Motown seems to be the only one that isn't a record label...

(snigger)

I think mine were Pestilence, War, Famine and Death.
I was in Famine. You could never get a pass to go into town at lunchtime.

House colours Purple, Red, Green and Yellow respectively.

Barkham was named after the founder, and I have it in my head that all the others were Bishops of Bath and Wells at some point.

God knows what they are called these days. Probably something florid and inoffensive.

But I'd have lots of friends in Stax.

As it is, I was in Seckford (named for the founder), and had lots of friends in Burwell (dunno).

I was in Kinnersley; our colour was a fetching maroon. Was far too rubbish at sport to get many points though.

Modern(ish) houses? How about Walker, Godfrey, Fraser and Pike? Don't think you could have any of the others cos they had rank.

I can't for the life of me remember what the others were, one of them might have been Hufflepuff. Still, nice to have houses named after Nick, Zoot Horn*, Ricky and Screamin' Jay. Has any school considered Terry, Timmy, Bobby and Zimmy?

I know, I know...

Trinity
Waltham
St Georges
Coventry
St Alfred
Temples

in Bracknell. I was in Basildon. The others I remember were Welwyn, Telford and Hatfield. Bit of a new town fixation going on.

Just looked it up and they are Mandela, Churchill, Roosevelt and Ghandi now. Not the same really.

*EDIT just realised I'd forgottent hat there was Peterlee as well. Full house of new towns.

Holt, Rathbone, Molyneux, Norris, Stanley, Derby.

All named after former Lord Mayors.

I was in Holt.

Four suitable modern houses would be Shankly, Paisley, Fagan & Dalglish

Mitford, Wallington, Cragside and ermm one other.

All North East stately homes.

Cousins, Lumsden, France and Digby (sounds like a Rowan Atkinson sketch!)

Modern houses? Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po.

It was...

Oswald (Light blue & dark blue)
Bede (Yellow & dark blue)
Cuthbert (Dark green & dark blue)
Aidan (Red & dark blue)

... at Yarm School.

I was in Bede, though never got to be a House Prefect (though younger Dakota did).

for the modern generation? It would have to be:

Cross
Circle
Triangle
Square

2b, 3b, 4b and then no name...

given a choice I'd probably go: Eldritch, Nephilim, Curve and Neffilim

just to confuse 'em

I was in Merton House.

There were four, another being Mitford. To my shame I can't remember the other two.

Anyone else go to Ponteland County High School here?

Barber, Dodds, Hodgson, Lever and Mixed (an overspill of the other four)
White, Red, Green and Yellow were house colours respectively. Colour was on tie and rugby shirt. Named after old boys of the school I believe.

At the AgentGraves School of Life, the houses would be (rather obviously) McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr. Boys would be sorted according to which personality of the HJH member they most closely matched.

My pregnant FPO has come up with a compromise on our impending sprog's name, should it be a boy. She likes 'Noah', which I cannot stand. However, should I agree to Noah, the middle name can be 'McCartney'!

blasted double post...

Crosby, Ward and School. I guess they just got fed up by the time they called the last one. Bangor Grammar famous locally for its sporting achievements and sex scandal.

Modern (ahem) alternatives ... John, Paul, George & Ringo anyone?

The ones in our school were excuses for the school trip, I was in Petworth, another was Goodwood, can't remember the others

In Great Yarmouth Grammar School in the 1970s we had

North
South
West

and wait for it...

Centre!

I assume some wag assumed that East house would be in the North Sea.

Bizarre.

Bentley (yellow), Cave (green), Freeston (blue) and Saville (red) - the former a 'famous' old boy and the others founders. They were really only used in the Junior school. All we had to show for this was a gym shirt with coloured trim. We had good and bad records too, which were stored in our record books - sadly these were more to do with behaviour and classwork, rather than musical taste.

We had Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - clearly Uranus was NEVER going to be an option

but I now have a mental picture of all of you as snotty boys in your school uniforms...spots, crooked ties...
God, how I hated school! But at least I didn't have to wear a uniform.

