Hunterhouse College

Hunterhouse College is a girls' voluntary grammar school in Finaghy, on the southern edge of Belfast, taking girls from Year 8 to Year 14. It describes itself as cross-community, and it is deliberately small, with around 750 pupils. Its own argument for that is straightforward: every girl is known by her teachers, and nobody gets lost in the crowd. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

The college opened on 1 August 1987, from the amalgamation of Princess Gardens School, which was already on this site, and Ashleigh House School. The name is a triple pun the governors made at the time, honouring Anna Hunter, who founded Princess Gardens in 1865, and the two headmistresses then in post, both also called Hunter. The oldest building, Colinmore House, dates from 1870 and still has its original interiors, which is why television keeps turning up. Hunterhouse was Our Lady Immaculate College in Derry Girls across three series, and Give My Head Peace and two BBC dramas have filmed there as well.

There are four houses, Lewis, Welch, Shearman and Duncan, all named after former headmistresses of the founding school, and a girl's house follows her form class and stays with her for the whole seven years. House points come from sport, art, music, drama and home economics, and from a Christmas quiz. The day runs from ten to nine to twenty past three on five hour-long periods, Years 8 and 9 finish an hour early on Fridays, and the school has a named alternative timetable it calls a Squashed Day, six shorter periods finishing at half twelve.