St Peter's Diocesan School

From 1911

Also known as SPUDS, St Peter's, St Peter Diocesan School.

Anglican girls' school in the Suburbs, founded in 1911 by the Community of the Resurrection of Grahamstown; closed to pupils on 30 November 1977.

Everyone called it SPUDS. St Peter’s Diocesan School stood in the oldest residential part of Bulawayo, the area still simply called Suburbs, around Lawley Road. For sixty-six years it was a small Anglican school for girls, with a junior department and boarders. It closed in 1977, and unlike most Bulawayo schools, no institution survives to tell its story.

Founded from Grahamstown

The school’s roots were in an Anglican religious order, the Community of the Resurrection of Our Lord, founded in Grahamstown in 1884. Its founder was Anne Cecile Isherwood, who sailed from England in 1883, aged twenty, with the party known as “the Bishop’s dozen,” and took the religious name Cecilia.

In May 1911, at the request of the Bishop of Rhodesia, the Community sent two Sisters to Bulawayo, Sister Ethel and Sister Christian. They lived first in “Bishop’s Palace,” a three-roomed wood-and-iron building. A temporary school was put up on church land in the Suburbs. It was dedicated on 31 July 1911 and opened the next day with seventeen pupils on the roll, fifteen of them present.

The school’s 1981 history preserves the names and ages of the first children enrolled, from Rose Mockford (15) to John Grant (4): Nan and Susanna Corner, Maryone Stewart, Amelia Cunningham, Mary Redrup, Jessie Tolbutt, Lincoln Strong, Livingstone Moffat, Kate Jackson, Joan Selmes, Fay Vintcent, Ruth Bickle, Doris Fouze, Grace Moore and Angus McKenzie. The orphanage the Sisters started alongside the school became St Gabriel’s.

Fletcher House

The Diocese took responsibility for the school in 1912. Over the years it owned or rented several houses in the Suburbs, including St Hugh’s, Heyman House and Red Gables. The one people remember best is Fletcher House, on the corner of Lawley Road and Fourth Street. It was brought to Rhodesia prefabricated and put up in 1896–97, partly brick at the front and partly wooden strips behind. For years it held music rooms and a chapel. It had a door high above the entrance that led nowhere, which, the history says, “has both puzzled and amused many people.” For the school’s sixtieth birthday in 1971, Sir Patrick Fletcher sent a telegram noting that it was also the house’s seventy-fifth year.

The last years

By 1966 rising costs had nearly closed the school. A group of Bulawayo businessmen formed a Board of Governors, and the Sisters handed over. The Board appointed the first lay headmistress, Miss A. Swart, in 1967. She took over sixty-six pupils, and the school soon had a waiting list for the first time in years. At its peak St Peter’s housed 135 boarders and 160 day girls.

It did not last. The school “closed its doors to students on 30 November 1977,” the 1981 history records. “Soaring costs and dwindling numbers of pupils had finally brought it to an end.” The chapel’s furniture and vestments went to St Columba’s, St Mary’s in Famona, St Mark’s in Bellevue and St John’s Cathedral.

The chapter ends with a former pupil’s words about her new school, which she said “has no soul.” “Perhaps that’s what we shall all remember about St Peter’s,” the writer concludes, “that it had a soul.”

Headmistresses

Sister Ethel (1911), Sister Grace Eleanor (1913), Sister Mary Noel (1919), Sister Eva (1922), Sister Edith (1923), Sister Elsie Beatrice (1924), Sister Hilda (1932), Sister Monica (1935), Sister Ethel Mary (1937), Miss A. Swart (1967), Mrs R. McGregor (1971) and Mrs M. Dismore (1976).

Head girls

The 1981 history prints a roll of head girls, and it is the only one we know of anywhere. It is reproduced here exactly as printed, which means its gaps are printed too: there is no entry for 1911–23, 1925–26, 1928, 1930–34, 1940, 1942–45, 1949 or 1967–69. Whether those are years without an appointment or gaps in the compiler’s sources, the book does not say — so read a missing year as unknown rather than as nobody.

The name for 1954

The scan of the printed roll gives “C. Foielick”, which is not a name. The page has been damaged or the scan has misread it, and nobody has yet been able to say what it should be. If you can read the printed page, or if you were at the school in the early fifties, we would like to hear from you.

Where the roll can be checked

Six of these names are confirmed independently by the school’s own magazines, which is what gives the roll its credit: Pamela Harland, elected in January 1938; Helen Hotson, a prefect in the 1938 issue; Stella Richardson, in the register from 1938; A. James, in the 1935 and 1937 hockey teams; J. Wesson, named with the headmistress in a Jubilee photograph caption; and Elizabeth Newham, later a Cambridge cricket half-blue, who came back to teach.

Two names the magazines give are missing from the roll. The 1934 magazine says “Edith Rawson was appointed Head Girl” and the roll has no 1934 entry at all. The 1940 magazine says “Barbara Cole was elected Head Girl for 1940” and the roll has no 1940 entry. A third, Molly Butt, is called “one time head-girl” in the 1939 issue with no year given. Where a contemporary magazine and the roll disagree, the magazine was written at the time and the roll was assembled afterwards.

What the photographs show

The single gallery page shows the school chapel, Fletcher House, the school block, a portrait of Sister Ethel, and the front of the administration building, courtesy of Ms Val Freeman Shepperd.

Read more

The school’s full story, drawn from its magazines, is told in Bulawayo’s Forgotten School: St Peter Diocesan School, A Historic Preview, 1911–1977, in print and as an eBook.

What we don’t know yet

The magazines in this collection cover 1930–40, 1970 and 1972, and the Jubilee Number of 1971. The forties, fifties and sixties are almost silent. If you were at SPUDS, as a boarder, a day girl or one of the boys at St Hugh’s in the 1920s, we would like to hear what you remember and see your photographs.

5 photographs of St Peter's Diocesan School →