Barnes School - History

History

In the late 19th century people began to think education for their children should be provided by the Government. Before that there were schools for the rich. For the poor there were very few schools and those were mostly provided by the Church and charitable people. In the early 18th century many schools were established in England. So it was that when the Revd. Richard Cobbe was appointed chaplain to the Hon. East India Company's factory at Bombay, he founded in 1718, in a building not far from the present Cathedral of St. Thomas in Fort, a small free school where twelve poor boys were housed, clothed, fed and educated by just one master. That charity school was the seed from which the mighty tree of Barnes has sprung.

A hundred years passed by. Another East India Company chaplain, the Ven. Archdeacon George Barnes, realised that the charity school could not possibly meet the needs of hundreds of children then without any education. So he appealed for funds and started the Bombay Education Society in 1815, the oldest society in the city interested in the welfare and upbringing of children. The first, small, school was taken over. Numbers grew rapidly until it was apparent that new grounds and school buildings were essential. A large airy site at Byculla was given by the Government. This time girls were also provided for. New school buildings were opened in 1825. One of the copper plates commemorating the opening is now on the wall of Evans Hall, Devlali. The other remains with Christ Church School, Byculla, which with the parish church there stands on part of the land given originally to the B.E.S. Much of the land was later sold to help build Barnes.

The B.E.S. schools, as they were popularly known, were primarily boarding schools for Anglo-Indian boys and girls, mainly belonging to the Anglican Church. However, day-scholars were admitted and they were of all castes and creeds. For another hundred years there seems to have been little change. Then in the early 20th century the B.E.S. amalgamated with the Indo-British Institution, which had been founded about 1837 by the Revd. George Candy. Byculla was by then crowded and unhealthy. Plans, initiated by Sir Reginald Spence and Mr Haig-Brown, to move the boarding part of the schools away from Bombay to the cooler and healthier Deccan Plateau began to take shape. A site of more than 250 acres (1.0 km2) at Deolali was purchased. On 17 November 1923 Sir George Lloyd laid the Foundation stone of Evans Hall. Less than two years later, on 29 January 1925, a special train brought the first boarders to Devlali. With old time ceremony, in the presence of many distinguished guests, Barnes was declared open by Sir Leslie Wilson, Governor of Bombay and patron of the Bombay Education Society.

This short historical sketch explains much of the present Barnes. It is still primarily a place where the poor Anglo-Indian children of the Anglican and Protestant Churches can be given a good upbringing and sound education. It is still a Church school where Christian ideals are practised and imparted. It is a boarding school, the largest in western India.

The memory of founders and benefactors is preserved in the names of the buildings: Barnes, Candy, Spence, Haig-Brown, Lloyd. Other names are remembered. Greaves House is named after Sir John Greaves, a prominent Bombay businessman of the firm of Greaves Cotton, Director of the Bombay Education Society from 1930 and Chairman of its Managing Committee from 1939 to 1949. Royal House commemorates Harry Royal, an old boy of the B.E.S. School from the years around 1900 to 1910, who became an important officer of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and honorary treasurer of the B.E.S. for many years. One name is yet to come - the greatest of them all, the Revd. Thomas Evans, familiarly but not irreverently, Tom Evans or just Tom. After being Headmaster at the old school at Byculla since 1910, he became the first Headmaster of Barnes, without whom it would probably not have survived its early years. His portrait hangs in Evans Hall which was named in memory of him when he retired in 1934.