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The Church Missionary Society College High School is situated in Kottayam, Kerala, India.HistoryIt was started by the Church Missionary Society, England, in 1817 when no institution existed in the then-Travancore state to teach English. Rev. C.Y.Thomas in the History of Madhya Kerala Diocese says: " After 1836 we find in the C.M.S. records, references to the 'Kottayam Village Mission' with Bailey in charge of it and 'the Kottayam District Mission' under Baker, with his headquarters at Pallom, five miles to the South. They also continued educational work and built another college at Kottayam, the C.M.S. College in 1838. The new college made its real start in 1840 when the Rev. John Chapman took charge of it. According to Agur, in Church History of Travancore, Nagam Aiya and Velu Pillai in separate editions of Travancore Manual have recorded that Scott christian College, Nagercoil started its career as a school in 1805 and evolved into a full-fledged college in 1817. So chronologically, Scott Christian College founded by LMS missionaries was the first college in the princely state of Travancore.Rev. Benjamin Bailey was the first principal of The College, COTTYM, as it was then called and spelt. The government welcomed the College as "a place of general education whence any demands of the state for officers to fill all departments of public service would be met". In the early years, the curriculum included the study of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Mathematics, History and Geography besides English, Malayalam, Sanskrit and Syriac. In 1838, the College was shifted to the wooded hillock — the present site — commanding views of the distant Western Ghats. One of the oldest buildings in the campus is Room 52 or "Grammar School," as it was then named. The College magazine in Malayalam was started in 1864 by the then-principal Richard Collins, after whom the College Library is named.
