St James' Hall, Warwick

General

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Also known as

Assembly Hall

Classification

State Heritage

Register status

Entered

Date entered

21 August 1992

Type

Social and community: Hall—other

Themes

8.1 Creating social and cultural institutions: Worshipping and religious institutions

9.2 Educating Queenslanders: Providing secondary education

Construction period

1917, Assembly Hall

Historical period

1914–1919 World War I

Location

Address

6 Locke Street, Warwick

LGA

Southern Downs Regional Council

Coordinates

-28.2259056, 152.0282117

Significance

Criterion AThe place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland’s history.

St James’ Hall, Warwick (1917, relocated 1987), through its form, fabric and architectural composition, is important in demonstrating the pattern of development of the Roman Catholic Church in Queensland. The hall was built as a component of Our Lady of Assumption Convent following the establishment of the Convent High School by the Warwick Sisters of Mercy in 1914.  

Built as a recreation hall for the school, with a focus on providing music education and holding performances, St James’ Hall is also important in demonstrating the development of secondary education and specialist education including music, as well as the role of religious groups in providing that education. As a hall purpose-built for music education and performance, it is important in demonstrating the Sisters of Mercy’s long and significant role in providing music education to students in the 19th and 20th centuries.

History

St James’ Hall, Warwick, was built in 1917 to the design of architects Dornbusch and Connolly for the Sisters of Mercy. The hall was named for Archbishop Duhig who opened the building in October 1917. Constructed as a recreation hall to provide music education and performance space for Warwick’s Convent High School, run by the Sisters, the hall was used by the school students and teachers for classes and public performances throughout the 20th century. Moved to its current site in 1987, the hall remains part of Assumption College, Warwick.

The land around what is now Warwick has been occupied for thousands of years by speakers of the Bundjalung language group. Traditionally home of the Githabul People[1] the open country was carefully and deliberately maintained by its Aboriginal custodians in an annual pattern of controlled burns to preserve pasture for native grazing animals. European occupation of the Darling Downs by graziers and pastoralists began in 1840. The town of Warwick was surveyed by James Burnett in 1849, with the first sale of crown land in July 1850. Warwick was declared a municipality (Queensland’s fifth) in 1861 and grew from a squatters' town into the principal urban centre of the prosperous southern Darling Downs’ pastoral and agricultural district.[2]

Early Catholic services began in Warwick at the Horse and Jockey Inn in 1852 with Father McGinty, one of only two Catholic priests in Queensland, travelling from Ipswich to celebrate mass. McGinty continued to serve the parish from Ipswich until 1862, when Warwick became a large separate parish within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brisbane. Dr John Cani, later first bishop of Rockhampton, was the first permanent parish priest in Warwick and during his posting the first St Mary’s Church [QHR 600958] was constructed, opening in 1865. A Catholic school, run by the Misses O’Mara in the Albion Street Oddfellows’ Hall, followed in 1867.[3]

The railway linking Brisbane to the tin mines of Stanthorpe reached Warwick in January 1871, fuelling further development in Warwick. As the population grew, an order of the Sisters of Mercy was founded in the town on 29 October 1874. The order had arrived in Queensland from Ireland thirteen years earlier with Brisbane’s first Bishop James Quinn (1861-1881). The Warwick community was the fifth branch house that the Sisters of Mercy established in Queensland, from the mother house at All Hallows' in Brisbane (QHR 600200). For their first Warwick convent, the Sisters acquired a brick cottage at the corner of Albion and Percy streets, and immediately took over the running of the Catholic school.[4]

The Sisters of Mercy, founded in Ireland by Catherine McAuley in 1831, was principally a teaching order. The establishment of religious schools in the Queensland colony was considered crucial to instil and strengthen faith in the community where religion was secondary to money-making.[5] By 1892, the Sisters were educating 7,000 students at 26 schools across Queensland, including secondary schools for girls in Brisbane and Rockhampton.

