Speculation about the future of Armidale’s historic Ursuline Convent ended with the recent announcement it has been taken over by the Catholic Schools’ Office. During October the Sisters moved out of their Convent after almost 130 years there, and the front page story of the Armidale Independent reported the end of an era. This week we’ll start a four-part series on a history of the Ursuline Sisters in Armidale, with a focus on the context, their Convent and St Ursula’s College buildings.
We’ll start with the context into which the Sisters came. A history of early schooling in Armidale appeared in Nos 56 to 58 this year, with a focus on how NSW schools were funded. These stories ended with the opening of the National School in Armidale in 1861. By then the Dual System of education in NSW provided funding for secular schools and denominational schools. But forces were already at work pushing for Government funding of denominational schools to cease.
Social disharmony had resulted from disputes about educational systems. Legislatures increasingly came to the view that the best way out of their difficulties would be by the creation of a “free, secular and compulsory” system. Reformers in NSW in 1866 secured the Public Schools Act, which abolished the Dual System and replaced the two Boards with a Council of Education. During the 1870s pressure increased for ending all Government funding of denominational schools.
Bitter sectarian battles were waged, but the Public Instruction Act was eventually passed in 1880. It repealed the Public Schools Act of 1866; dissolved the Council of Education; placed public schools under a Government Minister heading a Department; and ended all Government aid to denominational schools from December 31, 1882. It must be noted that the 1880 Act concerned primary education only – it was not until the first decade of the twentieth century that post-primary schooling became the subject of separate legislation.
In November 1881 Church leaders were asked to advise whether they would continue to run their schools. Armidale’s Anglican bishop, James Turner, replied that he could “see no prospect” of any such schools in his diocese continuing, but Elzear Torreggiani, the Catholic bishop, wrote “we intend to continue at our own expense”. Some Protestant schools continued. The Catholic Church decided to maintain a separate school system.
How could the Catholic community, still noticeably working class, manage to run its school system without Government aid? The answer was simple, if heroic – nuns and brothers, vowed to poverty, would make it work. Australia’s Catholic bishops regularly petitioned the superiors of teaching congregations overseas for religious men and women to work in Australia. By 1900, 26 female congregations arrived or were founded in Australia, and many of these devoted themselves to teaching.
Within a month of arriving in Armidale in November 1879, Bishop Torreggiani had invited the Sisters of St Joseph (founded by Mary MacKillop in 1866) to his extensive diocese. The Sisters opened their first Convent at Tenterfield in 1880, and others at Inverell (1880), Glen Innes (1882), Uralla (1886) and Hillgrove (1891).
Armidale’s first Catholic school (situated in Dumaresq Street, opposite what is now the Belgrave Cinema) had begun in 1848 and was staffed by lay people. From 1877 the school was situated in Dangar Street (on the site of what is now the Cathedral Presbytery) and was still being run by lay teachers, but they would not be funded by the Government from January 1883. Bishop Torreggiani needed nuns to run it.
Nuns did not suddenly appear in the parish. In fact, getting them was quite a business, which involved securing a home for them and paying their passage from overseas to Armidale. The story of how the Ursuline nuns came to Armidale is told by Sister Mary (Dr Pauline) Kneipp in several books. What follows is a summary, starting when Ursuline Sisters were expelled from their Convent in the Hanovarian town of Duderstadt in 1877 as a result of the anti-clerical policies in the then newly-unified German states.
Two Sisters went to London, where they visited many clerics to ask help finding a suitable home for the refugee Sisters. Among the clergy visited was Father Elzear Torreggiani, who was in charge of the Capuchins in Peckham in London’s south. Although he could do nothing at the time, that changed when he became Bishop of Armidale in 1879. Meanwhile, 22 Sisters settled in London at Greenwich, where they opened a school on October 1, 1877. A second Convent was opened at nearby Blackheath, but running it was expensive and the Sisters had little income, so they were in a dilemma about their future. Bishop Torreggiani would solve their problems and the nuns would solve his.
After writing to several religious orders overseas for nuns to serve in his diocese, he purchased a house in Armidale to be the Convent. Built in the 1860s, the commodious house (near the intersection of Barney and Jessie Streets) had a commanding view of Armidale and the surrounding country. Originally the residence of Mr JD Bradley (the local Inspector of Schools), it was later occupied by a Mrs Curry and her three daughters before it was purchased by a businessman, Peter Speare, who in turn sold it to Bishop Torreggiani in April 1881 for £2000. By November 1881 the Ursuline Sisters were negotiating seriously with the bishop, who called tenders in April 1882 for extensions for rooms for girls who would be boarders at the Convent School. Local builder, Henry Ernest Elliott, won the contract.
Letters from Bishop Torreggiani to the Sisters at Greenwich included advice to bring with them to Armidale as much summer and winter clothing as possible, because the lack of “manufactories” in Armidale meant that clothing was expensive to buy. He also told them to leave England in its mid-summer, to ensure their arrival in Australia in warm weather, thus “avoiding the cold winter for the first year.” His £600 to pay their fares arrived in May 1882. On May 24, 1882 a contingent of 11 Sisters left England on the sailing ship ‘Duchess of Edinburgh’, arrived safely in Sydney in September, and entered their new home in Armidale on the evening of September 12.
