Alan fairholme biography
Fairholme College
Independent, day and boarding school in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
Fairholme College is an independent, day and boarding school for girls, located in Toowoomba, one of Australia's largest provincial cities, in South East Queensland, Australia.
Established as Spreydon College in 1908 by sisters Elizabeth, Jessie and Margaret Thomson, the college has a non-selective enrolment policy, and currently caters for approximately 845 students from Kindergarten to Year 12, including 240 boarders in Years 5 to 12. It is the only school associated with the Presbyterian Church of Queensland that is not owned by the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association (PMSA), and is one of a small number of Presbyterian schools in Australia.
Fairholme is a member of the Alliance of Girls' Schools Australasia (AGSA), the Junior School Heads Association of Australia (JSHAA), the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA), and the Australian Boarding Schools' Association (ABSA).
History
In 1907, sisters Elizabeth, Jessie and Margaret Thomson, all former teachers of the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne, moved to Toowoomba, with the idea of establishing a girls' school conducted according to the standards of the Secondary Teachers' Association of Victoria. They leased the now heritage-listed house Spreydon, a property with over an acre of land on the corner of Warra and Rome Streets at Newtown in the west of Toowoomba, and on 4 February 1908, opened the privately owned Spreydon College, a Christian boarding and day school for girls. Commencing with a roll of 20 boarders and "quite a number of day girls", the school offered classes from Kindergarten to "Sydney Senior Standard". The Spreydon building housed the Principal and boarders' quarters, while a school room, Kindergarten and t Fairholm There is now no doubt at all that this is the oldest house in Strathfield. To begin at the beginning, here is a small extract from a paper read to the Royal Australian Historical Society in 1923 and published in the Society’s – Journal later that year (Vol. 8, page 358). ’There was no Strathfield station for some years after 1869. The writer’s father petitioned the Government for a road, a continuation of the Homebush Road on the Redmire estate to Homebush station, and the road was granted. Our first neighbours were Mr. William Wakeford, railway contractor; Mr. C. J. Muddle, Deputy Registrar – General; Mr. Donald Vernon, Secretary for Railways; Mr. John Vernon, afterwards Auditor – General; and Mr. Walter Renny, Mayor of Sydney’. The paper was by Mr. C. A. Henderson whose father was one of the first to move to the Redmire Estate in, or shortly after, 1867. The Henderson’s established the Seven Oaks Dairy facing Homebush Road near Redmyre Road and Mr. Henderson’s paper was based on what had been told to him by his father and on his own childhood recollections. He was very informative and factual on many matters of Strathfield history, especially from his personal knowledge of the descendants of Thomas Rose, whose grant of 1793 ran along the other side of Redmyre Road so that the families were neighbours. The Henderson’s’ property was part of the Redmire Estate subdivision of 1867 but the Rose Grant was just across the border. Another reference to early occupiers of the Redmire was read to the R.A.H.S. on this same subject and also published in the Journal (Vol. 22 page 317). It was by a Mr. Campbell and although it relates to a wider area and is accompanied by explicit maps, does not add to the specific matter of ‘Fairholm’ and its owner and occupier, Charles John Muddle, because it confirms what is already known as at a time when there were 41 residences on the Redmire, including some which we know to have been built in 1899, much 1908-1916 Fairholme College had its beginnings in Spreydon Girls’ College, opened by two sisters, Miss Beth and Miss Jessie Thomson, on 4 February 1908 at a house in Russell Street, Newtown, Toowoomba. By 1911, the need for more room resulted in Spreydon College moving to a more spacious home in Rome Street, Newtown, that was named ‘Spreydon’ after the College. 1917-1919 With enrolments increasing, the Presbyterian Ladies’ College quickly outgrew ‘Spreydon’. In April 1917, the PLC Board purchased ‘Fairholme’, a larger property on the Range generously offered for sale by its owner, Mrs Margaret Anne Cameron. .Our History
Beginnings
Moving to ‘Fairholme’