PIONEERING VALUES

Hilton College owes its origins to two remarkable, pioneering, but distinctly different, Englishmen. Both had arrived in South Africa in the 1850’s and became friends whilst living in Pietermaritzurg a number of years later.

Hilton College’s founding Headmaster was Rev. William Orde Newnham, a scholarly man who first arrived in the Colony of Natal in 1855. He taught in Pietermaritzburg and later at a mission in Highflats before attempting to start a school in Ladysmith. Ladysmith proved too hot and too remote, so Newnham accepted the offer made by his friend, Gould Arthur Lucas, to relocate his school to a farm above Pietermaritzburg. Lucas had, some years earlier, purchased half of a Voortrekker farm, “Ongegund”, the other half being bought by Joseph Henderson. Henderson named the farm “Hilton”, and Lucas called his portion “Upper Hilton”. It was here that Newnham opened Hilton College in January 1872.

As a young man Lucas had enlisted with the 73rd Regiment of Foot and sailed to join his regiment in the Cape Colony, aboard HMS Birkenhead. He arrived dramatically and unconventionally since the Birkenhead ran aground and sank off Danger Point, near Cape Aghulhas, in the early hours of 26 February, 1852. This story has become part of the heroic folklore of South Africa. Four hundred and forty five of Her Majesty’s troops died, but Ensign Lucas was amongst those who managed to struggle ashore.

Lucas was later posted to Pietermaritzburg and developed a strong affinity for Natal. After resigning from the army, he settled in Pietermaritzburg as a magistrate. He was a keen hunter, and it is probably this which prompted his purchase of the farm on which Hilton College was later to be founded.

The modesty of Newnham’s explanation, “I took a farm and started a school on my own account”, conveys nothing of the pioneering spirit which accompanied the start of Hilton College. The first pupils came on horseback or in wagons, for the only railway line in Natal at that time linked Durban with the Point. In fact the railway did not reach Pietermaritzburg until 1880.

So Hilton College opened in a South Africa where diamonds had only recently been discovered, where there was as yet no knowledge of the gold of the Witwatersrand, and where the founding of Johannesburg was not to take place for another fourteen years.
 

My first and greatest desire is that ‘Hilton Boy’ should be synonymous with ‘gentleman’ in the very best sense of the term, a boy who is honest and upright and true as steel. Rev WO Newnham Founding Headmaster

The Estate is all that an Hiltonian of the 1870’s would recognise in the modern Hilton, for he, like the present boys, wandered over the same unspoilt countryside, awestruck by the sheer beauty of the Mngeni river valley and the sandstone crags of the Karkloof mountains. The modern Hilton College remains secure in its 1700 hectares of unspoilt bush, productive farmlands and conservation area. The assurance of this Estate gives a unique context to the school, and extends the Hilton experience into an appreciation of nature and the environment.

The Hilton tradition of today encompasses a spirit of creative endeavour and the pursuit of character and excellence, enshrined in the cool Cape- Dutch architecture and the splendour of its surroundings.

After five years, Newnham resolved to return to England and Hilton College’s future seemed uncertain. The lease was, however, taken over by a man whose influence on the school proved to be enormous. Henry Vaughan Ellis had neither a University degree nor any teaching qualification, but having been a pupil at Rugby School he had a clear sense of what Hilton College ought to be. It was he who embedded the traditions of the Public School in Hilton; it was he who chose the fleur-de-lys as the emblem and the motto, “Orando et Laborando”, both borrowed from Rugby; and it was he who guided Hilton College through twenty seven years which proved extraordinarily challenging, both for the young school and for South Africa.

Initiating Change