The Grey was a profound personal experience for me as a Way House boarder for the four years 1952 – 1955. The level of teaching stimulated my love for the sciences, and the benefit of sporting activities has remained with me ever since. The boarding house experience of the time was vastly different to that noted during my recent visit for the 70th-year reunion of our class in May. Sadly, only three of us attended, although a number are still around.
Class of 1955 Reunion Attendees 2025: Rod Phillip, Sam Opland, Atholl Ryder
First impressions of the school in 1952 included the requisite pre-visit to Croft, Magill and Watson to be outfitted in school togs: a black blazer with the school badge, a Grey blazer for more formal wear, a straw basher, a cap and school tie. The school grounds contained a shooting range, later replaced by the swim bath, clay tennis courts, a cinder running track around the Phillip Field, two Fives courts, a woodwork building, and, most important of all, a tuckshop behind the boarding house.
Boarders were required to have two suits – a grey suit to be worn on Saturdays (alternately your Grey blazer if leaving the school with permission – when all made a beeline to the Willowtree downtown for milkshakes), and a navy-blue suit to be worn on Sundays. Boarding house life was Spartan: only cold showers were available and mandatory every morning and after sports unless excused by the Matron. Bathtubs (with hot water) were available on a roster, permitting one bath per week per student. Needless to say, bath sharing occurred in order to enjoy more baths per week. Each boarding house – Way, on the Rectory side, and Meredith, on the school side, had three dormitories. A junior dorm, a senior dorm and a balcony. The latter consisted of 7 beds in an enclosed balcony and housed the seniors slated with overseeing the Newpots. Each house had a prep room with large common tables, around which students sat to do homework; reading a book was only allowed during the last half-hour, assuming homework had been finished. A common reading room was available which contained a vacuum-tube radio, where boys could listen to music or sports broadcasts, but which was a continuous bone of contention, depending on who wanted to listen to what.
School life was mostly routine: Morning assembly in the De Waal Hall, for which all boys remained standing, was conducted by Rector “Flash” Gordon, and concluded by short prayers, then to the classrooms. After classes ended, there was compulsory Winter and Summer sport participation, but not the variety available today! The Winter sport was rugby, and if I remember correctly, the school fielded eleven competitive teams. Summer sports were cricket, tennis, athletics, and swimming. Gymnastics was a weekly “subject” and took place during the school day in the De Waal Hall, where apparatus had been set up. Every Summer an English cricketer, George Cox, would return to coach. In winter, our own M.C. Marais was the First Team coach. Harry McEwan was the Gym coach, and I. de V “Tienkie” Heyns, during his short tenure at Grey, coached Athletics.
Significant events that occurred during my years at Grey, starting in 1952, include classes being interrupted one day, and being summoned to the school hall in February for the announcement of the passing of King George VI (South Africa was still a British colony at the time). In March, the Van Riebeek Festival began in Cape Town to mark the South African Tercentenary. In PE, we were allowed to go to King’s Beach to watch a re-enactment of the landing of the 1820 Settlers. In May, the first commercial jet flight, the Comet, took place from London to Johannesburg, and in July, the Helsinki Olympic Games were held, and Rector James Lang passed away. The building of the “New Block” of classrooms to accommodate the Std 6 class the following year commenced, resulting in the demise of one Fives court.
1953 started with the addition of the Std 6’s, and school attendance reached 570 students. In April, a fund-raising event in aid of the school gymnastics fund took place with a gymnastic display in St. George’s Park – we had been rehearsing since January. In May, the unbelievable happened – Everest was climbed for the first time! In June, we all went to the cinema to see the lengthy colour film of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, after standing in the theatre and singing “God Save the Queen”.
In May 1954, Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile and in 1955, fundraising for the swimming pool started with a three-night presentation of “The Gay Greys”, a politically incorrect title today, but it was a most entertaining and successful variety concert. Construction of the swimming pool commenced toward the end of the year and was completed in time for the School’s Centenary Celebration in 1956. Some further trivia from 1955: Churchill resigned, Disneyland in Anaheim opened, and the first edition of the Guinness Book of Records was published.
That was then. Today, my return to the School this past May 2025, one of the few in the intervening years, due to my residence abroad since 1983, was marked with mixed feelings: nostalgia at re-living my own memorable years, and feeling a long attachment since my father’s attendance there from 1924 through 1929, and then envy at how the School has changed, both materially and educationally. The new facilities that were not imagined so long ago: the just-opened Music and Arts Centre, the interior sports facilities, the changed sports fields and swimming centre, the mind-boggling variety of sports offered – who could have thought that golf, and rowing (I was a sweep rower for the past many decades) would be available, amongst others.
I could go back to Grey High School tomorrow!