Andrews
Brooke
Craigavon (?)
Duncairn

Named after Unionist politicians

The houses at one school I went to were Tristan (red), Lancelot (yellow) and Bedivere (blue).

I would like to see houses named Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

When I started, they were:

Bannister (the House I was in)
Petit
Hillary
Fleming
Scott
Whittle

They were then altered to

Althorp
Sulgrave
Holdenby
Rockingham.

Anfield, Trafford, Stamford and Highbury
Walker, Smith, Pringle and Lay
Cromarty, Forth, Tyne and Dogger
Savile, Blackburn, Travis and Fluff
Trace, Singleton, Purves and Noakes
Penguin, Faber, Hodder and Stoughton
Bell, Walker, Chivas and Ballantine
Gibson, Fender, Hofner and Gretsch
Brie, Stilton, Emmenthal and Cheddar

...or perhaps - without the commas and the "and" - they're actually advertising agencies.

Celebrated The Space Race with

Apollo
Lunar
GeminI
and
Telstar

srnior s hol rather drably celebrated North Notts parks

Clumber
Rufford
Thoresby
and
Sherwood.

Chris, Vin, Harry, Chico, Britt, Lee and O'Reilly.

Lawrence (Viceroy of India in whose house school based,rather than T.E.)
Nightingale (Florence?)
Chandos (reference to a famous oak rather than lord)
Grovelands (Local reference)

You could have:-
Jobs, Wozniak, Gates and Allen
Secombe, Milligan, Bentine and Sellers
Goth, Skin, Metal and Punk
Forms could be:- U2, UB40, E17, B-52, MC-5, D12, L7 etc.
Bowie, Bolan, Sweet, Roxy
Clapton, Beck, Page, Green

...

You don't want to know, but the announcement of that week's house points was always guaranteed to raise a smile.

I'd quite fancy being in charge of Dewhurst, McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt.

From memory the Houses were/are Munro, Rutherford (as in Ernest), Barnicoat, Fell, Domett and Myrtle/Enid/Doris (or summing). All named for colonial explorers, except for Ernie.

Mine was Domett.

My 16 year old's secondary school has no Houses at all (and they have 1500 of the little horrors to manage)

Before I forget, some suggestions for modern Houses:

John, Paul, George and Ringo (somebody had to suggest them)

Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock, HBOS, Bear Stearns (for titans of finance)

We didn't have a house system. Which has had the subsequent effect of making me lackadaisical, rudderless, lacking ambition, and free from any competitive desire to try and make up something funnier than anyone else has here.
I'm going to bed now until Jeremy Kyle is on.

I think for two years I was in a house called Drake. Can't remember the rest, but will proably go to my grave able to remember my number (116) ...

...in fair Thorpe Bay, where we lay our scene."

In my junior school the four houses were:

Mowbray (Red)

Neville (Yellow)

Stafford (Green)

Tuke (Blue)

I was in Tuke.

The team points board was in the main assembly hall. Every 10 points scored added a wooden bar of the appropriate colour to your team’s column. When I joined the school the power houses were Mowbray and Stafford. Four years later Mowbray were in decline and Neville were all-conquering. Tuke were perennially awful.

At the beginning of each term it was the job of the senior house captains to reset the board by pulling out the pegs that held the tallies in place, sending the wooden bars tumbling back down into their respective boxes.

Our year’s all-conquering Borough Sports relay team was composed of one member from each of the four houses (this was down to athletic ability rather than design). I always ran first and was the only member of the team who wasn’t a house captain.

The concept of houses and team points was such an integral part of my formative education that When I moved on to a secondary comprehensive I pestered my form teacher for weeks in an attempt to discover which house I was in. Eventually I realised while there were four houses (Nore, Ness, Maplin and another one) nobody knew who was in what, or indeed cared. The school was violent enough; no one saw the need to stoke-up any additional rivalries.

In these modern times it is important to have team houses that are relevant to the interests of the pupils. If I were placed in charge of a failing school the houses would be: Dee, Dozy, Beaky and Mick, thereby reflecting contemporary musical tastes. Additionally one very weedy pupil would be singled out and made the sole member of ‘Titch’.

