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The opening was originally scheduled for June. or July, but the usual delays associated with building projects postponed that event until September. In August, the Department threatened to take legal action against the contractor, C. Campbell, for neglecting to complete the building. In September, the schoolyard still needed levelling and screening; there was no asphalt on the girls’ playground, the path to the front entrance or the paths between the school and the out-offices. For some reason District Inspector Swindley, who had been sent to examine the building and assess the works needing completion, recommended that the estimated £82 required to pave the girls’ playground would be a waste of money, and the job should not be proceeded with.15
There were other, potentially more serious worries. In a letter to the Department on 22 August, Mr B.Jackson of Garton Street complained that the lane between the unfenced school grounds and the backs of the Garton Street houses was a quagmire of unsanitary filth. The freely flowing drainage from the houses, he argued, endangered the health of children and residents. Diphtheria had already claimed one victim. The lane was finally paved by the Melbourne City Council on 10 February 1890.16
The events between March 1887, when the proposal for a new school was raised, and September 1889, when the school was opened, set the pattern of the schools’ history for the next century. If the Education Department was reluctant to build a new school until all alternatives had been explored and building was absolutely necessary, it was also parsimonious in the space it provided. The 1889 building was designed to house 300 pupils, even though Tynan’s 1887 report had predicted enrolments of over 500. The school’s local critics had objected that Princes Hill would take students from elsewhere. They were right. The unfortunate children who hitherto had walked the long distances along ‘perfect’ roads to Carlton and Brunswick flocked to the new neighbourhood school.17 Within six months, the 250 scholars who had assembled at the opening ceremony were fighting for space. With a capacity of 300, the school ’ had 338 students in February 1890, 372 in March, 379 in April and 416 in May. The 1890 enrolments peaked at 442 in June."’ 18 More space was urgently needed. Two rooms were added in 1891 to accommodate another 206 students. By that stage, however, average attendance was already in the high 400s, and it continued to rise. Acting Head Teacher Louis McNab reported on 20' August 1895 that 609 scholars were at school on that day. Since 1 July, he added, 686 different children had attended Princes Hill: the numbers only dropped below 600 on particularly wet days.’9 On 1 1 9 On 11 September 1901, Head Teacher Richard Skewes outlined the school’s plight. The infant room, which had been built to accommodate 120 children, now had to cater for 156. When weather permitted, the extra thirty-six were being taught in the playground; a further twenty-eight children were waiting to be admitted.20 The Education Department did not respond rapidly. Even when the school was built, Victoria was poised on the edge of a severe economic depression. Over the next two years, funds began to get tight as the supply of loan capital from Britain dried up. Early in 1891, it became clear that" the situation was critical. The Victorian government was rebuffed in its ‘attempt to raise a £3-million loan in London, and was left with no option but to make heavy expenditure cuts. School construction was one of the first casualties. Where the Gillies government had spent £128,470 on buildings in 1889, in 1892 the new Minister of Public Instruction, Alexander Peacock, cut expenditure to £28,272. In 1893, Queensberry Street and Rathdowne Street were among thirty-two pairs of schools amalgamated to save a paltry £16,519. By 1894-5, annual building expenditure was down to £6651; by June 1896, 221 schools had been closed.21
” The colony’s economic problems, however, were not the only obstacle. The Education Department archives contain considerable evidence of bureaucratic inertia. The signs are to be found mostly among internal memoranda commenting on requests from schools for assistance, whether it be space, repairs, staff numbers, equipment or materials. These are characterised by slow responses, requests for further information, another opinion, costing, files passed back and forth, deferred decisions.
Despite clear signs in 1887 and 1888 that a school was needed in Princes Hill, the Education Department adopted Tynan’s stop-gap recommendations that Princes Hill children attend other schools. Other such temporary measures included leasing suitable space, lowering the space allocation per student, refusing new enrolments and adding to the existing building. The Department had a long history of this kind of thing. As early as 1874, it was renting 457 buildings - including halls, churches, and former private schools - to accommodate the student overflow.” 22 By 1890, the Department was an experienced tenant and property seeker, with guidelines to direct rental procedure. After complaints of overcrowding and requests for more space were lodged with the Department, and attendance patterns had stabilised, the Head Teacher would be instructed to seek out suitable buildings for rental. A report was submitted, preferably accompanied by a ground plan of the proposed building, and sometimes a street plan showing the proximity of the building to the school.23 The lease would be signed after approval of the District Inspector and the Board of Advice representatives.
The first instance of ‘dispersed education’ at Princes Hill came in April 1890, when the average attendance of 430 was causing acute overcrowding?’ .24 Inspector Tynan, sent to investigate the situation, reported that space for another 200 students was required; that no suitable buildings were available for leasing, but perhaps a ‘portable’ from SS 1896 in Prahran could be sent to Princes Hill.25 Gardiner, however, was not far from developments and quickly found a shop for rent in Richardson Street.2" 26
Inspector James Laing, sent to assess the shop’s suitability, rejected it, as well as another building in Rathdowne Street: the rooms of the former were too small, and the latter was too close to SS Lee Street. He did, however, recommend a shop in Lygon Street, between Paterson and 11 Pigdon Streets,” 27 well-known to today’s students and residents as the local fish-and-chips shop. It had two large rooms that could house grades 5 downstairs and 6 upstairs. The Carlton Board of Advice also approved, and a lease was entered into with Mr J. Purvis, Ironmonger, for 30 shillings per week from 7 August 1890 until 24 December 1890.28 The shop was finally surrendered to Mr Purvis, together with a payment of £4 to compensate for damages, in December 1891, when grades 5 and 6 returned to-Arnold Street.29
The decade from 1895 ushered in the next spate of dispersed education at Princes Hill. During those years, the Department was inundated - often weekly, even daily with missives from the school concerning the acute overcrowding, aggravated by the growing flood of enrolments. By August 1895, Head Teacher McNab was compelled to refuse new admissions.30 The only solution was another extension. But before the Department would agree to this, it juggled alternative options - zoning, reduced space allocation, leased buildings - to win time.
