Church Comes to Light​

Recently, I was fortunate enough to obtain a brick from the church in which my great-grandparents were the first couple married. Normally, that would be unusual enough, but in this instance, it was made all the more unusual as the church was demolished nearly 60 years ago!

With recent earthworks near the Margaret Mary building, in preparation for our new auditorium (see the page 'Please Be Seated' in this edition), a section of foundations was uncovered. As is the norm around here, maintenance staff asked if I knew anything about them.

The Margaret Mary Wing was built in 1958 and opened in 1959 and included what we now know as Rooms 47-50 on the ground floor and a large hall on the top floor. (This hall was replaced in 1985 with our current hall named for Mary Dalton csb, who was Principal 1985-1995.) To make space for the Margaret Mary wing, the old Kilbreda Hall had to be removed.

The demolished hall was the second St Patrick’s church, which was built in 1905 and continued as the parish church until 1930, when the parish built in Childers Street, Mentone. The church was then ‘offered’ to Kilbreda for use as a hall. It was an offer we could not refuse, as the school already had a hall and secondly, the school had only recently built a new wing. This new wing, the Colonnade, or St Benedict’s Wing, was already a drain on the sisters’ finances, so they could ill afford another debt of £3,000 on top of what they already owed. Luckily for us, it all worked out in the end!

The foundations can still be seen from the street outside Room 47. The building had a frontage of 35 feet to Como Parade and was 60 feet deep. I had always known roughly where it was, but now we know exactly! Derek, our maintenance man, tells me that the Hoffman bricks used in the construction were made between the late 1890s and early 1900s, which fits the story perfectly!

This little piece of Mentone history, like Halley’s Comet, will only be visible for a short time. I wonder if, some time in the future, we might see it again?

Damian Smith

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