The St Joseph’s Providence Porch is the oldest remaining part of Wellington’s longest functioning school; a tangible historic link with the very beginnings of the history school and convent that were both built in the early 1850s.
Bishop Viard arrived in Wellington in 1850 along with a group of French Marist Fathers and Sisters. Land was purchased in Thorndon for church purposes and a cathedral (1851), bishop’s residence, convent school (1850) and boy’s school (1851) were built on the site. The Bishop soon received requests from Maori families to provide an education for their daughters. A further section of land was offered to Bishop Viard in 1851 by Governor George Grey for a Catholic convent or boarding school for this purpose, and a grant of £400 was promised towards the cost of the school. Governor Grey and his wife took a keen interest in the boarding school and it is said that Lady Grey personally furnished the building. The school, a substantial structure designed by Thomas Henry Fitzgerald, opened in 1852.
It was named St Joseph’s Providence, and initially staffed by Sister Mary Cecilia (Catherine McCann) and two assistants. McCann had previously taught at St Patrick’s School in Auckland, and had been the Senior Sister at the Hill Street Convent and girl’s convent school. She was replaced by 21-year old Sister Mary Joseph (Mary Ann McGarvey) when she left to lead the Providence. The rules of conduct imposed by Bishop Viard were so strict that there was no visiting allowed between sisters of the convent and the Providence, even though the two institutions were sited within a few minutes walk of each other.
On 8 January 1852 a report by inspectors to the Governor praised the Providence fulsomely as “an ornament to the town” and “…one of the most perfect establishments in the colony.” In 1861 the Sisters of Mercy arrived from Auckland to take over the convent, girl’s convent school and the Providence after the last of the original four Sisters died in 1860. A two-storey Gothic style extension was added to the Providence building in c.1869, and it is possible that this building was built as a house for Bishop Viard - as noted in an Evening Post newspaper article of 1889. It was certainly more elaborately ornamented than the original school building.
The Providence, although it had opened ostensibly as a college for Maori girls, in fact operated as an orphanage and charitable school. It was a separate institution from St Mary’s College, a boarding and day-school for young women, although both were under the care of St Mary’s Convent. In 1880 an act of parliament placed the nation’s orphanages under the control of the Education Department and the Providence became known as St Joseph’s Industrial School. By 1889 the building that had originally been designed to house 16 girls housed 60 children and was found to be too small, draughty, inconvenient (there was no hot water, and only a single bathroom) and the attic bedrooms were described as more suitable as stabling for Shetland ponies than as accommodation for children. The Providence was demolished and rebuilt in c.1890-92.
The orphanage moved to a larger site in Upper Hutt in 1910 and the (1892) Providence building was reused as residential accommodation for boarders at the adjacent St Mary’s College. It was demolished when the college closed its boarding facilities in 1976, and the building was replaced by a new administration block. The porch currently serves as a playground shelter and has become something of a shrine for people with close associations with the school and convent.
