Army Burn Hall College

Army Burn Hall College (Urdu: آرمی برن ہال کالج; Pashto: د ارمي برن هال کالج; commonly referred to as Burn Hall and abbreviated as ABHC) is a highly selective, Pakistan Army-administered day and boarding school and college in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It was founded in 1943 by members of Saint Joseph's Missionary Society of Mill Hill (MHM) in British India as a missionary school for boys, named "Senior Cambridge School" (later "Burn Hall School"). It was ceded to Pakistan Army Education Corps in 1977 and was renamed Army Burn Hall College. It has since expanded to multiple single-sex campuses for boys and girls in the city offering education up to master's level. Burn Hall's history and influence have made it one of the most prestigious and elite schools in the subcontinent.

The name "Burn Hall" comes from the Scottish and Northern English word burn meaning 'a stream or a small river', and the British English word hall meaning 'a large country house, especially one with a landed estate'. The Mill Hill Fathers named Burn Hall School after their own seminary that was housed in Burn Hall – an ancient "hall" that has a "burn" called River Browney running through its grounds in County Durham, North East England.

The institution was granted the prefix "Army" in 1977 after the change of administration and it was called a "college" on the pattern of cadet colleges and other prestigious institutions of the world.

In 1879, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan sent Mill Hill Missionaries to the north of British India to serve as army chaplains during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. After the end of that conflict, they were entrusted with the pastoral care of Catholic troops in the Punjab and North West Frontier regions, and with the evangelisation of Kashmir and Kafiristan. In 1884, they made a missionary settlement in Kashmir, because of its favourable climate compared to the mountain climate of Ladakh, on land granted by the maharaja and established "Senior Cambridge School" (now called Burn Hall School) in Srinagar in 1943 or late 1942.

At the time of partition of India, the Mill Hill mission was thrown into disarray by the Kashmir conflict and the school was closed. In April 1948, Father Herman Thijssen moved to Abbottabad and, along with Father Francis Scanlon, Father George Shanks and Father John Boerkamp, set up Burn Hall School in Abbott Hotel. Here, they replicated the English school system that they had themselves studied in. More buildings were later added to accommodate an increasing number of students. The Fathers promoted sports and extracurricular activities such as art, debates, dramatics and music as a means of character building. In 1949, Thijssen went on to establish St. Mary's Academy, Rawalpindi.

After the creation of Pakistan, foreign missionaries could no longer hope for residential permits. So, the Mill Hillers who had spent almost the whole of their lives in British India remained in Abbottabad to provide further service to the school. Burn Hall school later came under the control of the Diocesan Board of Education, Rawalpindi. In 1956, a new campus was constructed on Mansehra Road, a few miles outside the town, to provide more room for the seniors. It came to be known as Senior Burn Hall and the older campus Junior Burn Hall. The school in Srinagar was also reopened after nine years in 1956 by Boerkamp as "Burn Hall School". It has since been educating much of Kashmir Valley's elite.

Senior Burn Hall was renamed Army Burn Hall College (which is the present-day main campus) and Junior Burn Hall became Army Burn Hall College for Girls.

On 28 October 1993, Pakistan Post issued 1 million commemorative postage stamps to celebrate 50 years of Burn Hall Institutions.