Relive your schooldays in this wonderfully nostalgic portrait of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in the 1950s.

Filmed over a period of more than six years, this film captures scenes of school life typical of the era, such as pupils sitting exams, or assembly in the common hall. Also shown, however, are images that represent Inst's particular ethos and ambitions to offer its boys a "complete, uniform, and extensive system of education." So we see pupils performing Greek plays and scouting exercises, or taking part in sports, including sailing and rowing and the School's Rugby Cup.
 

Built, in part, with contributions from Belfast's mercantile class, Inst was officially opened in 1814. It's co-founder, William Drennan stated that the school would aim to "diffuse useful knowledge, particularly among the middling orders of society, as a necessity, not a luxury of life". Drennan was a physician, poet and political radical who was instrumental in the creation of the Society of United Irishmen. He could lay claim to coining the description of Ireland as 'the Emerald Isle'.

Digitised as part of Unlocking Film Heritage 

• Britain on Film
• BFI Player
• Royal Belfast Academical Institution