Athlone Institute Trust crest

Chapter three · 1926 onwards

Why "Athlone"?

A name borrowed from an Earl, and what a community did with it.

A Paarl church of the era in which the five founding congregations met. Not itself a founding church building.
A Paarl church of the era in which the five founding congregations met. Not itself a founding church building.Credit: ECSequeira, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Institute took its name from the Earl of Athlone, Alexander Cambridge, Governor-General of the Union of South Africa in the 1920s. Naming a community institution after the Crown's representative was, in that period, both a convention and a form of protection.

There is an irony the Trust does not hide. An institution built by people the colonial state excluded carries a colonial title. Over a century the community filled that borrowed name with its own meaning: teachers trained, musicians formed, students funded, a town's record kept.

The name is now the community's, whatever its origin.

Sources for this chapter

  1. aibprof — Who We Are, athlonebursaries.yolasite.com Read the source· to be verified by the Trust

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