When Research Surpises/Royal Military Asylum

While researching for one of my books recently I came upon the Duke of York's Royal Military Asylum. Hmm. Wonder what that could be? Since I use this post on Tuesdays to explore historical lunatic asylums I figured this must have been like a Veteran's Hospital in the 1800's. But it wasn't. It was a school that opened in 1803 to educate orphans of British military servicemen who were killed during the Napoleonic Wars. I was also surprised to learn that it admitted both boys and girls.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/SaatchiGallery.jpg/300px-SaatchiGallery.jpg

The School is no longer located in this building, which is now called the Duke of York's Barracks. In 1909 the school moved to Dover.

When's the last time you found something that you weren't looking for while researching either for a book you are writing or something else?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License