Top Marx

Colours were green, yellow, blue and red respectively - and I find it impossible to think of them, or say them out loud, in any other order; they're hardwired like that.

I propose Korma, Bhuna, Madras, Vindaloo. Although Korma, according to the owner of a takeaway I used to frequent, would 'only be fit for babies'.

Levi, Obie, Duke and Lawrence.

But actually was Drake, Nelson, Rodney and Wolfe.

School 1
Purkiss
Merdon
Tyrell
Rufus

School 2
Raleigh
Drake
Nelson

School 3
Falcon
Merlin
Kestrel
Albatross

...some Catholic Martyrs I think - I unfortunately got the wrong colour PE kit and so had to be in goal if ever they picked me to play!! Taught by Catholic priests in the depths of Bootle - Grammer school but only cos you had to pass the 11+ to get in - there were no boarders apart from Budgie - wonder how he got his name - he appologised one afternoon cos he didn't stop to give me a lift to school seems he had a full car - I think he was 14 or 15 at the time.

adidas,puma,nike and lacoste

Mine were Grene, Elliott, Walton and Sadler.
Main memory of school was assembly.
Don't know where this description comes from but it fits:
a hymn, a prayer and a bollocking.

May have got them mixed up but at least I didn't get caught by the school Leopard as in Ripping Yarns

Windsor, York, Tudor and Bayley. The latter named after some local dignitary of old.

The school had managed to get a rather distinct identity to each house. As I remember it, and I may well be totally wrong, it went thus - rugged sporty types tended to end up in Bayley, spotty oiks who were good at physics and athlete's foot gravitated to York, while loud, tall, future souls-of-the-party were Tudor. Sensitive flowers with artfully-sculpted Morrissey haircuts (including yer man Slotbadger) wafted around Windsor, quoting Wilde and dreaming up ever more ways of avoiding Friday afternoon cadet force training.

But the inner city school I taught at for over twenty years, once asked staff to submit ideas for a new set of "houses",
Rampton,Broadmoor,Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter These Gates,and Strangeways were all proposed.
If a cat had a tail on that council estate , it was a puff.

I was in Hendersons. The others (all named after former headmasters, I think) were Meadows, Russells, Joblings, Strouts and Calverts.

If I was in charge now, they would be renamed Van Zandt, Clemons, Bittan, Weinberg, Tallent and Federici (RIP).

.

Bury Grammar School (Boys)

Kay, Howlett, Hulme and Derby

I was in Kay and the blazer bade and tie were green. Roger Kay founded the scholl in 1625. To this day on governors day the school marches to the parish church with flags flying an drums beating. It used to be with bayonets as well but hopefully they've done away with all that militaristic bullshit. actually...probably not.

God know who the others were. Derby was presumably Lord Derby.

School (mine)
Wheeler
Laud
Serlo

Those were the houses in my original school, which was a low-rent independent to which I went free-buckshee. Haven't thought about those houses in forever.

Then I got a scholarship to Big Posh School, which had a million boarding houses. Thank fuck, I was a day boy. Let's see if I can remember them.

Wilson (mine)
Southwood
Chandos (girls. Mmmmm.)
Queens ( more girls. Double mmmmm.)
Boyne
Leconfield
Hazelfield (?) Might have been Hazelwell.
Christowe

No. I'm missing at least one.

Edit: remembered it. Newark!

A magazine, a podcast, a website, a school.

Ellen, Hepworth, Lewry and Mossman.

Sargents, Chaytors, Palmers, Dales.

What we should have had was:

Goodbodys (cafe for fags and frothy coffee with the girlies at lunch time)
Smiths (shoplifting jazz mags at lunchtime)
Mutley (crafty pints on the way home)
Van Dike (club for prog gigs in greatcoats at weekends with girlies)

[Sorry, found skirky's post now]

I think a school that named houses after these guys:

sounds pretty progressive to me-but who was this Raleigh bloke ?

[gets blazer (off peg)]

are Alumni of Buxton College.

