The illustrious 150-year history of Hilton College comes alive in the stories of its people, their accomplishments and the generosity that is at the heart of the school.
Hilton owes its existence to the meeting of two individuals: Gould Arthur Lucas and William Orde Newnham, who both arrived in South Africa in 1852, though in very different circumstances.
Anglo-Irish Lucas was a young officer on HMS Birkenhead which sank off Danger Point near Cape Agulhas. Among the few soldier survivors, he was posted as district adjutant to Pietermaritzburg where he met the man with whom, decades later, he would found Hilton.
Newnham, an ordained priest, studied mathematics at St John’s College, Cambridge under William John Colenso, later Bishop of Natal, who later encouraged him to settle in the colony and start a school.
After his deployment to Pietermaritzburg, Lucas was sent to India, but not before he had noted the beautiful countryside north of the colony’s capital. On returning to Natal, he took up the post of magistrate in Ladysmith and helped Newnham establish a school there, but soon relocated it to land he had purchased outside Pietermaritzburg. And so, on 29 January 1872, Hilton College was born.
At first, it was little more than two thatched bungalows but soon a double-storey block was built. From this modest nucleus, today’s Hilton grew, with buildings being constructed, playing fields levelled and avenues planted. Initially, the school was leased from Lucas, but later was bought by Newnham’s successor, Henry Vaughan Ellis, until in 1903 it passed into the hands of the old boys, where it remains.
In another distinguishing feature, Hilton is inter-denominational, with the headmaster conducting daily prayers and visiting priests officiating on Sundays before a resident chaplain was appointed in 1982.
Standing in stark contrast to the school’s white buildings is the stone chapel, while prominent among its Cape Dutch-style architecture are the Campbell Block, Crookes Block and Saunders Sanatorium, each donated by a family which had prospered from sugar. As all the boys are boarders, seven separate boarding houses are today arranged along the school’s circular drive.
Surrounding this hub is the estate. One-thousand-seven-hundred hectares of timber plantations and acacia-scattered grasslands, fringed by cliffs and cut by streams, it is now largely a proclaimed nature reserve, stocked with giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, warthog and a variety of antelope.
Yet more than by its appearance and locality, an institution is defined by its people. Newnham declared at his first speech day that his greatest wish was that a “Hilton boy” should become synonymous with “gentleman”, denoting someone honest, upright and true as steel. And down the corridor of time his successors – from Ellis to George Harris today – have sought to sanctify this ideal.
Across society, Old Hiltonians have made their mark. Architect and activist Rusty Bernstein played a pivotal role in drafting the Freedom Charter, the blueprint for South Africa’s lauded Constitution. And when South Africa’s first Constitutional Court was instituted, chosen to head it was Arthur Chaskalson, who decades earlier had defended Nelson Mandela in the Rivonia Trial, with another Old Hiltonian, John Didcott, among his legal team. Other notable alumni include cardiac surgeon Sir Terence English, trauma surgeon Ken Boffard, academic and novelist Imraan Coovadia, architect Glen Gallagher, cricketers Mike Procter and Lungi Ngidi, and Springbok rugby captains Gary Teichmann and Bob Skinstad.
When Hilton turned 100 in 1972, headmaster Raymond Slater defined his ideal Hilton boy as someone not necessarily academic or sporting, but who has compassion, humility, sensitivity, imagination and a concern for others. As Hilton celebrates its 150th birthday, Harris echoes these sentiments, while reiterating that “of those to whom much is given, much will be required”.
With privilege comes responsibility, and Hilton boys are taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive. These values are modelled by alumni who fund the education of promising boys who would otherwise not be able to afford the school’s fees, and the Vula Programme, which since 2001 has been up-skilling teachers from under-resourced schools.
William Newnham’s founding values live on.