More than 1400 old boys and girls, former principals and teachers, friends and supporters gathered at St Matthew's Collegiate School and Rathkeale College in Masterton at the weekend to mark the respective centennial and jubilee celebrations at the schools.
The schools' respective programmes included cocktail functions, special assemblies, picnics, lunches, school tours, sports events and chapel services.
The main event of The Big Weekend of celebrations was a combined marquee ball for 800 people at St Matthew's Collegiate School on Saturday night and both schools produced commemorative books.
Together with Hadlow School, which was founded 85 years ago, St Matthew's and Rathkeale form the Trinity family of schools in Masterton, which have contributed to education in Wairarapa and delivered lessons to thousands of pupils from throughout New Zealand and overseas.
Organising committees with connections to both colleges and the old boys' and old girls' associations had been working for two years toward the weekend celebration, during which an exclusive interactive sculpture titled Prelude, by leading New Zealand artist Virginia King, was unveiled at St Matthew's Collegiate School, while the centre of celebrations at Rathkeale College was a jubilee quadrangle featuring 10 low walls etched with the names of the 4448 boys who had enrolled at the school since its foundation in 1964, and four legend-bearing columns dubbed The Pillars of a Good Rathkeale Man.
