Our Founder

Anne Laugharne Phillips Griffith-Jones OBE

In 2025, Tanglin Trust School celebrates an important milestone, marking 100 years since Miss Anne Laugharne Phillips Griffith-Jones (affectionately known as “Miss Griff”) started the school in two attap huts on the grounds of the Tanglin Club in Singapore.

The story of Tanglin is a truly fascinating story of ups and downs, twists and turns, with the phenomenal Miss Griff as a key character. The school has not only survived for almost 100 years, but continually developed, expanded, and thrived. It has built up a strong reputation and won several accolades over the years.

Miss Griff not only founded the school, but also imparted important values and fostered a keen sense of passion and dedication to providing the best education for British children in Singapore and Malaya. These included the children of British plantation owners and managers, colonial administrators, and servicemen based in the Far East (Singapore and Malaya). Read on to find out more about Tanglin's founder and first Headmistress.

Early Life

Miss Griff was born in 1890, into a distinguished family in Pembrokeshire, Wales. She was the youngest of nine sons and two daughters born to Griffith Jones (1849–1920) and Anne Laugharne Phillips (1846–1921). Despite being the youngest among her siblings, and adopting all of her parents’ names, Miss Griff carved out her own path and left a unique mark on history in Singapore and beyond.

Pictured: A family portrait from 1912, showing Miss Griff (second from left) with her parents and older sister, Lynette (third from left), fondly known to the family as Nettie

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“She was very formidable… she was obviously a very knowledgeable person… (she) had done an awful lot with her life.” At the same time, “she was always very kind, always very interested in everybody”.

— In the words of her grandniece Mrs Carol Kimber

Activist at Heart

From a very young age, Miss Griff was already an activist for women’s rights. So it came as no surprise that in 1913, she was appointed as Swansea’s local secretary for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Suffrage means the right to vote in parliamentary and general elections. While Miss Griff was working towards the inclusion of women in the vote, World War I broke out in 1914 which brought about significant change for the status and position of women in society.

Not one to remain idle, Miss Griff set out to do her part for the war effort. As the men fought on the frontlines, women needed to step in. Miss Griff joined the effort, serving as a welfare officer in a National Shell Factory in Swansea, Wales. This was an extremely important role, as she had to handle the challenges and difficulties that the women, who became a significant portion of the workforce, faced. Miss Griff’s role as a welfare officer was extremely important in the face of these dangerous working conditions.

Miss Griff’s role as a welfare officer was extremely important in the face of these dangerous working conditions. Her work was critical in ensuring the welfare of the workers, and ultimately safeguarding overall productivity levels of the factory. She was responsible for the majority of the workforce as the women were the largest group of workers in the factory. This also provided her with critical experience in managing large-scale operations and people.

Arrival in Singapore

Long before Miss Griff left the chilly, windswept cliffs and beaches of west Wales for hot and humid Singapore, her older brother, Oswald Phillips Griffith-Jones, was already well-known in Singapore as an active member of the community, contributing in the political, social, and sporting arenas. The presence of Miss Griff’s older brother in Singapore ensured that when Miss Griff herself came to Singapore, she was not alone and adrift – instead, she entered a prominent family and social network with important ties to Singapore, at a time when personal connections mattered. This made her well-placed to start her own ventures in Singapore.

In October 1922, Oswald headed home on long leave with his wife and nine-year-old son Eric Newton. They returned eight months later in June 1923 – and they were accompanied by Oswald's sister, Miss Griff, who visited Singapore that year to spend time with them at their home at 19 Mount Rosie Road.

Miss Griff had originally planned to stay in Singapore for just three months. It was said that she fell in love with Singapore, the country, the warmth of the people, the beauty and the sunshine, so she decided to stay! And this is where our Tanglin story begins.

TANGLIN SCHOOL

Miss Griff arrived in Singapore in 1923 and turned her hand to teaching and, although not having any formal qualifications, in 1925 founded Tanglin School in two huts in the grounds of The Tanglin Club with just five pupils. Tanglin School Flourished and was soon spilling out from the huts. Assembly was held in the ballroom and The Tanglin Club even offered the use of the Men’s Bar for the school.