No longer a grammar school when I was there, but not yet a mixed-gender comprehensive, our houses were named after Derbyshire Dales:

Ashwood
Beresford
Dove
Lathkill
Monsall
Wolfscote

I seem to remember being awarded my house colours (blue - for Ashwood) for cross-country, somehow; but the main legacy of my days there was a terror of speaking to the female half of the species that lasted into my early 20s.

We had:

School - Silver & Navy
York - Yellow & Navy
Royal - Red & Navy
Brent - Royal Blue & Navy
Grange - Green & Navy

I was in Grange, we were shit at everything except Tug o' War (lots of unathletic fatties)

First school:
Hilary, Shackelton and a third one I can't remember

Second (and fourth):
Beckingham, Powell, Hamonde, Valpy, Austen and Nettles. All celebrated Guildfordians. I'm afraid I don't know which House JJ Burnel was in.

Third:
School (for the Boarders), Parker, Brooke, Coke, Repton, Valpy. They have since added Seagrim, named after two eminent Norvicensians.

I also have no idea why two very different schools had houses named Valpy.

Auldhouse
Balgrey
Capelrig
Duncarnock

I was in Duncarnock (colour - yellow). If I'd had the power at the time, we would have had:

Moonweed
Alien
Hillside-Village
Yoni

was strictly colours only red, blue, green and yellow

How about

Underpants
Crowther
Sheev
Valaparaiso

Hammond (mine)
Pidgeon
Lacey
Jones

Hammond was the founder. If you were in Hammond, you always felt superior!

Clarkson didn't go to my school as he would have been in the lower 6th form when I joined and I imagine he was a right nasty bully at school.

The only famous person who went there until gold medal winning rowers Gregg and Johnny Searle came along was Brian May, but he'd left long before I joined.

Wolds (Yellow)
Trent (Blue)
Sherwood (Green)
Belvoir (Red) - as "Vale of", pronounced "beaver" and so not at all amusing.

I was a Wolds House Rep for our year. Something which vaguely astonished my teachers, who never quite worked out that the house rep basically picked the teams and therefore was strangely able not to take part in anything...

Nobody famous went to our school. Someone in my brother's year won Miss UK, but can't remember who. If I were running a school in Notts house names would be:

Robertson
Pearce
Walker
Francis

- not the most imaginative of schools.
We had to wear little coloured badges to signify our allegiance.
Me and my mates invested in some white (or blank) badges that we wore instead - cos we were rebels right, no-one was gonna tell us what to do - we were all individuals, INDIVIDUALS!!

is quite traditional - Classics and Latin on the curriculum - so our houses are:
Chancroid
Candidiasis
Trichomoniasis
and
Chlamydia

Livingstone (green, my house)

St George (red)

Jubilee (blue)

Sunflower (yellow)

I can still remember the school song which listed all the supposed virtues of each house.

No houses at mediocre enormous comprehensive.

The houses were named after mertyrs who were burned at the stake in the 16th century - Ardleigh, Causton, Drakes and Tyms. (I was in Drakes.)

http://www.fitzwimarc.org.uk/rayleigh/towninfo/martyrs.htm

Fitzwimarc was a comprehensive. When I moved to Cheshire at 14 and went to Wilmslow Grammar, I was surprised to find out that they didn't have houses and that had been got rid of long before.

but what's wrong with

Parsley
sage
Rosemary
and Thyme

(of course allocating the little mites to the various houses would have to take account of any allergies)

Blackburn

Eymard
Colin
Chanel

All catholic martyrs so far as I remember. I started in Sept 1970 what a pity they didn't take the opportunity to re-brand that summer I would have loved to have been in Form One Jairzinho
Most notable contemporary was future Man United and England defender Mick Duxbury and a few years up the school was afro-haired Lancashire all-rounder to be Bernard Reidy who would have looked fine drumming for the MC5

Drink
Feck
Arse
Girls
Nuns

you could have

Hungerdunger
Hungerdunger
Hungerdunger*
and MacCormach.

(*remember this is the important one)

I think I understand this site a wee bit better now.

did no-one else go to an ordinary school that didn't run on a house system ?

We had Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Lower 6th, Upper 6th.

And forms :
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29
30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39
40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49
50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59

60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66