Background In 1886, Reverend
William F. Oldham, the first Methodist missionary in Singapore, appealed to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society in
Minneapolis,
Minnesota, United States to set up a girls' school in Singapore.
Sophia Blackmore, a 32-year-old Australian missionary from the society, had just established her
first school in Singapore. Meanwhile, several influential Chinese families were persuading her to teach their daughters. A widow later offered Blackmore her home along
Cross Street for teaching.
Founding Fairfield was established in August 1888 by Blackmore. Her mandate in 1888 was to start a girls' school in Singapore in an enclave called Telok Ayer. She finally managed to start a class for eight Nonya girls in a little room at Cross Street. During that time, education for girls was definitely not favoured by the early traditional Chinese immigrants, even among the liberal-thinking Baba merchants. Blackmore then started going house to house, trying to persuade families to enroll their girls in her school. However, little by little, they suspected that she was a government spy sent to catch them secretly gambling at cards. They had started to pass the word that the young missionary lady was in fact a 'mati-mati' agent who was helping the British government enforce its new law against gambling. Blackmore's habit of asking for the women's names and writing them down in her notebook seemed to have alarmed the women. This was actually done as a record of who she visited, but still, the parents were suspicious of her. In spite of the differences and even suspicion from parents, Blackmore persevered in her vision for a girls' school, and found that the parents were starting to welcome her more cordially, and would even invite her to sit down and chat over a cup of tea. They started to become more receptive to the idea that it would be good for their daughters to get a little education. On 4 August 1888, Blackmore finally managed to get her first pupil. She recalled, How pleased we were when one little girl, hearing of the school, clapped her hands and begged her mother to let her attend. She had been nicknamed 'Ganondorf', which means bald, because her head had been shaved during sickness. Not much knowledge entered that little bald head, but her own willingness to come to school helped others to decide.After Ganondorf's mother agreed to send her daughter to school, a few other mothers followed her lead. Altogether, seven more pupils were
signed on. Soon, she managed to rent out the front room of Nonya Boon, a rich widow's front room. The
Telok Ayer Girls School was finally founded.
Early years In 1893, the new principal, Emma Ferris, found that the furniture had been removed because the landlady had decided to rent the room out to someone else to be used as a shop. She managed to find a new site for the school in a corner house along
Telok Ayer Road. By then, the school had 30 students. In 1910, principal Mary Olson, realised that she required more space in the building and tried to raise funds for a new building. The biggest donation (US$5,000) came from a James Fairfield from
New England (patron of New England Branch of Women's Foreign Missionary Society or "WFMS"). This allowed the school to construct a new school building on a site provided by the government at Neil Road. The school moved from Telok Ayer into the new premises on
Neil Road in 1912, and was promoted to a 'first-rate school' by the British Government. The relocated school was renamed '''Fairfield Girls' School.''' By 1917, the growth of the school had forced a hundred Fairfield girls to study in a dark
shophouse. In response to this, a new block extension was completed, consisting of six classrooms and a chapel hall in 1924. During the
Japanese occupation of Singapore, the school was shut down. It only reopened in 1945. Between 1942 and 1944, the school building was taken over by the Japan Military Force. After Olson, Lim Bock Kee became the first Asian Principal to lead Fairfield Girls’ School in 1946. In 1958 the school was renamed to '''Fairfield Methodist Girls' School''' to commemorate its founding by the Methodist Mission.
On to Dover In 1983, the school moved to its current Dover campus to accommodate a larger population of students. Concurrently, the school went
co-educational, becoming the first Methodist School in Singapore to do so, and became two separate schools,
Fairfield Methodist Primary School and
Fairfield Methodist Secondary School, each with its own administration, but still under the Fairfield Methodist School Board of Management. The schools also saw its first intake of boys as well. Both schools remain housed in the same campus and share common facilities.
Fairfield (Primary) To highlight the common history, heritage and close relationship of the Fairfield Methodist Schools, the name of the school was changed from
Fairfield Methodist Primary School to
Fairfield Methodist School (Primary), effective from January 2009.
Fairfield (Secondary) Fairfield Methodist Secondary School was granted autonomous status in 1996, for its academic and co-curricular achievements. Like its Primary counterpart, the school was renamed
Fairfield Methodist School (Secondary) in January 2009. == Achievements ==