page_title: Kingswood College, Kandy
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kingswood College, Kandy / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Panoramic view of the Pallekale International Cricket Stadium During Dharmaraja vs Kingswood 106th Big Match.jpg
context_page_description: Kingswood College is a Public school which offers primary and secondary education for boys in Sri Lanka. The school was founded by L. E. Blaze on 4 May 1891, with 11 students at a site on Pavilion Street in Kandy. Later, the school was moved to a site on Peradeniya Road. Since then, the school has grown considerably, having over 3,500 students and 200 faculty members. It is one of the oldest schools in Kandy, and is commonly known as KCK.
context_section_description: Kingswood College was founded by Louis Edmund Blaze, with only eleven students, as a boys' high school. At the time, most schools on the island had been classified as state‑aided government schools or missionary schools. Government grants were available until a school showed itself established, with a solid core of able teachers and an expanding roll, but institutions run by individuals did not qualify for government assistance. The first few years of the school's existence were a struggle for Blaze. Fee income barely covered the cost of running the school, so Blaze had no option but to hand the struggling institution over to be managed by the Methodist mission. In 1961, the school was taken over by the state. 
   
  Under the aegis of the mission, Blaze left an indelible stamp over the school. From the outset, he modelled the school on the English public school system. It is not without significance that a house system was introduced to the school in 1922, and the names selected were those of major English public schools; (Eton, Harrow, Winchester and Rugby). He built up the school on the strength of his own reputation. It was he who coined the term Gentlemen of Kingswood to describe the body of students of his school and he who chose a motto for the school in Latin; Fide et Virtute. He then chose the distinctive school colours—maroon and dark blue—and he wrote the words of the school song.
  The school was the first in Sri Lanka to introduce rugby, the first boys' school to employ a female teacher, the first to introduce the sport of rowing and one of the first to establish a Cadet Corps. The first prize giving was held in 1895, only four years after the school was founded and became an annual feature thereafter. One notable feature of the Kingswood Prize Giving was the Prologue written by Blaze, a review in verse of the year's events in the country and the world. It was generally recited by the boy who won the annual Oratory Prize. Blaze continued to write the annual Prologue for three decades after his retirement as the Principal in 1923, indeed almost up to the time of his death in his 90th year.
  In 1900, Blaze wrote the first comprehensive school textbook on the history of Sri Lanka. It ran to several editions before it was superseded by the works of one of his earliest pupils at Kingswood, G C Mendis, who served for many years as a lecturer (and later reader) in the Department of History at the University of Ceylon.
  Blaze held office at Kingswood for 32 years, retiring in 1923. He had seen the school through its formative years and had securely established it. Before his retirement, he planned the removal of the school from the small premises it occupied in Pavilion Street. As the number of students continued to grow, the need for a more spacious and less noisy environment became a matter of increasing urgency. The location selected was in the village of Wel-Ata in Mulgampola, then a quiet and seemingly distant suburb of Kandy.
  The new site and the new buildings were made possible by a generous gift of money from a British industrialist, Sir John Scurrah Randles. The new complex of buildings consisted of class rooms, an administrative building, a large hostel and staff quarters. The school's new location (and railway halt just opposite) were named Randles Hill to honour Kingswood's main benefactor of modern times. The new buildings were opened in 1925 under Blaze's successor, Rev'd E Pearson, who ran the school for four years. He was succeeded by Messrs O L Gibbon (1929–1937) and F A J Utting (1937–1942). They consolidated the work that Blaze had begun and, during their administration, the school continued to develop.
  Although Kingswood was a Methodist missionary school, the student body contained Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Burghers, Eurasians and a mix of Ceylonese identity groups such as Malays, Chettis and Moors. A strong trans-national admission was seen in the years leading to Independence. Methodist students did have some advantage when it came to the award of scholarships, but the special scholarship
caption: Panoramic view of the Pallekale International Cricket Stadium During Dharmaraja vs Kingswood 106th Big Match
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