Noble College, Machilipatnam

The Noble College at Machilipatnam was a college of the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.), an English Protestant mission.¹² It grew from a school opened in 1843 by the missionary Robert Noble.¹ Rajah B. Manikam called it in 1929 the oldest college of the Andhra University.² He wrote that Noble was to the Telugu country what John Anderson was to the Tamil country: a pioneer of higher education.³

Robert Noble’s school

According to the Kistna manual of 1883, Robert Noble and H. W. Fox came out in 1841 to start the mission’s work at Machilipatnam.¹ Noble reached the town on 28 October 1841.¹ After passing an examination in Telugu, he opened his school on 21 November 1843, with only two boys.¹ Manikam says it was first meant for Indian and Muslim boys of the upper classes, but others were soon admitted.²

Noble worked at Machilipatnam without a break for twenty-four years.¹ He openly aimed to make his pupils Christians, says the manual.⁴ It counts twenty-five converts from the higher classes, among them Brahmins, Sudras and one Muslim.¹ For this reason the Brahmin officials of the town supported a Hindu school of their own.⁴

The great storm wave of 1 November 1864 broke Noble’s health.¹ He died on 17 October 1865 and was buried at Machilipatnam.¹ The same storm drowned thirty-three of the sixty-five girls in the mission’s girls’ boarding school.⁵

Rugby School and the college

Fox had been a pupil at Rugby School in England.⁵ After his death, a fund begun in 1850 at Rugby paid for an assistant master at Noble’s school.⁵⁶ By 1883 old boys of Rugby gave nearly £300 a year to it.⁶ After Noble’s death the school was called the Noble Memorial School, or Noble College.⁶ It stood on the site of the Collector’s office, which the storm wave of 1864 had ruined.⁶

In 1855–56 the Director of Public Instruction wrote that the mission’s boys’ school at Machilipatnam had long been thought the best in the Northern Circars.⁷ In 1864 it became a second-grade college of the Madras University.² One of its students, Velagapudi Sundara Ramayya, was the first to take the Madras University’s M.A. degree.⁴

Growth to 1929

Manikam lists these stages in the college’s growth:⁸

in 1892, its jubilee year, it became a first-grade college, teaching up to the B.A. degree⁸
in 1908 Sir Arthur Lawley laid the foundation stone of a new hostel and college building⁸
the Clarke Hostel for non-Christian students opened in 1912, and the Sharp Hostel for Christian students in 1914⁸
from 1922 the American Lutheran Mission helped to run it, hoping for a united Andhra Christian College⁸
that plan ended in June 1926, and the same year the college joined the new Andhra University⁸

Bible lessons were not compulsory for students who objected to them.⁸ Manikam calls this a “conscience clause”.⁸

In 1920 the Congress asked students to leave government-run colleges.⁹ Sarojini Regani writes that Kala Venkata Rao, then in the final year of the B.Sc. at the Noble College, was one of those who left.⁹ D. Anjaneyulu notes that the reformer Raghupati Venkataratnam Naidu was at the Noble College in 1897.¹⁰

The 1930s

Women studied at the college in the 1930s.¹¹ In 1936 and 1937 students of the Noble College won the Andhra University’s medal for the best woman candidate in the Intermediate examination.¹¹ The university’s register for 1939–40 does not include the Noble College in its list of 23 colleges.¹² It lists a Noble High School at Machilipatnam among its high schools.¹³ The sources used here do not say what happened to the college classes.

Where the sources disagree

No disagreement was found among the sources used for this page.

Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 285 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
Manikam, Missionary Collegiate Education (1929), p. 82 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Rajah B. Manikam, Missionary Collegiate Education in the Presidency of Madras (1929), p. 9 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Mackenzie, Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 370 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Mackenzie, Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 287 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Mackenzie, Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 288 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
S. Satthianadhan, History of Education in the Madras Presidency (1894), p. 52 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Manikam, Missionary Collegiate Education (1929), p. 83 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Sarojini Regani, Highlights of the Freedom Movement in Andhra Pradesh (1956), p. 69 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
D. Anjaneyulu, Kandukuri Veeresalingam (1976), p. 45 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩
Andhra University: The Annual Register 1939–40 (1939), p. 251, list of awards of the medal for women in the Intermediate examination (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²
Andhra University: The Annual Register 1939–40, p. 302, list of colleges (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩
Andhra University: The Annual Register 1939–40, p. 298, list of high schools (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