Heritage Trail
Raymond Hall (Former Preparatory School)
Raymond Hall was the first addition to the Carey school grounds and is still used as a classroom and staffroom today.
The buildings of the Carey Preparatory School were officially opened on Saturday 30 May 1925 and included three classrooms, a hall, a staffroom and an open-air room. Facing Wrixon Street, the new Prep School sat with its back turned to the rest of the school.
The total cost of the building of £5000 was met through an appeal for funds. Naming rights were granted to donors who supported the cost of the specific rooms.
At William Cartwright’s suggestion, the internal hall was named for George Nelson Raymond, a Baptist and wealthy boot factory owner who died in 1910. In memory of their father, the Raymond family gave £2940 to Carey’s appeal.
Raymond Hall provided space for daily assemblies, concerts and other large events for the entire school until the Memorial Great Hall opened in 1955. A corner of Raymond Hall was turned into a small library in 1936 with shelves, tables, books and small white chairs for the Preparatory School boys. In 1942, and with nearly 100 boys to accommodate, another part of the hall was screened off with moveable partitions so it could be used as a classroom.
Today, the Preparatory School site is occupied by the Middle School.
In 2020, the entire site was redeveloped and the Memorial Great Hall was upgraded. Raymond Hall still serves as a classroom downstairs and a staffroom upstairs, and forms part of the Centre for Creativity and Collaboration.
Fun facts
In 1941, a number of improvements and additions were made, including the installation of heaters and the open-air room made much more comfortable by the provision of sliding glass windows.
‘Raymond Hall was the venue for Friday night scout meetings, with Ken Lyall at the helm in the 1940s. The tufted, sloping junior oval was the space to the east of Prep school.’
– Tony McCutcheon, School Captain (1951)
This is a stop on Carey's Heritage Trail.
