Scots College – Learning. For Life.

Previously a teacher at Wesley College in Melbourne, Hugh M. Reid answered an advertisement for staff that Scots had placed in an Australian newspaper.

It was an end to a means; he originally planned to stay in New Zealand only to earn sufficient funds for a trip to England.  But after staying at Scots College for twelve months he was persuaded to stay on. From the first year and for all of his time at Scots he was a housemaster, becoming senior housemaster after K.R. Wadham gave up the position in 1961.

His first class was Form II but in 1950 became responsible for English and mathematics in the upper school and at the same time, in recognition of the choral work he had undertaken since his first year, he became the college’s music master.

Hugh Reid’s most notable contribution to Scots is music, notably choral music, for the whole seventeen years that he was at Scots. From his first year, when he directed the newly-formed college choir in a presentation of T.S. Elliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral”, the college’s participation in choral work continued to expand. A long succession of Gilbert and Sullivan productions in all of which he was musical director gave immense enjoyment to the boys from Scots and the girls from Queen Margaret College who took part, and to their audiences.

One of the more notable of the Savoy opera productions was that of “The Mikado”. The first of five successful performances was given on the evening of the new chapel-assembly hall’s official opening by the Governor-General in 1963. Also, house choirs were established and a church choir was trained, which sang every Sunday morning in Seatoun Presbyterian Church and at Advent performed the King’s College Cambridge, Festival of Carols. There was even a staff choir.

His other involvements at the college included organising tennis, helping with CORSO, and a five year period as master in charge of The Scot.

His vision of a trip to England materialised finally in 1955. In 1954 Hugh Reid was on the point of leaving Scots but in that year he won a New Zealand Government Bursary that enabled him to spend twelve months in England. The Board gave him leave and he spent the time at Trinity College, studying under Sir Adrian Boult and Sir William McKie, the organist and choirmaster at Westminster Abbey. During his time in Britain and Europe he visited over ninety schools, attended “five or six cathedral or choral services each week”, and found time to go to the Edinburgh Festival, the Salzburg Festival, and to Glyndebourne as well as King’s College Chapel at Cambridge and the rather more accessible Covent Garden, the Albert Hall, and Sadlers Wells theatre.

When the new chapel-assembly hall was built in 1963 it housed a new electronic organ the cost of which was largely met from funds raised by Dick Evans. Hugh Reid was deeply grateful to him for the support this contributed to the choir’s performance at assemblies and services in the chapel.

In mid-1964 Hugh Reid left Scots and returned to Australia. A farewell notice in The Scot was written by the headmaster Gordon Leary: “we shall miss his open friendliness and generosity, his unshakeable loyalty and inspiring leadership.”

In 1977 came the news of his death at the age of only fifty-two. As a memorial to him, the Old Boys’ Association had the chapel organ restored and it was dedicated at the secondary school prize-giving at the end of that year.

Condensed from The First Seven Thousand: a Jubilee history of Scots College 1916-1990 by James Brodie