Today there are three Jeppe schools in Johannesburg, each with its own buildings, grounds and playing fields and with a total enrolment of 2260 pupils. These three schools, apart from sharing the Jeppe name, have a common origin dating back to 1890.

 

The forerunner of the Jeppe Schools was St. Michael’s college funded as an Anglican private school at the corner of Commissioner and Crown Streets in Fairview. When the school opened in 1890, it had an enrolment of about twenty-five pupils. The Rector of St. Mary the Less in Jeppestown, Rev. H. NB. Sidwell, was the first headmaster. He was succeeded in 1891 by the Rev. George Perry.

 

In 1896 the Witwatersrand Council for Education purchased the college buildings and site as the school as struggling to exist. The Council had been formed to enable the children of Uitlanders to receive the education not being provided for them by the state.

 

The Council re-opened the school as the Jepestown Grammar School in April 1897. Mr. J. H. Hardwick was appointed headmaster and fifteen boys were enrolled. But financial problems soon after forced the Council to cut down on expenditure and Mr Hardwick and his staff were given notice. A Committee of Jeppestown parents eventually bought the school which changed hands on 1 October 1898 for £2 500.

 

Mr. Hardwick stayed on as headmaster. The parents’ Committee was led by Mr. E. Hancock. Julius Jeppe, F. Eckstein and Abe Bailey were patrons of the school. The outbreak of the Anglo-Boer war in 1899 caused the school to close down; the number of pupils dwindled steadily and Mr. Hardwick himself had left by September 1899.

 

After the war the school re-opened as the Jeppestown High School for Boys and Girls in the same buildings occupied by the Grammar School before the war. It was one of the six “Milner” schools opened by the Transvaal Education Department and was one of the first co-educational schools.

 

The exact date of the re-opening is unknown, but it was during the first quarter of 1902, for in a letter dated 9 April the Director of Education stated that the premises were inadequate for the number of pupils and that the teachers were refusing to work under these difficult and noisy conditions. 

 

The building was still the property of the Parents’ Committee. They were experiencing financial difficulties at this time and by September the Education Department had been presented with what amounted to an ultimatum to “purchase or vacate” the premises by October. On the advice of the Public Works Department the purchase was made; until a new school could be built, the premises would have to be used and there would in any case always be a use for the building.

 

Mr. C. D. Hope was appointed headmaster to the school in 1902 and remained there until the end of 1904. He was succeeded by Mr J.H.A. Payne who had joined the staff in 1902 and who served the school as headmaster until his death on active service in 1917.

 

The fine stone buildings in Kensington which are now occupied by the Boys’ School were started in 1909 and were designed by Ralston, a pupil of Sir Herbert Baker. In 1911 the boys and girls moved from their old premises in nearby Fairview to the new building in Kensington.

 

The School’s name had changed to the Jeppe High School for Boys and Girls. Over the years the enrolment had increased steadily so that by 1912 even the new premises had become inadequate. The boys had always outnumbered the girls and it was decided that the latter should have their own school. Both Mr. Payne and the then Director of Education were protagonists of monastic schools.

 

Miss E. L. Cummins, who had joined the staff of the school in 1904, was to be the first headmistress of the new girls’ school. She and Mr. Payne worked on the plans for the new buildings, but Mr. Payne did not live to see building commence in 1918 nor the separation of boys and girls at the beginning of 1919.

 

In July 1919 the girls moved to their new red brick building comprising only the central wing of the present main building, having been housed in the Fairview Primary School for the first half of the year.

 

The girls’ building had been planned during the economically stringent years of the First World War and construction had started in 1918, the last year of the war.  By the time Miss Cummins retired in 1930, she had had the grounds laid out and had seen to the provision of games fields, swimming bath, hall, a library and laboratories. The building was nevertheless incomplete and was added to piecemeal over a number of years.

 

It was intended at first that the Girls’ School should have boarders, indeed the sites of three hostels appear on early plans. These were to have been erected in the lower grounds facing the school, but were never built. A private hostel situated first in Somerset Road (1922 – 1933) and then in Roberts Avenue (1933 – 1946) served the school for some years.

 

Before the boys and girls were segregated, the Jeppe High School for Boys and Girls already had boarding houses which catered exclusively for the boys. Oribi House was established in 1912 and Mpiti dates from 1915. In 1916 Tsessebe was established in Friedenheim the gracious home of Sir Julius Jeppe. In 1960, both Tsessebe and Mpiti were rebuilt. In 1982 the Transvaal Education Department expropriated four hectares adjoining the Boys’ School including Thabana and Keith Hall which are now private boarding houses for the Boys’ School.

 

Over the years, the two high schools have grown steadily. Indeed, from the earliest years of the separation, new buildings and facilities became necessary.

 

The War Memorial at the Boys’ School, built to commemorate the sacrifices made by young men and masters of this school during the First World War, was unveiled on 14 November 1926 by General J. C. Smuts. In 1960 the Memorial Hall, built to commemorate the fallen of the Second World War, was added, as well as the Science and Geography block.

 

A major addition to the Girls’ School as originally conceived came with the building in 1957 of the east block that provided laboratories and art and geography rooms.

 

Extensive additions were made at the Girls’ School from 1984 to 1986 with the erection of a new block south of the main building. Here new laboratories and classrooms were provided. The province also undertook conversions in the main block to supply a larger library, six music rooms and space for an audio-visual room. As financial stringency prevented the authorities from providing all the facilities they had promised, the school on its own account, at a cost of R180 000, added to the new block and converted part of the main block into suitable offices for the secretarial staff. 

 

The excellent games facilities the High Schools offer their pupils, are taken for granted today, but these too were acquired and developed over the years and indeed the upgrading of these facilities is constantly taking place.

 

The Jeppe High Preparatory School was and is one of the High Schools’ main feeder schools. It also has a history of site changing.

 

It had originally opened in 1904 as a private school, the Troyeville Preparatory School under Miss Cousens. Later that same year Miss A. M. idles became headmistress. Although the Preparatory School had a separate staff, the work of the two schools was co-ordinated and they shared a gym master.

 

In 1911 when the High School had moved to the site of the present Boys’ School, the Prep moved into the old High School buildings. 

 

When Mpiti House was opened in 1915 the younger boys who were boarders were moved there from Oribi. Mpiti continues to be the boarding house for the boys of the Preparatory School.

 

In 1916 the piece of ground which had been donated by the Jeppe family for the erection of the new high school buildings and which had been rejected by the board of governors as being “a quarry bouned by a precipice”, was handed over to the Prep and twelve classrooms were built there.

 

Terracing of the quarry started in the nineteen twenties and in April 1933 the Preparatory School Grounds were officially opened by the Administrator. 

 

When the Jeppe Schools celebrated their Golden Jubilee as Education Department schools in 1953, the new playing field area at the Preparatory School that had been created over three years by filing in the quarry, was opened and named the “Jubilee Ground”.

 

By 1921 the Preparatory School was already grossly overcrowded, 500 pupils being accommodated in a building designed for 300. Eventually the school was completely rebuilt between 1969 and 1973. While work was in progress classes were held in neighbouring houses.

 

The Jeppe Old Boys Club had been established by 1910. In 1939 the Old Girls were amalgamated into the club and it was renamed the Jeppe High Schools Quondam Club, the appellation being brought with them by the Old Girls who had used it from the early days. A strong and active Old Girls Association has flourished since 1907 and holds reunions twice a year.

 

Thousands of pupils have passed through the Jeppe Schools and have made their mark in every field of endeavour.