On 1st October 1914 at the Christ Church Girls School, St Leonards, the New Zealand Flag was unfurled by the Rector, the Reverend G W Douglas. It was originally presented by children of Hastings, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. The girls won the prize for achieving a school attendance of 93.5, the highest in town during the previous quarter. It was the first time a girls school had won the honour. The original image is from the Hastings & St Leonards Pictorial Advertiser dated 8th October, 1914.
Hastings in New Zealand was founded in 1873 and was named after Warren Hastings, an English statesman, rather than by an ex resident with misty eyed memories of their old home town.
The two photographs used to create the image, and the final combined image are below. You can view the top image full size on my Flickr page by clicking on it.
This image is part of a continuing series of Then and Now images I’ve created for East Sussex Council’sWorld War 1 commemoration website. The website is focussed on the contribution that the men and women of East Sussex made towards the war effort.
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