These ad hoc measures could not solve long-term problems. On two occasions, in February 1895 and June 1899, the Department instructed the Head Teachers to forward lists of grades 4 and 5 classes recording dates of birth, addresses, distance from Princes Hill, and the distance and direction of the nearest alternative school to their home. The purpose was to determine whether amalgamation with another school was feasible, and what further accommodation should be considered for Princes Hill. (In this context, it is hard to understand why information was sought on grades 4 and 5 rather than the junior school, where the potential growth was.)3’ 31 Twice, in 1889 and 1903, the Department instructed the Head Teachers to draw up lists of students who could be transferred to Lygon Street and Brunswick South respectively. In 1903, Head Teacher Skewes resisted the directive, arguing that only seven of the 123 children attending classes at Christian Chapel, Pigdon Street (which was being used as an annexe) were from Brunswick; the Inner Circle railway line, which ran parallel to Park Street, was dangerous and difficult to cross; nor was it sound to separate brothers and sisters attending Arnold Street.” In August 1895, when McNab complained that 12 burgeoning enrolments were forcing him to turn students away, the Department reduced the space allocation from ten square feet to eight square feet per student, thus increasing the school’s capacity from 500 to 625 scholars.33 Unable to repeat that solution in 1899, when the complaint was again voiced, the Department ordered Skewes to arrange transfers to Brunswick South and to refuse new admissions.3" The instructions were repeated in 1903 and 1904.35 Sent in 1899 and 1902 to investigate the situation, District Inspectors S. Swindley and H. Shelton confirmed the obvious: short-term measures did not help. Princes Hill was not the only overcrowded school in the area. Only Lygon Street had space, but access to it was barred by the cemetery. Therefore, zoning or refusing admissions was not the answer. Nor was leasing space a viable solution: there were obvious problems of distance and supervision. Only extensions to the school building, Shelton concluded, would improve the situation.3 While the Education Department deliberated alternative solutions, the scholars of Princes Hill attended school in leased classrooms about Princes Hill and North Carlton. In November 1899, the school began a six-month lease of St Michael’s Hall on the corner of McIlwraith and McPherson Streets, five minutes’ walk from the main school. Here, one large classroom (54 feet by 31 feet 6 inches) and two smaller classrooms accommodated the 240 students in grades 1 and 2.37 In September 1901, the infant school returned to Mr Purvis’ shop in Lygon Street.38 In February 1904, after almost five years of negotiations, the Christian Chapel in Pigdon Street, between Rathdowne and Drummond Streets, was again leased, for £52 per annum. This was eight minutes’ walk from Arnold Street. It provided two large rooms (33 by 40 feet) and two smaller rooms."9 Nevertheless, the economic pressures were at last beginning to ease. By the turn of the century, government finances had improved sufficiently for public works programmes to resume. With a new Education Act and a new Director, Frank Tate, the Department began to do something about what Tate described as the ‘appalling heritage’ of nine years’ penny-pinching. In 1908, £40,000 was spent on new buildings and the remodelling of old ones. In 1909-10, the sum increased to £130,000.“ 13 The effects of the new policy were soon felt at Princes Hill. In March 1901, the Department held preliminary discussions to consider extending the school to accommodate another 250 children at a cost of £2350. In February 1902, at the suggestion of the Public Works Department, the proposed extensions were expanded to house 427 children at a cost of £3450.“ On 17 July 1902, Inspector Shelton reaffirmed the need for extensions, adding that at least a portion of the project should be built. Despite internal Departmental agreement that additions were necessary, work did not commence until 1906. The Arnold St building that was destroyed by fire on the morning of 8 February 1970 had been erected in three stages. The 1889 structure, which remained the central portion of the final building, was positioned on an east-west axis, approximately in the centre of the block, which had a frontage of 188 feet and a depth of 159 feet; The cube shaped, double-storey building was Gothic in style, with a polychrome brick facade and a slate roof. It cost £2221 and provided 2960 square feet of floor space.” Newspaper reports describe it as commodious and handsome. The four classrooms - two downstairs and two upstairs were well lit and ventilated.” The prominent bell tower that dominates photographs of the old building stood above the front upstairs classroom. The two downstairs rooms were positioned one behind the other. The front classroom was entirely a gallery room. Based on the English system, the room was filled with long backless desks, between six and twelve feet long,, each row standing on a platform three inches higher than the one in front. The rear room used by the infants was partly furnished with desks and partly with a gallery. Beside the front room was the Head Teacher’s office, a draughty, stone-floored, boxed-in passage. Although the first Head Teacher, John Russell, asked that any future plans for extensions to the school incorporate a proper office, the Department was not favourably disposed. The space, he was informed, would have to do: it was not anticipated that in a school of Princes Hill’s size the Head Teacher would be spending much time in the office. If the school was enlarged, an office would be considered.“ In 1889, the two upstairs rooms accommodated grades 4, 5 and 6.
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