William Oates Memorial School

My great news is that the William Oats Memorial School, which thought it was 120 years old, was established in 1843 as the Ebenezer School, and is 163 years old.
I was very puzzled about the school’s age when we went home. Luckily when my Dad, the Rev Alwyn Charles Lloyd, died in 1982, I found old papers about Somerset East in his desk and kept them.
He wrote to the London Missionary Society in 1937 asking for the foundation date of the school. They sent the extract of the London Missionary Society report of 1843, page 96. This said that Thomas Merrington, a teacher, started the mission in 1843 on the plot bequeathed by Dorothy Evans. About 120 to 150 attended the Sabbath service. There were 35 in the Day School and 65 in the Sabbath School.
The School was originally called the Ebenezer School, and only became the William Oates Memorial School in 1936 when it was enlarged. It was 26 years older than Gill College, and is, I think, the oldest school in South Africa.
(We have gone back over the SACS history, and agree this is the oldest school in the country. Certainly the William Oats is probably the oldest in the Eastern Cape and one of the oldest in the country.)
The William Oates School was built by the congregation under the leadership of John and Appolis Hufkie. The congregation burnt the bricks, and put scrap metal and old brass from beds between the layers of bricks to make the walls strong.
My Mother, who laid the foundation stone, said “The Hufkies said they were going to build it like Fort Knox, and it wouldn’t crack. Seventy years later there’s not a crack in the place! It’s just the floors need redoing, and it needs a coat of paint. Will all the old boys and girls please contribute. This is a place to be proud of.