Corporate entry: Maravovo School, Guadalcanal Island
- Functions
- Education
Details
Maravovo in northwest Guadalcanal is the name of an Anglican village on the seaside and Vera-na-aso, the hillside site of the Melanesian Mission station, and from 1922-1975 the site of St. Mary's School (q.v.), the fifth Diocese of Melanesia junior primary school. The station included a large plantation at sea level (site of today's Selwyn College). St. Mary's School was the largest of the Diocese of Melanesia boys' boarding schools and Rev. Charles Fox (q.v.) described it as 'in some ways the greatest'. Maravovo School began in 1916 as a Theological College, and in 1920 was moved to Siota. For a few years it was run as a technical college, which subsequently failed, and then in 1922 it became a boys' boarding school. It was destroyed by Japanese bombing in 1942 but rebuilt after the war. The Anglican Welchman Memorial Hospital was built at Hautabu a few kilometres away. After the hospital closed, the Melanesian Mission's printing press occupied Hautabu from 1912-1942.
St. Mary's School finally closed in 1975 and the site became a training centre for the Guadalcanal region of the Diocese of Central Melanesia. Most recently, it has become the noviciate training centre of the Community of the Sisters of Melanesia. (Fox 1958, 232; Terry Brown, personal communication, 26 July 2011; Montford 1994, 32)