The quality of education offered by the Sisters was high, including a comprehensive curriculum with specialist teachers in music and domestic science decades before these were introduced at state schools. It was also broad-ranging, providing education to young women before the concept of formal academic education for girls had become part of Australia’s educational system, and ecumenical, open to non-Catholic and Catholic students. Members of all religious denominations from regional centres across Queensland and northern New South Wales sought education at the Sisters’ schools. The number of non-Catholic enrolments exceeded that of the Catholic enrolments until the 1880s and remained equal to them until the turn of the century.[6]

At Warwick, class sizes quickly increased beyond the building’s capacity, and in 1882, the school moved from the Oddfellows’ Hall to St Mary’s Church in Palmerin Street. The Sisters remained housed in the cottage until 1893 when after many years of planning, a new convent was ready for occupation. The site, a 14½ acre block on Locke Street, was chosen by Bishop Quinn and purchased by the Sisters in 1877. An imposing two storeyed sandstone convent, designed by architects George Simkin and John Ibler, was constructed on the site and opened in 1893 [QHR 600953]. The new convent included accommodation for 30 school boarders as well as the sisters, and helped give rise to the name ‘St Mary’s Convent School’ or ‘the Convent School’. A western wing, part of the original plan, was constructed in 1904.[7]

Extensive reforms in Queensland’s educational system in the early 20th century impacted on both Warwick and the Convent School. Although primary education and been made free and compulsory from 1875, Queenslanders had limited access to secondary or tertiary education before 1900. Secondary education was provided through a small number of grammar schools, denominational schools or private high schools; all charged fees, with only a limited number of state scholarships available to the grammar schools. From 1900, students who passed the scholarship examination could take up their secondary education at schools approved by the Governor-in-Council, which included private and denominational schools. In 1912, state high schools were introduced to Queensland. Though initially opened in small numbers, these schools vastly expanded Queenslanders’ access to secondary education and provided a pathway to the recently introduced University of Queensland, teachers’ training college or technical schools.[8]

Warwick was considered an ideal location for educational institutions, thanks to its climate (believed to be conducive to studying), ‘congenial surroundings’ and railway service.[9] From 1910 a number of state, private, boarding and day schools offering primary and secondary education opened at Warwick, including: the Warwick Technical College (1910; and High School 1914 [QHR 6500562]); St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College for boys (1912); Church of England Girls School (1917); Presbyterian Girls’ College (1918); Scots College (1919) and the Slade School (1926).[10]

Warwick’s Catholic residents, who comprised almost a third of the city’s population by 1911, also felt the need for their students to compete for any available scholarships. In 1912, Sister M Vincent Donovan began a room in the Convent School dedicated to secondary classes. At the same time, a number of male students were transferred to the newly-opened Christian Brothers’ College, allowing the Sisters to focus largely on educating girls.[11]

In 1914 an extension of the convent’s western wing was added to designs by local architectural firm, Dornbusch and Connolly. This extension was undertaken in response to the newly introduced State High School provisions, which required additional subjects to be taught at the convent for students’ eligibility to graduate at junior and senior levels. The new extension furnished the convent with extra classrooms and space for boarders’ accommodation. Female secondary school students were relocated from St Mary’s primary school in 1915, marking the beginning of the Convent High School.[12]

While the new extensions facilitated secondary teaching, there was insufficient space within the convent building to assemble students in one space. Additionally, Warwick’s Sisters of Mercy had a particular and long-standing focus on teaching vocal and instrumental music and a suitable space for classes and concerts was also required. Convent school students were renowned for their ability in musical performance from the early 20th century, earning honours in music examinations and winning local and State competitions,[13] including the Queensland Eisteddfod piano competition in 1911, and the school choirs competition in April 1917.[14] Archbishop Duhig, attending a concert at the school in December 1916,

'mentioned that he had hardly ever listened to a finer concert than the one he had heard that evening. He congratulated the pupils upon their prowess, which was so largely the result of the excellent education given by the Sisters of Mercy, and which brought the children so closely in contact with those refining influences which make for so much in modern education.’[15]

The Warwick Examiner and Times lamented, however, ‘that the concert room was not more spacious so that full justice could be done to the real excellence of the performances, and also add to the comfort of the audience’.[16]

