — was begun in 1557 and finished in 1586. It has been in continuous use ever since, which in a High Street full of chain shopfronts is quite something to walk past.
Inside there is a chained library, endowed by Bishop John Parkhurst in 1575 and one of very few still surviving in a school, its oldest volume printed in Venice around 1480. Big School and the School Room, the two oldest rooms in the Old Building, were badly damaged by fire in 1962 and painstakingly rebuilt. Around that historic core the school has grown outwards, with a New Building completed in 1963 and the John Brown building opened in 2016, and it is this mix of Tudor fabric and modern facilities that is let out for events. What is available varies with the school calendar, but the headline spaces are the Great Hall, which has a stage; Big School; an undercroft sports hall; an all-weather pitch; and a range of meeting and seminar rooms.
The Great Hall, and the advantage of a real stage
The Great Hall is where the evening happens, and the stage is a genuine gift. Most venues ask a band to set up on the floor, where anyone past the third row sees the back of somebody’s head; here the band is raised, the sightlines work from the back of the room, and nobody is improvising a riser out of pallets an hour before doors. A hall built for assemblies and concerts also tends to have the power, the access and the ceiling height a five-piece wants, which removes most of the small frustrations that eat into setting-up time elsewhere.
Working backwards from an early finish
The thing that most changes how an evening here is planned is that it ends earlier than at a country house. Finishes of 10.30pm and 10.45pm are typical, roughly an hour and a half before a Surrey barn would be calling last orders, and everything upstream has to move to suit. With a 10.30pm stop, a band playing two hour-long sets needs to be on stage by about half past eight, which in turn means speeches that run to time and a short, brisk turnaround after dinner. It is entirely doable — and there is a lot to be said for an evening that ends while it is still going well — but any overrun in the afternoon comes straight out of the dancing.
Access and the practical side
School buildings usually have excellent power and rather less obvious parking, and a High Street address does not come with a hotel forecourt. The school’s events team handle access, timings and where a van can sit, so the sooner your band knows the date, the sooner those details can be agreed directly with them.
Bands available in Surrey and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
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Worth reading before you book: First Dance Guide. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.