Gill College

Gill College
Location
College Rd Somerset East , Eastern Cape South Africa 32°43′15.4″S 25°35′18.5″E / 32.720944°S 25.588472°E / -32.720944; 25.588472
Information
Motto	Sursum Prorsusque
Established	1869; 157 years ago (1869)
Grades	8–12
Gender	Co-educational
Accreditation	Eastern Cape Education Department

Gill College is a dual-medium (Afrikaans and English), co-educational public high school in KwaNojoli, formerly Somerset East, Sarah Baartman District Municipality. It provides education for grades 8–12, serving students from all cultural backgrounds. The college was established in 1869, and is one of South Africa's oldest standing schools, with the original buildings preserved as heritage sites.

History

Gill College was established through a bequest from Dr. William Gill (1795–1863), a Bristish-born surgeon who arrived in the Cape Colony in 1818 and who was appointed as the District Surgeon of Somerset in 1829. Beyond medicine, he acquired a number of farms in the district and became a wealthy merino sheep farmer. In his will dated 19 January 1863 he bequeathed £23 000 for the establishment of a college of higher education. It was stipulated in his will that the funds not be used for buying or erecting buildings, and that assets in the estate including property not be sold.

The Gill College Corporation was formed with seven trustees, including Dr. Langham Dale, local lawyer James Leonard and Robert Hart, to manage the endowment. Philip Wodehouse, the Governor of the Cape Good Hope, granted the Gill College Corporation land in Somerset East on 16 April 1867, for the sole purpose of erecting buildings for the educational institution.

A committee formed in 1865 under the chairmanship of Robert Bowker, appealed to the local community for public subscriptions and support to supplement Dr. Gill’s bequest for building the college. The initial plans of the campus were drafted by James Bisset, basing the architecture of the college on that of the University of Glasgow. The foundation stone was laid in late 1867 and Gill College was officially opened on 18 March 1869, under the Rectorship of Peter MacOwan.

The Gill College Act No. 32 of 1884 amended the restrictions of Gill's final will, in that it allowed for the sale of Erf 57, Paulett Street, including the building thereon, and that the proceeds be used to build student accommodation on the college property. The residence, College House, was completed in 1892 on the college campus.

Like other Cape colleges, it was an affiliated teaching college, with the University of the Cape of Good Hope examining and awarding degrees, and its constituent colleges doing the teaching. Gill College's remote frontier-town setting and small scale worked against it, and it could not satisfy the rule limiting university-college status to institutions with more than 75 matriculated pupils. By 1903 the Eastern Cape was moving toward a single central university college: St Andrew’s College Council agreed on 5 March 1903 that one should be founded, and Rhodes University College was established by act of parliament on 31 May 1904. Gill College lost its college status and became a high school in 1903, a change attributed to changes in educational regulations. The school was co-educational before 1928 and again after 1965, when it amalgamated with Bellevue Girls’ School (originally Bellevue Seminary); between those years it operated as a boys-only institution.

Bellevue Seminary was founded to address the lack of formal education for girls in the town. Until 1880 only two small private schools served girls, while boys attended Gill College. At the urging of the local Dutch Reformed minister, Rev. J.H. Hofmeyr, the church council acquired land in Paulet Street and laid the foundation stone on 19 July 1881. Designed by architect Carl Otto Hager, the building cost £5 000 and opened on 29 September 1882 under its first principal, Miss Jane Wright of Aberdeen, Scotland. The original structure later served as a boarding house and teachers’ residence. Government support began in 1885, additional buildings followed in 1895, and in 1906 a substantial new school block with an assembly hall and seven classrooms was opened by Cape Governor Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson. The institution was raised to full high-school status in 1925. When it amalgamated with Gill College in 1965, a new senior girls’ hostel had just been completed; that building remains in use by Gill College today. The original Seminary buildings were later taken over for military use by the now-disbanded Somerset East Commando and have since deteriorated.

The Gill Corporation Private Act of 1912 allowed for the Trustees to grant 3-year bursaries ("Gill Bursaries") to deserving students who passed the Matriculation Examination or the University Senior Certificate examination of the Cape of Good Hope, to further their studies at an acceptable institution within or outside the Union of South Africa.

The 1950s to 1970s saw Gill College emerge as a dominant force in schoolboy rugby in the Eastern Cape, as a result of the role played by legendary teacher and coach C.A. Coppens. Coppens was a mathematics teacher at the school from 1935 to 1984. He is buried next to Dr. Gill in front of the Old College building.

In 1916 Dr. Gill's remains were reburied in front of the school which he endowed, and a monument was erected next to the grave in 1923.

