Pears School (Repton)

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This elegant hall is deceptively named, as it is no longer used as a school and has nothing to do with pears. Its primary use is as an assembly hall, and it usually serves as an exam hall for the school.

The hall was constructed under orders of the then headmaster of the school, Steuart Adolphus Pears (pronounced, "Peers") in the 1800s to serve as the main assembly hall for 'big school'. Legend in the school has it that the architects made a rather large blunder when designing the building as the builders' plans were back to front. This means that, to this day, the stone archways which should face into the Garth (as is traditional in cloistered gardens) actually face away from it, to the south. However, this blunder has meant that students can access the classrooms underneath the hall withough having to enter the Garth - a place which due to its formal and spiritual nature is considered out of bounds for most of the year.