CAMERON HIGHLANDS BOARDING

In 1934 Miss Griff decided to open a boarding offshoot of Tanglin School in the Cameron Highlands. It was thought that the cooler climate offered a healthier lifestyle for growing children and – although the pupils would inevitably board – the journey from Singapore and parts of Malaya was negligible in comparison with the passage back to Europe. European children could now stay in Singapore at Tanglin School until the age of eight and then attend the Cameron Highlands Boarding School until they were 12 or 13.

Awards

Miss Griff was appointed to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition of her important work as a welfare supervisor at a National Shell Factory. She was only 29 years old when her award was announced. In 1957, she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), the second-highest ranking Order of the British Empire award.

Up to this point, Miss Griff had only received honours from the United Kingdom. However, her contributions to the community did not go unnoticed by the locals – in this case, the state of Pahang, of which Cameron Highlands is a district.

In 1962, Pahang’s Sultan Abu Bakar (1904–1974) bestowed the Pingat Jasa Kebaktian (PJK) or Meritorious Service Medal on Miss Griff for meritorious service to education.

Pictured: Miss Griff being presented her OBE by Governor Sir William Goode at Government House in 1958.

Miss Griff & Football

In the 1920s and 1930s, Miss Griff made a name for herself in Singapore’s newspapers, not just as the founder and head of Tanglin Preparatory School, but also as an avid sportswoman – in this arena, she stood toe to toe with her brother Oswald.

In fact, her sporting days go back to her time in Swansea, Wales, when she worked at a National Shell Factory during World War I. In 1917, to raise funds for wartime charities, she formed a women’s football team comprising the factory’s workers, named Swansea National Shell Factory FC (Football Club), also known as Swansea Ladies. She managed to galvanize her team to win three Silver Cups, also known as the Munitions Cup, raising around £700.74.

Miss Griff subsequently went on to play for other football clubs such as Swansea’s Baldwins United, Cardiff Ladies, and Plymouth Internationals. For the last club, she even went on international tours with them, playing two games in France in 1921. These matches attracted attendances of 5,000 to 6,000 – a respectable crowd at the time.

Miss Griff, the Sportswoman

No doubt, she would have joined women’s football teams in Singapore, if there were any. Unfortunately, women’s football was non-existent in the colony, so she traded her football boots for tennis rackets and hockey sticks.

The majority of Singapore newspaper reports mentioning her in the 1920s and 1930s was about her participation in primarily lawn tennis and hockey matches and competitions, usually organised by the Tanglin Club and the Singapore Cricket Club. Some of the matches were to raise funds for charities, such as the Poppy Day Fund.

An example of a charity match making the news was the Straits Budget’s account of a women’s hockey showdown between Miss Griffith-Jones’ XI and the Girls’ Sports Club at Jalan Besar Stadium in February 1931. Of course, Miss Griff’s team triumphed 2-0! In fact, Miss Griff was singled out for her contributions to the women’s hockey scene in Singapore, and when she left the colony on leave, her absence was keenly felt in the arena.

Thank you, Miss Griff

Given her longstanding and pivotal role in the establishment and management of the Tanglin schools in both Singapore and the Cameron Highlands, Miss Griff was given a warm send-off in 1958.

In a cosy ceremony, two of her inaugural batch of five pupils – Dr Wilson and Mrs Laurette Shearman – presented parting gifts to her.

Retirement

By the mid-1950s, Miss Griff was already in her mid-60s, and she was mulling over retirement. Tanglin in Cameron Highlands had been sold away, but there was still Tanglin in Singapore. Since its founding in 1925, its existence had been synonymous with Miss Griff. Surely, it had to have a future after her.

In the midst of political changes such as Singapore being granted self-rule in April 1957, Miss Griff approached the British European Association that year with concerns about the future of Tanglin School. This prompted the BEA’s decision to take over the school in May 1958 in order to preserve education facilities for European children in Singapore.

Miss Griff was given due recognition for building up the school from five pupils in attap huts in 1925 to 300 pupils and a staff of 20 teachers in 1957.

With the future of the school secured, Miss Griff could retire with peace of mind. Miss Griff retired to a small bungalow in her beloved Cameron Highlands (pictured) – and of course, she named it “Tanglin". According to visitors, “her humble cottage was a little bit of England tucked away in the hills of Malaya”, and “tea was always served in the best British tradition with a silver service and immaculate linen”.