Gill College coat of arms

The Shield is divided into 3 sections horizontally:

• Three Footless Martlets: From the ancient Gill family crest (Scottish Lowlands origin, linked to clans like MacGill or Gill of Devorgilla). Martlets symbolize swiftness, migration (echoing Gill's journey from Scotland to the Cape), and the "winged" pursuit of knowledge without earthly ties (footless = ungrounded, ever-ascending).
• Fish (Salmon) with Ring in Mouth: Directly from the arms of the City of Glasgow and University of Glasgow (where Dr. Gill trained as a surgeon and the architectural inspiration for Gill College). It references the miracle of Saint Mungo (aka St Kentigern), Glasgow's patron saint, who recovered a lost ring from a fish's mouth to vindicate Queen Languoreth. This evokes themes of providence, truth, redemption, and the "hidden treasures" of learning.
• Sheet Anchor: The Cape Colony's colonial badge (introduced 1806), representing hope, stability, and the "anchor" of British education in the frontier. It grounds the Scottish elements in the local context.

The motto is "Sursum Prorsusque", inscribed on a blue riband below the shield. Translation: "Upwards and Onwards," emphasizing aspiration, resilience, and forward progress.

Rectors and headmasters

• Peter MacOwen (1869 - 1881) was the first Rector of Gill College. He had previously served as principal of Shaw College in Grahamstown. At Gill College he headed the natural sciences department and contributed significantly to South African botany, especially the study of lichens and fungi. He later became a Director of the Cape Town Botanical Gardens and curator of the Cape Government Herbarium.
• Robert MacWilliam (1881 - 1903)
• William J. Gall (Rector 1903 - 1909; Headmaster 1909 - 1936)
• F. E. de Villiers (1937 - 1955)
• H. Winkler (1956 - 1960)
• S. D. Naudé (1960 - date unknown)
• Nic Viljoen (date unknown - 1980s)
• Tienie Koen (1980s - 2005)
• Steven Zietsman (2005 - 2014)
• Marina Marais (acting, post 2014)
• Hein van Heerden (2016 - 2018)
• Shirley Slater-Billett (2018 - 2026)
• Neil Schreuder (from May 2026 - present)

Notable alumni

• James Weston Leonard was a South African barrister, politician, and Attorney-General of the Cape Colony.
• Sir James Rose Innes served as the second Chief Justice of South Africa from 1914 to 1927 and is widely regarded as one of the country’s greatest jurists.
• Reinhold Gregorowski (12 April 1856 – 19 November 1922) was a South African judge and state attorney who became Chief Justice of the South African Republic (Transvaal). Born in Somerset East as the son of a Berlin Missionary Society missionary, he matriculated at Gill College in 1874 at the top of the University of the Cape of Good Hope examination list (a list that also included future judges Sir M. W. Searle and Sir H. H. Juta). He won the Frere Prize that year, later earned a B.A. from the University of the Cape of Good Hope, held the Porter Scholarship, and studied law at Gray’s Inn in London, where he was called to the bar in 1878. Appointed a judge of the Orange Free State in 1881 at the age of 24 (then the youngest in South Africa), he later served in the Transvaal, notably presiding over the 1896 trial of the Reform Committee leaders after the Jameson Raid, and succeeded John Gilbert Kotzé as Chief Justice in 1898. After Union in 1910 he continued as a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa until his death.
• William "Don" Hofmeyr Craib (17 May 1895 – 10 April 1982) was a distinguished physician and cardiologist whose pioneering research advanced the understanding of electrocardiography. Born in Somerset East, he was educated at Gill College, where his father, James Craib, taught mathematics and science, and later graduated with honours from the South African College. After decorated service in the First World War , he studied medicine, qualifying in 1923. As a Rockefeller Fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1925–26) and later with Sir Thomas Lewis in London, he formulated the “doublet hypothesis” explaining the generation of the electrocardiogram’s action potential—work initially rejected by contemporaries but later vindicated and foundational to modern ECG theory. He served as Professor of Medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand (1932–1947), practised in Port Elizabeth, and received honorary doctorates including an LLD from Cape Town (1962), MD from Witwatersrand (1966) and DSc from Natal (1969).
• Andries Heydenrich Vosloo (17 May 1912 – 11 March 1982) was a medical doctor and politician who served as Administrator of the Cape Province. Born on the farm Sterkfontein in the Somerset East district, he attended Gill College before graduating in medicine from the University of Cape Town at the age of 22. He practised as a general practitioner and surgeon in Somerset East (in partnership with Dr J. M. Beyers), served on the local town council from 1943 to 1966 (twice as deputy mayor), and was active in the Medical Association of South Africa. Elected National Party Member of Parliament for Somerset East in 1953, he held the seat until 1970 and served as Deputy Minister of Bantu Development (1966–1970) under Prime Ministers Hendrik Verwoerd and John Vorster. He was Administrator of the Cape Province from 1970 to 1975. The local hospital is named in his honour.
• Jan Pieter de Lange was a prominent educationalist and chairman of the Afrikaner Broederbond.
• Hambly Parker, Hannes Marais, Michael du Plessis, Willie du Plessis and Anton Meiring, former South African rugby union players
• Sieg Minnie, former South African international rifle shooter

References

External links

• Official website
• https://web.archive.org/web/20110814054231/http://d4512446.u80.securedc.com/E/geskiedenis.html