Having taken possession of their beautiful Convent in September 1882, and having constructed a chapel (opened by Cardinal Moran in January 1886) and the purpose-built three-storey St Ursula’s College (opened in October 1888 and fronting onto Barney Street), the Ursuline Sisters happily got on with their good work. The story continues now in the third of 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.
For about 80 years, Armidale had five independent boarding schools (three for girls and two for boys) happily running on parallel lines. Excellent written histories tell the origins and growth, successes and hard times of NEGS, PLC and TAS. Sadly, there are no corresponding published histories of St Ursula’s College and St Patrick’s College and the school which opened on its site in 1906, De la Salle College. The lack of histories of these Catholic schools has been an ongoing impediment to a comparative history of Armidale’s independent boarding schools to explore how they dealt with common challenges such as droughts, economic recessions and expansion when large numbers of Sydney children were sent bush during World War II to escape Japanese shelling, and challenges arising from the Wyndham Report 50 years ago.
Another common issue to explore was the response to meeting the requirements for public examinations, especially Matriculation; and the NSW Bursaries Endowment Act of 1912. In 1893 the first candidates from St Ursula’s College sat for the Sydney University examinations and the college successfully applied in 1912 to be registered to the Leaving Certificate status.
Sister Cordula, who was one of the original group which arrived in 1882, turned out to be a real mover and shaker, whose name is commemorated in bricks. Caroline Ann Rowland was born at Kentish Town, London, on December 31, 1852, a daughter of George Rowland, railway clerk, and his wife Caroline Agnes, nee Reeves. About 1870 Caroline went to the Hanoverian town of Duderstadt and taught in a school run by the Ursuline Sisters. She entered the Order, and took the religious name Mary Cordula. She was one of the two Sisters who went to England in 1877, and found a suitable house at Greenwich, where the other refugee nuns later settled, and from where a contingent emigrated to Armidale in 1882.
Energetic and efficient, with unusually high administrative abilities, Sister Cordula was a competent businesswoman. She held various offices in the religious community: Treasurer; Superior (1898-1904 and 1905-11) and Mistress General of the boarding school (1911-19). Between 1900 and 1907 she was responsible for an extensive building program to enlarge St Ursula’s College and to modernise its facilities. An accomplished artist, Sister Cordula established the reputation of the Ursulines as painters of illuminated addresses for presentation to local and visiting dignitaries. She was quite broad-minded and her friendly manner endeared her to the members of her own religious community as well as to the wider local community.
Sister Cordula died on March 11, 1921 in St Margaret’s Hospital, Sydney, aged 68 years, and was buried in the Nuns’ Section in the Armidale Cemetery. A new wing on the eastern side of the Convent and a three-storey building were added in 1922 and they were named in her memory.
Designed in the Tudor Gothic style of architecture, the additions changed the whole character of the existing buildings which were redecorated to harmonise with the extensions. The graceful lines of the original building and the delicate wrought iron decorations disappeared under heavy brickwork, and the change gave the buildings the monastic appearance which has made St Ursula’s College and the Ursuline Convent such a familiar landmark in Armidale. Photos and their captions will again take up the narrative.
