Persona

Kent, Leslie Patrick

1891 - 1967

Kent was born in Hastings, in the UK in 1891 and emigrated to South Africa with his parents in 1894. He was educated at Kingswood College in Grahamstown (now known as Makhanda). It is likely that it was here that he met fellow Methodists, Wally Mears, Gilbert Tucker, Thomas Hall and Basil Read, all of whom were later involved in the founding and building of St Stithians College.
Kent was an accountant by profession and formed his own company, Palmer, Kent and Co., that was the first to be engaged by the Anglo-Transvaal Consolidated Investment Company.
Kent was an active Methodist who became a St Stithians Trustee on the death of DF Corlett. He became Chairman of council at a difficult time when there were differences in interpretation of the roles of the College governance and that of the Headmaster. Kent was also involved in the selection of Walter Macfarlane as first BP headmaster.

On 30 October 1957, Kent opened the first swimming bath as it was then known. This had been a priority for parents as the College offered few sporting opportunities at its inception and the parents felt that a swimming batch would serve all the boys. However, it was not a priority for Council. As a result, the parents had to raise the funds for the pool themselves, but invited Kent to officially open the pool. He was vice-chair of council at the time. By 1957, the country knew that it would be changing from the imperial to the metric system and St Stithians was thus the first school in Johannesburg to have a pool measured in metres rather than yards.
The BP Library was officially opened by Mrs Eunice Lilian Kent in 1969.

An obituary for Mr. Kent appears in the Stythian of 1967, page 7. It was written by Ray Bradley. Here is a link to the magazine in AtoM: https://atom.stithian.com/index.php/stythian-magazine-1967

Kent House in the BP is named in his honour.