University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016 University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 1989 An evangelical school in an evangelical diocese: an examination of Trinity Grammar School, Sydney, 1913 to 1976 Phillip J. Heath University of Wollongong Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. 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Recommended Citation Heath, Phillip J., An evangelical school in an evangelical diocese: an examination of Trinity Grammar School, Sydney, 1913 to 1976, Master of Arts (Hons.) thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 1989. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/2248 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] An Evangelical School in an Evangelical Diocese. An Examination of Trinity Grammar School, Sydney 1913 to 1976 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Arts (Honours) from The University of Wollongong by Phillip J. Heath BA (Hons) Dip Ed. 1989. UNIVERSITY Of WOLLONGONG ' i LIBRARY 1 012201 Acknowledgements It is no easy matter to pay appropriate tribute to the scores of people who are behind the accomplishment of a work such as the present thesis. To mention any is to give offence to those who through sins of omission are not duly acknowledged. Yet, risks notwithstanding, I feel it necessary to express my most profound gratitude to those who have made a contribution to the present work. To the army of Trinity students, staff and families who have contributed time and knowledge to an otherwise ignorant writer, I acknowledge my debt. First among many is the Council, Archivist and present Headmaster, Roderick West, who have made freely available archival material and Council minutes. To Rod and Janet West I owe particular gratitude for their frank and dispassionate account of their first months at the school. West's predecessor, James Wilson Hogg, a man whose eminence scarcely matches the contribution to Australian education he has made, was most generous in both his time and his insights across innumerable drafts and countless hours of discussion. I am grateful, too, to Philip Bryson and William Clarke College for assistance in the final stages of this work. To my supervisor (in more ways than one), Dr Stuart Piggin, I retain a lively sense of gratitude for his painstaking and scholarly perusing of pages of clumsy syntax and incomplete syllogisms. That which is of merit in the following may be justly attributed to his capable assistance. The corollary is not the case. To my wife, and our newborn son, whose collective patience grew more obvious with each rejected page of text, I acknowledge publicly a profound and incomprehensible debt. Complete at last, we look at long promised moments of idleness with incredulity. Long may it remain. An Evangelical School in an Evangelical Diocese. An Examination of Trinity Grammar School, Sydney, 1913 to 1976. Table of Contents. Introduction. 2 Chapter One: Foundation (1912) 9 Chapter Two: The Headmastership of K.T. Henderson (1913) 24 Chapter Three: The Headmastership of W.G. Hilliard (1913-1916) 46 Chapter Four: The Headmastership of F.H. J. Archer (1916-1922) 70 Chapter Five: The Headmastership of G.E. Weeks (1923-1928) 97 Chapter Six: The Second Headmastership of W.G. Hilliard (1929-1934) 132 Chapter Seven: The Headmasterships of P.W. Stephenson (1935-1937) and V.S. Murphy (1938-1942) 157 Chapter Eight: The Headmastership of J. Wilson Hogg Part One (1944-1962) 188 Chapter Nine: The Headmastership of J. Wilson Hogg Part Two (1963-1974) 214 Epilogue: An Evangelical Restoration. 230 Conclusion: 239 Bibliography: 246 1 Abstract. The following thesis attempts to describe the history of Trinity Grammar School, Sydney, Australia, from 1913 to 1976. It examines the foundation of the school, its demographic setting, and its continuity of religious expression from its establishment by the Rev. G.A. Chambers in 1913 to the appointment of its most recent headmaster, Roderick I. West, in 1975/76. In examining the history of Trinity Grammar School, this thesis postulates three themes which are consistent features of its narrative. First, Trinity was founded and sustained as an attempt to establish an evangelical school in an evangelical diocese, one in which the religious foundation of the school is consistent with the diocese within which it exists. Second, Trinity has been dominated, in the main, by particular individuals whose influence has been of the utmost importance to its progress. Chiefly headmasters and councillors, the most significant individual in the foundation of the school in 1913 was the rector of Holy Trinity, Dulwich Hill, Sydney, G.A. Chambers, whose influence was the dominant element of the school's governance for nearly thirty years. Finally, this thesis asserts that a proper understanding of Trinity Grammar School is impossible without due recognition of the demographic setting of the school. This school was set down in the inner western suburbs of Sydney, an area which neither valued nor desired the kind of education undertaken by Trinity. The fact that Trinity survived in spite of rather than because of its setting, has made an indelible impression on the history of this school. This thesis has implications for the wider study of the history of independent education, for the role of individuals within the governance of these schools, and for the history of the Anglican diocese of Sydney. An Examination of Trinity Grammar School, 1912 to 1976. Introduction. Preamble. School histories, like many other institutional histories, are traditionally characterised by hagiography and uncritical narrative. This is due, no doubt, to the desire of those historians commissioned to write institutional histories to provide a study which portrays their subject in a sympathetic light. Hence, the history of specific institutions or, in this case schools, rarely appeals as a subject of academic or scholarly preoccupation. Yet, in a sense, there is a place for such a genre of history in that it documents the life and influence of an important social unit the existence of which mirrors broader social movements. By broader social movements it is implied that schools are as much the victims as the result of the historical context in which they are set down. Independent Schools are established, in the main, by individual members of wider institutions, notably churches, whose ambition it is to establish a place of learning as a component of their strategy for the advancement of their movement. The present study examines the history of an Anglican diocesan school, namely Trinity Grammar School, located in Summer Hill and Strathfield in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney. The history of Trinity Grammar School is considered from three viewpoints: the foundation and conduct of an evangelical school in an evangelical diocese; the role and influence of individuals, notably its founder, G.A. Chambers, its councillors and its headmasters; and the demographic setting of an Independent school in the inner western suburbs of Sydney, an area which, it might be argued, was inimical for a time to such an institution. There have been comparatively few scholarly studies on the history of specific Independent schools in New South Wales. In 1974, Braga wrote a thesis entitled The History of Barker College, 1891-19571 in which he traced the historical development of that school and its place in secondary education in New South Wales. In a similar vein, in 1980 Peter Yeend submitted a thesis on Aspects of the History of The King's School, *3 Is. Braga, A Century of Governance in Anglican Boys' Secondary Schools in the Diocese of Sydney, 1831-1931. Unpublished Master of Educational Administration Thesis, University of New England, 1983. 3 0009 02980 4825 Parramatta"2 3, in which he examined the progress of the nation's oldest Independent school. Both historians were in the employ of the institutions under scrutiny and Yeend had been, for some years, the full time archivist of The King's School, Parramatta. More recently, Braga has written a Master of Educational Administration thesis entitled "A Century of Governance in Anglican Secondary Schools in The Diocese of Sydney, 1831-1931" which combines some orginal research on Diocesan policies regarding education with a synthesis of published Anglican school histories. The result is useful in that it makes generalisations concerning the lack of Diocesan initiatives in education apart from the foundation of schools which mirrored the great English Public Schools which provided the educational model transplanted to the Sydney scene. However, the reliance of this thesis on published school histories, some of which dwell almost exclusively on narrative, undermined the scholarly merit of the work.3 Published school histories greatly outnumber academic treatises.