Newcastle East Public School - History of The School Site

History of The School Site

The Foundation Stone for the building was laid by Mr. Clarence Hannell, who was at the time the president of the local school board, on the Prince of Wales' birthday, Saturday, 9 November 1878. The ceremony was performed at midday by placing a glass jar beneath the stone. The jar contained four newspapers and a document inscribed with details of the ceremony and the names of relevant dignitaries such as the headmaster, Mr. M. Willis, Jr.

On the 20 November 1879, Hannell officially opened the building as Newcastle Public School before a “very large and fashionable audience in the large schoolroom of the building”. The man responsible for the design was the celebrated architect George Allen Mansfield, who was architect to the Council of Education from 1867-1879, building a series of single storey suburban schools in that time, all in the Gothic Revival style. The final cost of this construction was 10 000 pounds.

The original purpose for this newly built building was to house the Newcastle Public School, a school that was established in 1859 in nearby Brown Street. At this time the school consisted of boys’, girls’, infants’, and babies’ rooms and accommodated over eight hundred students.

In 1880, the school became a Superior Public School, reaching a peak of over 1000 students in 1884. The school on Bolton Street was enlarged soon after and other schools opened, causing a drop in enrolments.

In 1906 and within the same confines, the Hill High School was established in the western-most classroom. As the only high school in Newcastle at the time, it continued after Newcastle Public School was closed in 1911. The high school enrolled over 300 students by 1912. In 1929, Newcastle Girls' High School began its separate existence at Hamilton and the Hill High School became Newcastle Boys' High School. In 1934, they moved to a site in Waratah, and the site housed Newcastle Boys' Junior High School until 1973 when it was closed.

From 1974–1981 the site was used by the Society of Artists and other small groups to hold workshops. Renovations then commenced, as the building was in a state of disrepair. Newcastle East Primary School, at the time located down the hill in Bolton Street, was to be the new tenant. The school’s first day of teaching at the site was on 13 September 1982.

The architect responsible for renovations conducted during the 1980s was heritage architect John Carr. The original building, and the school, has won several architectural awards for its outstanding renovations, including a national award for the refurbishment of an historic building and is listed by the National Trust as a building of cultural significance.