History
It was established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1954. The purchase of the 20 acre (81,000 m²) site at Springfield brought to fruition the dream of finding a healthier environment for the girls' boarding school until that time part of Saint Aloysius College in Angas street, Adelaide. With the eighty boarders on opening day were sixty day scholars, mostly girls but with a group of boys in the infant section.
After twenty-one years the boarding school was phased out when rising costs and a decline in the rural economy made it financially beyond the means of the very families it was created to serve. In 1976 the school became co-educational with the first intake of boys in the Year eight and numbers have grown.
The Mercedes property was originally part of the Springfield Esate. It was sold to John Duncan, (father of Sir Walter, Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives for many years) who planned the house in 1891 and built it in 1899. The family home was named Strathspey after his childhood home in Scotland.
The Duncans eventually bequeathed the property to the Presbyterian Church and it became St Andrew's Residential College attached the University of Adelaide. In 1939 the property was sold to Mr and Mrs F W Cornell and it once again became a private residence. During their time St Andrew's became something of an artistic oasis. Mrs Cornell was very involved in the formation of the SA Symphony Orchestra and in encouraging touring celebrities to give concerts in Adelaide and many of these people were her house guests while in Adelaide.
In 1953 the property was bought by the Sisters of Mercy. Mercedes, the Spanish word for mercy, was chosen by the sisters to commemorate the circumstances of the Mercy foundation in Adelaide.
Archbishop Reynolds, first Archbishop of Adelaide, was in Dublin in 1879 asking for sisters of his diocese when a group of sisters returned from Buenos Aires, forced by revolution to leave their home for twenty-four years.
Some were the original Irish sisters but many were South American girls who left behind their families and homes. Accepting the Archbishop's invitation the twenty-four sisters arrived in Adelaide on the 3 May 1880. The heroism and endurance of the Spanish speaking pioneers are commemorated in the name Mercedes.
Read more about this topic: Mercedes College (Adelaide)
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