St Francis Convent (former)

As part of this building program, a new Catholic Church building and school were proposed for West End. The church was completed in 1923, but was built across the road from its present site at 47 Dornoch Terrace. It was soon discovered that the original site was not large enough for both the new church and the proposed school.

In 1926, the Catholic Church took the opportunity to acquire a large block (8 acres) of land, located just across the road from the new St. Francis Church that belonged to the O’Reilly family who were Scottish Presbyterians. Duhig liked to select sites that were at the centre of a suburb, preferably on high ground. O’ Reilly’s Paddock along ridgeline of Dornoch Terrace fitted Duhig’s strategy perfectly. So St Francis Church was moved across the road to its current location.

In February 1927, Duhig separated West End and Highgate Hill from St. Mary’s Parish of South Brisbane to create the new West End Parish. Upon his arrival, Keating found that

his new parish had poor facilities. Keating recalled that in 1927, he had found “…a small church, a ramshackle building where the convent now stood, a 40 year’s old fence along the front, a cow hall and a large number of gum trees”. 1

The building of the proposed school was finally commenced in 1927. St Francis of Assisi School was blessed and opened by Archbishop Duhig on 22 January 1928. At the school’s opening ceremony, Duhig outlined the role of the Sisters of Mercy in his plan for the West End Parish headquarters site:

“The Sisters of Mercy acquired the old family home (of the O’Reilly’s) which they are now

enlarging, and we kept the remainder of the frontage to Dornoch Terrace for church, school and

presbytery.’2

The alteration and additions were undertaken by building contractors H. Corbett & Sons with the Brisbane City Council approving the work on 4 November 1927. While the work

was being completed, the nuns resided at the Sisters of Mercy All Hallows Convent in Fortitude Valley.

The Sisters of Mercy Convent Building was constructed by completely altering and extending the existing O’Reilly family’s nineteenth century house ‘Toonarbin’. ‘Toonarbin’ was built c 1869 for the shipping agent Captain Henry O’Reilly with the architect being the Englishman, Benjamin Backhouse. The architectural firm of Hall & Prentice were contracted to oversee the conversion of the nineteenth century O’Reilly Residence into a twentieth century convent.

The Convent was opened on 1 April 1928 by Duhig with the cost of the renovations and alterations of ‘Toonarbin’ funded entirely by the Sisters of Mercy. The work was completed just prior to the opening of the new St. Francis Presbytery. A brick fence that fronted the Convent and the adjoining Catholic Church buildings was completed by 1934. Gardens were planted at the front and in the rear of the property. In the quiet back garden, seats were placed where the nuns could sit and reflect while enjoying the views of the University of Queensland’s new St Lucia campus (work began 1937).

The convent primary school had been constructed at the rear of the Convent. The nuns from the Sisters of Mercy provided the entire teaching staff for St.Francis School. The nuns ran a Children of Mary organization for the school’s pupils. Speaking at a 1961 ceremony for the opening of extensions to the school, former pupil, Father Robert Prentice O.F.M. Ph.D, M.A. said of the nuns: "The influence of the Sisters on the minds of little children is a most profound thing”.3 At the same ceremony, the long-serving Parish priest

Monsignor Keating paid a warm tribute to the role of the Sisters of Mercy in the parish. Changing local demographics, particularly the reduction in housing across the West End Parish due to industrialization and the conversion of many old houses into flats and boarding houses for single people; together with the changes to the education system such as end of the state Scholarship exam and the policies introduced under the Radford Scheme had contributed to the school’s declining enrolments during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The nuns continued in their primary teaching role until St Francis School closed in 1974.

After the school’s closure, it served as the Remediation Centre for the Archdiocese of Brisbane. The nuns from the adjoining Convent provided teachers for the Remediation Centre. Other activities under taken by the nuns based at the St Francis Convent were as lecturers at the Australian Catholic University’s McAuley campus or undertaking apostolate work with the local Aboriginal population.

The West End Parish was subsumed by the Dutton Park Parish in 1988. In 2002, only two nuns remained in residence at the Convent and the Convent closed that year. The Convent was sold as a private residence in late 2007.

The western portico features a rendered, concave grotto that formerly housed a statue. Four chimneys are visible from the streetscape, rising clear of the simple pitched, galvanized iron roof with flanking single pitched roofs to the east and west.

The building has a prominent presence in the local streetscape, and is complemented by the face brick and rendered coping fence with wrought iron gates, which extend along the

frontages of the adjoining Convent, Church and School.

1. “A Progressive Parish – Tenth Anniversary of St. Francis’s West End” The Catholic Leader Brisbane, 18 November 1937, p.15. 

2. “St. Francis Parish, West End -The Archbishop Performs Dual Ceremony”, The Age, 28 January

3. ”Archbishop Blesses New School Additions at West End Parish”, The Catholic Leader, 27 July 1961, p.5.

4. The Architecture and Building Journal of Queensland, 7 April 1923

5. Brisbane City Council Water, Sewerage Plan No.623, 1934

6. The Catholic Leader Brisbane, 18 November 1937

7. The Catholic Leader, 27 July 1961

8. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificates of title and other records.

9. ‘Golden Jubilee at West End’, The Leader, 13 March 1977

10. JOL Estate Map Collection and photographic collection

11. Lawson, Ronald Brisbane in the 1890s: A Study of an Australian Urban Society. St Lucia U of Q Press, 1973

12. McKellar's Map of Brisbane and Suburbs. Brisbane: Surveyor-General’s Office, 1895

13. ‘Progress and Development of the Church in the Archdiocese’, Catholic Leader, Jubilee Supplement, 10 November 1955