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Named in honour of Prince Alfred’s visit to the district in 1867, Princes Hill was part of Victoria Ward in the City of Melbourne. Although the district was little more than a kilometre from the heart of Carlton, the Melbourne Cemetery and Princes Park had insulated Princes Hill from the rapid, dense urban development that had been occurring in Carlton since the 1850s and 1860s.2 Writing in 1888, ‘Garryowen’ described the area around Royal Park as having recently been ‘a vista of hill and dale, well-wooded and , grassed’.3 This situation changed rapidly in the late 1870s and 1880s. Settlers rushed to Melbourne, attracted by its reputation as the financial and industrial capital of the Australian colonies. By 1889, Carlton had 33,000 inhabitants, and many businesses and industries were located there. The laying of the cable tram along Lygon and Rathdowne Streets and the opening of the Inner Circle railway line with a Carlton station in 1888-9 added to the area’s appeal for city commuters. Although Melbourne as a whole lost population in the early 1890s as the result of a severe economic depression, Carlton continued to grow. By 1895, the population of Carlton’s two wards, Smith and Victoria, numbered 35,703.4
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Under Duncan Gillies, and with the zealous Pearson as Minister, the Victorian government embarked on a major construction programme. The results were striking. In 1872, there had been 1048 schools and 135,962 new students, of whom 68,436 attended regularly. By 1891, the numbers had increased to 2233 schools, 253,469 enrolments, and 141,126 average attendance.13 In 1889, the total building program expenditure was £128,470, more than half the overall Education Department budget of £214,266. Sixteen Metropolitan schools were established to accommodate 4000 new enrolments. One of them ‘was was Princes Hill.
The constant pressure had eventually won out. A memo dated 25 October 1888 informed Gardiner that tenders would be called as soon as money became available. The contract to build a school of 2960 square feet for 300 students at the allocated space ratio of 10 square feet per child was signed on 23 February 1889. A week later the new school was officially listed on the roll as SS 2955.14
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The third phase, first mooted in 1901-2, was built in 1906. It was designed by Samuel E. Bindley according to specifications determined at the 1904 Conference on Hygiene.47 The two-storey enlargement to the north wing provided an extra 6132 square feet, doubling the school’s space. Even at the new ratio of twelve square feet per student, the school could now accommodate 511 scholars. The additions cost £5327.6.ll11. Signed on February 1906, the contract was won by W. H. Deague and Sons of Albert Park. Work was to be completed by 29 September. Delays in June and a strike in early December delayed completion. The building was officially opened on 23 March 1907.48
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Six-foot-wide corridors lined with pressed tin directed movement within the school.51 Externally, the decorative features . that adorned the central upstairs windows of the 1889 building were not reproduced in the extension. It is clear that the Education Department responded belatedly to current community needs rather than planning so as to anticipate future growth. The first stage of Arnold Street was built to accommodate 300 scholars; 250 arrived on the first day. The second stage added another 200 places, when figures were already 500 plus. The third stage provided 502 seats, when the average attendance was 1000. It was to be another seventeen years before the students of Princes Hill would have room to spare.
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The debate in Parliament and the delegation to the Minister galvanised activity. In April 1914, Peacock diplomatically visited the railway site and the school. In 1915, the Department, having decided to erect a new building rather than add a second storey to the existing school, moved to acquire land and design a newjunior new junior school. Meanwhile, to alleviate accommodation pressure, it provided three pavilion classrooms.60
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As life slowly returned to ‘normal after the ‘Great War’, the building of new schools resumed. By 1924-5, the Education Department was spending £350,000 annually on buildings, £219,321 on suburban schools alone. Almost every week the Department could announce that a new school had been opened, or an old one refurbished.61 In Princes Hill, attention again was focused on the school’s plight. In 1920, after six years of negotiations with the Melbourne City Council, the State and Federal Governments, the Education Department finally netted a former army site for a new school. The five-acre site, bordered by MollwraithMcIlwraith, Pigdon and Wilson Streets, was locally known as ‘the swamp’.
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Additions to the school’s building, particularly those of 1906, alterations to accommodate more students, or Departmental changes to classroom design, added to the Head Teacher’s consternation. The north wing built in 1906-7 displayed signs of Frank Tate’s influence on education, with his emphasis on adequate lighting and high standards 22 of cleanliness and hygiene. The old dark green frosted window panes, designed to cut out glare, were replaced by blinds. Glass panes replaced wooden panels in doors, and seating was arranged so that natural light fell over the pupil’s left side. Rooms had to be kept free of dust, even if this meant leaving the room devoid of wall or mantle decorations. Hats and cloaks were no longer to be brought into the classroom, but were to be left outside in the newly erected cloakrooms. The old galleries - twelve-foot-long seats arranged in stepped rows above one another were to be replaced by New Zealand-style dual desks with backed seats, also arranged on stepped floors. The stepped arrangement of galleries took up air space and teachers could not move freely to attend to-individual students. The number of pupils per classroom was now set at fifty. Curiously, an earlier proposal in 1902 to convert the ,schoo1’s school’s gallery room into one with desks had been refused.73
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Skewes quickly took on the spirit of change. He made an extensive, detailed appraisal of the 1906 additions and his recommendations for further alterations. The old portion of the school was disrupted when carpenters were brought in to alter and refurbish the tiered rooms in line with the new proposals. Rooms were reflooredre-floored, desks installed, windows enlarged and frosted glass panes replaced by blinds. Internal brick walls, which hitherto had only been painted, were plastered over and repainted, thus erasing the threat to health posed by greasy and dirty walls. The brown ceilings were repainted white.75
Classroom decorations became acceptable again. A letter to the Argus from an ex-pupil led the way at Princes Hill. Comparing the ‘handsome collection of masterpieces’ adorning the walls of SS Macarthur in Ballarat with the blank and barren walls of Princes Hill, Donald McDonald exhorted all past students of Princes Hill to show their 23 appreciation of their old school by purchasing pictures and presenting them to Princes Hill.76 Requests for money to buy pictures were made periodically to the Department. In 1956, a subsidy of £50 was used to purchase sixteen prints for the Infants’ Department. Among them were Heysen’s ‘Summer’ and, ‘A Summer’s Day’, Corot’s ‘The Bent Tree’, Young’s ‘Evening Sunlight’, and Wood’s ‘Seascape’.77 Scientific and technological developments also made an impression. Despite the general use of electricity‘in electricity in the community, and even though wiring had been installed some time before 1936. (defectively, as it transpired), in 1945 the Department refused to install electric lighting in the classrooms at Pigdon Street. Electric lighting had been connected at Arnold Street in 1912 to provide light for the evening classes. A wireless was bought in 1936, a film projector was promised for 1946, a public-address system was installed in 1947, and a strip projector was supplied in 1959. But here, as in so many other areas, the facilities provided at Princes Hill lagged far behind the times.