Lea Martini

" Built in the 1790s it is a bizarre building in a country renowned for extravagant eccentricities. Even more incongruously it now houses an eminent Indian Public school blessed with all the tribal rituals of Eton or Harrow. It is a disturbing building of the most peculiar design. The central tower has bridge links and the entire central range has a strange array of statues dominated by two huge lions whose eyes were supposedly lit by red lanterns."

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 was 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 learning young men the English language and Christian religion if they found themselves inclined".

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. In 1837 Emily Eden, sister of the Governor General, described it as "a sort of castle in a fine jungly park, built by an old General La Martine, who came out to India a private soldier, and died worth more than a million. I wish we had come out in those days". The school finally opened on 1 October 1845 with some seventy boys on roll. The first Principal was John Newmarch.

Khursheed Manzil, or the House of the Sun, is a large double-storeyed mansion marked by towers at the corners. The building was begun by Saadat Ali Khan, and completed by his son, Ghazi-ud-Din Haidar. The property was built in the form of a fortified castle. There is a 12-foot (4 m)-wide moat, over which there was formerly a drawbridge. After the annexation of Oudh, in 1856, Khursheed Manzil was used as a mess house by officers of the 32nd Regiment, and it became known as the Mess House.

Within the grounds is the grave and memorial to Major william Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, who became famous during the rebellion of 1857.

Principal Schilling's leadership was well rewarded. He became a taluqdar, or noble of Oudh, with an estate worth £30,000, thereby ensuring a comfortable retirement in England. The Martinière contribution was officially recognised in Queen Victoria's (1858) proclamation. The staff and the boys who served during the Mutiny were all awarded the Indian Mutiny Medal, inscribed with the words "Defence of Lucknow", in recognition of their courage and steadfastness.

La Martinière Lucknow, like its counterpart in Calcutta, expanded rapidly after the Mutiny. 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.

Vive La Martiniere is the school song for the three schools founded by Major General Claude Martin in Calcutta and Lucknow in India and in Lyon, France. The song was written in the late 1860s by Frederick James Rowe while he was an English Teacher at the brother school, La Martiniere Boys' College in Calcutta, India. The song is now an inseparable part of the ceremonies at all seven schools, and is sung in honour of the school's founder Claude Martin. Two recordings of the song are available online. The first version is complete with words, while the second version is a recording of the music only.

The awards were notified to the principal on 5 February 1861 by a letter from the chief commissioner of Oudh. However, it was not until 1932, following a request by the College, that the British Government recognised Martinière's role in 1857. The school was granted the right, on ceremonial occasions, to carry a British Army regimental-style 'colour' or flag bearing its own coat of arms with a picture of the Residency and the words "Defence of Lucknow, 1857". It thus became the only school in the world to be awarded a British battle honour. McGill University in Canada is the only other educational institution in the British Empire to be awarded the same honour for its role in World War I.

The records show that in 1865 over 120 boys qualified for admission to the higher department of the Civil Engineering College at Roorkee.

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.

Unlike the schools in Calcutta and Lyons there had been no provision to found a girls' school in Lucknow. However funds were found from a female education fund and a school was started at Moti Mahal. The Lucknow Girls' School, as it was then known, was run by Mrs. Saunders Abbott. Following a land grant from the government the school was moved to its present location at Khursheed Manzil in 1871 and incorporated and established as a branch of La Martinière College. The adoption and endowment was facilitated by the distribution by the High Court of Calcutta of the surplus funds of the legacy for the release and relief of prisoners for debt left by General Claude Martin.

Hubert S Bolst (1872–1947) was the founder of the Alumni Association. He was an old boy of the school who got together with several Martinians stationed at Faizabad to celebrate Founder's Day. This unofficial gathering was the genesis of the present-day Old Martinians' Association (OMA) which now has chapters spread across the globe. The OMA chapters in Australia, the UK, and Canada are the more active ones.

In 1889 Government raised the school to the High or Final Standard of Education for Europeans. Later the school was recognized for the Overseas Examination Board of Cambridge University.

Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim tells of the adventures of Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of a British soldier. Kim is given the chance to go to St Xavier's School in Lucknow, the most prestigious school in British India. St Xavier's is a fictional creation but Kipling authorities believe that the school is modelled on the real La Martinière.

In 1907, on the recommendation of Mr. S. H. Butler, C.I.E, the Deputy Commissioner, The Government gave the Trustees and Governor of the school a piece of land adjoining the compound on the west of the Bank of Bengal (now the State Bank of India) considerably increasing the size of the estate and greatly improving the playground.

The College is divided into four houses, mainly for promoting academic and athletic competition among the pupils. The houses were first given their names in 1913. The houses are Martin (blue), Lyons (yellow), Cornwallis (green) and Hodson (red). Each houses are headed by houses, the most senior Teacher in the house. He is aided by a House Captian and prefects from the senior high school.

The Bolst Fund Bolst died in 1947 and in his will left instructions that a sum of Rs. 5,000 be handed over to the OMA as an 'Endowment Fund'. The interest accruing from this investment was to be used to provide a scholarship to pay the fees for a needy and deserving Anglo-Indian day scholar boy. Since then, some 50 recipients of the scholarship have reason to be thankful to Hubert Bolst.

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.

Constantia stands on a landscaped terrace overlooking what was once a lake, from the centre of which rises a solid fluted column with a Moorish cupola known as 'the Laat'. The monument is about forty metres (~125 feet) high, and is thought either to be a lighthouse or a marker for the grave of Claude Martin's horse. Over the years, the Gomti River has edged closer, necessitating the construction of a river bund between the front terrace and 'the Lat'. In 1960, the grounds were flooded and the 1803 and 1934 earthquakes caused several statues to fall from their pedestals where they crown the architecture. The statues are in modern and older antique styles.

The school has a pipe band, which dates from 1967. It was part of the Senior Division NCC contingent and the band members played in NCC uniforms with hackles on their berets.

In 1976 the school was affiliated to the Indian Council for Secondary Education system of education. This entailed the exam for the Certificate of Secondary Education (class X) and the School Leaving Certificate (class XII).

Valerie Fitzgerald's 1981 historical novel Zemindar features the siege of Lucknow in 1857 and uses La Martinière as the backdrop. The novel has an interesting character, a Martinian boy called 'Lou'.

Philip Davies writing on Architecture of the Raj in the illustrated London News of May 1982 has this to say about the Constantia:

The role of the boys and masters of La Martinière has been well documented in Chandan Mitra's 1987 book titled Constant Glory - La Martinière saga 1836–1986. The Residency fortifications and defended houses were about a mile in circumference, and the Martinière contingent, along with a detachment of the 32nd Regiment of Foot, were garrisoned in a strongly built house containing tykhanas (cellars) and adjoining outhouses. The position became known as The Martinière Post and was a mere thirty feet distant from Johannes House, held by the rebels, and as a Consequence, was exposed to heavy shelling.

On 1 October 1995, on the 150th anniversary of the school's opening, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, the then President of India, released a two-rupee postage stamp in the school's honour.

In 1997 one of the teachers was murdered in the early hours of the morning on 7 March. Thirty-year-old Anglo-Indian Frederick Gomes, the College's assistant warden and physical training instructor, was murdered in his bungalow on the perimeter of the school grounds. Two people were seen firing shots through a broken window at the back of the building, but the culprits were not identified and the murder remains unsolved. However, the murder created a sensation in India at the time, especially when it was found that the school's students had access to guns. Newspaper columnist Saeed Naqvi, Ashank Mehrotra former pupils at the school commented: "The killing is a metaphor of our times. For such a level of violence to reach the sacred precincts of La Martinière is symbolic of the way that Lucknow, like so much of India, has completely ceased to be what it once was."

In 2007 when the girls' school celebrated its 138th anniversary, it was given a similar honour and a first day cover was issued by Department of Posts with a picture of Khursheed Manzil on it.

          – Frederick James Rowe, "Vive La Martiniere"