By Georgie Burgess
All that remains of Horton College is the brick portico, an arch to nowhere that is a Midland Highway landmark.
But there once stood a prestigious 19th-century boys school that boasted of producing many of Tasmania’s most successful barristers, doctors and well-known religious leaders.
It was built near Ross in 1852, after Captain Samuel Horton offered the Wesleyan Church 20 acres and £1,350 to establish a boys’ school.
The Tasmanian Wool Centre in Ross holds some of Captain Horton’s history.
“Captain Horton is a really important figure in the history of Ross,” centre manager Jess Newton told ABC Radio Hobart.
Ms Newton said he was given a big parcel of land, known as Somercotes, when he arrived in 1823 from the merchant navy.
The farm is still in family hands, making it one of the few Australian properties to remain in continual family ownership.
Captian Horton was reportedly persuaded to come to Van Diemen’s Land by his cousin, who was the first Wesleyan minister in Hobart Town.
“He was a staunch Wesleyan, he really wanted to bring a strong Methodist teaching to the Midlands,” Ms Newton said.
She said the college was “very prestigious”.
“People would send their boys over from the mainland,” she said.
Horton ‘vanished as a school’
The foundation stone for Horton College was laid in 1852.
From 1855 until its closure in 1894, 770 boys attended the school.
Enrolments fluctuated over the years, from 15 to 86 boys.
When the longstanding headmaster William Fox resigned due to ill health, the college passed through several hands of management during difficult economic times.
The college was also competing with schools in Launceston and Hobart that were considered more convenient.
It was decided to “hold a sale of materials in and about the property to liquidate the debt which had fallen upon it,” The Mercury reported.
“It vanished as a school amid the regrets of all but not before it had performed splendid services in the cause of education,” the report said.
The Wool Centre holds the school’s honour board, a seachest belonging to Captain Horton, and a portrait of him and his wife.
The school’s bell went to the Hutchins School in Hobart, and some bricks went to Scotch Oakburn College in Launceston.
Horton College inspired the establishment of Methodist Ladies’ College, which later became Scotch Oakburn College.
Life at the college
A 1920 report in The Mercury recounted the college’s history to mark its demolition.
Life at Horton College was described as “free and pleasant”, with Sunday enjoyed especially because the boys didn’t have to get out of bed until 7am instead of 6:30am.
It was described as being founded along the lines of a traditional old English boarding school, with the “freer and more independent atmosphere of Australia”.
An hour after breakfast on Sundays, the boys would walk “four abreast into Ross” for church, which was about 4 kilometres one way.
The report said a popular way of spending afternoons was for small parties of the boys to visit huts and enjoy an “alfresco meal of chipped potatoes, a rabbit boiled in a billy can and damper made on stones”.
Despite the boys’ pedigree, it was reported some were still caught smoking.
“Boys of today will be glad to learn that boys of that generation were no better, and probably no worse, than they are now, and some of the Horton College boys used to indulge, as boys always do, in surreptitious smokes,” the report said.
“One old boy, at present in Hobart, tells a story of a schoolmate who produced a couple of clay pipes and some fig tobacco, and persuaded him to master the gentle art of smoking behind a wood fence.”
Portico of light
Tasmanian landscape photographer Luke Tscharke brought Horton College back into the limelight by capturing the portico with a bright aurora australis behind it in 2018.
“I’d seen it from the roadside, like how most Tasmanians have seen it in their lifetime,” Mr Tscharke said.
“As a photographer, I’m always looking for interesting subjects and features to include in the photographs I take.”
He said he stored it away in the “location library” in his mind.
A few weeks after returning from photographing the northern lights in Norway, Tasmania experienced a significant aurora and Mr Tscharke was keen to continue his work.
Hobart had cloud, so he decided to head north to the Midlands with a friend.
Mr Tscharke thought of the portico, and got permission to go onto the Somercotes property.
“The aurora kicked off and I put a light inside the portico to create a little bit of warmth to it,” Mr Tscharke said.
“It was very fortunate how the aurora worked with the scene.
The shot is one of his most popular aurora photos, and will be exhibited during the Beaker Street Festival in August.