Getting Started

Abstract

The year 1953 opened with a good deal of optimism, in the country and among those involved with Peterhouse. On 6 February the Rhodesia Herald carried a small article headed ‘Building of New School to Begin This Year’. At last it was public knowledge that it was to be situated near Marandellas, ‘on a healthy and attractive spot 5,400 feet above sea level’, on a 1,300 acre site. The school was to cost some £350,000, of which £100,000 had already been promised in donations of unsecured debentures. It was almost a year since Snell in Natal and the Committee in Salisbury had come up with this figure, though of course – as is the way in these matters – by 1957 it was clear that the cost of the buildings and equipment would be nearer £550,000.⁶⁸ However the fund-raising was going well, and by the time the foundation stone was laid in July 1954, nearly £250,000 had been promised or received.

Parliament was opened by Sir John Kennedy on 14th April, 1953 in a speech which was considerably brighter than the usual dull affair one had got accustomed to. It referred to three matters concerned with royalty: the death of the Dowager Queen Mary, the impending coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second, and a prospective visit to Rhodesia of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. It went on to refer to the Rhodes Centenary celebrations, and the acceptance of federation at the referendum. These events, in conjunction with the inauguration of the new order, gave 1953 the promise of an annus mirabilis.

Julian Greenfield, Testimony of a Rhodesian Federal (Bulawayo 1978) p 133