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St Patrick's Primary School
From the School website.
On 24th May 1855, four French Sisters of the Order of St Joseph of the Apparition climbed into cargo baskets and were lowered over the side of the Lady Amherst to be taken ashore to the town of Fremantle. The Sisters had arrived at the request of Bishop Serra and resided for three years in the top storey of a house in Henry Street, the lower storey of which served as a Church. They began immediately to attend to the education of the local Catholic children.
In 1858 the main portion of the St Joseph's Convent was built in Adelaide Street and soon afterwards part of the Primary School in Parry Street was erected.
Education of the Catholic children of the Fremantle area continued in these two schools until 1966. In that year the St Joseph's Convent site was sold to the GJ Coles Company and the High School was re-established at De Vialar College in Samson. The Parry Street School was phased out over a couple of years as more space became available in the building, which was once part of the St Joseph's High School, but which from 1967 became known as St Patrick's. The Parry Street School was remodelled to become the present St Patrick's Parish Centre. In 1974 Mrs Gladys Parry became the first lay principal and the final extensions to the School were completed in November 1975. Maristella Kindergarten in Hampton Road, founded by the Italian Ursuline Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1963, became incorporated into St Patrick's in 1980. Until the end of 2014, Maristella encompassed the three-year-old Pre Kindergarten, a four-year-old Kindergarten class and the Pre Primary class. In 2014 a building program at St Patrick’s was initiated to make way for the early childhood students to be housed with the rest of the school, at 8 Ellen Street.
Today St Patrick's Primary School, Fremantle, is a Catholic school, under the care of the Oblate Community.
References and Links
Ewers, John K. 1971, The Western Gateway: A History of Fremantle, Fremantle City Council, with UWAP, rev. ed. [1st ed. 1948]: 177.
St Patrick's Primary School website
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 16 August, 2015 and hosted at freotopia.org/schools/stpats.html (it was last updated on 30 April, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.