[4] Situated on high ground above central Dunedin it commands excellent views of the city and is a prominent landmark.

The school owns a lodge in Mount Aspiring National Park, and has regular field trips for students.

On 24 November 1864, a petition bearing 54 signatures was presented to the New Zealand House of Representatives, seeking official recognition for Dunedin High School's cadet corps (the ‘memorialists’) as members of the colonial Volunteer Force.

[8] The foundation rector, Thomas Campbell, was a graduate of St John's College, Cambridge, and headmaster of Wolverhampton Grammar School.

In May 1864, the Reverend F. C. Simmons, of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Head-master of the Dundee Proprietary School, arrived to take up the position of Rector.

[13] In 1920 the Fulton Building provided six additional classrooms, but this has since been replaced with the gymnasium complex and rehoused swimming pool designed by E.J.

Morrell, which was erected in 1961 to a standard Ministry of Works design, though contextualised with blue stone fascias by the architect Ian R McAllum.

[11] Specialist science laboratories designed by Angus Black were constructed in 1967 and were named after the pioneering plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe, an Old Boy of the school.

This is part of the major restoration and redevelopment which saw the refurbishment of the Main Tower Block, the central feature of which is the Maurice Joel Theatre.

Where Lawson's tower block is an exemplary composition in the Scottish Baronial style, taking its inspiration from the 16th-century tower houses and reading something like a toy fort or a castle to a modern eye, McCoy's blue stone aggregate and fair face concrete echo its materials while the new complex's gun slot windows are a playful reference to the Maginot line which echoes the old building's military theme.