A photograph of three corporals making up the school's colour party taken sometime after King Edward VII's coronation in 1902 and before the school's move from Chelsea to Dover in 1909. Army dress regulations are helpful because the presence of peaked forage cap headgear points to the photograph being dated 1905 onwards. Unfortunately the identities of the three boys are not known.

Although uniform colours are difficult to determine using black and white photography, tonal variations in the high-quality original and other contemporary colourised images suggest that the boys' tunics were scarlet with blue piping. The boy in the centre is a colour corporal with a medical orderly qualification, shown by a circular red cross on a white background, between his stripes and crown. The other two were probably also colour corporals, though their right sleeves are obscured. The peaked forage caps mark a significant departure from earlier Victorian-era Glengarry headgear, which earlier photographs of school colour parties. The good-conduct stripes visible above the left cuffs indicate one year of good conduct each. The cap badges appear to be topped with Tudor Crowns (note cap badge example), confirming Edward VII-era uniforms. Interestingly the old school gates (now closed off) bear the cipher of King Edward VII in their wrought iron work.

The photographer was German-born Karl August Reinhold Thiele (1856-1921), a renowned Victorian and Edwardian photojournalist who photographed a range of military subjects. At the height of his career he was commissioned by the Daily Graphic to cover the Second Boer War. For nine months, he followed the battles in South Africa in an ox-drawn wagon. Unfortunately, the newspaper's editorial staff thought some of the photographs were too graphic for the public, and were not published. He is known to have taken images of wounded servicemen in hospital wards.