OTAGO HIGH SCHOOL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 37, 13 September 1890, Page 1

OTAGO HIGH SCHOOL.

HE High School of Otago (to quote its full title) was founded by ordinance of Provincial Council in 1863, at which date only a school (Affifi for boys was contemplated. A good many 'U years later the Girls’ School was developed out of the original endowment, and in 1877 the present system of direction and control of the Otago Boys’ and Girls’ High School was called into existence by an Act of the General Assembly. The building represented in our engraving was opened by Sir William Jervois, K.C.8., Governor of New Zealand, on the 11th February, 1885. The new Fives Courts and other arrangements have been added during the office of the present Rector by private subscriptions. The plan of the building is that of a main central hall round which are grouped several class rooms; this hall is seventy-four feet long, forty-three 'feet wide, thirty feet high. The tower,

which forms a conspicuous object in the details of picturesque Dunedin, is about 70 feet high. There is a spacious gymnasium fitted up in the best modern style, and plenty of accommodation for every kind of school teaching. The cadet corps numbers sixty. The number of boys attending the first half of this year was 250. The present Hector in the Rev. Henry Belcher, LL.D., Fellow and sometime Chaplain and Tutor in King’s College, London. The mathematical master, Mr D. Bient, M.A., was present at the opening of the school, August 3, 1863, and is the schoolmaster whose work in this colony has been the longest. Among distinguished old boys of this school are, Hon. Thos. Hislop, M. H. K., Minister of Education; Mr H. D. Bell, Crown Prosecutor in Wellington ; Mr Justice Edwards, Mr Fergus Hume (of ‘Hansom Cab’

fame), Mr Bland Holt, ami many others rapidly rising into prominence in New Zealand.