School walls
Moss-covered stone.
cotterillmike — CC0 · National Heritage — CC BY 4.0 · Radosław Botev — CC0
Stone ruins among the trees on the mountain road of Sans Souci, of a boarding school opened by an English mission in 1876 and closed in 1889 to educate the children of Africans freed from slave ships. It was named after the English missionary Henry Venn. Between 1861 and 1874 the Royal Navy landed thousands of Africans freed from slave ships in the Indian Ocean on Mahé and placed them on the plantations. This school was then set up for their children, who learned carpentry, farming and reading in Creole, French and Swahili. What remains are moss-covered walls of local stone along an avenue of spreading trees, and beside them a roofed viewing pavilion that looks down on the west coast of Mahé from high above, over forests, bays and the sea. The visit is free, and the spot is an almost obligatory stop on the Sans Souci road, usually combined with the nearby tea factory and the Copolia trail. The view is clearest in the morning, before the clouds.
Moss-covered stone.
Above the west coast.
Deep shade.
Sans Souci road, in the Mahé mountains above Victoria
They are the remains of a boarding school run by an English mission from 1876 to 1889 for the children of Africans freed from slave ships.