Contributing to a Broad, Liberal Education

The fourth Lady Principal of Brisbane Girls Grammar School, Miss Sophia Beanland was born in 1852 in Bradford, a thriving industrial town of 100 000 in north England. Life for girls and women at that time was very different to today. Generally, they were expected to marry, have children and undertake domestic duties rather than pursue education, employment or professional careers, although significant social changes were beginning to emerge, including the suffragette movement and the concept of providing an education for girls.

By the 1850s, Sophia’s hometown of Bradford had experienced rapid population growth and migration as it became an international centre for the manufacture of textiles, particularly woollens, which brought wealth, prosperity and progress to the civic life of Bradford. For Sophia, it brought personal opportunity. Educated, confident and independent, she studied at London University and then Girton College at the University of Cambridge where she obtained a teaching qualification.

In 1875—the year Brisbane Girls Grammar School was founded—Miss Beanland took up a teaching position at the newly established Bradford Girls Grammar School. She became an advocate for young women, often publicly voicing her opinion about the contribution that women made, and could make, to their communities. Committed to the liberating nature of education, Sophia described it as ‘the most important subject that can engage the attention of mankind’, noting that education shaped a woman to be ‘more independent in spirit, more developed in character,’ and that ‘a woman had the right to a fuller life’. In 1882, Miss Beanland, then aged 31 years and accompanied by her mother, made the long and daring trip by sea from England to Brisbane—at that time a small colonial outpost—to begin her appointment as Lady Principal of Brisbane Girls Grammar School.

Miss Beanland believed that girls should receive a holistic, rather than a narrow, education and, based on her own education and early teaching experiences at Bradford Girls Grammar School, Miss Beanland ensured the students at Brisbane Girls Grammar School received a balanced curriculum comprising numeracy and literacy, mathematics and science as well as languages, music, art and physical education. She hired accomplished teachers from overseas to teach the girls and was conscious of effectively preparing the students for the entrance exams to Sydney University and universities in England (The University of Queensland did not open until 1911). Proving to be a progressive visionary, Miss Beanland also led significant advances to the School’s facilities. This included the construction of the School’s iconic Main Building and the establishment of a staff reference library, later named the Beanland Memorial Library and now incorporated within the Elizabeth Jameson Research Learning Centre. A believer in the value of physical education to enhance girls’ learning, Miss Beanland also launched a special appeal in 1886 to raise funds for the construction of the School’s first gymnasium and tennis courts and the establishment of the School tennis club and annual tennis prize.

In 1889, Miss Beanland became ill and, on her doctor’s advice, returned to England and maintained a close relationship with the Girls Grammar for the remainder of her life. In 1915, she established the Esther Beanland Medal in memory of her mother—an award in textile design to celebrate the creativity and craft of exceptional Grammar girls. Miss Beanland died in 1925 and bequeathed her estate to Brisbane Girls Grammar School ‘as a remembrance of Sir Charles Lilley’, the School’s founder, together with the gold bracelet watch she received as a gift when she left the School in 1889.

An advocate for gender equality, the value of education and the belief every student has potential, Miss Beanland made a profound contribution to the education of girls in Queensland. She has left a lasting legacy at Brisbane Girls Grammar School and we are proud to honour her memory and philanthropic spirit through The Sophia Beanland Circle. Established in 2020, the Sophia Beanland Circle celebrates and acknowledges those who have made a gift in their Will to Girls Grammar.