The school was established in 1897 by recently arrived Belgian Jesuit missionaries, led by Joseph Van Reeth, first bishop of Galle and Father Augustus Standaert.

This is the only school in Sri Lanka that has produced national team captains in the sports of cricket, football and volleyball.

[citation needed] St. Servatius' College was founded when the Bishop of Galle, Joseph Van Reeth (in French), wanted to create an educational infrastructure in the newly established diocese, and called on the Belgian Jesuits for help.

[1] Father Augustus Standaert and a few other Belgian Jesuits arrived in Galle in 1896, and on 2 November 1897, the priests opened an English medium school on a small plot of land on the banks of the River Nilwala in Pallimulla, Matara.

As the construction funds came from the St. Servatius Jesuit school of Liège, Belgium, the Matara school adopted the name of this patron saint: Servais de Tongres, a 4th-century Belgian missionary, and one of the first bishops in the area around Tongeren, Maastricht, and Liège.