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Gift symbolises UNE's living link with its origins

May 30, 2006

Vase.thumb.jpgA gift to The University of New England by the great-granddaughter of Frederick White, the original owner of “Booloominbah”, symbolises the continuing strong links between the University and the community that founded and nurtured it.

Yesterday, in the office of UNE’s Vice-Chancellor – originally the bedroom of Frederick White and his wife Sarah – Mrs Sue Grace presented the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Pettigrew, with a Royal Copenhagen ceramic vase. She placed the vase on the mantelpiece where it is known to have stood in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Mrs Grace explained how, after meeting Professor Pettigrew’s wife, Mrs Ann Pettigrew, and talking about her association with “Booloominbah”, she had had the idea of making a gift of the vase to the University. “It can be clearly identified on the mantelpiece in a photograph taken in my great-grandparents’ bedroom in 1920,” she said. “After talking to Ann, and learning that the bedroom was now her husband’s office, I thought I would like to present it to him so that it could stand in its original position once again.”

“I think it’s very exciting,” she continued. “It’s one of only a few original things that have come back to the house. I feel very proud of the fact that I live here in Armidale and am associated with ‘Booloominbah’.”

Professor Pettigrew said he was delighted by this new link to the family that had built the house in the 1880s, and had occupied it for more than four decades before its rebirth as a university college. “We’re very grateful to the family for the generous gift of this artefact, which is returning to ‘Booloominbah’ after 75 years,” he said. “Among other things, it symbolises the vital relationship between the University and the community.”

Mrs Grace’s father, John Eversley Belfield, was the son of Amelia, the second-youngest child of Frederick and Sarah White. Amelia lived in “Booloominbah” from the age of five until her marriage to Vere Eversley Belfield in 1905. Later in life she lived in the nearby house “Trevenna” (now the Vice-Chancellor’s residence) with her sister Florence Wilson, and Mrs Grace has many happy memories of visiting her there. Mrs Grace’s daughter, Mrs Jane Solly, accompanied her to Booloominbah yesterday.

Mrs Grace said that the vase, which is beautifully (and unusually) decorated with images of bats and pine-tree branches, had been among items left to her by her uncle, Henry Eversley Belfield.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Mrs Sue Grace (centre) placing the vase on the mantelpiece in "Booloominbah" after presenting it to the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Pettigrew. Professor Pettigrew, accompanied by Mrs Ann Pettigrew, confirms its position in the 1920 photograph.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at May 30, 2006 02:09 PM