In This Issue The Weekly Magazine of Cranbrook School

The Founders
Those boys in senior years will be well accustomed to
the list of names that is read out at each Founders’ Day
Service. For those in the junior years, it won’t be long
until you too are familiar with that collection of names.
For many boys it may seem a bit tedious to sit through
a long ceremony at the end of a long term. For that
reason the reading of the Founders’ names and original
benefactors has become something to be gotten through
in order to get to House Football Day.
In the opinions of the writers that is a great shame
because the Founders were remarkable men and women,
who achieved some quite extraordinary things. Most of
them were members of the Parish at St Mark’s, Darling
Point. The Founders were the members of the first
School Council. This council was a group of men with
extraordinary vision, men like Dr Skipton Stacy. It was
Dr Stacy, a noted surgeon and veteran of the WWI, who
campaigned hardest for tennis courts and the purchasing
of the land we now know as the Dangar playing fields.
Other men of talent on the council included John
Burcham Clamp, an architect who designed the Perkins
Building and was the School’s architect. Among the most
important of the Founders was Sir Samuel Hordern, the
owner of the department store, Anthony Hordern &
Sons, who along with Rodney Dangar provided most of the funds for
the purchasing of the land and other costs of establishing the School.
Sir Samuel also provided funds for the establishment of Kambala in
1926. Of course both Hordern and Dangar are now remembered in
the names of Cranbrook’s two ovals.
Perhaps what ensured Cranbrook’s strength from the start was the
able nature of the School’s Founders. In their number were two
Supreme Court Judges, Sir Alexander Gordon and Sir John Harvey,
important surgeons, businessmen and pastoralists, and the father of
Australia’s only Nobel Laureate for Literature, Patrick White. Victor
White and his uncle were original benefactors and indeed Patrick
White, himself, probably learned to read at Cranbrook.
Sir Samuel Hordern
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Page 2 - Cranbrook Chronicle
It’s all too easy to take for granted the
achievements of the Founders. We are so used to
Cranbrook being so well established and strong,
but this was not the case in its early history. It is
only due to the hard work and generosity of the
Founders that Cranbrook grew into the School
we now attend.
In the year of the School’s opening 1918, WWI
cast a shadow over much of Australian society,
with thousands of young men lost on the battle
fields and in the trenches. Despite this atrocity,
Cranbrook’s Founders had a vision for a Church
of England School in the Eastern Suburbs of
Sydney. The foundation of a school at this time
and with so many other boys’ schools in close
proximity was always going to be a difficult task.
The Scots College stood only a hundred metres
up the road from the Cranbrook site and was
a member of the Sydney’s Great Public School
Association. The question for the Founders was,
‘Would there be room for another private boys’
school on Victoria Road?’
Here was a group of men, who felt that there
was a need for an Anglican school in the eastern
suburbs. They felt that Shore, The Kings School
and Trinity Grammar School were too far away.
Additionally the Rector of St Mark’s Church in Darling Point had a
similar vision to that of the Founders for future education in Sydney.
Still, the founders and benefactors took a considerable risk the when
they purchased Cranbrook on 1 December, 1917. There was a very
real chance that the School would fail, taking the Founders’ time,
efforts and money with them.
Rodney Dangar
Yet these men had faith that their school would not only stand the
test of competing education institutions, but would be of the highest
quality. Indeed a large number of the Founders’ sons were some of the
names on the first roll when the School opened on 22 July, 1918. We
are all living proof that their trust, faith and vision were worth the
risks they took.