As anyone who went to Hill House will be intimately aware of, it is a a school like no other. I once heard it described as "Hogwarts without the robes and broomsticks" - which may seem a hyperbole at first, but the similarities run surprisingly deep. I compiled a list of all the similarities I could think of (some admittedly a little tenuous) but here they are:


In their own fields, perhaps: whilst the Harry Potter series is one of the best-selling of all time, Hill House is only really well-known within the areas of Chelsea and Knightsbridge, and has something of a reputation amongst pupils in public day schools in London. More on that some other time. Nevertheless, within these circles, the name Hill House stands prominently above those of other junior schools.

Hogwarts was supposedly founded in 997A.D. Hill House was somewhat more recently - 1951 (in London, and 1948 in Switzerland). Colonel Townend, founder of Hill House, wanted his school to stylistically reflect the old-fashioned public schools of his day, and so deliberately created an environment which seemed older than it truly was: still to this day, wooden boards proclaim the head boys and girls, head choristers, and lab monitors of today and years gone by; trophies and medals rest upon any shelf space the buildings can offer, and the walls are adorned with perhaps thousands of pictures of school life, sandwiched between the quaint wood panelling and lace wallpaper. Whilst not that old in reality, Hill House feels like a time capsule to some time long ago, and much like at Hogwarts, history embeds itself into every surface.

Hill House's two main buildings (Cadogan and Main School) are converted Victorian apartment blocks, and as a result were never built to accommodate a school. Whether or not their unique layouts were a deliberate decision by Colonel Townend I cannot say, but nevertheless I have clear memories of the perplexed expressions worn by prospective parents when we toured them around Main School. Meanwhile, the layout of Hogwarts is perhaps mostly an expression of the more whimsical side of the fictional world it inhabits: it gives an organic feeling to the castle, as if it were a living, breathing creature.

This is closely related to the previous point; you can walk around Main School in a couple of minutes at most, whilst it can take several to get to far-flung parts of the building. From the windows of the Bronté room, at the top of the school, you can see the windows of the computer room opposite, in the Pont Street building. However, to actually get there, you have to navigate through the twisting corridors and stairs I have talked about: you must first go down a set of stairs, walk along a corridor, down another set of stairs, go through a door, down two more flights of stairs, go through another corridor, turn left, walk through the scullery into the secondary dining hall, walk through a doorway into a corridor, turn back on yourself and head up a staircase, enter into the year 5 classroom, leave through another door into a large hall, head up a staircase, and the computer room is on your left.

Had I been a pupil just a decade and a half earlier, the aforementioned headmaster would be Colonel Townend himself. Alas, I never met him, as he died in 2002 (I was a pupil at HH from 2011-2020). Instead, I write about his son, Richard Townend. I have never seen Richard angry, disappointed, unhappy or anything other than absolutely joyous about his school and those who are part of it. I continue to visit Hill House regularly, and he is enthusiastic as ever, and has certainly held the principles established by Colonel Townend all those years ago. He reminds me a lot of the more eccentric, whimsical aspect of Professor Dumbledore, the beloved headmaster of Hogwarts. Today his son Edmund is headmaster, whilst Richard has assumed the role of warden - although he still maintains a very active presence in school life.

This should, by now, be fairly evident. Need I say more?

The houses at Hill House are named after mountains in Switzerland: red for Naye, yellow for Rosa, blue for Grammont and green for Midi. Whilst unlike Hogwarts they do not have any particular qualities associated with them, during my time they certainly all had their own traits - for example, Grammont (my house) was the smallest, with only five people in my year group. We only had two sporty people, and as a result fared much better in academic competitions. Meanwhile, Rosa and Naye were perpetually locked in a battle for sporting supremacy, having the likes of Giacomo Laureri and Pascal Bachmann in Rosa, and Max Ellis in Naye.

This will become more evident in my own stories to come.

This is one of the most prominent ways in which Hill House is unique amongst its kind: Beatrice, wife of Colonel Townend, believed that "a grey uniform produces grey minds and grey children", and so designed the school's uniform to be colourful, distinctive and instantly recognisable. Whilst some people looked at our rust-red corduroy knickerbockers, beige polo shirts, golden yellow jumpers and maroon and gold cravats with a sort of displeased curiosity, those of us who wore it did so with pride, and still to this day it brings a little bit of joy to me when I see Hill House pupils going around Chelsea.

Another admittedly tenuous one: whilst the Hogwarts Express and Platform 9 3/4 are some of the most famous aspects of the Harry Potter series, I cannot imagine many pupils travelled to Hill House on the Piccadilly Line from King's Cross St. Pancras - instead, most of us lived in Fulham or Chelsea.

In the entrance hall of Main School there is a large portrait of Colonel Townend at his home in Switzerland, presented to him for his eightieth birthday. He is now joined by a portrait of Richard, which is in the organ room adjacent to the entrance hall.

I have already alluded to this, but from my experience all of my friends loved our time there, and we all look back on it fondly. Perhaps my year group feels this way more strongly than others, as we graduated during the Covid-19 lockdown and so we left with little pomp and circumstance compared to other year groups before and since, and so still feel more attached to Hill House than we may have otherwise been.

Harrods is right behind Main School, and during the 1980s - when Hill House was at its largest - any classes without a classroom allocated would be taken to Harrods for a haircut. Those days are long gone, but Harrods continued to play a part in our lives at Hill House - particularly when Arabic people in their gold lamborghinis drove by the school, blasting their music during English lessons. That's a story for another time...

Every square millimetre of Hill House was used for something. As a result, Ms Coussmaker, a Latin teacher who was at the school from the 1960s until the 2020s, kept all her books in a cupboard hidden behind the wood panelling on one of the staircases. Likewise, Mr Hayward the History teacher decided to make the Beethoven room (a music room) as his personal office - whilst it was still being used as a music room. Why he did this I have no idea, but evidently the staff had no objections.

Well supposedly quite a few people weren't really aware of the Pont Street end of Main School. Admittedly if you didn't have any lessons there there was no point in going there.

Maroon and gold repp stripe... although the Gryffindor ties from the 3rd film onwards had double stripes.

Well... sort of. HH got a bad review by Ofsted and brought in this new guy to become headmaster. He wasn't very popular, and left after a couple of weeks. It was on the news.