Kingswood: Opening of the Kindergarten and the Shift to Peradeniya Road.

The following excerpts are from the preliminary chapter (“A General Survey – Peradeniya”) of Louis Edmund Blaze’s KFE: The Story of Kingswood Kandy (pp. 30-38), which documents the author’s reflections of Kingswood’s first twenty five years.

On the 13th October came the Rev. William Goudie, Missionary Secretary, and President-elect of the Wesleyan Conference, on an official visit, accompanied by a Mathodist layman, Mr. Robert Simpson. Much was hoped from this visit… and no one could be more keenly and heartily sympathetic than Mr. Goudie. “I want to assure you,” he wrote in August 1921, “that Kingswood lies very heavy on my heart, and though we may have to be patient for a few months longer, I am in good hope of your securing all that you ask – a suitable appointment as principal and the necessary funds for a new site and a new building.” To our great sorrow, Mr. Goudie died in April 1922…

Rev. William Goudie.

… In May 1920 the Rev. A.S. Beaty ceased to be Manager… The Rev. John Eagle succeeded, and events moved fast. The “House System” was adopted by us in June 1922, the Houses being named after Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Winchester. An “Advisory Council” for Wesleyan schools had been established early in 1921, and the Committee of that Council for Kingswood was not idle. A Kindergarten was decided on. Miss S.P. Marshall, Principal of Princess of Wales’ College, came up to advise us on the matter, and encouraged us greatly by the arrangements she suggested. On her recommendation and that of Miss Carter, Inspectress of Schools, Miss Nancy Fernando, a trained teacher, was appointed in charge of the Kindergarten, which began its work in January 1923. Miss C. De Sylva assisted in this department, which carried on in the rooms left vacant by the removal of the Girls’ High School to Katukelle. Some others of our classes too went to the vacated rooms, and the pressure due to lack of space was greatly relieved.

But the problem of a new site with new buildings was not so easily solved. It will have been observed that all along more and better accommodation became necessary as the School grew, and the accommodation in the Brownrigg Street premises was certainly not what it should have been…

… Not to go back too far, Dr. [James Hope] Moulton wrote in 1917: “We may be as proud of the School as ashamed of the buildings – and that is saying great deal.” In the “Foreign Field” for February 1918 the Editor wrote: “Our Kingswood College at Kandy has for some years been carrying on a really good work in most inadequate premises; in fact, dormitories for the Boarders had to be commandeered for classrooms.” Mr. Goudie reported early in 1922: “The School, however, is miserably housed in old, inadequate, and dilapidated buildings in the heart of the town. We have postponed consideration of this scheme so long that the case is urgent and calls for immediate action. We must provide for the School a new building on a new site on the outskirts of the town.”

Edward Brandis (EB) Denham

The comments of the Education Inspectors in their annual reports may be summed up in Mr. Denham‘s frank outburst when he last spoke from a Kingswood platform: “I consider Kingswood most inadequately housed and extremely badly equipped. It is no reflection on the Principal, as it is largely a matter of finance; but it has to be remedied. Work is being done in difficult circumstances… As they stand, the buildings are more fir for a Night School. Yet I can say that more daylight is let into education in this School than perhaps any other school of the same size in Ceylon. If it’s buildings cannot face the light of day, its spirit is a light, an illuminating force, which gives the dingy and dismal surroundings a character of its own – modest, retiring, regardless of outward show.”…

… Nor must this fact be overlooked, that our Managers were keener than even those within the School itself to obtain suitable accommodation. The scheme first proposed was to pull down the existing buildings in Brownrigg Street and to replace them by a large two-storeyed building. Plans were drawn up by Mr. A.M. Spaar, and a Building Fund was started. In 1916 the Wesleyan Missionary Society in London gave us a grand of 666 pounds and we hoped to collect Rs. 10,000 locally. But doubts soon arose as to whether we should build on the old site or find a roomier and less crowded location. Mr. Denham wished us to be in close touch with the Department of Agriculture, and suggested Peradeniya. Ampitiya and Getambe were also explored; and at last the land on Peradeniya Road, known as “Solomons Gardens”, was selected and purchased with a grant of 4000 pounds from the Society’s Centenary Fund. The land belonged at one time to the father of W.H. Solomons, and was often visited by the young people of the seventies and eighties in their morning walks…

… When Solomons Gardens was secured, new plans were drawn up by Mr. A.M. Spaar, and it was estimated that the new buildings, with the proper equipment, would cost Rs. 200,000. This was the grim problem which now faced us; but at any rate we would make a start, and build as money came in. Imagine, then, the astonishment and joy felt by all of us when it was announced that a gift of 10,000 pounds (nearly Rs. 150,000) had been made to the Society by Sir John Randles, M.P., a distinguished Wesleyan Methodist in England…

… The amazing liberality of Methodist laymen in England towards their Church is almost proverbial, and a subject of wide comment. Sir John Randles has not been the least generous of many generous givers, and this is how he was led to endow Kingswood, when he offered 10,000 pounds to the Wesleyan Missionary Society:

Sir John Scurrah Randles

“I wanted to do something that would be for the greater glory of God, and the good of my fellow-men in some part of the globe where the British flag flew, but not at Home in Particular. I had heaps of projects and plans put before me. I am not a learned man. I am not clever; but I think I have a little of the commercial instinct within me, and my instinct told me that I must put my money in the right place, where value would be received and good results follow. And of all the projects laid before me, the project of Kingswood seemed to be the most opportune and desirable… If at the old Kingswood so much good could have been done, so much of value could have been achieved, surely, with better opportunities it seemed to me a desirable place to put down some money and help people who were willing to help themselves.”

On 31st December 1923 my official connection with Kingswood came to an end.

KFE: The Story of Kingswood Kandy was originally published in 1934. This excerpt was taken from the book’s current edition in use, published in 1994.

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