In 1917, the Sisters again engaged the services of Dornbusch and Connolly to design a large timber hall adjacent to the High School wing to accommodate their needs. Architect Conrad Dornbusch (1867-1949) had trained in England, and by 1887 was employed in the Brisbane office of the architects Oakden, Addison and Kemp. He was practicing as an architect in Warwick by 1891. He was elected an Associate of the Queensland Institute of Architects in 1893, and a Fellow in 1913. He was an Alderman of the Warwick Municipal Council in 1901. In 1910 he entered into a partnership with Queensland-trained architect Daniel Connolly, with their offices located opposite the Town Hall. Dornbusch and Connolly worked on a number of prominent Warwick buildings, including the Christian Brothers’ School; the Mitchner shelter shed at the Warwick General Cemetery [QHR602152]; the Johnsons Building [QHR600960] adjacent to the Town Hall; the Langham [QHR600957] and Criterion [QHR600962] hotels on Palmerin Street; and the 1926 St Mary’s Church [QHR600959]. The partnership also designed the rest house at the Stanthorpe Soldiers Memorial [QHR601632].[17]

Dornbusch and Connolly received tenders for the Convent’s ‘recreation hall’ in February 1917. The contractor for the hall was Phillip Thornton and the painting was undertaken by John Ambrose Lefrancke. The building was officially opened on Monday 22 October by Archbishop James Duhig, and named St James’ Hall in his honour.[18] Some 500 people were in attendance and a fundraising concert was performed by students. The building of the hall had coincided with a push within the Warwick parish for a new church to replace St Mary’s, and the concert was the first public appeal for funds by the Sisters.[19]

St James’ Hall was described in the Warwick Examiner and Times shortly after its opening. The building was 69ft x 40ft (21m x 12m), with a 40ft x 15ft (12m x 4.5m) stage. Behind the stage were two small teaching rooms (21ft x 10ft and 17 x 10ft) (6.4m x 3m and 5m x 3m). The main hall featured a 20ft (6m) high coved ceiling with pressed metal panels; fixed seating around the walls; four double hung outward-opening escape doors with fanlights, and eight casement windows with fanlights, ‘opening outwards so as to catch any breeze that may be passing’. Gables in the roof were louvered, allowing warm air to escape. A porch provided the main entrance at the building’s eastern end. The roof – a single span with subsidiary roofs and gables – had a 4ft (1.2m) overhang to provide protection from sunlight. Inside, ornamental columns and panelling provided screening at both sides of the stage, flanking a heavy curtain. The description emphasised the hall’s acoustic properties (a test of which had ‘given every satisfaction to the Sisters’), decorative features, ventilation and heat reduction features.[20] Later articles exhorted the hall’s aesthetic qualities of soft curves, quiet beauty, desirable acoustic properties, splendid lighting, ‘modern’ ventilation, handsome stage and embellishments and tasteful artwork at the back of the stage.[21]

With accommodation for music training and performance space at St James’ Hall, Convent High School students maintained their reputation for musical excellence into the mid-20th century. In 1921 a Convent student was the first to receive the Queensland-wide three-year travelling scholarship from Trinity College London.[22] All of the school’s students were trained for Trinity College London and University of Queensland music board examinations,[23] and a number of the Convent students received high-level musical qualifications from Trinity College while under the Sisters’ tuition.[24] Others used their musical education at the Convent as the basis for professional careers in music.[25]

St James’ Hall also provided a useful function venue for the school. The convent’s annual end of year entertainments and awards presentations were held in the hall, as were public music lectures; fundraising concerts; music examinations for students of the Convent and other Warwick schools; and euchre tournaments and dances, hosted by past students. Public concerts were held for high-ranking religious figures, beginning with an entertainment for the Apostolic Delegate to Australia in 1918.[26]

In February 1922, the Warwick Convent School was approved as a school at which holders of state scholarships could attend.[27] The Governor (Sir Matthew Nathan) attended a performance at the school; Archbishop Duhig encouraged the Warwick parish priest to ‘be sure and show him [the Governor] the new hall’ at the school.[28] The Governor returned in December to present prizes at the school’s end of year event, when ‘the beautiful and spacious hall was arranged like a drawing-room with comfortable easy chairs and large carpet square’.[29]

By 1964 St James Hall had been renovated to include temporary high school accommodation. In 1969 Warwick Assumption College was built next to the convent to provide additional facilities for the Convent High School. Year 11 and 12 classes were discontinued at the Convent High School in 1975. In 1980 Assumption College became a co-educational Junior Secondary College, absorbing the boys from St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College.[30]

St James’ Hall, also known as the Assembly Hall, was moved from its original site west of the convent in 1987 to the Assumption College grounds.[31] Some features of the hall were altered or lost, including the stage with decorative arch, side screens and curtain; interior fixed perimeter seating; external gabled roof vents (removed 1975-6); and crosses to the gable ends of the main roof. Additional windows have been inserted and the porch altered with the removal and insertion of balustrading.

