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Kingswood College derives its name and ideals from the 18th century college established by John Wesley (the founder of The Methodist Church) in Bristol, England in 1748.
The College is the oldest Methodist educational institution in South Africa with roots in the Settlers days of the 1820's.
The Salem Academy, founded by the Methodist minister to the 1820 Settlers, William Shaw, was started in Albany in the 1830's. The Academy was subsequently moved to Grahamstown where it was renamed the Shaw College.
What was eventually to become Kingswood College started out as the Wesleyan Collegiate School for Boys and moved to its present site in Burton Street in 1896.
While the College is a Methodist foundation, children from other denominations and creeds have always been welcome at Kingswood. The Kingswood philosophy has always been, and remains, to provide a liberal education rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which helps to foster every pupil's development - spiritual, moral, social, academic, cultural and physical.
Commemoration Church, situated in the centre of Grahamstown, has long been associated with Kingswood College. It was the Leaders' Meeting of the Commemoration congregation that pledged support fro the idea of the 'Committee of Gentlemen' in 1892 to found the School.
In their book Still Upon a Frontier, the history of Kingswood's first hundred years, Rev Howard Kirkby and his wife Joyce, write as follows,
'Once the School opened, its scholars attended the Church regularly. It was also the decision of the Leaders that the School be seated in the gallery. Whether this was because the trustees of the Church feared that the downstairs pews would fall victim to the penknives of the scholars is not known, but the accompanying picture
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of the gallery balustrade and pews illustrates the art and the craft of school boy carving and their yearning for immortality.
From 1894 to 1962, when the Kingswood Chapel was built, the gallery at Commem was the School chapel. Visitors who for the first time see the carvings sometimes react with shock, feeling that they desecrate this holy place. They are right to some extent, but anyone who examines the woodwork on which the youngsters of yesteryear carved their names and then scrutinises the memorials to the Old Kingswoodians killed in the two world wars will observe that many names appear on both. The 'naughtiness' of the boy takes on another dimension. Think of the comfort to many a grief-stricken family such an association has brought.
Commem is a sacred place to every Kingswood person and a vast number of boys, and latterly girls, have found in its services and spiritual witness the anchor that holds fast in the storms of life'.
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The first suggestion that Kingswood should have a Chapel of its own was made on 14 March 1903 at the first annual general meeting of the Old Kingswoodians Club. It was proposed that ' some permanent memorial should be erected to the memory of any Old Kingswoodians that had fallen in the late war. The President (E G Gane) remarked that the only fitting place for such a memorial was a School Chapel'.
The College, at that time, had suffered the loss of two old Kingswoodians in the Anglo-Boer war. But then came World War I, followd by World War II, during which the College losses were horrendous. It was at the Reunion of the Old Kingswoodians in 1946 that the issue of a Memorial Chapel was taken up in earnest. Mr Jack Slater, the Headmaster at the time, proposed that the Old Kingswoodians should aim at raising funds for the building of a College Chapel, a long-felt need. A chapel would help develop the corporate spirit of the College and it would be a place where things precious to the School could be kept.
And so the Chapel scheme was launched. Over the years from 1946 until the building of the Chapel began in 1961 much thought, research and planning went into the project. Gradually two principles began to take root in the minds of the committee charged with the responsibility of building the Chapel:
"a) because we have scholars at Kingswood from various denominations it must be a building in which they can feel spiritually at home;
b) it must be a building that would house not only the whole School but also be in keeping with the other buildings on the campus."
With these two goals held firmly in mind the committee set out to build, as far as it was able, a Chapel on traditional ecclesiastical lines and in the Kingswood style of architecture. The Chapel is, therefore, cruciform in shape to remind us that God's plan for the salvation of mankind cost Jesus Christ the Cross.
It seemed right that here in a place of Christian education, even the structure of the chapel should teach and bear its silent testimony to things eternal. Therefore, it should be traditionally correct in its architectural details.
