A father’s love can contribute as much to a child’s development as a mother’s. And when a dad wants the best for his daughters, rest assured that they will receive the absolute best! – Especially in education. A testament to this belief is in the story of the McDonell family that started Limuru Girls High School.
It was 1904 and 28 year old Arnold Butler McDonell arrived in Mombasa from England, ready to start a new life. Up until then, he’d been living with his parents and working as a junior architect. He collected his savings and moved toward a new, uncertain future.
From Mombasa, Arnold made his way inland to a small settlement in Limuru town called Tigoni. Here he purchased 350 acres from the British government and began his hand at farming, naming his new plot Kiambethu Farm. Sadly, none of the crops he tried to grow prospered due to Tigoni’s high altitude.
Three years after Arnold arrived, his longtime sweetheart, Agnes Evelyn, joined him. The two had maintained a long distance love affair but couldn’t stand another minute apart. As soon as she arrived, Arnold received her in Mombasa and the two married that same day. Arnold then took his wife to his farm and the two began their new life. A year later, the McDonells welcomed their first daughter, Evelyn Mitchel. In the coming years, the two had three more daughters.
With more children in the farmhouse, Arnold inevitably became a family man. As the provider of his household, he wanted his daughters to receive the best of what he could offer. He sought after seedlings that would do well on his farm. In 1918, a friend sent him tea seedlings from India to experiment with. The seedlings, being in optimum climatic conditions, took to the soil and grew. Arnold McDonell would later be remembered as the first commercial tea planter in Africa.
Once the McDonell girls neared school-going age, Arnold and Agnes started considering their education. They employed a governess to home-school the girls as there was no European school in Tigoni. Meanwhile, Arnold embarked on a construction project. Armed with ambition and architectural experience, he put up his own school – Hill Preparatory School – on Kiambethu farm in 1922. Because he had daughters, he decided that the school would only admit girls. His eldest daughter Evelyn was the first pupil at the school and the governess was recruited as the headmistress.
Word in Tigoni spread about the establishment of Hill Prep and eager parents – both European and African – brought their daughters who were ushered into the school with open arms.
Hill Prep introduced the girls to a formal education that modeled the British public education system. As each McDonell girl grew and went through her father’s school, the institution too increased in its number of students – and this goes to show the impact of the school in Tigoni area. When first born Evelyn was set to transition to secondary school, Hill Prep slowly transformed into Limuru Girls’ School.
While the school developed, McDonell turned his attention to his tea-farming. His agribusiness took off in 1926, so much that he decided to sell the school and 60 acres of his farmland to the Church Commissioners’ Society. Limuru Girls’ ownership changed hands several more times until it was finally taken over by the Kenyan government in 1974. To date, it remains under the government’s custody as an accredited national public secondary school.
Fourty years after his death, Arnold Butler McDonell’s devotion to his daughters’ education is remembered through the presence of Limuru Girls’ School, or, some are fond of calling it, Chox.
