On 23 July 1863, a week after the Wesleyan Collegiate Institution opened its doors, the new college was formally inaugurated in a ceremony reported by the Empire newspaper the following day. Oddly, the Sydney Morning Herald did not publish its account of the event until 21 August.

A hundred and twenty guests, ‘several of whom were ladies’, came in the morning by steamer from Darling Harbour to the wharf at Silverwater, where they were met by cheers from the twenty students and another fifty guests who had come from Parramatta.

The inauguration service took place in the college chapel, which doubled as the schoolroom. After a hymn — ‘Except the Lord conduct the plan’— the Chairman of the Wesleyan Education Committee, Rev Stephen Rabone, expressed the hope and prayer that ‘this might prove the beginning of a great and glorious institution’.

The main speaker was the founding Principal, Rev John Allen Manton. He confessed to being fatigued from his labours in setting up the school and hoped that his audience would not expect too much of him that day. Nonetheless, he provided a detailed outline of the background to the College’s establishment and of its aims and values. It would be an institution, he declared, ‘in which the influence of Christianity would be felt, and those principles of religious truth be implemented, while they received that secular education necessary to fit them for the business of life.’ He urged parents, when praying for the sons they had sent to the new school, ‘not to forget those who had the charge of them.’ He also told them not to believe everything boys wrote home. ‘All that could be done for the comfort and happiness of those sent there would be carefully attended to.’ There, he said, pointing to the students, were his family, and he meant to have an increasing family.

The service was followed by an ‘excellent luncheon’ in the dining room of Newington House, ‘to which admission was by ticket’, and by an inspection of the buildings and ‘the beautiful adjacent grounds’.

The day finished with a meeting ‘for the purpose of taking the financial state of the institution into consideration.’ The Principal gave a detailed statement of what had been done, what it had cost, and what was still required to be done. After exhortations by several prominent guests, the sum of £200 was raised. At half past four, the steamer took the guests back down the river to Sydney.

David Roberts
College Archivist