East India Company College

It provided general and vocational education for young gentlemen of sixteen to eighteen years old, who were nominated by the Company's directors to writerships in its overseas civil service.

Charles Grant, Chairman of the British East India Company and a Member of Parliament (MP), was closely involved in the foundation of the college.

The grounds were landscaped by Humphry Repton, his most notable work here being the terraced area to the front of Wilkins' main range and ponds to the west of this.

Figures such as Benjamin Jowett of Balliol College pressed government ministers to break Haileybury's monopoly on Indian Civil Service training and to privilege graduates of the universities instead.

In 1855, Parliament passed an act "to relieve the East India Company from the obligation to maintain the College at Haileybury".

In the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and in anticipation of the winding-up of the affairs of the East India Company itself, the college was closed in January 1858.

For a brief period, they became a military depot for troops destined for India, and during this interregnum the college's Master, Henry Melvill, and Registrar, the Reverend James William Lucas Heaviside, continued to live in their residences on the site and oversaw the maintenance of the buildings.

[1][6] A Hertford publisher, Stephen Austin,[7] who had been the official printer to the East India Company’s College and had thus become one of the leading printers of books in various Oriental languages, led a campaign to ensure the buildings were returned to some sort of academic purpose, and in 1862 the site reopened as the public school Haileybury College.