The premier girl’s school in Southern Sri Lanka
- Lighthouse Street
- Not open to public
- +94 91 2234117
- Website
Famous school
Fort is home to two famous schools: Southland Girls College and All Saints’ Boys College. Both were started by missionary priests who arrived in Galle in 1814. The priests purchased an Old Dutch period house at the junction of Lighthouse Street and Middle Street cross and took in students and named it Wesleyan school. Open to Burgher, Sinhala and Muslim students both male and female, the school grew fast and eventually separated into Wesleyan girls’ school and Wesleyan boys’ school.
Miss VanderStraaten
Decades later in 1885, was the beginning of a girls’ only school. Miss. Lucy VanderStraaten was the first principal. The school began in two larger down-stair rooms in a house in Fort with a group of some 50 children. They expanded bit by bit, buying up old warehouses and mansions making it the school complex it is today, the premier girl’s school in Southern Sri Lanka with more than 5,000 students.
Knit together in love
The school’s motto ‘Knit together in love and service’ is also the motto of the next-door Methodist Church.