It is located on a 55-acre (22 ha) site in Colwall in the County of Herefordshire, on the western slopes of the Malvern Hills.

Hoyland built new buildings, introduced student self-government and an innovative curriculum with an emphasis on science and the arts.

Under his supervision, the pupils built and maintained a miniature railway, the only one in any English school at the time, which still survives.

Shortly after the war the poet James Kirkup taught at the school for four terms, and wrote his first collection there.

In 1957, he appointed as English master the actor Anthony Corfield, who sustained an active programme in drama for more than thirty years.

In 1935 he wrote, composed, and organised a musical revue, in which the entire school took part, and reused some of the lyrics in his play The Dog Beneath the Skin.

In 1937 he wrote a preface to the catalogue of an exhibition in a London gallery of paintings by present and former members of the school.

[8] Benjamin Britten, Hedli Anderson and William Coldstream visited Auden at the school several times to work on their collaboration for the GPO Film Unit, and to perform music and teach art to the pupils.

[9] Among the poems that Auden wrote at the Downs were Hearing of harvests; his evocation of his Vision of Agape in June 1933, Out on the lawn I lie in bed (later dedicated to Geoffrey Hoyland); Our hunting fathers; Look, stranger; and, during his return in 1937, the despairing Schoolchildren.

This miniature-gauge railway was begun in 1925 and, complete with a tunnel under Brockhill Road and a station, is situated within the school grounds.

It maintains working engines under both steam and petrol power and is used as an extra-curricular activity to teach pupils a range of skills.