History
Queenwood School for Girls was established by Grace Lawrance, assisted by Beatrice Rennie, as a private, independent, day and boarding school for girls, on 21 September 1925.
The two women had met in 1918, at the Glennie Memorial School in Toowoomba, Queensland, where Lawrance was Principal, and Rennie first assistant-mistress. They travelled to England in 1921, where they visited many of the best girls' schools. Both women resigned from the Glennie in 1925, with the intention of founding a school in Sydney. They chose a large, old house at 47 Mandolong Road, Mosman. Their entrepreneurial courage was remarkable since neither enjoyed perfect health.
The school was named "Queenwood" after the now defunct Queenwood Ladies' College at Eastbourne, in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, which had been founded by Miss Lawrance's mother in 1871, and which was similarly located on a hill overlooking the sea. The site at Mandolong Road was chosen because of its view over Balmoral Beach, and its northeasterly aspect. As Queenwood grew, the school expanded to a second site at Mandolong Road.
By 1926, Queenwood was a registered secondary school, and three years later Miss Rennie was teaching, running the school and caring for her ailing co-Principal. In 1932, a combination of the Depression, Lawrance's death in November, and Rennie's illnesses, meant that Violet Maude Medway often assisted in managing the school. The two women became co-Principals in 1942. Queenwood prospered despite the Depression and Second World War, and by 1950, Rennie was president of the New South Wales branch of the Headmistresses' Association of Australia. The school phased out its boarding program in the 1950s.
In 1962, Rennie retired as co-Principal, but the school remained her home as she worked in the library and helped with the students, as far as her health permitted. In 1966, the school became a non-profit private company, named Queenwood School for Girls Ltd.
The Junior School moved to the Medway Centre at Queen Street, Mosman in 1990, and later the Visual Arts Department moved to a separate site on The Esplanade at Balmoral Beach.
Queenwood School for Girls is now no longer a boarding school.
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