ISLAND BAY CONVENT

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27636, 18 April 1955, Page 2

ISLAND BAY CONVENT

GOLDEN JUBILEE THIS MONTH

Former pupils of the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Island Bay, Wellington, are expected in large numbers from many parts of the Dominion to take part in the convent’s golden jubilee celebrations, beginning on April 27, and continuing until May 5. The foundation stone of the big four-storey concrete house was laid by Archbishop Redwood, Metropolitan of New Zealand, in April, 1905, and received its first pupils at the beginning of the school year in 1906. While the new building was being erected the nuns lived in a small wooden building nearby. They were a cosmopolitan group. The acting superior, Mother Lydon, was an Irish-American, and of the other four, one was a Belgian, one an Australian, and two were Irishwomen. The convent in Island Bay was not the first house opened by the Order of the Sacred Heart in New Zealand. The first house was founded by the nuns 26 years earlier in Umaru, and was for many years regarded as one of the leading private schools for girls in the South Island. At the convent at Island Bay where the jubilee celebrations are to be heli there are now 170 pupils, of whom 140 are boarders. Among those who will attend the celebrations will be Miss Hilda Nottingham, president of the South Island Association of Alumnae, and Miss Nona Gillespie, honorary secretary.