In the year of the school’s centenary, Mrs Pitt retires. In many ways she has guided it into the modern era, admitting the first black pupils, employing the first black teacher, adding new classrooms in both the Senior and Junior Schools, opening a gym and two squash courts, and introducing subjects such as isiZulu, Drama and Computer Science.

To paraphrase the words of Miss Nathan (her friend, colleague and deputy principal) who spoke at her memorial service, Mrs Pitt was a fascinating person because she was a woman of such contradictions. Her upbringing was Victorian, yet she was thoroughly modern. She had certain eccentricities, one being her use of the back of her Dunhill cigarette boxes to jot down essential information at the beginning of each year, when she was working on the school timetable. She was compassionate, understanding and kind, a warm mother, a lover of dogs, clever, well read, decent, slow to anger, sincere, totally un-judgmental, quite shy and diffident, and yet extremely courageous. She had a tremendous sense of humour. The school was a very happy place.