From the Archives

140 Years of Sacred Heart Education

On 20 July this year we celebrated 140 years since the opening of the School of the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Rose Bay. Although much has been written over the years about the history of the School, this remarkable milestone presents an ideal opportunity for us to pause, reflect and celebrate the foundation of our School.

On 16 May 1882, five religious of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus gathered in Paris at the Order’s Mother House to be briefed by their Superior General on their mission. Less than two months later, on 9 May, Reverend Mother Febronie Vercruysse, Mothers Mary Jackson, Rose Dunne and Alice Woodward, and Sister Sarah Simpson disembarked at Circular Quay to establish the Society’s first Foundation in Australia.

The Five Foundresses were met by Mr and Mrs John Hughes, eminent members of Sydney’s Catholic community, and two of their daughters. Almost immediately, the search began for a suitable site for their new school. With the assistance of Mr Hughes, the sisters secured a lease on the property Claremont at Rose Bay, which the Society of the Sacred Heart subsequently purchased, on 22 June.

Wasting no time, the nuns moved into Claremont on 23 June, and set about readying the building for the planned opening of the School, which was set down for 20 July. Before that, however, the House Journal records that the first priority was to set up the altar, as the nuns had their hearts set on celebrating Mass on Sunday 25 June, the Feast of St Febronie (patroness of Mother Vercruysse). The altar had been a gift of the Vercruysse family and travelled with the nuns to Sydney and was in use at Rose Bay until the Chapel was completed in 1900. This first Mass in the first Convent of the Sacred Heart in Australia marked the Spiritual beginnings of the Society’s first Foundation in Australia.

With only four weeks, from the time they moved into their new home until the opening of the School, the nuns faced the enormous task of getting everything ready, including purchasing or making furniture, including beds, tables, chairs and desks, and unpacking linen and utensils and preparing lessons. Proving to be thrifty and adaptable, the nuns recycled a number of the wooden trunks used by fellow passengers on board the SS Orient, the ship on which they sailed to Sydney, turning them into wardrobes and cupboards.

The rentree – the beginning of the school term – on 20 July saw five students enrolled at Rose Bay (they were joined by three more students within the week), with the formal “Opening of Classes” the following day marking the beginning of the first Sacred Heart School in Australia. The beginning of classes did not signal a slowing down in the non-teaching work of the nuns. The construction of a water mill and water storage tanks ensured an adequate and regular water supply, cows were purchased, and a dairy built, the existing orchard and vegetable gardens were cleared, more fruit trees planted, and pigs and chickens were purchased.

A typical school day, which started with Rise and Prayers at 5.57am, comprised around five hours of classes, two hours of study, one and a half hours of needlework, forty minutes of writing, one long and three short recreation breaks, and nine hours of sleep. During the needlework period, students spent their time mending, making church vestments and clothes for the poor, and doing lacework and embroidery, while conducting all their conversations in French. Saturdays were Parlour Day, or visiting day, while Sundays had additional activities including extra devotions, singing practice and time set aside for learning poetry.

In the early years of the School, vacations occurred twice a year, and there were no outings at weekends. Feast Days were celebrated with organised ‘holidays’, during which both the nuns and the students enjoyed a range of informal activities including swimming in the harbour and playing games such as cache-cache, a game of hide and seek. Competitive sport between girls’ schools was not common at the time, but the Rose Bay students enthusiastically participated in sports such as cricket, tennis, rounders and flags.

As the number of students and nuns grew, thoughts turned to planning major building operations to allow for the continued expansion of the School. The task of planning and overseeing this work fell to Reverend Mother Vercruysse. The first addition

L to R Back: Sister Sarah Simpson, Mother Rose Dunne; Front: Mother Alice Woodward, Rev Mother Febronie Vercruysse, Mother Mary Jackson

Claremont was originally built by Mr George Thorne in 1851. Sold to Mr Arlington Thomas, it was renovated around 1881. It is thought that the renovations were the work of the acclaimed architect John Horbury Hunt The Vercruysse Altar in the Kincoppal School Chapel, 1955

This cupboard, currently on display in the School Archives, was fashioned from a trunk used by one of the passengers on board the SS Orient, the ship on which the five Foundresses travelled to Sydney The School Journal of 1882 records the beginning of the School on 20 July

The imposing Main Building of the Rose Bay School The School’s Chapel is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of the work of architect John Horbury Hunt

