The Hill School

Eldoret Kenya

1955 to 1962

The School Crest which hangs above the entrance to the Junior Tuition block was painted by art teacher Gwen Bristow. The oribi represents the Uasin Gishu district of Kenya and the crested crane represents Uganda - the catchment area for most of the pupils in the mid 1950s. The red and yellow diagonal lines represent the Afrikaans Highlands School which was absorbed into Hill School in January 1956.

The entrance to the Junior Tuition Block (right). The House Boards were for Stanley (green), Livingstone (blue), Lugard (red) and Portal (yellow). Headmaster Arthur Brindley (above) and The Flagstaff (right) with girls' Block 4 behind.

The Sanatorium viewed from the Senior Pupils' Class Gardens (left).

The swimming pool  was completed in 1959 (right).

The campus is dominated by the Water Tower - taken (left) 1956 and again (right) in 1962. The school bus (actually a lorry) can just be discerned in both photographs.

The Senior Tuition Block Quadrangle in 1957 (left) and in 2003 (right).

PHOTOs (left) Malcolm McCrow (right) David Baird

The Junior Tuition Block from Games Field in 1956 (left) and later in 1962 (right).

The Tuition Blocks viewed from a balcony in [boarding] Block 6 (left). The gardens (right) with the headmaster's house by the trees which bordered the Kisumu Road.

Block 5 and the communal dining hall (left) shared with Block 6 (right).

Many pupils' parents worked in Uganda. School holidays for pupils resident in Uganda were always associated with School Trains. In the run up to end of term, boys would carve "propellers" to hold out the train window and watch them turn in the slipstream of the train as it meandered through the countryside at around 25 mph.

This end of term scene (right) was actually taken at Kaptagat Preparatory School in 1962 when I was escort to pupils travelling by Mail Train to Uganda.

In January 1957 - my Father with me and Eugene Mersey on the equator on the Kampala/Masaka road (left).

A Hill School pupil on Christmas Day 1955 in Masaka (right).

HILL SCHOOL in the 21st Century

The lockers (top left) between the dining hall and the boarding block were for out-door shoes.  Only slippers were allowed in the block to avoid damage to the highly polished parquet floors - still in evidence in the shot of a stairwell (right).

A housemaster's or housemistress's flat viewed from the rear of a block (bottom left)

PHOTOs - Louise Heckl

The Junior Tuition Block (above).  The Dining Room serving Blocks 3 & 4 (right) with a painting by Gwen Bristo depicting an ox wagon and the pioneers who trekked up from the coast to the Highlands:  in the top corner Gwen has set the year as 1901.  The painting (centre) was hung in the Dining Hall in its heyday - and it is still there.  Gwen's other well-known painting of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party is in the Blocks 1 & 2 Dining Hall.  Blocks 1 & 2 used to be for very young pupils, but now accommodate girls.  PHOTOs - Louise Heckl

There was a row of staff tables at one end of the Hall, parallel to those of the pupils.  It was at these tables that the staff took lunch.  In the mornings a teacher would sit at the head of each table.  At supper, each table was headed by a prefect.

In the Boys' Block Dining Hall (5&6), anyone caught talking during the enforced silence periods would be made to go and stand by the window wall.  The signal for silence was a single clap of the hands by the teacher on duty. Anyone who had been called out for talking or other misdemeanours would have to wait behind at the end of the meal and receive one or more strokes of the takkie on his backside.  Only recently did I learn that the word takkie is Afrikaans for tennis shoe.  I always wondered how it got its name!  PHOTO - Louise Heckl

The Senior Tuition block quad (left and right) - PHOTOs Louise Heckl