Resurrection House

Resurrection House, Essendon was established in 1952 and run by the Sisters of the Resurrection. First intended for Polish migrants, it housed children from 1954, including some state wards. It ceased to be a children’s Home in 1971. In 2019 Resurrection House is a Catholic school.

Resurrection House was situated at 6 Aberfeldie Street, Essendon. It was run by the Sisters of the Resurrection, a Polish order of Catholic nuns. The institution was originally intended to accommodate the children of Polish migrants.

According to the website Catholic Education Melbourne, Resurrection House was established ‘to help meet the needs of these people, who as a result of the events of World War II found themselves in difficult circumstances in a foreign land with children who needed care while parents worked to provide a home and future’.

Jenkinson writes that from time to time, Resurrection House received state wards. In October 1957, Resurrection House was declared as an approved children’s home under the Children’s Welfare Act 1954.

A 1956 report of an inspector for the Child Endowment Scheme states that Resurrection House could accommodate 90 to 100 children. At that time there were 75 children in residence between the ages of three and ten years old. The house itself was described as ‘comfortable and attractive’, and included playground facilities and a kindergarten and junior school run by the Sisters.

Ryszard Szablicki was admitted to Resurrection House in the mid 1950s, an experience he writes about in his book Orphanage Boy. He calls the institution St Nicholas’s Orphanage. He writes: “Most of the children were not orphans, but were children of Polish immigrants. Many lived in the orphanage only during the school week and for them it was like a boarding school as they often spent their weekends and school holidays with family. Apart from the very early grades, children attended school outside the orphanage” (Szablicki, p.13). Day pupils were attending school at Resurrection House by 1957.

Szablicki writes of his first impression of the building:

A towering edifice stood proud on a rise overlooking the garden. Double-storied, cream-coloured and with several bold archways spanning its frontispiece, this building was my new place to stay, but I did not yet know that … The main building housed the nuns’ quarters and an upstairs dormitory for the girls. Attached at the rear was a single-storey structure that housed the boys’ dormitory. Comprising three or four large rooms connected by doorways, it accommodated about 30 boys. A wide open walkway separated this dormitory and the dining room (Szablicki, pp.13-14).

In 1971, the Sisters advised the Department that Resurrection House would be terminating its function as an approved children’s Home.

Following the closure of the Home, Resurrection House continued to operate as a primary school incorporating a kindergarten.