Carey Clements came to speak to the Club about Wellington's third
oldest school.
It might not be what you expect!
Brenda Lazelle reports.
Carey Clements is the archivist and historian at Wellington College. He gave us a fleeting 
view of the history of the school’s establishment and the changes that have occurred since it opened in 1886, including three different locations and four name changes.
view of the history of the school’s establishment and the changes that have occurred since it opened in 1886, including three different locations and four name changes.The first incarnation of the school was the Wellington School of Design on the corner of Brandon and Featherston Streets. There were a number of problems with the building giving an historical perspective to leaky buildings which meant it had a very limited life. So, the school moved to Mercer Street in 1891 with six classrooms and library. Next move was in 1897, to a corrugated iron shed in the City Council’s transport yard with a roll of 954.
In 1900 the Technical and Manual Instruction Act enabled subjects such as carpentry to be taught and in response to this, New Zealand’s first technical school opened in 1905 as Wellington Technical College. The second Director of the school developed a syllabus with the aim to equip the student with intelligent apprenticeship and citizenship. This Director spent 12 years lobbying the government to enable a new school with well-equipped workshops to be built on Mt Cook. The Norfolk pine planted at the laying of the foundations stone still stands and is the oldest remnant of the original school. There were a number of innovations implemented, such as uniforms were introduced in 1930 - and discarded in late
1990s.
The current School was designed in mid 1960s and in 1964 it became Wellington High School – a progressive co-educational high school and one of the first in New Zealand to adopt computer studies as far back as 1980.