The Sisters of Mercy withdrew from Warwick in 1988, marking the end of the convent’s association with school teaching. Lay Catholics in the town retained the convent as a short-lived campus for tertiary education (Sophia College) before the building was sold in 1994 to private owners.[32]

Within Assumption College, St James’ Hall is still maintained as a space for assembling students and for teaching subjects including music.

Description

St James’ Hall, Warwick (1917, relocated 1987) occupies a level site within the grounds of Assumption College, approximately 1km south of the central business district in Warwick. Relocated from its original position on the adjacent allotment (Cloisters (Our Lady of the Assumption Convent) [QHR 600953]) and accessed from Lock Street to the north, the place stands at the western edge of the school grounds, southeast of the main school buildings and adjacent to the sports fields.

Features of state-level significance at the place include:

• Hall (1917, relocated 1987)

Hall (1917, relocated 1987)

The Hall is a rectangular timber building, set on low stumps, with its long sides facing east and west. It has a gable roof that wraps at its lower sections around the front (north) of the building to form hip-roofed awnings. The awnings frame a central gable-roofed entrance porch, which is accessed from its front (northern) side (balustrade has been altered - formerly accessed from its western side). A narrow hip-roofed projection extends from the rear (south) elevation and features a decorative gablet. No visible evidence remains of gabled roof vents.  

The interior comprises a large rectangular auditorium, separated by a full-height timber partition from a southern storage room (forming the southern projection). The auditorium has a low stage at the south end and a coved ceiling with metal tie-rods (the coved ceiling and tie rods are concealed by a removable suspended ceiling). Its walls feature a moulded timber dado and picture rails.  

Features of the Hall of state-level cultural heritage significance include:

• Rectangular, timber-framed building on stumps
• Gable roof form, with hip-roofed northern awnings and hip-roofed southern projection
• Corrugated metal sheet roof cladding
• Vertical timber slat infills to apexes of the gable ends, the southern gablet and the entrance porch, including narrow decorative timber brackets, and timber base plates (the base plate to the entrance porch and the southern gablet and are scalloped)
• Any remnant roof framing concealed within the roof space indicating dormer window configuration
• Timber soffit linings
• Decorative timber eaves brackets
• Timber fascia boards
• Entrance porch, including its: corrugated metal sheet-clad gable roof; stop-chamfered timber posts; decorative post brackets; stop-chamfered horizontal rails with ball finials; stop-chamfered timber top-plate rails; V-jointed (VJ) timber infills over top plates, including front (north)-facing timber sign with lettering ‘A-M-D-G; ST JAMES’S HALL; 1917 A.D.’; decorative pressed metal ceiling lining; timber board floor; and single-skin, VJ timber-clad eastern wall with timber-framed, gothic arch opening
• Timber chamferboard exterior wall cladding
• Auditorium, including its: large, open room with low stage at the southern end; coved ceiling lined with decorative pressed metal; VJ timber interior wall lining; moulded timber dado and picture rails; and wide timber skirting boards
• Southern storage room (formerly two rooms), including its: coved ceiling lined in decorative pressed metal; ceiling rose vents; VJ timber interior wall lining; and wide timber skirting boards
• Outward opening, dual, braced and ledged timber doors with VJ cladding, and two-light fanlights (to the front elevation, and two sets of doors to each long elevation)
• Five-light, timber-framed casement windows to east, west and south elevations (four windows to each elevation), featuring pairs of coloured glass panes in the upper and lower lights; with two-light fanlights (except to the southern windows, which don’t have fanlights)
• Timber window frames, with two-light fanlights (two to north elevation; and one to west elevation)
• Low-waisted, 6-light timber door at stage level, with two-light fanlight, to west elevation
• Any early timber flooring (currently concealed)

Features of St James’ Hall not of state-level cultural heritage significance are:

