Duncan Hall School was a boys’ prep school at Scratby Hall in Ormesby St Margaret with Scratby, Norfolk from 1949 to 1986, with girls admitted from 1979. Prior to occupying Scratby Hall, it was located in Great Yarmouth and was called Duncan House. Origins The founder of the school was Daniel Tomkins (1826–1902), the son of Joseph Tomkins, a farmer, and Elizabeth Wait. He came from a Dissenting family, and was baptised in 1826 by the famous preacher and social reformer Rowland Hill in the Bristol Tabernacle. He was married first to Frances Shaw and secondly to Caroline Katie Fellows. Tomkins's first school in Yarmouth was the Great Yarmouth College, at 28 South Quay, which he opened in 1864. One of the students at this school was his son, Oliver Tomkins, who became a Congregationalist missionary in Papua, where, in 1901, he was eaten by cannibals. Duncan House Tomkins opened a further school on the South Quay in 1898. This school had various names, and the records are held at the National Archives for the period 1897 to 1915 under the names Great Yarmouth British School and Daniel Tomkins’ Council School. By 1901 he had retired to Little Plumstead, and the following year he died in Blofield. Kelly’s Directory of 1912 refers to the school as Daniel Tomkins, by then on St George's Road, erected 1813, although this is the year of the building not the school itself. By this point the headmaster was John Dawson Gobbett. Bernard Eaton Pledger became headmaster in 1919. After WWI, the school moved to Camperdown, at which point it was named Duncan House, after Admiral Duncan, the victor of the Battle of Camperdown. In the 1930s the school moved again, to Albert Sq. The Albert Square building is now the St George Hotel. Initially, the school remained open during WWII. A member of staff, Percy Smowton, was killed by a bomb blast while on fire duty in 1941, following which the school closed and the boys were evacuated to North Wales. Duncan House reopened in Albert Square in 1946 with Reginald Morgan-Hughes as headmaster. In 1949 the school moved to Scratby Hall, and changed its name to Duncan Hall School. Scratby Hall Scratby Hall was built in 1750 by John Fisher, a Yarmouth merchant and Mayor in 1767. He let it to the diarist Sylas Neville in 1769. Neville left in 1772; he returned