Wynberg Boys’ Junior School and Glebe Cottage
An extraordinary opportunity was presented to Wynberg Boys’ Junior School a few months ago. An opportunity to reconnect our vibrant, modern school with our deepest roots in the historic Wynberg community.
It is with pleasure that we report that Wynberg Boys’ Junior School made an offer to purchase Glebe Cottage on Waterloo Green which was accepted by the seller.
While of huge value in our campus expansion plans, the return of our founding building is also powerfully symbolic, connecting us full-circle to the multiracial, multicultural institution on which we’ve grown, transformed, and prospered through the turbulence of politics and history to be one of South Africa’s leading boys’ schools.
When Wynberg Boys’ Junior & High began planning our 175th founding celebrations, the idea of our combined schools progressing through Old Wynberg was grasped enthusiastically. On Monday 1 February 2016 over 1500 students, staff and old boys gathered on the roads and the small expanse of Waterloo Green, with Glebe Cottage as the backdrop, to launch the celebrations and walk to each of the three successive historic school locations before raising our Wynberg 175 Flag on the Hawthornden Field.
None of us could have imagined then that the building so strongly associated with our schools would ever return to us in more than the words of our song.
The acquisition of this prime property within walking distance of our schools and our shared sports facilities is more than a real estate asset to our much-needed campus expansion. It provides extraordinary potential in the area of heritage education for our boys with a venue ideally located for expanding our school archives into a living, a working museum in a safe and secure environment.
Glebe Cottage will provide Wynberg Boys’ Junior School with conference and venue hire opportunities for core educational needs, both income-generating and cost-saving which in time will justify the outlay. The premises themselves will double as staff accommodation, as and when needed, in a suburb increasingly outpricing rental budgets for key academic staff, while potentially providing boarding for intern and exchange students.
Old boys were the drivers for the acquisition of Glebe with the School Governing Body of Wynberg Boys’ Junior School counting no fewer than five Old Boys being Chairperson Werner van Kets, Treasurer Zaid Samaai, Infrastructure Portfolio Head Luke Centurier-Harris, Sport & Culture Portfolio Head Jonathan Stephenson and Teacher Representative Dean Oosterwyk.
Kind regards,
Cedric Poleman
Headmaster
Wynberg Boys’ Junior School
To view additional Glebe visuals, visit the Flickr account by clicking here.