GRAEME COLLEGE (until 1939, Victoria Boys’ High School), Grahamstown.
leopard supporter/badge / school’s founding / Afrikaanse blasoen
The school’s coat of arms may be blazoned:
Arms: Per pale: I : Or, three piles azure; upon a chief azure three escallops or; II : Azure, three annulets or, 2 and 1.
Crest: Upon a wreath or and azure, an ostrich running, azure and or.
Supporters: Dexter a leopard rampant, sinister a giraffe statant, both or, spotted azure.
Motto: Virtute et Opera.
About the arms:
These are the original arms of the Grahamstown Municipality (adopted in 1862), differenced by altering the division from quarterly to impalement (partition down the middle) and adapting the colours.
The school – which only in 1939 became known as Graeme College, and was previously called Victoria Boys’ High School – used the town coat of arms (in its quarterly form) from 1886 to 1938, but appears to have gradually adapted the colours.
Angus Barnard,1 in his Templeton Memorial Lecture of 1992, makes reference to Sir George Cory’s changing the colours of the arms to gold and blue. However, he states that the city bore the arms in black and red, which does not appear to have been the case. Black and red appear in the arms of Graham of Fintry, the red being a royal tressure, but in the 1862 municipal arms the tressure is (quite properly) omitted. These arms appear in the municipal coat in memory of the town’s founder, Colonel John Graham of Fintry. Instead the chief (the top part of the shield) is black and set back from the edges of the shield, as it is in the Fintry arms, but with a plain gold (or yellow) edging. The school (probably as part of a gradual evolution) eliminated the gold edging and pushed the black (later blue) of the chief to the outer edges. The piles are also black in the 1862 city arms. In the illustration above they are shown as a jagged line of partition below the actual orange line indicating the division between the chief and the main field, but they should in fact be shown as distinct triangular projections from the chief. The gold annulets on red of Van Riebeeck were rendered gold on blue in the 1862 arms. (In Afrikaans, annulets are called ringe, but in English heraldic usage a ring is one worn on the finger, and set with a stone.) The municipal council also added the innovation of making the lowest of the three annulets larger than the other two. In the arms granted to the municipality in 1912, the anomalies of both the larger annulet and the blue background have been eliminated, but the larger annulet has been retained by both Graeme and its sister schools, Victoria Girls’ High and Victoria Primary. Graeme has also retained the blue background. The blue used by the school (influenced by the popularity of navy blue for school blazers) is dark, as is the gold, which tends to be more of a tangerine colour. However, if these arms were to be registered under the Heraldry Act, they would have to be treated as being azure and or, since navy blue is not a recognised heraldic colour, and orange does not contrast sufficiently with blue. Concerning the change in the school badge, Barnard remarks: “In 1938 the school decided to register its badge in terms of Act 23 of 1935 to prevent unauthorized people using the school’s caps and blazers but obviously could not attempt registration of the badge as it was the one used by the city. Changes had to be made. “The Graham and van Riebeeck arms were therefore impaled (placed side by side) instead of quartered thus preserving the link with the past and the badge was registered in that form. “This new form had the advantage of being more convenient for manufacturing purposes. “Registration was effected on 11 November 1938 with the Secretary of the Interior in terms of Section 5 of the Protection of Names Uniforms and Badges Act (Act No 23 of 1935) and by this registration Victoria Boys’ High School in Grahamstown obtained the sole and exclusive right to the use of the badge in the Union of South Africa. “When the name of the school was changed with effect from 1 April 1939 to Graeme College, the badge registered for Victoria Boys’ High School continued to be used.” The badge registered under the 1935 Act comprised only the shield and the motto; the supporters and crest were omitted. The ordinary school blazer badge comprises the shield and motto scroll. In view of the 1938 registration, the school should not have any problem registering its arms under the Heraldry Act (1962), but there are a few anomalies. The badge as currently used has been shaped according to the requirements of badge-makers, and is not quite within the heraldic tradition. The shield is outlined with a thick orange stitching which resembles a narrow border; this would have to be narrowed considerably, as it should only be the vaguest outline. Similarly, the two halves of the shield are separated with orange stitching of equal thickness, and the chief (in the dexter half of the shield) is likewise marked off from the lower portion. The shield division should be marked by a much narrower line, and there is no need for any line of division between the chief and the rest of the dexter half. The scallop shells are poorly drawn and small. This shortcoming would be rectified in any drawing produced by the Bureau of Heraldry. Not only do the supporters appear in the school’s full armorial achievement (which is used as an old boys’ blazer badge), but the leopard is used as an honours badge (in this instance stitched in gold thread), and on first team rugby jerseys. Victoria Girls’ High similarly uses the giraffe supporter as an honours badge. Schools are not usually granted supporters, but the long usage – and the application of the supporters as honours badges – would seem to justify their inclusion in the arms as they might be registered by the Bureau. Alternatively, the Bureau might be willing to grant the leopard to Graeme and the giraffe to VG (as the girls’ school is affectionately known) as badges, instead of as supporters. The drawing shows the crest and supporters as being in gold on white, but this is not acceptable in heraldry. The blazon (my