College’s 150th Anniversary

The following is a report on the College’s 150th Celebrations in October 2000

4000 university students have lived and studied at College House. During the first weekend in October some 500 people gathered for a Banquet Dinner to celebrate the College’s 150th anniversary.

As New Zealand’s most traditional College, ceremony was not unexpected. Following champagne and pre-dinner drinks, a trumpet fanfare announced the procession to dinner. College House students, wearing their academic gowns, lined both sides of the route from the college to a marquee on the Ilam Fields, forming a guard of honour for former Housemen and women and other guests to walk between.

Dinner was punctuated by toasts from the student President and an old Houseman and by speeches from the Principal and the Chancellor of the University. The student President cut an anniversary cake and the Principal launched a spectacular fireworks display using a massive plunger set up outside the marquee, and to the accompaniment of a student countdown. Unscripted moments included the Principal being presented with a chain of bathplugs by a former member of the ‘Gentlemen’s Bathing Society’ (each bathplug representing having bathed at one of the women’s halls) and a group of old Housemen performing the College House Haka (not seen since the early 1980s).

Student bands, choirs and other musicians performed during the dinner, and a large screen was used for video footage and an overview of the college’s history since 1850. Shortly before midnight, everyone returned to the College for birthday cake and port. The students in gowns again provided a guard of honour, this time holding up burning torches to light the route back from the fields. Students being students, not all went according to plan. The ‘House streaker’ (an elected student position) made an unheralded appearance in front of the Principal and Chancellor. Bowing to the official party, he led the procession back to the foyer, draped in nothing more than the college flag!

150th Anniversary of College House

To fit everyone in for the following morning’s Chapel service, only students performing musical items attended. Several students also took part in a presentation from the College’s history, wearing costumes from relevant periods. Dr David Coles, Bishop of Christchurch and Warden of the College, preached the sermon, reflecting on the part College House had played in the lives of its students, and the experience and joys of College living which had been gained.

Old Housemen and women were also able to mark College House’s 150th Celebrations at drinks functions, and by revisiting the old and new University and College sites. Past students attending ranged in age from their late teens to late eighties, every yeargroup from the start of the 1930s to the end of the 1990s being represented. The Principal, Dr Andrew Stockley, noted “College House’s strength is its sense of community – not only shared by its current students, but by the previous generations of students who have lived and studied here, who have built up the traditions, and helped shape the College as we know it today”