• Location and orientation
• Recent door leaves inset within an original opening to the front (north) elevation
• Recent louvre windows (without fanlights) to north (x2) and west (x1) elevations
• Louvre sashes to early window frames to north and west elevations
• All external stairs, handrails, concrete paths, access ramps, and tactile floor tiles
• Timber balustrades to front porch (not original)
• Suspended ceiling to auditorium, including trusses and supporting posts
• Acoustic wall panels
• Recent floor coverings, including carpet to auditorium
• Non-original electrical fittings: lights, heaters, fans, air conditioners (including units and metal cage to south elevation), and associated ducts and grills
• PVC downpipes and watergoods
• Concrete stumps and ant-caps (not original)
• Retaining walls (2018) adjacent the west elevation
• Bitumen carpark to north
• Garden beds, plantings and concrete edging
• Recent speaker attached to wall of southern elevation

References

[1] The Native Title Claim of the Githabul People (Waringh Waringh), encompassing Warwick, was registered in May 2021. Land of the Githabul people in New South Wales, within the Bundjalung language, has already been recognised. Traditional owners of the Warwick area have also been referenced as the Gidhabal, Giabal/Gomaingguru and Geynyon/Keinjan people. National Native Title Tribunal, QC2021/001 – Githabul People (Waringh Waringh), Register of Native Title Claims Details, http://www.nntt.gov.au; Jessica Paul, ‘Warwick’s Githabul community celebrate landmark steps in native title claim after years-long battle for recognition’, Warwick Daily News, 27 May 2021; 'The Indigenous Peoples of the Darling Downs', http://www.visualarts.qld.gov.au/content/martens_standard.asp?name=Martens_context_indigenous; David Parsons, Waringh Waringh: a history of the Aboriginal People in the Warwick Area and their Land, Maryvale: David Parsons, 2003, p10, via https://eprints.usq.edu.au/4687/1/Parsons_Wadingh_Wadingh_Publ_version.pdf;  Maurice French, 'Darling Downs', Queensland Historical Atlas, 1 January 2010, http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/darling-downs; David Horton, Map of Indigenous Australia, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1996, https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia.
[2] Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Warwick State High School, 650062.
[3] Freeman’s Journal (Sydney), 30 December 1852 p10; Thomas Hall, The Early History of Warwick District and Pioneers of the Darling Downs, Toowoomba: Robertson and Provan, 192-, pp73-4. Additions to the original church began in 1879. The foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1879, the day of the Feast of the Assumption, so the additions were given the name “Assumption”: Warwick Examiner and Times, 16 August 1879 p2.
[4] Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Warwick State High School, 650062; Rev Father Joseph McKey, The Light of Other Days, Stanthorpe: International Colour Productions, 1979, pp155-6
[5] Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, All Hallows’ Convent and School, 600200; Yvonne McClay, A Critical Appreciation of the Educational System of the Sisters of Mercy, All Hallows’ Congregation, Queensland (unpub), Master of Education Thesis, University of Queensland, 1963, pp333 & 340.
[6] Entries on the Queensland Heritage Register, All Hallows’ Convent and School, 600200; The Range Convent and High School, 600779; and Ipswich Girls Grammar School, 600565; Eileen M O'Donoghue, 'Whitty, Ellen (1819–1892)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/whitty-ellen-4845/text8089, published first in hardcopy 1976, accessed online 15 September 2021; Malcolm Cole, Tropical sounds: a cultural history of music education in Cairns and Yarrabah, 1930 to 1970, PhD thesis, James Cook University, 2014, https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/41105/1/41105-cole-2014-thesis.pdf, pp125-6. Mother Vincent Whitty, head of the Sisters of Mercy who arrived in Queensland in 1861, considered music ‘indispensable to her concept of education’. She introduced music lessons to the schools run by the Sisters, which proved so popular that she had to employ lay music teachers: Evelyn O’Donoghue, Mother Vincent Whitty; with special reference to her contribution to education in Queensland, Masters of Education thesis, UQ, 1968, pp54 & 57.
