History

The Heritage Precinct is located in the oldest part of the school on the ground floor of E Block near the Gun and the Great Hall. Three original classrooms, which first opened in 1881, have been converted into an Archives preparation room, a School Museum, and a Reading and Research room. There is further storage for fragile material and school records in the Lilley Centre.

The Archives (E101)

The Archives collection includes trophies and artefacts, academic and military medals, school magazines, photographs and books, oral histories, and architectural plans. Material is recorded, restored and used for educative purposes and prepared for display.

The Museum (E102)

The Museum displays a remarkable collection of objects and print material. It is organised around the four themes of: Foundations – time and place; Honours – academic and military; Masters and Servants; and Sports and Games.

The Stephenson Reading Room (E103)

The collections here preserve the records and the intellectual history of the school. School histories, registers, school magazines, prize books, books by old boy authors and the Golden Books are all available to read. It is named after Stuart Stephenson, the School’s fourth Headmaster and great chronicler of our history.

Visiting the Heritage Precinct

The Museum is open is open for general visits on Wednesdays, between 1.00pm and 4.00pm. and at other times by appointment. Research enquiries are welcome.

Donations and Collection Policy

Brisbane Grammar School is committed to retaining, preserving, and expanding the collection as it relates to the school. This will ensure the Archives remain a valuable and relevant resource for the school community – Old Boys, their families, and current and future generations of students and staff. Offers of donations to the collection are always welcome.

For all enquiries please contact the School Historian- Archivist.

The Awards Chronicle was created as part of the BGS sesquicentenary history project. It contains 114 prize lists, with over 6000 entries in a searchable database. Academic prizes, scholarships, captains and champions of sport are all listed.

The focus is on Year 12 and each list is based on the current prize as its starting point. Many prizes have changed endowments or conditions over the years and these are explained in the accompanying text. Some prizes were eligible to both Year 11 and Year 12 (Form V and VI), but only Year 12 recipients are on these lists. We hope to expand the lists in the future.

To create this database, each entry was entered manually and while every care was made to ensure the information is accurate, it is possible some inaccuracies may be present. The database will continue to be developed and edited, but if you see an error in the lists or have a query, please email Community Relations.

We hope you enjoy this resource. Please click below and follow the instructions at the top of the page to choose and filter the lists you wish to view.

Please note that the chronicle is optimised for desktop viewing and will not display properly on mobile devices.

Awards Chronicle

Learn about some of the key buildings, objects and places of Brisbane Grammar School in the following fact sheets.

In 1904, Arthur Stanley Roe was awarded the first Rhodes Scholarship from Queensland, attending Balliol College at Oxford. In total, 26 BGS Old Boys are recipients of either Queensland Rhodes Scholarships or Australia at large Rhodes Scholarships. A list of scholarship recipients is detailed below.

Year of Election	Name
1904	Arthur S Roe
1905	Norman Leslie
1908	Stanley Castlehow
1909	Leonard G Brown
1911	Harold K Denham
1914	Allan W L Row
1915	John N Radcliffe
1918	Frederick W Paterson
1919	Victor Grenning
1922	Tom Lawton
1927	Franz Konrad Saddler Hirschfeld
1928	John H Lavery
1930	Cecil E Kerr
1939	James K Newman
1958	Thomas Baxter
1960	Clive P Hildebrand
1967	John M Fenwick
1978	Peter J Wetherall
1981	Donald Markwell
1982	David M Rose
1991	Craig Arnott
1992	Daniel V Botsman
2006	Nicholas I Luke
2007	Ryan A Goss
2019	Nicholas Salmon
2024	Jeremy Hunt

Brisbane Grammar School has two sets of colours.

Red and Gold were introduced by Thomas Harlin, Headmaster 1869-1876, and are now used as the academic colours. These were the colours of Peterhouse College at Cambridge, from which Harlin graduated.

Oxford and Cambridge Blue were the sporting colours introduced by Reginald Heber Roe, Headmaster 1876-1909, and are now used as our formal school colours. Roe graduated from Balliol College at Oxford and combined the “Light-Dark Blue” of the two great universities.

Nil Sine Labore is the school motto, which means Nothing without hard work.

The word ‘hard’ is significant. ‘Labore’ has the connotation of a struggle, involving some trial and even tribulation. It requires grit, effort and determination to achieve reward. By contrast, the idea of ‘opus’ or work alone implies something being created, perhaps a little more gentle or mundane than ‘labore’ which is a more strenuous or rigorous activity.

The Brisbane Grammar School Magazine provides a valuable written and pictorial record of school life. The first 22 years of the BGS Magazine, from 1898 to 1920, have been digitised and can be viewed below.

This period was momentous in the School’s history, reflected in writings and photos about the Boer War and World War I, as well as School events, news and student achievements.