St. Andrew’s College Grahamstown 1855-1955

This is the tale of a South African school founded a hundred years ago in the full tide of those Arnold reforms which were to bring so many famous schools to the birth in nineteenth century England. But St Andrew’s College was set up on the Eastern Frontier of South Africa as it then was; in what was a Military Headquarters through the long series of frontier wars. For Grahamstown lies at what was the point of impact between the European Settlers coming in from the west and from overseas and the African tribes pressing down from the north and east. So, the school had a stormy infancy; and there were further storms ahead in the ‘colonial’ period that was to follow. Emerging from these cramping conditions St Andrew’s stands today, on the threshold of its second century, as a completely South African school which is yet not unmindful of the rock whence it is hewn.