A SHORT HISTORY OF THE SUNDAYS RIVER WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

In 1920 the Addo Women's Association was founded by the women of Addo who met in a shed near the Addo Station to which they always brought their eggs for collection by The Egg Circle. These intrepid pioneer women, many of them newly settled in Addo from Britain as the wives of farmers who had bought land from Sir Percy Fitzpatrick's Sundays River Settlement Scheme, in 1923 later renamed their association The Sundays River Women's Institute.

To this day, the Women's Institute remains the only one in the Eastern Cape and now the only one left in South Africa. It has an unbroken record of raising funds for charity and has served the needs of the community for the last 83 years.

The first Chairlady, Miss Valentine Magniac, was a remarkable and eccentric woman descended from British aristocracy. It was she who had founded the New Brighton Soup Kitchen in the early 1900's. She persuaded the Women's Institute members to raise funds to build a hall at Addo. Each member was expected to raise one pound a year towards the Building Fund. To raise funds, a bazaar was held at the Addo Tennis Club and Miss Magniac persuaded Lord Athlone, his wife, Princess Alice, and their daughter Lady May Cambridge, together with Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, Princess Beatrix, to attend this function! Thanks to their patronage, enough money was raised to start building the Valentine Hall in 1928. The cost of the very plain brick building was four hundred pounds. As the bank would not give the women a loan for the balance of funds required to complete the building, a Founder Member, Judith Gruskin stood surety for the loan. It is interesting that today in 2006, her grand daughter is Chairlady!

The Valentine Hall was named after Miss Magniac and in 1950 a plaque on the South wall, sculpted and designed by Miss Stainbank, was unveiled in her memory.

Through good times and bad, wars, droughts and floods, the Valentine Hall and the Women's Institute have stood firm as the core of the Sundays River Valley community.
Many improvements and alterations have been made to the Hall that is so well known to thousands of rose enthusiasts who attend the annual Rose and Garden Show. This show is still organised by the Women's Institute members, many of whom are direct descendants of those intrepid women who founded the Institute.