When in 1920 the Natal Provincial Council finally decided that it was time to establish a separate secondary school for girls, Maritzburg College had already been open since 1863.  They were not yet sure enough about the importance of high school education for girls to build a school, so they bought a house.  If there was not enough demand for a school they could always resell it.

They chose Morningside, the large and beautiful home of the Davis family with grounds that extended over 32 acres.  Mr Davis had become rich by establishing a printing press in Pietermaritzburg and spared no expense in building a house to impress his fellow Maritzburgers and to accommodate his wife and 9 children.  Most of you have seen the beautiful entrance hall at the BE with its impressive staircase and admired the stained glass windows, pressed metal ceilings and fireplaces in the remains of the original building which form the heart of the BE.  The lounge or drawing room as they called it had its own stage and was big enough for the first Sixth Form Dance in 1933.

When the school opened there were only 71 girls and 8 teachers but Morningside could not provide adequate living space for 17 boarders, some teachers and the principal Norma Burns, as well as classrooms for teaching.  So by August 1925 the new day school was built.  It stretched from Mrs White’s Art Room to just before Mrs Goddard’s kitchen with only a staircase sticking out at the back.  The architects wanted a building that was attractive as well as functional and they used pillars, arches, stonework and even a balcony over the entrance to enhance the Pietermaritzburg red bricks from which it was constructed.

It is obvious that GHS was already establishing a good academic reputation because, when in 1929 the American Carnegie Corporation offered to sponsor books for a school library that would make good use of them, GHS was chosen to receive the equivalent of R1000.  That was enough money in the 1930s to stock the library which was established in what is now the Staff Room.  It was officially opened in 1932, Norma Burns’ last year as principal.  The girls’ affection for Miss Burns continued long after her retirement, a number of them kept contact with her and there is a photograph of her at an Old Girls’ Dance in 1951.

Our library has grown along with the school.  It moved to the Eve Grundy Room in 1962 and to the McDowall Centre in 1973. (You can still see the label Resource Centre on the door.)  Finally in 1995 to celebrate our 75^th birthday and with the help of the girls who passed the books along a human chain it was transferred to its spacious present venue, the Guy Hall.  The architect, Bill Straw had cleverly converted what had been a gym hall into a spacious library.  

In 1935 new buildings were added to the front part of the school.  One of the ways to work out how old the classrooms are is to look at what type of windows they have.  All these old sections have the sash windows which are so awkward to open and close.  Probably the most important 1935 addition was the Guy Hall with its lovely high windows.  It was the first time that the school had had a proper venue for assemblies and large functions and looked very different from now.  The main entrances were at the sick bay end and there was no mezzanine floor.

In the late 1930’s the BE was extended but unfortunately that meant that large sections of the old Davis home were demolished among them the tower at the top of the purportedly haunted black stairs.  A boarder mistress from that time remembers that she and her friends managed a last midnight feast in the tower at which they ate sardines, marie biscuits and condensed milk. 

In 1938 the ship's bell which now hangs next to the main entrance was bought and in those days could be heard by the whole school.

By the time Eve Grundy became principal in 1950 there were 240 girls enrolled at GHS.  During her ten years at the helm, the enrolment more than doubled to 580.  One of the reasons was that classes for Grade Eights or Form Twos as they were then called were introduced with the first two in 1957. At that time Latin was a compulsory subject for them.  Six new classrooms, a kitchen, now yellow 4, and a sewing room which is now the technology room had to be built.

There was still not enough space and when Dorrice McDowall took over in 1961, plans had already been approved for a new wing which now houses mainly Afrikaans, History, EMS and CAT.  As before, if you want to see where this wing ended look at the windows and compare them to the louvre windows on the newest classrooms.  Was Mrs Gouweloos’s geography room built before or after Miss Wood’s?  By 1974 enrolment had doubled again to over 1000 and the North Wing with its 3 storeys, Mrs Lawrence’s Art Room and the JDCC were added in the early 1970s. The staff and girls must have been greatly relieved not to have to use the prefabricated buildings which had been erected as a temporary measure, any more.  They are very hot in summer and equally cold in Winter. The last of the old prefabs was demolished, during the July holidays after 40 odd years.

Another development in the 1960s was the addition of the Norma Burns Hall which left the Guy Hall to be converted into a gym.  Unfortunately, the rapid growth of the school in the 1960s and 70s meant that it was soon a squeeze to fit everyone into the new hall for assembly and prizegivings had to be split.  It was only with the construction of the Sylvia Vietzen Community Centre in the early 1990s that that problem was solved.  It was in the early 1990s that GHS first opened to all races, with overwhelming support from the girls and parents and gained more independence in raising funds to build facilities such as the CC.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the main emphasis in developing sporting facilities was on hockey and tennis and to a lesser degree netball.  The school’s first tennis court cost all of R100 to construct in 1925.  Girls had to walk to the Alexandra Pool for swimming but, in the late 1930s, Miss Lindsay decided that it was time to raise funds for a new swimming pool.  Despite the limits placed on spending by World War Two it was opened in 1944.  Even College did not have its own pool at that stage.  Our first pool was bigger and deeper than the present one with facilities for diving.  You can still see where it was in front of the new matric wing at the BE.  Unfortunately it did not last well and had to be replaced by a smaller pool in 1983.

1979 was an important year with the inauguration of the Eleanor Graham Squash Complex and the introduction of Inter-house Badminton and Athletics.  Basketball was also introduced in 1979 and was originally played on some of the tennis courts closest to the classrooms.  I can still recall one of my more outspoken history pupils interrupting the lesson with “I wish they would stop making that bouncy, bouncy ball noise.”  Of course, the CC has made a big difference to much of our sport, as has the Shelagh Bowness Artificial turf hockey field opened last year.

In the 1990s and 2000s, excluding the CC and ‘astro’, eight more new facilities were built, namely:

1. Shongololo – new rooms for Senior Boarders 1990’s
2. Music Auditorium 2001 forming part of the enlarged Performing Arts’ Centre
3. The Addition or Gym built on to the Sylvia Vietzen Community Centre 2003
4. Gazebo 2004
5. McNeil/Turner House which is the Matric Wing at the Boarding Establishment 2006 
6. Sculpture Room forming part of the Susan Allison Art Complex 2008 
7. Hulamin Science Laboratory 2009
8. The Audrey Laidlaw Viewing Deck 2010

Mrs Sue Rautenbach (Adapted from an assembly talk - Nov 2010)