16 May 2025
Dear Parents
Monday 12 May was our Founders’ Day and so assembly presented the ideal opportunity to share with the audience aspects of the history, and particularly the founding, of the school, which has now reached the 83 year milestone.
History of Clifton
In 1939, the Second World War broke out. People living in Durban knew that there were submarines offshore, and at night they would sometimes see explosions on the horizon as ships were attacked with torpedoes.
So, many Durban parents worried about their safety and the safety of their children and a number of Clifton Durban parents wanted to send their children to a safe place in case Durban was attacked.
In late 1941, Mr. Sutcliffe and Mr. Hayworth began searching for a suitable place to set up a school in the Midlands. In December of 1941 they found the farm Spring Grove, the country home of Colonel and Mrs. Greene, who also had a home in Westville, and the Greene’s agreed to move to Westville so that Spring Grove could be used for Clifton boys and staff.
The building of dormitories in their house, now the Headmaster's house, began, and the first sixty children and staff arrived by train on the 12th of May 1942, after an extra-long Easter holiday because they had to wait for the building to be finished.
Phillip Dykins
The below excerpt of Phillip Dykins recollection of the early days gives a wonderful insight into the life of the pioneer group who arrived from Durban by train to Nottingham Road in1942. He was one of the boys who travelled in that first train.
“One dark and freezing late afternoon in May 1942, the special train pulled slowly into Nottingham Road Station. As we jumped out onto the platform one thing became very clear. They must have brought us by mistake to the North Pole.
Arriving from Durban, where it always seemed to be summer, we were now under a black and forbidding sky, freezing in an icy breeze.
We tried to keep warm by rubbing our hands together, jumping and stamping our feet. Eventually a cattle truck backed into the station yard and we all ran up the steps and crossed the footbridge and down the other side to climb onto the truck. Some of us, the lucky ones, were able to fit on. But others had to walk all the way up to the school.”
Phillip Dykins, in the blue circle in the photo below.
