St James Ivanhoe Hall and School

Posted on Saturday, 7th June 2025 by Janine Rizzetti

If you drive along Upper Heidelberg Road, you’ll see this building looking pretty much as it does here in this drawing from 1915.

St James Hall and School was the original home of St James Church of England Grammar School for Boys (later Ivanhoe Boys’ Grammar School), which opened in this building on 9 February 1915 with 14 students. It shared the building with students from Cooerwull (later Ivanhoe Girls Grammar School), established in 1903, which from 1907 operated from Hillsley, a weatherboard homestead-style house with wide verandahs and french windows, in Noel Street.

The boys’ school relocated to its current site on the Ridgeway in 1920, but it returned to the St James hallin 1942 for 18 months when the Ridgeway site was taken over for the Australian Women’s Army Service.

The Ivanhoe Grammar School, the Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School and Cooerwull are just three of the 73 schools we discovered in the Heidelberg area in our ‘Back to School Exhibition’. There’s only two more Sundays to catch it, rain hail or shine, on Sunday 8th June and Sunday 15th June between 2.00 and 5.00 p.m. We are in the Old Heidelberg Courthouse, Jika Street Heidelberg. Entry $5.00, children under 16 and members free.