St Mark's College, North Adelaide, affiliated with Anglican church and Adelaide University, opens to students,1925
St Mark's College, affiliated with the Anglican church and Adelaide University, started in 1925 in the adapted Downer House on Pennington Terrace, North Adelaide, with (inset) Grenfell Price as its first master and its colours and coat of arms decided that year.
St Mark's College, South Australia’s first residential college for university students, was founded in 1925, affiliated with the Anglican Church of Australia and Adelaide University.
The need for a college was driven by demand for student accommodation that Adelaide University didn’t provide. The university founders believed that learning thrived best on “haggis in a hovel” and that students should survive without tutorials and rely on a few lectures from their professors each week.
Anglican priest and St Peter’s College headmaster Julian Bickersteth led the drive to start a residential college, with the Anglican synod of the diocese of Adelaide appointing a committee with that aim in 1920. Negotiation for a college site began in 1922 when H. W. Hodgetts secured options to buy, for about £10,000, the historic residence of the late John Downer in Pennington Terrace, North Adelaide, plus adjoining land on Kermode Street, a horse paddock and some old cottages. This, with more neighbouring houses and land purchased, gave room for a college of up to 150 students.
While the proposed constitution fully safeguarded its Anglican character, the college admitted non Anglicans to the council and was opened freely to men of all faiths. During 1923 and 1924, funds to buy the property weren’t enough to open the college with new buildings. The college council instructed architect Walter Bagot to adapt Downer House to accommodate a single or temporarily-detached married master; 12 tutors and students; a cook/housekeeper with the title of matron, and two or three maids.
A committee considered 40 Australian and New Zealand applications for the college mastership, together with 40 English names from Frank Wylie of the Rhodes Trust. It chose as first master the North Adelaide-born (Archibald) Grenfell Price, educated at North Adelaide’s Queen’s School and St Peter’s College. Failing the Adelaide University entrance examination, he got into Magdalen College, Oxford, and graduated with a bachelor and master of arts and diploma of education. Back in Adelaide, Price coached St. Peter's College athletic team and was elected a fellow of the Royal Georgraphical Society. His appointment as founding master of St Mark’s College in 1925 continued until 1957. In the meantime, he was elected to the seat of Boothby in the Australian House of Representative (1941-43) and was a founder of the Australian National Library.
The Adelaide University council approved the affiliation of St Mark's, its first college, on October 31, 1924. Initially, St Mark’s was to be called Christ's College but a movement developed for it to be changed to King's. A compromise was reached on St Mark's, after the saint’s day of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli. Another interesting compromise by the college founders regarded alcohol. Wishing the college to avoid the occasional drinking orgies they’d seen in Oxford and Cambridge, they asked the bishop to support making the college damp rather than wet or dry. The meant the council granted the students access to beer and light wines in regulated quantities but spirits were rigidly excluded.
Early in March 1925, the first council was elected. By March 25, the founders had entries from a resident tutor, A. E. M. Kirwood MA, a university lecturer in English; and nine students: L. A. G. Symons, A. Walkley, Kells Price, S. J. Douglas, B. Griff, L. F. Casson, W. D. Walker, BSc, C. J. Glover and G. W. W. Browne. The college was opened by South Australian governor, lieutenant general Tom Bridges and blessed by Anglican bishop Nutter Thomas. The college coat of arms and colours also were decided in the first year.
