In 1984, with significant financial assistance and personal support from Mr Aron Kleinlehrer, together with communal generosity, Emanuel School purchased their present site in Randwick.

This building features new classrooms, a design lab and a kitchen for hospitality students Pre-1780s local Aboriginal people in the area used the site for fishing and cultural activities – rock engravings, grinding grooves and middens remain in evidence.

[11] By the mid nineteenth century the traditional owners of this land had typically either moved inland in search of food and shelter, or had died as the result of European disease or confrontation with British colonisers.

[10][6] One of the earliest land grants in this area was made in 1824 to Captain Francis Marsh, who received 4.9 hectares (12 acres) bounded by the present Botany and High Streets, Alison and Belmore Roads.

The village was isolated from Sydney by swamps and sand hills, and although a horse-bus was operated by a man named Grice from the late 1850s, the journey was more a test of nerves than a pleasure jaunt.

The wealthy lived elegantly in large houses built when Pearce promoted Randwick and Coogee as a fashionable area.

An even poorer group were the immigrants who existed on the periphery of Randwick in a place called Irishtown, in the area now known as The Spot, around the junction of St.Paul's Street and Perouse Road.

Many European migrants have made their homes in the area, along with students and workers at the nearby University of NSW and the Prince of Wales Hospital.

[6][12]: 218–9 The area of land which subsequently was developed into the Aston Lodge Estate was offered for sale by the NSW Government in August 1862.

[6] Watkins is known to have engaged the architect Edmund Thomas Blacket to design the extant double storey, sandstone built, suburban villa known as Aston Lodge.

He had a considerable interest in English medieval architecture, which later provided Blacket with the intellectual background for his work in Australia in the Gothic Revival style.

He married Ann Frazier in 1844, and the couple had at least two children – John Leo (1849) and Aston James (1852), but there may have been others as the published genealogies of this family are often contradictory in their detail giving different places of marriage, birth, etc.

Apart from his commercial interests (which included the noted coaching company Cobb and Co.), Bradley was instrumental in establishing a number of ornithological societies and the Sydney Zoological Gardens.

John Leo after education at Sydney Grammar School and Christ's College, Cambridge was called to the London Bar in 1872.

[6] In July 1892 the Loreto Sisters of Ballarat, Victoria opened their first school (with convent) in New South Wales at Aston Lodge.

[6] The Sisters of Loreto Order was established in Germany in the early seventh century by a number of expatriate English Catholics.

The work of this Order was first extended to Australia in 1875 from the Irish Mother House with the establishment of Mary's Mount Ballarat, Victoria.

[6] The Loreto school proved very successful within its first years of opening providing courses in instruction at moderate cost for both boarders and day girls who whom were prepared for the Senior, Junior and Matriculation Public examinations.

[6] In June 1894 'after lobbying by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal Moran, the Sisters assumed responsibility for religious education of primary school girls in the Randwick Parish.

[6] In October 1897 the boarders and four nuns moved to the new purpose built school and convent established in the upper North Shore suburb of Normanhurst.

[clarification needed] The last move was reported to have been due to Kirribilli being more convenient for the school's pupils in terms of contiguity to the tram, ferry and rail services.

By their own fundamental rule, the Order could not accept any funds or any permanent endowment, with their help extended to the poor coming from providential dispensation of daily charity.

[6] The Little Sisters of the Poor were one of about seven comparable Catholic religious caring orders established in New South Wales in the late nineteenth century.

In 1982 the Little Sisters of the Poor proposed selling Aston Lodge to developer Beinda P/L for $3.1m to raise funds to rebuild and upgrade their aged care facilities nearby at Mount St. Joseph's.

The Order decided in favour of The Emanuel School in July 1984, who in turn offered to accommodate the IGS for two years to allow them to find a new site.

A conservation management study was prepared for the property by Clive Lucas, Stapleton & Partners in 1999 and updated in 2002 with more of a focus on the landscape components of the school grounds.

A succession of surveys dating from c. 1890-1930s and photographs from c. 1920s-c. 1960s describe the physical evolution of the site to indicate that the first permanent capital improvement was made c. 1864 for a stone residence and stables for the Watkins family which has been altered, adapted and extended with addition of new buildings over time to the present.

[6] Within this known occupational history, the earlier c.1864-1901 phase in view of the generally domestic nature of land uses and improvement may be of archaeological potential in that: Of the next phase, c.1901- say c.1940, that being the construction and operation of the former Novitiate, the site may be of archaeological potential in that: As at 5 October 1999, The Emanuel School site, Randwick is a unique complex of buildings and grounds situated in the Randwick area, containing a c. 1864 suburban villa known as Aston Lodge designed by Edmund T. Blacket which is of exceptionally high integrity, with remnant garden planting, and a fine and simple chapel (1921) and novitiate (1936) buildings constructed for the mendicant Roman Catholic order of the Little Sisters of the Poor who owned the site between 1901 and 1985.

[6] The site has important social and historical associations with the development of the Randwick area through the occupation of James Watkins, merchant and alderman of Randwick Council, and his large villa estate, the development of late 19th century private education in the eastern suburbs of Sydney with the Loreto Sisters' school, and the development of social welfare in NSW with the use of the site as the novitiate for the Little Sisters of the Poor who ran the adjoining Mount St Joseph home for the aged which was one of about three non-government aged homes operating in New South Wales in the late 19th century.

These include the high enclosing walls (late 1920s & 1930s), the gate lodge (1932), the laundry (1929), and paths, drives and early plantings (c. 1930s) by Clive Lucas Stapleton, 1999:46; modified slightly by Mayne-Wilson & Associates, 2002, 55).