The Schools That Made Freetown

In the nineteenth century Freetown earned the name "the Athens of West Africa", and the reason was its schools. Missions, churches and later the colonial government opened one after another, and their pupils went on to teach, preach, practise law and medicine and run offices across the region.

Fourah Bay College came first, founded by the Church Missionary Society on 18 February 1827. Its first student was Samuel Ajayi Crowther. The college needed better-prepared students, so on 25 March 1845 the same society opened the CMS Grammar School in Regent Square: the first secondary school for Africans in sub-Saharan Africa, today the Sierra Leone Grammar School at Murray Town.

Schools for girls

The Annie Walsh Memorial School was founded in 1849 at Charlotte, a village of Liberated Africans in the mountains, and later moved into Freetown. The Wesleyan Girls' High School, now the Methodist Girls' High School, opened on 1 January 1880 under James Taylor, an uncle of the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Its brother school, the Wesleyan High School for Boys, now the Methodist Boys' High School, had opened in 1874. And in 1926 Hannah Benka-Coker and Maise Osora founded the Freetown Secondary School for Girls, still called the Osora School.

A school in every quarter

The Catholic St Edward's began as a primary school in 1866, and its secondary school followed in 1922. On 4 October 1904 the United Brethren in Christ mission opened the Albert Academy, named for the missionary Ira Albert; Milton Margai and Siaka Stevens were among its pupils. The Prince of Wales School at Kingtom opened in 1925.

Beyond Freetown, Governor Leslie Probyn founded Bo School in 1906 to educate the sons of Paramount Chiefs. It later opened to boys from every background.

Every one of these schools has its own history of teachers, uniforms, songs and rivalries, and most of it is in old boys' and old girls' photographs and magazines. If you have one, share it.