Holloway at 75

The Holloway campus officially opened its doors at the start of February 1949.  But it was a long process to get to this stage, and the story of the land on which the school sits and the process of getting a school built is interesting.

We need to strip away the layers of the school and its environs.  The land surrounding the school was once covered in heath and scrubby trees growing on sand dunes.  Much of this is now covered over by suburbia except for a remnant block adjacent to the school site, the Bay Road Heathland Sanctuary.  Criss-crossed by small streams that flowed in a north-westerly direction towards the bay, the land was once home to tribes of the Bunurong people who used the streams and land for food and materials.

In the 1850s, the land was surveyed by Henry Dendy who had bought a very large tract of land covering much of what we know as Moorabbin, Brighton, and Sandringham. He subdivided his holdings and land speculator Josiah Morris Holloway, namesake of the school and nearby road, bought a large block stretching from Bay Road in the north to Balcombe Road in the south, and bounded on the east and west by Reserve and Bluff Roads. This was just one of Holloway’s tracts of land throughout Melbourne and he subdivided and sold his land very quickly afterwards. 

Nearly a century later in the 1940s with a much larger population in the surrounding area, and land evolving from market gardens to housing, the need for a new technical school in the area was identified as nearby schools in Hampton, Brighton, and Cheltenham were very overcrowded.  Also, Sandringham East Primary School had been built in the area in 1927 and the students needed somewhere to go once they reached leaving age.  

A delegation from the Education Department met with representatives from the Sandringham Council who pressed the need for a new school and were willing to provide the land.  By 1944, blocks of land had been bought by the council at low prices from landowners who owned land in the Bon View Estate – an estate where the school sits.  Remnants of this estate can be seen on the entrance road to the school between the primary school and college buildings, and Google Maps.

Construction of Sandringham Technical School commenced in 1947, delayed because of a shortage of manpower and materials due to World War Two.  It was designed by Government Architect Percy Everett and is one of the last schools in Victoria designed in his distinctive Moderne style – many other schools around Victoria built in this time look very similar.  By the end of 1948 the school was just about ready to be opened and the founding principal, Mr. Marcus Beresford, was transferred from Sale Technical School.  It opened its doors in February 1949 with an enrolment of one hundred and twenty boys.

If the school community has any other stories or photos to contribute, or donate (especially Sandringham Technical School yearbooks), please do not hesitate to get in contact with Jeremy de Korte (Teacher-Librarian/School Archives).