Objects of Substance- The Cottages

Our cottage industry – or not so “industrious”?

1956 VIB outside the cottages [on the School side] When I started at Girls Grammar as a Year 9 student in 1964, having completed Grade 8 at primary school, my “form room” was the “first cottage”, the one closest to the Main Building. The cottages were not quaint English structures with roses growing over the door but a timber and tin duplex of “temporary” classrooms that, in 1964, were situated very close to the front fence near to the location of the current gate to the Jameson Building.

c 1975 The cottages viewed from the front of the Western Wing

From where did this building appear? In 1921 the Brisbane Grammar “hospital” was brought over to the Girls Grammar campus. It was repainted and fitted out as two large classrooms. They were traditionally the classrooms given to Form III classes [the youngest students until 1964] and, even as early as 1927, students were complaining about the noise from the street. These two classrooms were a little isolated, even a little out of the way, and “some students” were known to throw orange segments at the Grammar boys who sped past on their training runs; indeed, they were so close to the footpath that girls’ feet out the window nearly touched passers- by!

1975 School Magazine p20

1971 Lesley Stephenson at the western gate next to the cottages.

The classrooms had wooden desks and benches for two [like the ones in the current library spaces] and a set of small, square wooden lockers. [The only remnants of this solid piece of furniture are three square, graffitied doors kept in the School Archive].

Three salvaged lockers doors from the Cottages.

In 1964, I was not, like most 13 year-olds, interested in the history of this small building with its rooftop finial. However, it did have one main advantage: it was on the margins of the campus at that time and a lookout ensconced at the back windows could alert the class when the teacher was coming as, in those days, the classes stayed in place and the teacher roamed. The other clear memory I have is that, in that year on the final day for the Seniors, a couple of carloads of Grammar boys drove in the car park gate just past the building, made a quick and dusty circle, and then exited, yelling gleefully.

1924 Merle Weaver on the Cottages’ steps.

Looking back to the cottages with W Block on the left. The doors to both classrooms are evident, as is a rather interesting car park. There was a driveway into the school just past the cottages.

The new and beautiful superstructures that are the Hirst CLC and the Science building are stunning examples of innovative modern design but I cannot help but wonder if, with a little more attention, we could have preserved what I now, perhaps nostalgically, remember as a strangely charming structure, a piece of Queensland architectural history.

Kristine Cooke (1967) Director of Information Services