[7] Warwick Examiner and Times, 14 October 1882 p2; Brisbane Courier, 12 December 1891 p6; entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Cloisters [600953]. Accommodation at the new convent was designed for eight sisters and about 30 boarders.
[8] Eddie Clarke and Greg Logan, Department of Education, ‘Primary Education – A Brief History’, ‘Secondary Education – A Brief History’, ‘Tertiary Education – A Brief History’ and ‘State scholarship examination’, History of Education in Queensland, Brisbane: Queensland Government, 1982, via https://education.qld.gov.au/about-us/history/brief-history, accessed 15 September 2021; Neil J Byrne, Robert Dunne, Archbishop of Brisbane, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1991, p179; Queensland Government Gazette, Vol 74 No 60, 1 September 1900, p511.
[9] Hall, The Early History of Warwick District, 192-, p80; Toowoomba Tourist Bureau, Darling Downs Centenary Souvenir 1840-1940, Toowoomba: Toowoomba Tourist Bureau, 1940, p115.
[10] Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Warwick High School, 650062; Paul Burmester, Margaret Pullar and Michael Kennedy, Queensland Schools A Heritage Conservation Study, a report for the Department of Education, 1996, pp29 & 50; Helen Bennett, Warwick Shire: Thematic Historical Overview; Queensland Department of Environment, Cultural Heritage Branch; 1996, pp59-67.
[11] Byrne, Robert Dunne, 1991, p140; McKey, The Light of Other Days, 1979, p156; Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Ipswich Girls Grammar School, 600565.
[12] Archbishop Duhig, quoted in Warwick Examiner and Times, 8 February 1915 p5; Ray White Commercial, Property Report: Sophia College Warwick, South East Queensland, 1994, p7.
[13] In 1901, 16 year old Convent student Josephine Donovan had been awarded the gold medal and senior honours certificate of the Associated Board of the Royal Academy and Royal College of Music, London; it was the only senior honours certificate granted for two years in Queensland (Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 26 September 1901 p6). In 1906 the Catholic Press reported that ‘for many years the Warwick Convent has worthily upheld its reputation as a first-class musical, educational establishment. It has the proud distinction of passing pupils for exhibitions in the London Trinity College examinations… large numbers of Warwick Convent pupils have won gold medals, honours, and distinctions, both in theory and practical, in the Associated Board of the Royal Academy, as well as the London Trinity College examinations.’ (Catholic Press, 18 October 1906 p17). Students continued to win awards through the 1910s, e.g., The WA Record (Perth), 9 May 1914 p8; Warwick Examiner and Times, 6 March 1916 p1; Catholic Advocate, 21 April 1932 p20; In 1911, when the Eisteddfod was held in Warwick, several of the Convent’s piano students competed so successfully that the Warwick Examiner and Times expressed its doubt that there was ‘in Queensland any better teachers of classical piano compositions, especially Chopin, than in the Warwick Convent’: Warwick Examiner and Times, 22 April 1911 p1.
[14] Warwick Examiner and Times, 22 April 1911 p1, 6 April 1917 p5 and 24 October 1917 p3.
[15] Warwick Examiner and Times, 18 November 1916 p1.
[16] Warwick Examiner and Times, 18 November 1916 p1.
[17] Entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, Warwick Town Hall, 600961; Donald Watson and Judith McKay, Queensland Architects of the 19th Century, South Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1994, pp39,55-6; Warwick Examiner and Times, 2 July 1910 p5.
[18] In her speech at the opening ceremony, one of the Convent students noted that the hall had been ‘rightly placed under your [the Archbishop’s] own patron, St James’: Catholic Advocate, 1 November 1917 p8.
[19] Warwick Examiner and Times, 31 January 1917 p8, 10 February 1917 p5 and 24 October 1917 p3. The Sisters had chosen not to publicly fundraise for the hall, as a subscription for a new St Mary’s Church was already underway, but held a paying concert on the opening of the hall in October 1917, and appear to have raised sufficient funds then: Warwick Examiner and Times, 20 October 1917 p5.
[20] Warwick Examiner and Times, 20 October 1917 p2.
[21] The stage drapings were ‘green and scarlet… lending themselves to the general colour scheme’, and the artwork included a copy of Murillo’s ‘Madonna of the Assumption’ and two ‘tasteful’ oil paintings: Warwick Examiner and Times, 24 October 1917 p3; repeated in the Catholic Advocate, 1 November 1917 p8.
