In presenting the school’s history in May here forever flourish and abound the approach taken was to trace St Mary’s roots and then to chronicle the contribution of each Head. In the first section we therefore present the early years of the school, first at St Elizabeth’s High School and then later as St Mary’s Diocesan School for Girls; then we trace the Heads in chronological order. Along the way we were not averse to being diverted by the school mysteries, passed down from generation to generation. For instance :
- Who were the Sisters of the Society of St John the Divine and why did they choose to set up the school in a tiny little wood and iron cottage between a dusty dirt road and a railway line overlooking Durban?
- Who was ‘the gentleman’ who, in 1906, came to the school to announce to the Sisters that his wife wished to bequeath to them the land on which the school stood? Did the gentleman say ‘in memory of my wife’, or were his words, ‘in memory of my wife’s mother? Why was the school called St Elizabeth’s – was this the name of the gentleman’s wife?
- Who originally owned the land on which St Mary’s presently stands? Was it indeed Mr Butcher, or did the Sisters purchase the land and cottage from someone else?
- How true was the rumour, spread in 1919, that St Elizabeth’s had to close its doors because the Sisters ‘had fallen on hard times’?
- Why did St Elizabeth’s High School change its name to St Mary’s DSG
- Where did the mysterious Anglo-Boer War hospital ward come from? Was there in fact a hospital on the present St Mary’s site?
- What happened to the ‘tin temple’ and where were the ‘Greenwoods’?
- Bishops, Baines, Butchers – were did our houses get their names?
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