The seed funding for CMS Grammar School, Lagos was made possible by
James Pinson Labulo Davies who in April 1859 provided
Babington Macaulay with £50 (equivalent of ₦1.34 million as of 2014) to buy books and equipment for the school. With the seed funding Macaulay opened CMS Grammar School on 6 June 1859,which made it the first secondary school in Nigeria.[2] In 1867, Davies contributed another £100 (₦2.68 million as of 2014) toward a CMS Grammar School Building Fund.[3] Other contributors to the CMS Building Fund were non
Saros such as Daniel Conrad Taiwo AKA
Taiwo Olowo who contributed £50.
Saro contributors also included men such as Moses Johnson, I.H. Willoughby, T.F. Cole, James George, and Charles Foresythe who contributed £40.[4] The
CMS Grammar School in
Freetown, founded in 1848, served as a model.
The school began with six students, all boarders in a small, single story building called the 'Cotton House' at
Broad Street.
The first pupils were destined to be clergymen.[1]
The curriculum included English, Logic, Greek, Arithmetic, Geometry, Geography, History, Bible Knowledge and Latin.[5]
The first principal of the school was the scholar and theologian
Babington Macaulay, who served until his death in 1878.[6] He was the father of
Herbert Macaulay.[7]
When the British colony of Lagos was established in 1861, the colonial authorities obtained most of their African clerical and administrative staff from the school.[1]
^Elebute, Adeyemo. The Life of James Pinson Labulo Davies: A Colossus of Victorian Lagos. Kachifo Limited/Prestige. p. 190.
ISBN9789785205763.
^Herskovits Kopytoff, Jean. A preface to modern Nigeria: the "Sierra Leonians" in Yoruba, 1830–1890. University of Wisconsin Press, 1965. p. 244.
^Herskovits Kopytoff, Jean. A preface to modern Nigeria: the "Sierra Leonians" in Yoruba, 1830–1890. University of Wisconsin Press, 1965. p. 365 note 87.