At St Margaret’s Day this year, we celebrated the heart of St Margaret’s (the school’s foundation building on the Ascot site – Community House) and our school theme: striving. Striving is really at the heart of St Margaret’s development and was a key element in the story of the success of the Sisters of the Society of the Sacred Advent (SSA) when founding St Margaret’s.

The foundation of St Margaret’s and its early growth was not easy; the school remained very small for its first 20 years, and it was only due to the efforts of a number of key women that the school survived to celebrate St Margaret’s Day.

The St Margaret’s story begins on the other side of the world, in Leicestershire, England in 1837, when the hero at the beginning of the story was born, a woman, Caroline Amy Balguy. 

Fast forward 39 years, and Caroline Amy became a novice in the Community of St John the Baptist at a place called Clewer. As a nun, she worked with destitute and poor women. At 55 years of age, Caroline Amy was striving for more, claiming “that she felt God was calling [her] out of Clewer for some purpose”. That calling was to do missionary work on the other side of the world, in Brisbane, to support poor and disadvantaged women and children and to establish much needed Church schools. 

Brisbane parishes, however, could not financially support a group of Sisters, and Sister Caroline’s family provided the funds for her and one other woman, a Deaconess Minnie, who was also a trained nurse, to travel to Brisbane. The money they had could only support them for one year; nevertheless, Sister Caroline and Minnie took the risk and arrived in Brisbane in December 1892 and began their work under a new name, The Sisters of the Society of the Sacred Advent – an order independent of their order in Clewer, England.

Within six months of arrival (May 1893), Caroline Amy had acquired a failed boys’ school at Nundah where she laid the foundations of a most successful girls’ school, St Margaret’s. That school was called Eton High School for Girls and Eton Hall is named after the original name of St Margaret’s.

In the 1890s, there were a significant number of homeless and neglected children in Brisbane. Sister Caroline had to work very hard and with purpose, to establish and grow a new order of Sisters. She achieved much within only two years of her arrival in Brisbane, with numbers of Sisters and novices increasing and taking responsibility for operating an orphanage and then later working in the areas of nursing and education.

There is no doubt that Sister Caroline Amy was a history maker – she was driven and established an independent order of nuns which she named Sisters of the Society of the Sacred Advent. She strove to support the education of girls and young women and, in 1895, their first school – our school – was established.

So, what attributes did she have? In addition to her devotion to her faith, she was the epitome of striving – having courage, initiative, determination, and zeal. Her courage and decisions, albeit in the distant past, have influenced the very existence of St Margaret’s today.

However, in these early days, there were many other women who were constantly striving in support of St Margaret’s – Mother Emma Crawford, the Mother Superior of the Order, and Isabella Caine (1895 – 1907), the first Headmistress and the second Headmistress, Juliet Lyon (1907 – 1917).

The Church Chronicle of January 1887 provides an insight into the work ethic of the Sisters, and no doubt Isabella Caine, and their willingness to take on ambitious projects. They lamented that their current school could take no more than 8 – 9 boarders. So, with perspicacity and determination, they launched an appeal to fund expansion and renovations, and the diaries of Mother Emma at the time records entries in April, May, August, and September 1898 of the Sisters begging in the streets for donations.

Progress at the fledgling St Margaret’s was very slow, and if it weren’t for the undaunted focus of the Sisters, St Margaret’s would have closed. However, by 1907 things were looking up, and the Sisters took a lease on Toorak House, an imposing two-story home on Hamilton Hill where they stayed until 1910 and another Headmistress, Miss Juliet Lyon (related to the family of the Queen Mother) took the helm of the school. There is little doubt that the future St Margaret’s owes much to the strength of Mother Emma and Juliet Lyon’s successful leadership of the school.

Obviously, our Toorak Building, where the Year 7 precinct is now, was named in honour of this location. It is at this point we became known as the Church of England High School for Girls and Daphne Mayo, who the Mayo Arts Festival is named for, was a student at the Toorak House campus in 1907.

The records of the time indicate that Mother Emma was looking for a new site as she feared that its current location was temporary as the owners had decided to sell. One that she seriously considered was a place called Fernberg at Paddington. However, it was sold to the Queensland Government and is now the current home of the Governor of Queensland.

In 1910, Mother Emma purchased a home called Donatello for the asking price of 3,000 pounds. With the purchase of the house, they promptly changed its name to St Margaret’s House. We now know that home as Community House, but it became the start and heart of St Margaret’s on this site. And as you all know, we are excited to start renovations of this important building for our new Student Wellbeing Centre.

In honour of the Sisters who referred to it as Community House, we will retain that name, a fitting name, not just because of its legacy housing the SSA community, but because we are all part of a strong community.

By 1911, St Margaret’s had 67 students; I do not believe that those four early St Margaret’s pioneers could ever have imagined our current school with 1,425 students. Without their ‘striving’, St Margaret’s may have had no future and be confined to a footnote in a local history book. St Margaret’s Day gives us the opportunity to celebrate these important stories in our history. 

Per Volar Sunata

Ros Curtis AM
Principal