Greyfriars School

Greyfriars School
A map of Greyfriars School
Location

England
Information
TypeFictional:
Public school
Boarding school
Religious affiliation(s)Church of England
Established1540s
FounderHenry VIII
Chairman of the Board of GovernorsSir Hilton Popper
HeadmasterThe Rev Herbert Henry Locke, D.D.
GenderBoys
Age13 to 18
PublicationThe Greyfriars Herald
Created byCharles Hamilton writing as Frank Richards

Greyfriars School is a fictional English public school used as a setting in the long-running series of stories by the writer Charles Hamilton, who wrote under the pen-name of Frank Richards. Although the stories are focused on the Remove (or lower fourth form), whose most famous pupil was Billy Bunter, other characters also featured on a regular basis.

Time is frozen in the Greyfriars stories; although the reader sees the passing of the seasons, the characters' ages do not change and they remain in the same year groups.

From 1908 to 1940, the stories appeared in The Magnet, in a total of 1,683 weekly issues. After 1940, the stories continued to appear in book form until Hamilton's death in 1961. Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School was broadcast as a BBC television series from 19 February 1951 to 22 July 1961. A comic strip was published in Knockout (drawn by Frank Minnitt) from 1939 to 1958, and then drawn by various other artists until Knockout merged with Valiant, in which comic strips continued to appear from 23 February 1963 to 16 October 1976.