Green Ways Bundanoon was a guest house which was acquired by the Society for the purpose of evacuating Kincoppal during WWII

to the site was a small temporary wooden chapel, erected in 1883. From the beginning of the same year, Mother Vercruysse began discussing the plans for the school building. She engaged the architect John Horbury Hunt to draw up plans for what we know today as the Main Building on the Senior School campus. Work commenced in 1884, with the foundation stone laid and blessed on 29 August. Completed in November 1887, the Main Building was officially opened and blessed on 27 January 1888. The Chapel, widely regarded as one of Horbury Hunt’s most beautiful works, was completed – minus the stunning marble altar – in 1900, the opening on 21 November, that year marking the centenary of the beginnings of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

While the site we occupy on the shores of Sydney Harbour, on the traditional lands of the Eora people of the Gadigal nation, with its iconic Horbury Hunt designed main building and Chapel, is the site of the first Sacred Heart School in Australia, it is not the only site on which Sacred Heart education was provided in Sydney.

In 1903, the Society established a day school in Bourke Street, Darlinghurst, in premises previously occupied by the Jesuits. The Jesuits had acquired a site at Milsons Point for a day school, and the Society was looking for a city location from which to operate a day school. Opening in February 1903, the day school languished; however, a night school flourished from the start. The proximity of a noisy hotel and “undesirable establishments” nearby, however rendered urgent the need to find more suitable premises. The solution to this dilemma was found in the benefaction of Mr John Hughes, the same supporter who had met the Five Foundresses on the wharf at Circular Quay when they arrived in Sydney in 1882. On his death in 1885, Hughes bequeathed his home Kincoppal, Elizabeth Bay to his eldest daughter Maria.

Hughes had purchased land at Elizabeth Bay in 1869 and, over a period of five years built an elegant residence, which he named Kincoppal, the Gaelic word for horse's head. There is a prominent rock formation on the harbour foreshore nearby which is said to look like a horse’s head and is believed to be the reason for the name. The house was constructed in the Victorian Italianate style.

The property passed to Maria in 1907 after the death of her mother, Susan. Maria had taken her vows and entered in 1886, so the property was transferred to the Society. In 1909, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Sydney, the Society moved its day school from Darlinghurst to Kincoppal, where it operated until its amalgamation with Rose Bay in 1971.

During World War II, thoughts turned to relocating the schools away from Sydney as fears of a Japanese attack became a reality. The Society secured several properties in the Southern Highlands - “Green Ways” at Bundanoon (to which Kincoppal was evacuated for two years), “The Rift” at Bowral and “Laurel Park” at Burradoo (to which the junior and middle classes from Rose Bay were evacuated for several months in 1942).

By the beginning of 1944, both Schools were back on their harbourside sites, as the tide of war in the Pacific had turned by the end of 1943. The experience of having junior boarders had proved so successful, however, that the decision was made to establish a junior boarding school in the Southern Highlands. A suitable house was found in Burradoo and, for the following twenty years, Kerever Park (named for the muchloved Mother Alix de Kerever) was a place of education for future pupils of Rose Bay.

In 1950, the Society’s sesquicentenary year, an expansion of facilities for junior students at Rose Bay was planned in response to a request by Cardinal Gilroy for a kindergarten to be established. Supported by the Alumnae Association, £3,500 was raised towards the cost of establishing the Margaret MacRory Kindergarten, named for Mother MacRory, Mistress General at Rose Bay from 1910 – 1922 and the first Principal of Sancta Sophia College at the University of Sydney. A neighbouring property, an Italianate villa The Poplars was purchased from Mr J Melocco, and in February 1952, 40 juniors and 24 small boys and girls of the kindergarten moved into the renamed Barat Burn.

Opened in 1966, the new Barat Burn buildings as seen from Vaucluse Road

The Junior School soon outgrew the old Barat Burn, and more modern and spacious facilities were required to accommodate the increasing numbers. A major fundraising campaign was launched in 1964, raising £90,000 for the construction of a new junior school with accommodation for junior boarders and a convent for a second Community, which became the provincial residence soon afterwards. Kerever Park in the Southern Highlands was closed, the two junior schools amalgamated, and the new building complex was opened in September 1966.

In 1969, the Australia-New Zealand Province of the Society commissioned a review of its operations by the management firm WD Scott and Co. With the findings of the review as their guide, the Society reached the difficult decision that they could no longer operate two schools in Sydney in such close proximity to one another. Thus, the decision was made to amalgamate the two schools, bringing into existence Kincoppal – Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart from the beginning of the 1971 school year. While building works were completed to accommodate all the students on the Rose Bay site, classes continued to be taught on both campuses, with the two senior years taking their classes at Elizabeth Bay. From 1976, the whole school was united on one campus at Rose Bay.

Kincoppal – Rose Bay continues to grow and evolve, looking to the future while building on and celebrating its rich history and the traditions of the last 140 years.

Dr Tracy Bradford Archivist