After James Bath and Church Christ school, Queen's School/College turns out big roll call of Adelaide's achievers
Queen's School's (inset: its Frank Naish-designed village style building in North Adelaide) staff and students in 1902. Headmaster/owner R. G. Jacomb-Hood is pictured alongside long-time science master "Teddy" Le Messiurier (who became the school's Mr Chipps) and future famous aviator Ross Smith, second from right on front row. Everyone in in the image is identified on the State Library of South Australia's digital collection image number B 29751.
Main imaged by Terrence McGrann, courtesy State Library of South Australia
Queen’s School in North Adelaide, setting an Australian record time from 1897 to 1949 as a private boys schools, produced many notable achievers including the first Canberra commonwealth observatory director Walter Duffield, geographer Grenfell Price, youngest-ever Nobel physics laureate. Lawrence Bragg and school’s great heroes: aviators Keith and Ross Smith, the first to fly from London to Australia in 1919.
Queen’s School was a successor to the school attached to Anglican Christ Church in Jeffcott Street, North Adelaide. James Bath was head of a school attached to Christ Church, for 10 years from 1851. An assistant schoolmaster in Wiltshire, England, Bath was attracted to Adelaide by George Blakiston Wilkinson’s book South Australia: its advantages and resources and J.C. Byrne’s Twelve Years Wandering in the British Colonies.
Bath was appointed Christ Church headmaster soon after arriving in Adelaide but the Victorian gold rush soon after crushed the local economy and Bath was left to cope with 100 students with little assistance. Organist James Shakespeare was a former student who helped him. After 10 years, Bath founded his own North Adelaide Classical and Mercantile Academy in Ward Street, North Adelaide, until 1867 when he became secretary to the central board of education, later the council of education in 1877. In 1883, Bath became secretary to a succession of 14 education ministers, including former student William Copley.
Christ Church School had been let to Miss Miller in 1879 and then to church ministers between 1880 and 1891. The last, Rev. Thomas Field (1885-91) with Frank Dobbs/Rev. H.A. Brookshank, sold its goodwill to James Lindon, a Cambridge-educated former acting St Peter’s College headmaster, and G. L. Heinemann (of book publishing family fame) who opened Queen’s School, keeping a link with Christ Church with its rectors as chaplains.
Queen's School opened in 1897 with 34 students and had 72 at the end of the year when visiting examiner B. T. Williams pronounced it highly successful in producing boys with high average education rather than a few brilliant ones. From 1892, the school had gained a villa-style building, designed by architect Frank Naish, on Barton Terrace, including a boarding house, big school room and chemistry laboratory. On its parklands oval, the school had cricket matches against Hahndorf Academy.
After Heinemann returned to Britain in 1895 and Lindon died in 1897, the Rugby- and Cambridge-educated classical scholar R. G. Jacomb-Hood bought the school and ran it successfully for 30 years.
Queen’s College (as it became known) had its biggest growth era under its first South Australian-born (at Melrose) owner Edward Stokes, son of the Rev. Frank Stokes and grandson of General John Stokes. Educated at St Peter's College and Adelaide University, he gained his M.A. and an exhibition in chemistry at Magdalen College, Oxford. From 1908, he was headmaster in Bareilly, Oudh Province. with imperial Indian education service. He returned to Adelaide in 1923 as master in charge of St Peter’s College preparatory school and bought Queen's College in 1926. Under Stokes, the boys in their Lindon and Hood houses competed for the cup donated by Langdon Bonython. The Ross memorial library had more than 800 books. By 1928, former pupils had gained six Rhodes scholarships.
When Stokes died in 1934, assistant master Dudley Haslam, leased the college and boarding house. Also South Australian-born and educated at Scotch and Prince Alfred colleges, with engineering at Adelaide University, Haslam saw enrolments drop in the mid 1930s, return to 100 in 1938, reaching 160 in 1943. More property was bought in 1942 to cope with the increase but in 1949 Haslam announced the school was no longer viable and he immediately accepted a teaching appointment with his old school Scotch College.
