GEORGE COURT & SONS LIMITED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22970, 23 February 1938, Page 11 (Supplement)

GEORGE COURT & SONS LIMITED

KARANQAHAPE ROAD,

A BRIEF HISTORY . . . . IT was the far-seeing and gentle Father Petitjean, half saint, wholly selfless, and unwearying in his work among the small community of early settlers, who gave to Auckland its first badly-needed school in 1842. Eight years later came the pioneer Sisters of Mercy, a brave little band led by that remarkable and gifted woman, Mother Mary Cecilia Maher, who, at the age of 50, left the security of her Irish convent and turned her face toward a new land, of which she knew nothing beyond the desperate need of its people. They came to a wooden cottage, built on a corner of land in Wyndham Street —the square on which now stands St. Patrick's Cathedral. There was a well and a little plot of flower garden, and little else. But under the care of the Sisters the tiny school throye-and became the nucleus for an orphanage, infant school, girls* school, benefit school and home for the teaching and domesitic training of Maori girls. In those early years Mother Cecilia recorded much of her small convent garden with its fine white lilies and English daisies—but little of the poverty and hardship and the dark robes grown threadbare and tattered in service to the sick, the poor and the: orphaned. December, 1861, saw the laying of foundations for the Mother House at Mount St. Mary's, Ponsonby, where already the 20 boarders from the little Wyndham Street School were housed., Around the gracious Mother House grew up the St. Mary's College of to-day. The old Mother House still stands, serene and dignified, in the gardens of Ponsonby Convent, but the woodfih boarding and day schools have been replaced by concrete buildings after the Spanish Mission style. There's an air of permanence about St. Mary's. The grounds are \ rambling and very beautiful, the lawns stretch out under shady trees j and the new school buildings have something of the mellow peacefulness that surrounds the old wooden Mother House. St. Mary's has kept up the tradition of good literature and good music" begun by Mother Cecilia, and now has a noteworthy school of music. ; Back from Richmond Road, Ponsonby, stretch* over many acres, the green playing fields of Sacred Heart College. Creeper clings to the walls of the school-house, built in 1903, and the grounds are shady with seasoned trees. Go up the drive past flaming borders of cannas and into the quiet hallway and ask any one of the teaching brothers for the College records. You will find three Rhodes Scholars heading the scholastic honours list and the names of prominent Auckland ecclesiastics figuring on the roll of ex-pupils. Sacred Heart College can speak with just pride of fine scholars and athletes who owe their education to the Marist Brothers. The history of Marist education in Auckland began in 1885, when a personal appeal from Bishop Luck brought four Marist Brothers out from France to open a school for Catholic boys. These Brothers of the famous Order dedicated to the teaching of Catholic youth—-an Order which requires of its members great personal sacrifice, while offering none of the privileges of priesthood—took over the Pitt Street School, started seven years earlier by the great American missioner, Father Hennenberry. The squat wooden building with its turret and its white picket fence that housed the first 120 pupils of the Brothers still remains a landmark on the corner of Pitt Street and Wellington Street. At the end of nine years' work the Brothers were accommodating a secondary school in an adjoining brick house and boarders in their own living quarters. In spite oIF these cramped conditions and a pitiful lack of equipment their work went ahead. It was some years later that the Sacred Heart College was built on 40 acres of Church property in Ponsonby and the secondary scholars we're able to move into splendid new quarters, leaving Pitt Street School for the primary pupils. In 1912 a fine new Marist School was built in Vermont Street and the old Pitt Street building vacated in the following year. Vermont' Street gathered in the boy pupils from St. Mary's Convent and in the first six years of its existence piled up scholastic and sports,laurels that placed it in the front rank of New Zealarid's great primary schools, a proud record which the school continues to uphold. From the windows of the Wellington express, pulling into Auckland with a white trail of smoke across the harbour, you get your first glimpse of the Convent of the Sacred Heart. The turrets, the high grey walls, the Cross on the point of the chapel steeple gleam whitely through the trees and the green lawns run down to a tangle of busji at the water's edge. This was once the property of a well-known Auck-r lander. It is his stately"wood-built home that forms this Mother House of the Convent. The beautiful 25-acre property was bought by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1909 and a girls* school established. New buildings were added—dormitories, a little white and! gold chapel, a concert room —foreign languages figured prominently on the syllabus and land was cleared for the six tennis courts and up-to-date sports grounds. To-day the Convent takes well over 100 pupils, most of them boarders. The new concrete wing, completed in time to accommodate the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Panico, and his suite as guests during the Centenary Celebrations, contains a new Montessori room for the small kindergarten folk, a .well-equipped library, soundproof music rooms and extra boarding accommodation. The Convent of the Sacred Heart stands for the best in modern Catholic education, a best typified by the standards of those four splendid schools and colleges that have played so important a part in the training of Auckland's Catholic youth. m