Methodist-born Prince Alfred College a social class and sporting rival in Adelaide to Anglican St Peter's since 1869
The opening day, with the main building, for Prince Alfred College (inset, in 21st Century) at Kent Town, Adelaide, in 1869.
Image courtesy Prince Alfred College
Prince Alfred College, founded at Kent Town in 1869, reflects the ambitions of South Australia’s Protestant dissenters to be an alternate establishment. Prince Alfred College became the social class and sporting rival of St Peter’s College as representing the English Anglican aristocratic establishment that the Protestant dissenters had tried to overcome in their hopes for the South Australian colony.
Started by the Methodist Church of Australasia, Prince Alfred College signalled the decline of John Lorenzo Young’s Adelaide Educational Institution, previously the bastion of middle class Protestant dissenters. Young’s school was open, rugged, unorthodox and didn’t teach Latin and Greek (required by the opening of Adelaide University in 1874).
Although expecting its students to adhere to the temperance of Methodism’s founder John Wesley, Prince Alfred College became a model of the English (public) establishment private schools, given its name during a visit to Adelaide by a son of Queen Victoria in 1867.
The growing rivalry between St Peter’s College and Prince Alfred was expressed in “intercols” or intercollegiate matches in all sports, but especially Australian football and cricket (said to be the game’s longest unbroken annual contest) that became major social occasions at Adelaide Oval. Rowing has been important in Prince Alfred culture since 1883, now with a full-time rowing director and boat houses on the Torrens Lake and West Lakes.
Educationally, at one time, Prince Alfred was the only college in Adelaide offering the International Baccaleureate diploma at all three stages to its 1000-plus students, including boarders. Prince Alfred College added its own kindergarten, Little Princes, in 1999 but renamed it Princes ELC (early learning centre) in 2009.
David Prest (from the Port Pirie retail family), who graduated as Prince Alfred College captain and dux in 1949, became principal of Melbourne's Wesley College 1972-91.
