FINDING ITS HOME

Taranaki Daily News, 18 April 1935, Page 9

FINDING ITS HOME

EARLY VICISSITUDES

BUILDING OF SCHOOL OF TO-DAY. IMPROVEMENTS OF 19 YEARS. I I It is only within comparatively' recent years thaj/the New Plymouth Girls’ High School has had a home of its own; for the present building was opened only iff 1916, after four years of wandering by the unfortunate girl students who had been “cast out” from thei Boys’ High School building in 1912. One finds in the school magazine of 1916 a-suggestion of justifiable pride and relief in the following description:— “The new school is a handsome building in cream roughcast with accommodation (if the assembly hall is counted as a room) for at least 120 pupils. From end to end of the building runs a wide corridor on to which all rooms but the sports room and the prefects’ sanctum open, these two being connected with the main corridor by a side passage. The corridor divides the school into two parts.. In front there are four class rooms, the science demonstration room, and the head’s study. The back comprises the assembly hall, the domestic and physical science rooms, the prefects’ study and the cloakrooms. “The class rooms are airy and welllighted and are fitted in the latest style with wooden wainscotes and white walls, and the science rooms have the most modern appliances. The assembly hall can easily contain the 99 or so pupils of the school ...”

At this time the grounds were being carefully laid out and a beginning made with lawns for croquet and tennis. The fine hockey field at the back of the present school was planned from the beginning and two asphalt tennis courts provided. It is recorded that, in the same year, there was agitation for “much-wished-for permission” to play cricket, the hope being expressed that a cricket pitch would make its appearance before long. The wish was granted. Cricket is still played on the basketball courts.

“With all these advantages for both work and recreation,” says a contributor to the magazine of 1916, “the girls are endeavouring to gain distinction in both school and sport to show their keen appreciation and their delight in their new and commodious school.” The reaction of enthusiasm was certainly justified. For the three years (between 1912 and 1915) after the exodus from “the school on the hill” where there had been modified co-education since 1885, the girls were accommodated in a Devon Street residence that was school and boardinghouse combined; and it is recorded that “the rules were very definite!” Rats, unseen but very much heard, diverted the pupils in these unusual quarters and, with the mysterious disappearance of 'a box of matches, created their own little quota o" excitement in the expectation that a fire was imminent.

After the sojourn in Devon Street, the homeless high school actually moved into the, power house, where the monotony was again broken by the presence of rats in the drains. Then the trams started- running and the vibration of the machinery was so nerve-racking that the unfortunate students were driven out into further temporary quarters in the Taranaki Jockey Club building—more rat-infested than either of the other buildings. Lunch packages had a habit of disappearing bodily. The only compensation was the presence of the bar; but even that joke became a trifle stale after the first term.

In all, the girls were three years in “Devon House,” five or six weeks in the electric sub-station and 18 uieeks in the racecourse building. For want of a ground, the annual school sports had been abandoned for the first three years. Since the opening of the new school in 1916, the large increase in the number of students has required extensive alterations and additions to the school’s accommodation. The assembly hall was enlarged and a new staff room built. A two-roomed, sunny preparatory building was occupied in 1923. Three years later an addition,- ’ block of four class rooms on newly purchased land was begun', and was occupied in the following year. At the same time plans for Scotlands were completed and the hostel was first occupied in 1928. In 1932 there was no further- Vise for special accommodation for the preparatory department and the block was converted int- music rooms. At the same time girl? of the main school were saved from the endless annoyance of smoky fires which gave no heat by the installation of central heating. *

To-day the school is equipped in every way to give a broad and sound education to its students—in comfortable quarters. With buildings, playing fields, gardens and its own delightful little area of native bush on the banks of the Henui stream, it occupies in all 16 acres of land, improved by constant work and wise planning beyond recognition. If the personality of the school and the uniform excellence of the training it gave apparently suffered little by reason of its early “homelessness,” its begin-

nings, common with' those of the Boys’ High School were in the vigorous tradition of all education institutions in the province.

A small residence for the principal and a school of four barn-like buildings was the extent of the secondary educational centre of New Plymouth in the year 1882. In a graphic description of the first High School given to an old girl some years ago, Mr. Pridham said: ‘.‘There were no fences anywhere . . . Nothing separated my house from the school or the borough reserve-ror even from the road. Pigs used to come down from a farm up the road and root about under the house!”

The school itself, when opened on February 1, 1882, comprised a junior boys’ room, a museum, a librarjTand Mr. Pridham’s study and cloak room. When girls were admitted in 1885 they took the room used for a library and the library ( was moved into the museum room. Two years later a girls’ class room was erected behind the cloak room and a special entrance provided through the cloak room. Later the door was nailed up and linoleum—an historic strip of linoleum covered with the scribbled names of scores of senior girls—was tacked over it. In 1904 the linoleum was taken down and vanished unaccountably. Inquirers who in later years sought to discover it for the value of its rough record, were unable to trace it. ■ : i-.. Despite the Structural changes of the years the Girls’ High School kept its quarters for nearly 30 years in the old “school,on the hill,”