While the Chapel of St Luke is a familiar part of our School today, it was only ever a dream in the first 70 years of the School. It was on a wish list as far back as 1914. Indeed, plans were drawn up by architect Alexander North for both a School Hall and a School Chapel, and these plans are in our Archives. However, the Hall was deemed the more important of the two, and, being wartime, money and labour were scarce. Thus, in 1917, the Hall was finished, but alas, no chapel followed.
Miss Gilman Jones, Headmistress at the time, was very disappointed that a chapel was not high on the list of school needs and encouraged the community that a chapel should be “built by the girls, not the Council, as their gift to the School”. Thus began nearly 50 years of fundraising for a chapel. Generations of girls were familiar with the blue pockets circulated at assembly, gathering weekly donations. These contributions never reached the required amount for a chapel. There always seemed to be more urgent priorities in front of the School Council, such as classrooms and boarding houses, and the Chapel never made it to the top of a building list.
Enter Miss Mountain, Headmistress 1957-1974, who believed a chapel was “the focal point of the School”. She raised the need for a chapel with the Council soon after she arrived in 1957. In the early 1960s, the School Council investigated the idea of using the entire School Hall as a chapel, but asked the architect Louis Williams to meet with Miss Mountain and discuss an alternative proposal for a two-level structure with a horizontal division within the Hall. This design, which highlighted the soaring timber beams in the Hall’s roof and the high windows, was accepted, and the new chapel was completed by 1967.
It was described as a “beautiful modern place of worship” in the 1967 School Magazine. The whimsical stained-glass window above the altar was already in place, having been created when the School Hall was built. However, the beautiful west window at the back of the Chapel was a gift from the Old Grammarians Society at the time of the chapel’s construction. Since then, the OG Society has commissioned and installed three stained-glass windows, created by David Wright, in memory of Principals Dorothy Ross, Edith Mountain, and Nina Crone.
The tall building facing Anderson Street, which initially served as the School Hall, is now commonly referred to by most members of our School community as the Chapel of St Luke.
