The sandstone Ursula Frayne Memorial Chapel is part of the Academy of Mary Immaculate and Convent of Mercy Catholic girls’ secondary college. The Chapel, built between 1887 and 1890 is a rare example of an intact convent chapel in the geometric French gothic style.

Clara Mary Frayne was born in Dublin in 1816. She became a professed Sister of Mercy in 1837, taking the name Ursula. In 1845 she and five other Sisters of Mercy sailed to Western Australia with Bishop John Brady, to staff a recently constructed school. Because the catholic population in Perth was small, when the school opened in 1846 it only had one pupil, but by year’s end had 100 children attending its classes. In 1849, Mother Ursula opened the first secondary school in Western Australia.

In 1857 Mother Ursula accepted Bishop James Goold’s invitation to establish a foundation in Victoria. The site on Nicholson Street was selected and a convent and school for day girls and boarders built over a number of years. The Sisters of Mercy were the first teaching nuns in Victoria. Mother Ursula Frayne died in 1885. The Gothic chapel was built in her memory, and her remains are buried in a vault in the chapel under a Celtic cross.

The Convent of Mercy and Academy of Mary Immaculate consists of a number of buildings constructed over a period of thirty years. The first two buildings to occupy the site were two almost identical regency houses erected in 1850 to designs by architects Newson and Blackburn for John Watson and Edward Wight, merchants in partnership.

In 1853 the northern house, belonging to Watson, was purchased by Dr James Goold, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Melbourne, for use as his official residence. In 1857, Dr Goold invited Mother Ursula Frayne of the Sisters of Mercy to establish a convent and school in Melbourne. To enable the order to establish their convent, Dr Goold sold them his house and in 1861 the sisters acquired the adjoining house and converted it to a school.

Additional bluestone wings were added between 1858 and 1863, a three-storey bluestone classroom wing was built along Palmer Street in two stages between 1869 and 1881, and a sandstone memorial chapel was built in memory of Mother Ursula on the corner of Palmer and Nicholson Streets in 1887.