own wording) reflects the arms as shown on the badge of the Old Graemian Union. Barnard is dubious about the crest’s being allowed by the Bureau, but there is no reason to prevent a school from bearing a crest. A further problem with regard to the 1938 registration appears when one searches the database of the National Archives online. Following a rather wordy (and unheraldic) description of the arms is this note: “REMARKS: Registration lapsed - refresher fee not paid.” In short, this means that despite the fact that an application was made and a certificate issued, the arms have no legal protection, and it would be in the school’s interest to seek registration under the Heraldry Act from the Bureau of Heraldry. The motto can be translated as “Courage and toil” (see here for the interpretation used by Victoria Girls’ High). About the school: Our fathers passed through the Drostdy Gate To a tiny school of a bygone day Where the lessons they learned were of ageless date We learn them today in the selfsame way. The song was written in the days of corporal punishment and many other practices that have since passed, and its chief value seems to be its reference to the Drostdy, the seat of the landdrost, the official who headed the civil and judicial administration of Grahamstown in its frontier days. (Col Graham was the first landdrost of what was then called Graham’s Town.) The Drostdy buildings have long since disappeared and been replaced by those of the Rhodes University campus, but the Drostdy Gate remains to this day. “At a public meeting held in 1872 a resolution was moved to the effect that: ‘It is highly desirable to establish a high class undenominational school in Grahamstown, with a view to providing an education which is not furnished by any of the present schools.’ “And so in April 1873, with an enrolment of 25 boarders and 45 day scholars, under the headmastership of the Rev Robert Templeton, the Grahamstown Public School opened its doors in the Drostdy Barracks and the Drostdy House, newly vacated by the Colonial military authorities. “The new school grew rapidly and within 10 years the enrolment had reached 200. The first candidate for the matriculation examination was entered in 1874 and the school began preparing candidates for the examinations of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. “The political troubles at the end of the nineteenth century saw the British Army wanting their buildings back and school move to new premises in Beaufort Street in 1898.” (For more information on this move, and on the relationship between the boys’ and girls’ schools, see here.) Prior to the move to Beaufort Street the boys’ school was known variously as the Boys’ Public School or the Public Undenominational School – to distinguish it from the church schools run by the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Methodist churches. The Beaufort Street building first occupied by the boys’ school had its foundation stone laid on 23 June 1897. This occasion was also a celebration of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and the boys’ and girls’ schools were at the same time named after the Queen. The boys’ school occupied its own buildings in Beaufort Street in 1898, and was to stay there until 1974. The change of name in 1939 was in part occasioned by a desire to name the school after the town’s founder, Colonel John Graham of Fintry, and the spelling chosen reflected what was widely believed to be the original spelling of the name Graham. This is, however, mistaken. Clan Graham
The school song begins with the words:
In calling itself a college, Graeme was aligning itself with its neighbours in the Eastern Province and Border: Grahamstown already had St Andrew’s College, St Aidan’s College and Kingswood College, while Uitenhage had Muir College and Somerset East its Gill College. The boys’ school in Graaff-Reinet (later to become part of Union High School) had also been known as Graaff-Reinet College. On the Border, King William’s Town had its Dale College, East London its Selborne College, and Queenstown its Queen’s College.
The word college is especially associated, in the Eastern Province, with the 19th-century practice (in the absence of tertiary institutions in the region) of schools teaching young men at tertiary level. See here for more on this.
Until 1956 Graeme and VG also catered for Afrikaans-speaking pupils – Grahamstown has, since the arrival of the 1820 Settlers, always had a relatively small Afrikaans-speaking community – but in 1956 the town acquired its first Afrikaans-medium school, the Hoërskool P J Olivier.
For many years before the boys’ school moved in 1974, the Graeme College School Committee had maintained to the Grahamstown School Board and the Cape Education Department that the buildings were unsuitable for education.
Land in Somerset Heights, east of Settlers Hospital and just below the railway line, was purchased, and the first sports fields there came into use as early as 1963.
The school as it stands today teaches boys from Grade 1 to Grade 12 (according to the old Cape system, Sub A to Std 10), but over many years shared classes in both directions with its sister school (see here). Only in 1973, when Graeme established its own junior primary department, were boys able to attend the boys’ school from the beginning to the end of their school careers.
Website:
The school has its own website here.
Afrikaanse blasoen:
Die wapen mag in Afrikaans so geblasoeneer word:
Wapen: Gedeel: I: In goud, drie omgekeerde punte van blou; op ’n blou skildhoof, drie mantelskulpe van goud; II: In blou, drie ringe van goud, 2 en 1.
Helmteken: Op ’n wrong van goud en blou, ’n lopende volstruis in blou en goud.
Skildhouers: Regs ’n klimmende luiperd, links ’n staande kameelperd, altwee in goud met blou stippels.
Leuse: Virtute et Opera.
Die leuse vertaal as: “Deugsaamheid en arbeid”. Die skildhouers en helmteken word hierbo onreëlmatig as goud (of oranje) op wit aangetoon; op die skool se baadjiewapens verskyn dit as blou en goud/oranje.
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Remarks, inquiries: Mike Oettle