[22] A Brisbane scholarship had been awarded since the beginning of the 20th century, but this was not open to students from the rest of Queensland until 1922: Warwick Daily News, 14 March 1921 p2 and 27 September 1922 p4.
[23] Queenslander, 5 October 1938 p11; Telegraph 12 February 1940 p15; Toowoomba Tourist Bureau, Darling Downs Centenary Souvenir, 1940, p115.
[24] The success of the music students in Trinity College examinations was reported in Queensland newspapers; Warwick’s Convent students were often allotted their own separate article to record the numerous passes, credits and distinctions. High level qualifications obtained by Convent students included performance diplomas as Associates of Trinity College London (ATCL, equivalent in standard to the first year recital of an undergraduate degree), and Licentiate of Trinity College London (LTCL, equivalent in standard to the final year recital of an undergraduate degree). In a single year in 1933, for example, four Convent students obtained ATCL passes; in the following year, another two received their associated qualifications, and one received her LTCL. One went on to obtain a fellowship diploma (FTCL, equivalent to a postgraduate course recital at a conservatoire or university) in violin, and another a fellowship diploma in piano while remaining a pupil of the Sisters: Catholic Advocate, 17 August 1933 p19 and 17 May 1934 p19; Warwick Daily News, 4 December 1937 p3 and 2 December 1939 p4; Trinity College, ‘Performance diplomas’, https://www.trinitycollege.com/qualifications/music/diplomas/performance, accessed 1 September 2021
[25] Along with students who earned music teaching diplomas and took on students  of their own, contralto/mezzo soprano Helen McKinnon became a professional singer, performing in Australia and internationally in the 1950s-1970s, before taking up a position as a lecturer at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music in 1979: Courier Mail, 29 March 1948 p3; Warwick Daily News, 31 May 1940 p2; Queensland Times, 26 February 1952 p2; Sunday Mail, 31 May 1953 p3; Canberra Times, 20 June 1966 p3; Australian Jewish Times, 2 August 1974 p26, 21 March 1975 p26, 12 December 1974 p15, and 27 April 1979 p13; Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales, 7 December 1979, Issue No 172 (supplement), p6200.
[26] Warwick Daily News, 19 August 1922 p4, 28 October 1922 p4, 23 September 1924 p2, 22 November 1924 p2, 21 December 1927 p3, 11 December 1929 p3, 12 December 1930 p8, 8 December 1932 p3, 5 December 1933 p4, 16 November 1935 p6, 20 November 1937 p2 and 7 December 1939 p4. The Apostolic Delegate was the Vatican representative to Australia; known since 1973 as Apostolic Nuncio: Warwick Examiner and Times, 15 June 1918 p4; Catholic Church in Australia, ‘Apostolic Nunciature’, https://www.catholic.org.au/about-us/apostolic-nunciature-in-australia, accessed 9 September 2021. The Bishop of Toowoomba also visited the hall in 1929 and 1930 (Brisbane Courier, 12 December 1929 p31 and 13 December 1930 p7; Catholic Press, 19 December 1929 p24; Catholic Advocate, 12 December 1929 p34 and 19 December 1929 p45). Warwick’s civic reception for Archbishop Duhig was also held in St James’ Hall in 1923, following the Archbishop’s return from Rome and Ireland (Warwick Daily News, 21 June 1923 p4).
[27] Queensland Government Gazette, Vol 118 No 44, 18 February 1922, p600.
[28] Warwick Daily News, 8 February 1922 p2.
[29] Warwick Daily News, 13 December 1922 p4.
[30] Miriam McShane and Anna Battle, Memories of the Past and Visions for the future… 95 years Assumption Convent 5 years Sophia College, Warwick: Sophia College, 1993, p4; Assumption College Warwick, ‘College History’, https://www.acwarwick.catholic.edu.au/college-history, accessed 27 August 2021; Toowoomba Archives File 300083.
[31] State of Queensland Natural Resources and Mines, aerial image QAP4380069, New England Hgwy Warwick-Wallangarra Road 22C (29 April 1985), and State of Queensland Environment and Resource Management, aerial image QAP4822103, Warwick 9341 (7 August 1989).
[32] McShane and Battle, Memories of the Past and Visions for the future, 1993, p4; Courier Mail, 26 August 1994 p25 and 2 December 1994 p21; Certificate of Title 16972026.

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