The East India Company Military Seminary, colloquially known as Addiscombe Seminary, Addiscombe College, or Addiscombe Military Academy was a British military academy at Addiscombe, Surrey, in what is now the London Borough of Croydon. It was established in 1809, and closed in 1861. Its purpose was to train young officers to serve in the East India Company’s private army in India. It was a sister institution to the East India Company College in Hertfordshire, which trained civilian "writers" (clerks); while in military terms it was a counterpart to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and a forerunner to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
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The country house, Addiscombe Place, which formed the central building of the later Seminary, was erected in about 1702 by William Draper, who had inherited the property at Addiscombe in 1700 from his aunt, Dame Sarah Temple. Draper's father-in-law was the diarist John Evelyn, who in 1703 pronounced the house "in all points of good and solid architecture to be one of the very best gentleman's houses in Surrey, when finish'd". Its interior included many mural paintings of mythological subjects, supposed to be the work of Sir James Thornhill; while high up on the exterior east front was carved the Latin inscription, "Non faciam vitio culpave minorem" ("I will not lower myself by vice or fault"). By the late 18th century the house was in the ownership of Charles James Clarke, who leased it to the statesman Charles Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, later 1st Earl of Liverpool. Regular visitors during Liverpool's tenure included King George III and William Pitt.[1][2]
Following the death of Lord Liverpool, Addiscombe Place was sold in 1809 by Emelius Delmé-Radcliffe (Clarke's brother-in-law) to the East India Company, and it became a military seminary. Although the East India Company was primarily a trading concern, it also maintained its own private army, and the officers of this army were to be trained at Addiscombe before setting off for India. The doors of the Seminary opened on 21 January 1809, although the formal transfer of title did not take place until a year later, in January 1810.[3]
The initial intake comprised 60 cadets, but the numbers rose to about 150 a year. In all, 3,470 cadets passed through Addiscombe during the years of its existence. To accommodate them, the college had to expand: the initial purchase comprised the mansion house and 58 acres of land to the south of Lower Addiscombe Road, but a further 30 acres (to the north of Lower Addiscombe Road) were subsequently acquired.[4] New buildings included barracks, a chapel, a drawing and lecture hall, a hospital, a dining-hall, a sand-modelling hall, a gymnasium, and other service facilities including a bakehouse, dairy, laundry, and brew-house.
Cadets entered the Seminary between the ages of 14 and 16, and normally remained for 4 terms (2 years), although it was possible to pass the final examination within a shorter period.[5] Each cadet had to pay £30 annually.[6] The curriculum comprised Mathematics, Fortification, Oriental Languages (including Hindustani), and Military and Civil Drawing; while supplementary subjects included Classics, French, Geology, and Chemistry. In the 1850s Photography was also studied. Specialist training was given to cadets destined for the Engineer or Artillery arms of the service. The cadets regularly worshipped at Croydon Parish Church (marching there each Sunday in uniform, accompanied by their band) until 1829, after which they began to worship at the newly-consecrated St James's Church.
The academy's first Superintendent and Head Master was James Andrew (1809-22). He was temporarily followed by Major W.H. Carmichael-Smyth (1822-4), stepfather of William Makepeace Thackeray. The headship was then retitled Lieutenant-Governor, and was held successively by Lt-Col Robert Louis Houston (1824-34), General Sir Ephraim Gerrish Stannus (1834-50), and finally Sir Frederick Abbott (1851-61), who had himself been a cadet at Addiscombe.
Following the Indian Rebellion (or First War of Independence) of 1857, the British East India Company was wound up in 1858. The Seminary passed into government hands, becoming known as the Royal Indian Military College, Addiscombe, but continued to perform much the same function. With the amalgamation of the Royal and Indian services in 1861, there was initially a proposal that Addiscombe should be retained as a military college. However, this did not happen (the War Office considering that the establishments at Woolwich and Sandhurst were sufficient for their needs), and the college closed in June the same year. The site was sold on 30 August 1861 for £33,600 to the British Land Company, who demolished most of the buildings.[7] All that remains are two former professors' houses, "Ashleigh" and "India", on the corner of Clyde Road and Addiscombe Road; and the former gymnasium on Havelock Road, now private apartments. The Land Company laid out five parallel roads over the greater part of the grounds, and built them up with villas. The five roads - Outram, Havelock, Elgin, Clyde and Canning Roads - all took their names from soldiers and politicians who were prominent on the British side in the events of 1857-58, but none was in fact a college alumnus.[8]
In 1848 the Seminary began awarding the Pollock Medal to the best cadet of the training season. The award was named after Field Marshal George Pollock. The Pollock Prize was transferred to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich after Addiscombe was closed.