CHAPTER 1: A HUMBLE BEGINNING
THE HISTORY OF LYFORD CAY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
By Eric Wiberg( 1975-79)
William Sayle led the Eleutheran Adventurers to Eleuthera, and then in September 1785 Captain William Lyford Jr was granted 448 acres in what is now Lyford Cay for his service to the Loyalist cause as a ship’ s pilot in Savannah and St Augustine.
Lyford Cay International School( LCIS) can trace its origins to one man’ s fall from his horse. Early in 1954, the Canadian businessman, horse breeder and visionary Edward Plunket“ EP” Taylor was riding his grey mare on the family estate named Windfields when the horse bucked, throwing Taylor onto the road and sending him to Toronto General Hospital for a month and a half. According to his biographer, Richard Rohmer,“ It was during this recuperative period, with little to do, that he took a long, hard look at his own future and at the potential of Lyford Cay …‘ I went there for reasons of my happiness and my health, and to make a contribution.’”
Shortly after getting out of hospital, Taylor and his wife Winnie returned to The Bahamas to stay with their friends the Allan Millers at Lyford Cay. He made an offer to Bahamian realtor Sir Harold Christie to buy all of the available land at Lyford Cay, which was still mostly swamp and mangrove. Musing on the reasons for the move, Taylor later said,“ I’ ve always found it difficult to refrain from embarking on a business venture which appears to be constructive, which would fill a need... Lyford Cay afforded the opportunity to lay out a perfectly planned community that would stand out for generations as a pleasant place in which to live.”
The total land that EP Taylor purchased was about 2,800 acres. His accountant Don Prowse described Taylor viewing the property from a hill:“ All I could see down there was mango [ mangrove ] swamp. He’ d say,‘ We’ ll put the golf course over there, the beach club will go there, and we’ ll have the first residential development over there.’ He could see it. The place was transformed by his vision because he could see what most of us can’ t see. That’ s the nature of the man.”
Of course Taylor was not the first pioneer to visit The Bahamas – the Lucayans and Taino tribes first arrived around 700 AD, and Columbus landed in 1492. In 1648,
The origins of Lyford Cay School lay with EP Taylor’ s formation of the Lyford Cay Development Company in 1954, with the intention to carve one of the first and most exclusive international residential and seasonal communities. The area was to be gated in and include a golf course, marina, main club house with hotel-style rooms, club pool and beach, fire station, post office, roads, and so on. Taylor did not want to sell lots until the development was substantially complete; the golf course opened in 1958 and the marina opened in 1961. The main club opened at the end of 1959, and, by then, the club could boast 500 members. Almost all of the funding came from Taylor himself, and, until 1973, he owned roughly three quarters of the shares.
Lyford Cay School, now known as Lyford Cay International School, had humble beginnings in 1962 as a place where children of the
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