Road. After this move she seems to have called it "The Girls'School". Mrs Robertson gave up the school when her sons had left Hilton College. She later lived in Gillitts and then moved to Pietermaritzburg, where she died in 1972 at the age of a hundred and four. Hillcrest School In January, 1910, Mr Samuel Courtenay Chard, who was forty-eight years old, opened the Hill Crest School in premises which he had leased from the Rev.Oxiey-Oxland. Mr Chard had taught at Forbes's Berea Academy in Durban before opening his own Musgrave Road School at the corner of Musgrave Road and Grant's Grove.The Musgrave Road School closed in December,1909. Mr Chard had two sons and a daughter. The younger son, Ivan, was a pupil at Hill Crest School and the daughter went to Redcliffe School. Later she helped her father with housekeeping duties. The older son (nicknamed "Cork") taught the junior class at Hill Crest. Mr Chard was spoken of as a very good teacher. He was a strict disciplinarian. One of his favourite punishments was to make boys stand in the corner of the dark hall after everyone else had finished and gone to bed.The boys called him "Puggy". He had been a Durban chess champion and he taught those boys who wished to learn the game.One of his pupils was later a Durban champion himself. Chard was also choir master of the local Anglican congregation, which met on alternate Sundays at the Hill Crest hall, across the road from the school. There were between fifty and fifty-five boarders at the school, ranging in age from seven to eighteen. They came from all over the country. There was one boy from the Belgian Congo (now Zaire), who spent a week travelling home and took a week to get back to school after the holi days. There was a boy by the name of Da Silva who came from Mocambique. Others came from the Transvaal and the Free State,as well as from different parts of Natal. The boys wore blue serge suits as the No. 1 uniform.The school colours were dark and light blue and the school badge was taken from the Chard coat-of-arms. Lieutenant Chard,the hero of Rorke's Drift, was a member of the same family. The mathematics master, Mr Armfield, was well liked by the boys. His favourite punishment was to make the boys do "reversibles", which involved multiplying sums of money (in pounds,shillings and pence) by a certain number and then reversing the procedure. Miss Scott taught music and once a week a teacher came from Durban to teach Dutch. (There was no Afrikaans in those days). Also once a week came Sergeant-Major Shell to drill the Hill Crest cadets. Games played an important part in the lives of the boys. They played soccer and tennis as well as cricket against Highbury. Highbury always won. Brian Norton became a famous tennis player and went to the United States, where he played against William Tilden, the American champion in the 1920's. The annual athletic sports were held on Union Day, May 31st, so that parents could attend. There were three games houses: School House (orange); Armfield's (purple) and Little's (green). Little's House was named in memory of a former pupil, Bruce Little,who died in the battle of Delville Wood in 1916. Another old boy, Francis August Quin, was killed at Passchendaele in the same year. The water supply at Chard's (which was the name com monly used for the school) came from large tanks which filled with rainwater. In the dry season the boys could hear Mr Chard going around late at night, tapping the tanks to check the water level. If it dropped too low then they had to use less water in their baths. They bathed every other day in tin baths. By the end of the dry season they were allowed about twenty-five millimetres of water in the bath. The boys did not enjoy the food at the school. One Sunday they all walked out after an unpopular meal.They refused to come back. Mr Chard blamed the senior boysfor this rebellion and all of them were caned. Mr Chard retired in about 1922. As neither of his sons wished to carry on the school, it was closed. He retired to the South Coast, where he died in 1937. His younger son, Mr Ivan Chard, still lives on the South Coast. His daughter, Mrs Gwen Gold,lives in Durban. St Margaret's School St Margaret's School for girls was opened in 1918 by Miss Cecil Mayhew, who had been Head Mistress and Art Mistress of St Anne's at Hilton Road. She opened the school in what had been the holiday home of Mr J.J. Beningfield. Mr Beningfield is said to have introduced azaleas to the Hillcrest area. The house was situated where the playing-fields of Hillcrest Primary School are today. The main house contained the kitchen,the dining room, the linen room and the bathroom,as well as Miss Mayhew's bedroom. The bathroom floor was lined with lead and had four tin baths in it. The girls were allowed to bath several times a week and were given half a paraffin tin (ten litres) of hot water each time. The house had wide verandahs on which most of the girls slept at night on folding beds. During the day these stretchers were stacked away. Some times the younger girls slept in one of the rooms in the house. There were rondavels in the grounds. Some were class rooms and others were teachers' bedrooms.They had three windows and a stable door, which made them very cool. The girls used to swing on the crossbeams of the classrooms if the teacher was out. Other rondavels were a staff common-room, a guest cottage and Miss Mayhew's sittingroom, as well as a museum at one time. There was also a wood and iron sickbay and a hall built of the same materials. At the end of the hall were two staff bedrooms. In the hall the girls did dancing on wet days and they also produced plays and concerts. pretty GROUNDS. The grounds were very pretty. The lawns and shrubs were very well kept. Miss Mayhew took a great interest in gardening. At one time there was an old African gardener called Santa Glaus or Father Christmas. There was an oval of lawn in front of the main house which was out of bounds to the girls. On special occasions and in fine weather they put on plays and displays of dancing for the parents on this oval. In addition each girl was given responsibility for a piece of the garden in which she had to grow vegetables. Behind a grove of trees there was a row of toilets. They used the bucket system and smelled bad.The girls were afraid to visit them at night. The St Margaret's girls wore a No. 1 uniform of green skirts and blazers with brown shoes and stockings. With this uniform they wore a white panama hat with a green band. On the band was a badge of a gold crown with the motto "Keep Faith". For very special occasions the girls wore green silk dresses but the everyday uniform was a cotton dress in butcher blue. All the spare clothes were kept by the matron and the girls could change their clothes once or twice a week: some former pupils say once only. Perhaps the system changed. FOOD,GLORIOUS FOOD.The food at St Margaret's was not very good. Often the girls had bread and dripping or porridge for supper. They seldom had fruit or vegerables, although those whose parents lived nearby sometimes sent fruit parcels to the school. One girl's father farmed not far away and he sometimes brought several dozen eggs. Then each girl was given an egg for breakfast. Some of the girls used to eat toothpaste or wormy guavasfrom the tree near 29
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTc3MDU5Nw==