{"id":1220,"date":"2018-10-29T23:40:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T23:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/testsite\/?page_id=1220"},"modified":"2020-05-26T12:39:57","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T02:39:57","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/stagnesmatraville.org.au\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The first Mass celebrated in this district was on Sunday, 20 January, 1907, when the Bunnerong school-church of Our Lady of the Rosary was blessed and opened by Archbishop Kelly on donated land now known as 45 Perry St, Matraville. At that time, Bunnerong village (the name of the suburb changed to Matraville in 1936) was part of the Randwick Parish District with only a small, scattered Catholic population. It was believed that if a church was built it would not only ease the difficulty of families attending Mass but should assist in attracting more settlers to the area. The wooden school-church was described in The Freeman\u2019s Journal<\/u><\/em> as unpretentious but \u201cserviceable and ample enough to meet present needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n School began on 29 January, 1907 with about forty-six pupils taught by two nuns from the North Botany community of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just a few weeks later, on 1 March, 1907, a new parish of Botany was declared and Bunnerong village was included within the new Botany boundary. The Botany-Bunnerong area at that time was an isolated outer reach of Sydney. Forced by economic circumstances beyond the established suburbs, these new Bunnerong residents set up their tents or humble make-shift homes in the empty areas of open sandhills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In The History of the Australian Province<\/u><\/em>, circa 1911, mention is made of the Bunnerong School: \u201cNo mission could have been harder than this teaching at Bunnerong in the early days of the wooden church-school. How all the children were fitted into the accommodation is one of the mysteries of the apostolate. There was a class in a derelict shed with no glass in the windows; another class in the tiny sacristy; still another class on the verandah; and the rest of the pupils in the main body of the church. When the cold winter winds from the bay swept around the exposed building, the Stations of the Cross swayed on the walls and the statues threatened to fall from their precarious niches. Nevertheless, over the years, the families scattered amid the sand and scrub of Bunnerong did what they could to support both the church and the school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1936, the name of the church-school in Perry St changed from Our Lady of the Rosary to St Agnes to avoid confusion with Our Lady of the Rosary School in Kensington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1939, the Archbishop informed that St Agnes church-school would come under the control of Malabar Parish. By this time, there was an urgent need for a new church-school in Matraville but various circumstances and World War Two delayed this necessary project. The potentially dangerous safety issues and inadequate size of the church-school building fronting the tram lines in Perry St were causing immense concern to parishioners and the school\u2019s pupils and their parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, on 6 November, 1949, Cardinal Gilroy blessed the foundation stone of a new brick church-school building in Perry St. It was to open in May, 1951: a happy occasion for Our Lady of the Sacred Heart nuns who had taught with dedication for forty-four years under difficult conditions. They now had a modern, large building designed, first and foremost for school purposes and secondly for church purposes. This long-awaited brick church-school building, right next to the old timber school-church, was planned to serve the Matraville parishioners well into the next century but was to be abandoned within ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n