DALLIMORE, EKITI AND CHRISTS SCHOOL The Venerable Henry Dallimore, the founder of Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti was born in Aughton, Lancashire, England on 5th February 1885 to simple Christian parents. He was ordained as a deacon in 1911, and sent to Sierra Leone in 1914 by the C.M.S. as the Principal of C.M.S. Grammar School, Freetown. He was recalled to England in 1915, and at the ceasation of the 1st World War in 1918, he was posted as the Warden of the YMCA in France. He however returned to Sierra Leone in 1915 for a couple of years before he was deployed to St. Andrew’s College, Oyo, Nigeria as the Vice Principal to Archdeacon George Burton in 1922. It was while on this tour that he met Miss Dorothy Nash, a female C.M.S. missionary who was then the Principal of ‘Kudeti School’ – an all-female middle school that trained young women for assistance in missionary work like the old ‘Miss Mars’ School’ at Akure. Its curriculum was of the Secondary Modern School status. Kudeti School is the precursor of St. Anne’s School, Molete, Ibadan founded as a full-fleshed Anglican Secondary School in 1950. Henry Dallimore married Dorothy at Norfolk in 1924 following which Dorothy abandoned her teaching job to fully. Archdeacon Dallimore was to make his generational impact on the Church, society, and education by his rather presumptuous posting out of Oyo to Ekiti in late 1929 as Archdeacon, Superintendent of Ekiti District Churches, and the Supervisor of its Schools. Henry and Dorothy arrived Ekiti to purse a 3-point mission of evangelism, education, and healing. It is pertinent to state that the Ekiti District Church Council Archdeacon Dallimore superintended include the all the Churches in the present Akure Diocese less its Idanre Archdeaconries, Ekiti Diocese, Ekiti-west Diocese, and Ekiti Oke Diocese! While the Archdeacon focused on pragmatic evangelism and quality education, Dorothy concentrated on the provision of improved health services through the founding of the “Our Saviour’s Hospital” at the present Ekiti Bishop’s Court, Oke Aremu which was later re-named as “Ile Abiye Hospital” and relocated to Irona, Ado Ekiti. Dorothy also looked after the girls in Henry Dallimore’s Christ’s School which he founded in the same site on 23rd January, 1933 as Ekiti Central School – a senior elementary school which was to provide quality all-round training for boys and girls. The School, which was formally commissioned on 30th June 1933, opened with 70 boys and 7 girls. With the attendant expansion and growth of the two institutions, the School moved into its permanent site on Agidimo Hill on 22nd June, 1933, and was christened as “CHRIST’S SCHOOL” by the visiting Governor of Nigeria, Sir Bernard Bourdillon on 10th September, 1936.
